Description:
In Modern and Normal, Karen Solie takes her on-the-road fascination with being between places to a new level, exploring conceptual and perceptual states of in-betweenness.
For example, between what is perceived and what is actually there, or between and among the patterns the world repeats from the cell to the structure of the universe--to find points of intersection. Solie finds a middle ground between the discourses of the hard sciences and the intuitive, a realm of weird overlap wherein lie questions of probability, fate, determinism, chance, luck, and faith. She writes about fractals and physics, but also about bar bands, broken hearts, and the trappings of desire. Some splendid landscape poems celebrate nature while mourning the way in which it's often exploited and used. Once again Karen Solie offers readers her lovely dexterity and skill in poems which entertain as they move.
"Evade your eye. Try to see as others do
what is desired or refused. What went wrong.
Or right, then wrong. Objectively, what hangs.
Pull yourself together. Years are neither kind
nor cruel. You drag on. The girl is gone.
Consider that it might be time to call in
a professional. Blood is fearless, runs
to meet a touch, indiscriminate, remembering
the first time it fell in love with the world, unaware
that now you are alone."
--From "Mirror"
Brief description: Karen Solie's first collection of poems, SHORT HAUL ENGINE (Brick Books, 2001), won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize, the ReLit and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her second, MODERN AND NORMAL (Brick Books, 2005), was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Her poetry, fiction and non-fiction have appeared in numerous North American journals. She is a native of Saskatchewan and now lives in Toronto.
Review Quotes:
"Her voice is wild and loving all at once, her poems...are lit by a language so fresh that you long to hear it in private."
--Michael Redhill, Nuvo Magazine"A work simultaneously wide-ranging in scope and unified in depth...Its language is muscular and strong-willed, its poems executed with deadly seriousness and a side-long smirk. Karen Solie is among the best poets of her generation. Modern and Normal is the work of a seasoned, established poet at the top of her game, but in the disguise of a humble second book."--George Murray, The Globe and Mail
"Her technical and formal skill is beyond reproach; in 90-odd pages of ringing, percussive lyrics...she never seems to put a foot wrong or waste a word."--Lyle Neff, The Vancouver Review
"Instead of pat answers, she offers us something more central, more interesting, and more moving, 'the long valley opening at the centre/ of a constant world.'"--Rob Winger, Arc Poetry Magazine