Description
The Book of Festus is a shattered fable. In these poems, every object has a voice; every thing is awake. Festus wakes inside a myth?on a wharf in Halifax, Nova Scotia?and recalls nothing but a bicycle. As he looks for it, he thinks the city's thoughts. Upon a sidewalk over a buried river, he remembers what the city remembers. He steps past a skateboard park to a Mi'kmaq lagoon. He follows 17th century pioneer cattle to a fast food restaurant. A girl he once knew steps out of the fragments. Festus is an anagogic man, loser-hero of the first city, Ur, Halifax. This collection is a city's lucid dream of itself.
About the author
John Wall Barger’s work has appeared recently in CV2, The Antigonish Review, and The Malahat Review, and is forthcoming in Grain, Descant and The Best Canadian Poetry 2008. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he teaches English literature part time at Saint Mary’s University. Pain-Proof Men is his first collection of poems.
