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Poetry General

Standing Wave

by (author) Robert Allen

Publisher
Vehicule Press
Initial publish date
Apr 2005
Category
General, Canadian
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781550651980
    Publish Date
    Apr 2005
    List Price
    $16.00

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Where to buy it

Out of print

This edition is not currently available in bookstores. Check your local library or search for used copies at Abebooks.

Description

The themes of Standing Wave will be familiar to readers of Robert Allen's acclaimed poetry and novels: the slow rusts and wild incandescences of memory; the myths and delusions sustaining our lives; the uneasy duo of body and mind. In this book, he brings two different lenses to bear on these ideas: a wry, conversational formality in "Sonnets from Jimmie Walker Swamp", and the long and complex syntaxes of the final section of his ongoing long poem, "The Encantadas". Put together, these two sequences are the black and white photographs and the colour film of the same restless dream. More than any of Robert Allen's other books, Standing Wave illustrates, through this two-fold structure, the range of language and cadences still possible in contemporary poetry.

About the author

Robert S. Allen earned his doctorate in history at the University of Wales. His previous publications include The British Indian Department and the Frontier in North America (1975), Native Studies in Canada: A Research Guide (1989, 3d ed.), and Loyalist Literature (1982). Allen lives in Ottawa and is deputy chief, Claims and Historical Research Centre, Department of Indian and Northern Affairs. The centre's mandate is to facilitate native researchers and others in aspects of native history and land-claims investigations.

Robert Allen's profile page

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Robert Allen's previous books:

"Lively and unquestionably gifted prose." --Globe & Mail

"[Napoleon's Retreat] is a work of sustained, unrelenting, unmercifully protracted brilliance." --Montreal Gazette

"Napoleon's Retreat [is] a work of lyrical genius." --Montreal Review of Books

"Robert Allen is a talented poet, strong in both structure and philosophy." --Poetry Canada Review

"The Hawryliw Process belongs on the same shelf as Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds." --Toronto Star

"[The Hawryliw Process] deserves a wide reading." --University of Toronto Quarterly

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