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Like Zieroth’s The Fly In Autumn that reshapes the heroic sestet with the benefit of long years of poetic practice, D.C. Reid takes the glosa and makes it his own. Utilizing quotes from Rilke’s greatest series, The Duino Elegies, and PK Page’s hologram, Reid attends to the preoccupations of formality while addressing some of humanity’s themes: war; religion; women; what there is left of family; nature; as well as the ghosts of summer; even a canyon where he hung above the water before letting go. This book results from PK Page’s confidence in his first glosa many years ago, and his long desire to write a formalist book.
This has been said of D.C. Reid’s books:
Reid has made a breakthrough that is rare.
~ Patrick Lane
[Reid’s work is] honest, lyrical hard hitting, even shocking… It takes the ordinary and explodes it in your face. This is poetry about women drenched in admiration and sexuality.
~ Vancouver Sun
Like Tim Lilburn’s work, the metabolic rate of Reid’s poems is pitched very high, the effort to meld the poetry’s imagery and the narrative prodigious.
~ David Godkin
D.C. Reid has, with passion and immense skill, created a compelling new poetic form. Intensely self-aware, each poem moves with the in and out-breath of existential examination. Sensual and intelligent, D.C. Reid’s work ignites inquiry and prods the reader to move to the spaces between the defined and the definition. This collection is at once, challenging, startling, and intimate.
~ Dale Winslow
The Spirit of the Thing and the Thing Itself is D.C. Reid’s 12th book (his oeuvre includes: poetry, novels and non-fiction). Reid’s Love and Other Things That Hurt and The Hunger were shortlisted in their separate years for the Dorothy Livesay Award, BC’s highest prize for a book of poetry. Among many other awards, Reid has taken silver twice in the Bliss Carman Award. His work has been translated into Hindi, Spanish and Chinese. He is a past President of the League of Canadian Poets.
Among his awards is the recent Colleen Thibaudeau Award for recognition of a substantial volunteer series of projects that significantly nurture and support poets and poetry across Canada. Royalties and readings revenue from this book will be deposited in the PK Page Trust Fund for mentorship, and help him expand the DC Reid Poets Bursary Fund.
For something completely different, go to www.sandria.ca where Reid’s most recent book of poems, You Shall Have No Other, a book of poetry, written as a novel, pared down to a play, is presented as web-based movies.
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