Continuing from Desire Lines, Shifting Paradigms is a collection of essays on art, poetry and culture--both high and low--gathered from the astute critical work of Toronto writer Ewan Whyte. Included: essays on Yayoi Kusama, Anish Kapoor, Janet Cardiff, Damien Hirst, Viktor Mitic, Anne Carson and a number of other Canadian artists and poets.

Ewan Whyte is a writer and translator. He has written for the Globe & Mail and The Literary Review of Canada. He is the author of Entrainment, a book of poetry, and a translation, Catullus: Lyric, Rude and Erotic. He makes his home in Toronto.

Ewan Whyte's profile page

Here cultural critic and essayist Ewan Whyte uses his uncanny and rare capacity to slip inside works of art and figure out what make them tick. In Desire Lines: Essays on Art, Poetry and Culture, a sweeping variety of essays on imagery, language and creativity, Whyte offers up maximum insight with a minimum of attitude. Both a poet and translator, Whyte is a relaxed, lucid, knowledgeable critic of poetry as well as visual art. Desire Lines culminates with his personal essay about childhood in a religious cult. His sympathy for those trapped within bizarre, sometimes sadistic demands (and for art made under severe cultural restrictions) underpins his generous critical views. Whyte triumphed by embracing the imagination and this splendid collection is a triumph for the arts as a humane and gifted writer understands them.

Molly Peacock, author of The Paper Garden and The Analyst