Fortune

by Tanis MacDonald

Nominated for the Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba Publisher (Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards)."Tanis MacDonald probes the miracles, accidents, dumb luck, and rogue chromosomes that swirl beneath the surface of who we think we are. MacDonald weaves folklore, history and myth while keeping her cowboy boots firmly planted on Canadian soil."--Jeanette Lynes, author of The Aging Cheerleaders Alphabet

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 2003

About the author

Tanis MacDonald is the author of two books of poetry: Fortune (2003) and Holding Ground (2000), and is the winner of the 2003 Bliss Carman Poetry Prize. She has published articles on the poetry of P.K. Page, Lorna Crozier, and Anne Carson. She teaches English at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario.

Reviews

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid collection. Much of the book seems to focus on more-or-less typical situations, like rainy days, deer hunting, picking berries, attending university class, and drinking at the bar. There are a few other odds and ends, like "Genealogy of Heaven" and "Arise and Walk" that describe an unconventional version of the afterlife. And the Guardian Bastards section inspired by geniuses like Einstein, Edison, Auden, and Dickinson. The last parts of the book are heavy, with several poems about Dr. Barnardo's Homes, along with some other poems about adoption and what it means to become part of a family.

MacDonald's poems are good but there aren't many that stood out to me. The thing that impressed me most about her technique is that she has a number of poems with unusual, yet very strong rhyme schemes (e.g. "Body of a Woman," "Move," "Astrophel," "Bliss,"). Other than that, the subjects she wrote about and the words she used just didn't click with me.

Poems that I liked:
"Tornado Weather," "How Orange, How Red," "Shut-eye," "Move," "La méduse," "Cuckoo."

=6/73 (8.2%) poems that I liked.