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Flux
Flux is everything a significant debut should be--the arrival of a fresh, confident voice with an extraordinary range of form, direction and style.
From a sequence that captures the art and vocabulary of commercial fishing with careful precision, Denham bursts into a free-flowing and varied narrative based on the angst-ridden and picaresque life of a hitchhiking, cigarette-scrounging West Coast university student. Between these poles, Flux draws on Denham's broad palette of expression to evoke the various shades of urban house fires, street life, garbage strikes, disturbing and life-affirming revelations of young love, and friends and relatives possessed by drugs, child abuse and suicide.
All of this leads to "Two Waters," Denham's brilliant long poem painstakingly laying out the natural beauty and geography of the small coastal town he grew up in and its transformation into "Memories rippling/ On the periphery of vision between clean new buildings . . . Stripmalls. Traffic. Suburbia's/ Low-swell panic moving in . . ."
From a sequence that captures the art and vocabulary of commercial fishing with careful precision, Denham bursts into a free-flowing and varied narrative based on the angst-ridden and picaresque life of a hitchhiking, cigarette-scrounging West Coast university student. Between these poles, Flux draws on Denham's broad palette of expression to evoke the various shades of urban house fires, street life, garbage strikes, disturbing and life-affirming revelations of young love, and friends and relatives possessed by drugs, child abuse and suicide.
All of this leads to "Two Waters," Denham's brilliant long poem painstakingly laying out the natural beauty and geography of the small coastal town he grew up in and its transformation into "Memories rippling/ On the periphery of vision between clean new buildings . . . Stripmalls. Traffic. Suburbia's/ Low-swell panic moving in . . ."
96 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 25, 2021
A beautiful variety of poems that keep you gripped. Topics on love, mortality, tragedy, the everyday, student life, commercial fishing and more.
Joe has a way of bringing concrete imagery into life where your hands can feel every word he says.
I saved several poems as they left me in subtle awe.
Joe has a way of bringing concrete imagery into life where your hands can feel every word he says.
I saved several poems as they left me in subtle awe.
August 23, 2016
many of the poems in this astonishingly moving book concern activities which lie way outside the scope of my interest, so it was a delightful surprise to find myself so engaged.The quality of attention focused on the interplay of action and stillness, droplets of water glistening in an arc that that the poets skill illuminates combined in me as a grand epiphany. Maybe that's what he means by flux.
" The only thing surreal or strange
is how everything always appears
to change but doesn't". p33
JD captures this movement and these poems map his journey of discovery. The reverence and respect for natural process establish a zesty appreciation in the reader. ' swimming through inertia ' to what we come to call home' p 63
" The only thing surreal or strange
is how everything always appears
to change but doesn't". p33
JD captures this movement and these poems map his journey of discovery. The reverence and respect for natural process establish a zesty appreciation in the reader. ' swimming through inertia ' to what we come to call home' p 63
October 19, 2017
Better than a lot of usual Canadian poetry! Had some very poignant moments! A little rambling at times!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews