D.C. Reid

These Elegies

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The concept of DC Reid’s eighth book of poetry is the violence that humankind does to itself in its conflicts, recognizing, on the one hand, the waste of human beings over the centuries in armed conflict – The War Without – one of our unfortunate passions, and on the other, when conflict is turned inward – The War Within – and the goal is survival. In the external world of war, Gallipoli, for instance, was Churchill’s first major disaster. And Canada’s loss in the World Wars is also chronicled. A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness places man in the natural world, though he may not think that is his lot, and is saved by a deer and wildness. Narratives of Sex and Death, asks the Purdyan question: is there more than sex and death, or are we just reiterations of the founding mythologies of western civilization? Erebus is a political section that is, of course, where souls first go after death. The War Within moves from outer conflict to inner, and charts the mental territory of pain, cancer and the tiring dimension of radiation. It lifts to elegy in open-form love songs that offer resolution for the dead.

D. C. Reid’s most recent book, The Spirit of the Thing and the Thing Itself, stands out as one of the finest books of poetry I’ve read in the last few years, combining as it does an uncanny blend of impressive, full throttle inventiveness with the discipline of a master. How many poets can balance such polar ends? Anyone else?
~ Stephen Bett, author of So Got Schooled

D.C. Reid’s poems have been published widely in 50 literary magazines in Canada, and just as many around the world, with his work translated into Spanish, Chinese, French, Greek, Hindi and Bengali. His sixth book of poems, You Shall Have No Other, has being made into web-based movies on www.sandria.ca – fifty-five so far. Of this cross-media-genre project, Reid says: Poems bloom easily into video because of their images. Take a look.
Reid is a past president of the League of Canadian Poets. His recent awards include: the Colleen Thibaudeau award for service to Canadian poetry and poets in establishing a PK Page Trust Fund for mentoring, and a Planned Giving and Bequest Program; the national Roderick Haig-Brown Award for sustained environmental writing; and the War and Love Anthology, first prize, for ‘Sepia our high faces.
Reid has widely-divergent deep interests: poetry; novels; cutting-edge brain science and neuroplasticity; the science of artistic creativity; sport fishing - non-fiction and creative non-fiction; and, the environmental degradation caused by fish farms.

ISBN 978-1-77171-277-4
Poetry
121 Pages
6 x 9
$23.95
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