Plans Deranged by Time
The Poetry of George Fetherling
- Publisher
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Initial publish date
- Jan 2012
- Category
- Canadian, Poetry
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781554586318
- Publish Date
- Jan 2012
- List Price
- $21.99
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781554586493
- Publish Date
- May 2012
- List Price
- $11.99
Add it to your shelf
Where to buy it
Description
The Toronto Star called him a legendary figure in Canadian writing, and indeed George Fetherling has been prolific in many genres: poetry, history, travel narrative, memoir, and cultural studies. Plans Deranged by Time is a representative selection from many of the twelve poetry collections he has published since the late 1960s. Like his novels and other fiction, many of these poems are anchored in a sense of place—often a very urban one. Filled with aphorism and sharp observation, the poems are spare of line and metaphor; they display a kind of elegant realism: loading docks, back doors of restaurants, doughnut shops with karate schools upstairs.
In the introduction, A.F. Moritz places Fetherling in the modern picaresque tradition in the aftermath of Eliot and Pound, highlighting his characteristic speaker as an itinerant cosmopolitan outsider, a kind of flâneur, impoverished and keenly observant, writing from a position of “communion-in-isolation.” He contrasts Fetherling’s contemplative intellectualism with that of the public intellectual and highlights this outsider’s fellow-feeling, making the poems indirectly political.
Fetherling’s afterword is an anecdote-anchored exploration of what the poet sees as his two central approaches—“the desire to create new codes of hearing” and “writing-to-heal”—and how they are reflected in the collection.
About the authors
A.F. Moritz has published more than twenty collections of poetry as well as important works of literary history and numerous translations of Latin American verse. A leading figure in the literary life of Canada, he has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a major award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Two of his most recent works have reaffirmed his reputation: Night Street Repairs (2004) received the ReLit Award and The Sentinel (2008) won both the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine and the Griffin Poetry Prize. He teaches at the University of Toronto.
George Fetherling's profile page
George Fetherling has been writing and publishing for more than forty-five years. One of his most popular works is Travels by Night: A Memoir, which recreates leading personalities and events in the fabled Canadian cultural renaissance of 1965–75. His most recent books are The Sylvia Hotel Poems and the novel Walt Whitman’s Secret, both published in 2010. Fetherling is also a visual artist.
A.F. Moritz has published more than twenty collections of poetry as well as important works of literary history and numerous translations of Latin American verse. A leading figure in the literary life of Canada, he has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a major award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Two of his most recent works have reaffirmed his reputation: Night Street Repairs (2004) received the ReLit Award and The Sentinel (2008) won both the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry magazine and the Griffin Poetry Prize. He teaches at the University of Toronto.
Excerpt: Plans Deranged by Time: The Poetry of George Fetherling (by (author) George Fetherling; edited by A.F. Moritz)
Art Criticism by George Fetherling
Je suis ici pour faire des achats de dynamite.
— Blaise Cendrars
There are no guarantees
that anything will last
especially when you use
these inferior materials.
Thick chemical gesso
slides onto recycled canvas
one coat horizontal
the next vertical;
as soon as one dries,
another arrives to
contradict it.
I can’t stand the silence.
My ears chafe waiting
for the tune of a catchy explosion.
I am the neighbourhood dynamiter
who never knows when opportunity
might strike. One must always
be alert and heavily armed
against success and its enemies.
This is how I am.
I have no patience
with craft for its own sake
not like the old
Chinese man standing
in his garden every morning
applying more red lacquer
to his coffin.
When the surface is hard
and shiny like a beetle
he will be venerated as only
the ancient dead can be.
I will be scattered over a wide area.
Parts of me may never be found.
Editorial Reviews
[Fetherling's] images are not simply precise and evocative; they are also witty.... Many of his poems tend toward aperçu or epigram. The reader is constantly surprised by an unexpected analogy. Moritz in his erudite and densely allusive introduction...bring[s] out those elements of Fetherling's critical self-examination that underlie his empathy for members of the similarly disillusioned wider community, and makes a good case for recommending Fetherling's poetry to the expanded audience it deserves.
Event (Douglas College), 42.1
Other titles by
George Fetherling's Travel Memoirs 3-Book Bundle
One Russia, Two Chinas / Running Away to Sea / Indochina Now and Then
Carpenter from Montreal, The
The Carpenter from Montreal
Travels by Night
Dundurn Vietnam War Library Bundle
Guerrilla Nation / Indochina Now and Then / Cross-Border Warriors
The Writing Life
Journals, 1975-2005
Indochina Now and Then
The Silence on the Shore
Sylvia Hotel Poems, The
Running Away to Sea
Round the World on a Tramp Freighter
Other titles by
Great Silent Ballad
Poems
The Garden
a poem and an essay
The Garden
a poem and an essay
As Far As You Know
As Far As You Know special hardcover edition
Special Edition
The Sparrow
Selected Poems of A.F. Moritz
Sequence special hardcover edition
Special Edition
Sequence
For a Savage Love / Por un amor salvage
