Vis a Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness

by Don McKay

In Vis à Vis , Don McKay charts a vision of poetics that keeps its feet on the ground and its eyes on the horizon. As one of Canada’s leading poets, McKay has long been known for his passionate engagement with his natural surroundings. This book collects three essays on this relationship, together with new and previously published poems that further demonstrate these ideas. Using bushtits, baler twine, Heidegger and Levinas, McKay sets out to explore some of the almost unspeakable concepts driving the use of language particular to poets, and the arguably skewed relationship human beings have with their natural surroundings. In a book the Globe & Mail calls “stylishly constructed” and “impeccably casual,” one of Canada’s best-loved writers offers his own sense of poetics. Finalist for the 2002 Governor General’s Award for Nonfiction.

Genres: Poetry, Canada, Nature, Essays, Nonfiction

112 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2001

About the author

Don McKay is an award-winning Canadian poet, editor, and educator.

McKay was educated at the University of Western Ontario and the University of Wales, where he earned his PhD in 1971. He taught creative writing and English for 27 years in universities including the University of Western Ontario and the University of New Brunswick.

In June 2007, he won the Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip (2006). He is the co-founder and manuscript reader for Brick Books, one of Canada's leading poetry presses, and was editor of the literary journal The Fiddlehead from 1991-96.

In 2008, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.[2]

Reviews

[Colby Clair Stolson]

Hardly a point in the book I couldn't grapple with. That is to say I think I got it, which is to say it is written clearly, with conveyance in mind. There's new zest in metaphor for me, a device I had been thinking was old and easy, not of concern to the new poetry. I like what McKay has to say about it, and I'll feel less guilty using it myself. Still, the practice examples (poems) to the theory often were conspicuous, i.e, a huge gap was present to what I felt the theory was intending and what the poems accomplished, but that's a classic divide. The Bushtits' Nest was the most rewarding part for me. Thank you.

[Margaryta · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick yet interesting meditation on nature and the role of both nature poets and the reader as an individual in this cycle.

[Nirvana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shorty was a baddie

[Leslie Wexler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have only read the first chapter of this book of poetry/philosophical musings and already I am completely captivated by it. It is not the sort of book to rush through it is that once and awhile rare gem that must be savoured.

[Nick Seeger · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent exploration of the philosophical and poetic implications of wilderness and the appropriation of the 'other' through the various effects of anthropocentrism, domestication and identification. It was interesting to find that this collection of essays spent as much time musing on the wilderness of technology or tools as it did on birds or explicitly ecological concerns.

Above all, this was an enjoyable read with many anecdotes from the perspective of the author who is himself an avid birder and nature poet.

[Meg]

*Part of my read all the poetry project*

More prose than poetry, and not exactly the most accessible prose. A most gorgeous book to read in print however - the weight of the paper, the illustrations, a real pleasure to hold in the hand.

[Jacob Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it

[Kelsey]

Some really interesting ideas. Beautifully constructed book.