Sinners Dance

by Darrell Epp

In a desperate bid to slow down time, an unreliable narrator picks fights with washed-up child stars, scheming super-villains and polyester-clad draculas. Lost in a maze of hastily-erected condo towers, lugging his trick bag bursting with obsolete gadgets and wrong numbers, he hunts for salvation or at least a few clues. Steeltowns’ giant pistons and wheelhouses are so silent now, you can hear a drunken muse tiptoeing through the blood-stained hall of mirrors. Sinners Dance is Darrell Epp's third collection of poems following hot on the heels of After Hours (Mosaic Press, 2016), a book the Winnipeg Free Press called "A fun, sly jumble of poems that often tackle weighty issues."

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2018

About the author

author of imaginary maps (2009), after hours (2016)

Reviews

[Timothy Epp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Darrell is one of my favourite poets. This is indeed a good read.

[Lorette Luzajic · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a longtime poetry enthusiast, I've read thousands of poems, and as editor of The Ekphrastic Review, I read the works of some of the strongest poets in the world. And Darrell Epp is one of the best contemporary poets I've read. There is such a sense of place that his poetry reminds me of the work of several visual artists, specifically that of Charles Sheeler, Edward Hopper, and Walker Evans. Like them, Epp draws the everyday world and the common man, but it's more wry and funny and beautiful than bleak. Epp's craft is wholly original, intelligent, astute, funny, sad, and consistent, with a knack for memorable last lines. Outstanding.

[Wayne F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Competent, literate, interesting poems, big as football fields on the page, large in the sense of no constraints except the poet's own mind--witty, wry, smart, and impatient. At the turn of a comma or point of a period, Epp is liable to go anywhere--everywhere--and does, almost breathlessly, toward epiphenomenal endings. Nothing scattershot here--this is disciplined work--the language flows like a river; festive and fun ("...i ran into the library to avoid paying late/fees on MODERN LIVING FOR DUMMIES Volume 3"); never dull or pedantic..."standing in the hub of the world's/sweaty churning in a miami dolphins jersey"--"you're late/you say, your period you mean, we're late/period, full stop..." Subtle music and wise bon mots: "aging is about the narrowing/of possibilities." The conversational, heard-earned, style, of Frank O'Hara. Poems that begin in medias res then take off, like the space shuttle, moving in quantum leaps through a universe of Epp's creation, a place worth visiting, if only to dance a night away.