Redirection: The Prime Sonnets and Other Poems

From its quirky sonnets on each of Canadas Prime Ministers to its ruminations on the history and landscape that have helped mould this country Ways redirection is solidly a Canadian book. The poems are a tour-de-force that shifts in genre tone style and theme. Modernist interests are fused with postmodern sensibilities-anything goes as the poems slide from topic to topic form to form. A charming ode of sorts on Al Purdy gives way to a sustained ode on the death of the authors great uncle in World War I a satire about the odd compulsion of neighbours to decorate their driveways sits next to a comic haiku eulogy about an exotic pet owner who loved baby tigers an elegy on his mothers death by cancer is followed by an ironic lyric recounting a childs doomed visit to see Queen Elizabeth-the language of Ways work is always precise and unswerving-agile exact arcane blunt. This is a poetry in which imagination translated into language as effectively as words can manage offers us a new often redirected view of the world as Way sees it-sometimes funny sometimes brutal but always honest genuine. And always with that ineffable sense that this is a Canadian seeing himself and Canada inside and out and the world beyond. From its innovative sonnet sequence on Canadas Prime Ministers to myriad ruminations on matters local and intimate national and universal Ways redirection is a Canadian book of poetry that seeks unceasingly to lay bare the Canadian psyche and that of the world beyond.