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Watermelon Kindness: Poetry PDF

146 Pages·2010·0.51 MB·English
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Watermelon_FINAL_COVER:_ 26/03/10 12:32 PM Page 1 D We are plunged into the world of Jack Hodgins A and the Latin American magic realists. V — William French, The Globe and Mail I DAVID D The sum of all the poems is a powerful, wide-ranging personality, D possibly the most engaging in Canadian poetry right now. O — Ken Adachi, The Toronto Star N DONNELL N David Donnell’s poems and stories captivate the reader with their inherent grace E and beauty . . . after just a few lines, you are enraptured with the language. . . . L The trick of the writer is to take that leap into art and keep the language L new and alive. Donnell does that masterfully. WATERMELON KINDNESS — The Windsor Star David Donnell has long established himself as one of the important voices in Canadian literature. W — Literature and Language A T Donnell’s writing is both urbane and urban . . . insightful and inciteful. E — Judith Fitzgerald, The Globe and Mail R POEMS M With more range than any other contemporary poet, Donnell ponders questions of art, E history, and psychology while reveling in the sensory and all that makes us real. Whether L exploring the modus operandi of other writers or paralleling the trajectory of a satellite O with everyday occurrences like lost money, badly ended love affairs, or political disappoint- N ment, Watermelon Kindnessis the Roman pada, a tough individual loaf approximately the size K of your hand. Always concerned with what’s most nourishing — why we’re as crazy as we I N are crazy — it’s forty percent crust, because crust is almost always the best of it. D N DAVID DONNELL is generally acknowledged as a master of E the conversational intellectual poem. His books of poetry include S Settlements, winner of the Governor General’s Award; China Blues, winner S of the City of Toronto Book Award; The Blue Ontario Hemingway Boat Race; and, most recently, Sometimes a Great Notion. His poetry has been widely anthologized in Canada and the U.S. He teaches and lives in Toronto. ISBN 978-1-55022-914-1 ECW Press (cid:129) $16.95 ecwpress.com ECW TRIM SIZE: 6 x 8.875 inches SPINE SIZE: .466 inches WatermelonFINAL2__ 3/26/10 11:49 AM Page i WATERMELON KINDNESS WatermelonFINAL2__ 3/26/10 11:49 AM Page ii WatermelonFINAL2__ 3/26/10 11:49 AM Page iii WATERMELON KINDNESS DAVID DONNELL ECW Press WatermelonFINAL2__ 3/26/10 11:49 AM Page iv Copyright © David Donnell, 2010 Published byECW Press 2120Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada m4e 1e2 416.694.3348 / [email protected] All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. library and archives canada cataloguing in publication Donnell, David, 1939- Watermelon kindness / David Donnell. Poems. isbn 978-1-55022-914-1 i. title. ps8557.o54w38 2010 c811'.54 c2009-905967-3 Editor for the press: Michael Holmes / a misFit book Cover and text design: Tania Craan Author photo: John Frederick Eddington Cover images: Water Melon Slice With Bites © Carole Gomez / iStockphoto Wood planks on black © Maria Toutoudaki / iStockphoto Typesetting: Mary Bowness Printing: Coach House 1 2 3 4 5 This book is set in Centaur mt The publication of Watermelon Kindnesshas been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, by the Ontario Arts Council, by the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit, by the OMDC Book Fund, an initiative of the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (bpidp). printed and bound in canada WatermelonFINAL2__ 3/26/10 11:49 AM Page v This book is for Sidney Crosby, who played so well during the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. We were finalizing the very last pages of Watermelon Kindnessduring the last weekend of the games. Crosby was all over the place helping other people against Slovakia, without scoring the big stat himself. Then, tied up 2–2 in overtime against the Americans, he scored. A huge, deliberate goal. A role model. For sure. Hey, guy, you did it. WatermelonFINAL2__ 3/26/10 11:49 AM Page vi WatermelonFINAL2__ 3/26/10 11:49 AM Page vii I’m standing by the window where the light is strong — Leonard Cohen, Tower of Song WatermelonFINAL2__ 3/26/10 11:49 AM Page viii WatermelonFINAL2__ 3/26/10 11:49 AM Page ix CONTENTS LIFE STYLES Mariner 3 At the Café de Kahlua on West St. Clair 4 Iraq 5 Obama’s iPod 6 A Poet in the Kitchen 7 Watermelon Kindness 8 It Was Before Your Time 9 The Truth 10 Life Enthusiasts 11 Breaking Up with Miriam Mulstein 12 Platforms 13 Poems I’ve Thought of Writing 15 Your Effulgence Disorients Me 16 Facing the Streetcars 17 Drunken Horses 19 Scarlett Johansson 20 Watermelon Summer 21 Poetry Reading, Oak Park, Ill. 22 Behold the Lillies of the Field 23 Remember Sean? 25 In/Out 26 Titles 27 It’s Lonely at the Top 28 A Comic Moment Toward the End of a Serious Relationship 29 A Slightly Stoned Descartes 30 Bright Red Numbers on a Digital Morning Clock 31 Grants 32 Lateral Interference in Daily Life 33 I’m Not Walking in Circles 35 She Thinks Zen Is Too Intellectual 37 Ibid. 38

Description:
Detailing a point of view that is both contentious and genial—somewhere between the outlooks of Archie Bunker and Dale Peck—the wide-ranging poems in this honest collection ponder questions concerning art, history, and psychology while reveling in the sensory experiences of everyday life. Whethe
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Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.