Daniel Cowper's debut poetry collection, Grotesque Tenderness, speaks for an unrooted age, for unrooted people. In these poems, city-dwellers long to ally themselves with some sympathetic culture or the evolutionary logic of nature, but those alliances remain conditional, ambiguous, or dangerous. A tsunami smashes a harbour city into tide-rows of burning debris; children chase snakes in summer meadows. The primordial past spins off rogue by-products and flawed replicas, while lonely office-workers get high on back porches and drink themselves to sleep. The musical and kinetic energy of Grotesque Tenderness is driven by our urge to understand pain and our hunger to reach an imperfect reconciliation with the problems of guilt and suffering. But in the tradition of William Blake, these poems affirm again and again that the lit world goes on living and life justifies itself through its own workings. From elegant lyrics of alienation and heartbreak to long-form mythopoeia and lament, these poems approach beauty, ugliness, even criminality in a spirit of wonder and vulnerability.--$cProvided by publisher.
Authors
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Date published
- 2019.
- Description conventions
- rda
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- C811/.6
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 23
- Distributor
- Canadian Electronic Library (Firm),
- General Note
- Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- ISBN
- 9780773557703 0773556273
- LCCN
- PR9199.4.C6865
- LCCN Item number
- A6 2019eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- NLC
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (xi, 132 pages)
- Published in
- Ottawa, Ontario
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)kck00239833 (OCoLC)1083307748 (CaOOCEL)456810
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- YDX
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- Copyright 7
- Contents 10
- Part I The Life & Crimes of Sextus Tarquinius 14
- Transubstantiation 16
- Phoresy 18
- Too Small to Eat 21
- Child’s Play 23
- The Camera 25
- Fugitives Will Bring the News 27
- News 29
- Elect 32
- MacBeth 34
- Notes for the Sentencing 36
- Psychiatric Evaluation 38
- Failure to Appear 40
- The Fugitives 42
- Part II Regrets 44
- The Lotus-Eaters 46
- Counterpoised 48
- Departures 49
- Ballgame 51
- Rat Patrol 52
- Red-Eye 54
- Spandrel for Pan Twardowski 55
- A Long Country 57
- Underground 58
- Wanting to Look 59
- Snake in the Mind 60
- Time Delay 61
- Walking 62
- Secret Water 63
- Vagrants 65
- Civil War 67
- Crowsnest Pass 69
- Home before Dark 70
- Part III A Little History 72
- Age of Innocence 74
- Age of Experience 76
- Age of Exploration 79
- Age of Anxiety 81
- Age of Plagues 83
- A Land Flowing with Silk and Money 85
- Age of Prophecy 87
- Age of Empire 89
- Age of Science 91
- Part IV Windfishing 94
- 1400 Cromie Rd 96
- Euclid Refuted 97
- Labour Day 98
- Goodnight, September 99
- Weeknight 100
- Searle’s Chinese Room Problem 101
- Vancouver Cherries 102
- Winter Construction 103
- Finisterre 104
- It Wouldn’t Be Spring 105
- Together Still 106
- Two Bodies Once 107
- Instead of a Christening 109
- Winter Oaks 111
- Part V The Salt Worlds 112
- Cinematheque 114
- Abiogenesis 116
- Zugzwang 119
- Mercy 122
- Fire Worship 123
- Oncology of Ice 126
- Thirst 128
- Hunger 130
- Easter Sunday 132
- Principles of Conduct 134
- Earth on the Ocean’s Back 136
- NOTE TO READER REGARDING SEXTUS TARQUINIUS 142
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 144
