Strange Attractor: Poems

Description

A stunning new work from the Griffin Poetry Prize-winning author of Loop and Is. All of us are many selves within our lifetimes, but we rely on a construct of the self, one that is thrust upon us at birth, shaped during youth, and reconstructed throughout our lives. Who is this self? What is the self in relation to the other? What happens to the self during illness? Even after our deaths we are not fully known. The notion of the self is a liminal one- somewhere at the threshold of selfhood we become aware of what it is and what it is not. In the coming-to-be of the self in childhood or in the transformation of the self during illness and dying, we see it most clearly, yet most uncannily, as we face the unknown within the known. The poetry of Strange Attractor reveals the self to be a construct that becomes, under scrutiny, as fluid as water.

ANNE SIMPSON is the author of four previous books of poetry- Light Falls Through You, winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Atlantic Poetry Prize, and a finalist for the Pat Lowther Poetry Award; Loop, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Governor General's Award; Quick, winner of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and a finalist for the Atlantic Poetry Prize; and, most recently, Is. She is also the author of two novels, Canterbury Beach, a finalist for the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, and Falling, longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and winner of the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction. In 1997, her short story "Dreaming Snow" shared the Journey Prize, and in 1999 she was awarded the Bliss Carman Poetry Award. Simpson lives in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where she helped establish the Writing Centre at St. Francis Xavier University.

Praise for Anne Simpson and Is: "With the experimentalism of Anne Carson and the imagism of Anne Michaels, Anne Simpson explores the globe of the heart." -Halifax Chronicle-Herald "Anne Simpson's voice is instantly recognizable.... [She writes] poems of extraordinary range, intelligence, and empathy."-Jury citation, Pat Lowther Memorial Award "Simpson turns our attention to the sharp edges of life, and she does it with language that juxtaposes beauty with death, creating internal tension in the poems. Simpson looks at death and loss with an unsentimental eye."-Canadian Literature