Question and Answer

by Alison Pick

"How is one to speak with the dead?" "Anyone for tea before night falls?" In this volume, celebrated, multi award-winning new poet Alison Pick grapples with these questions, from the work of poets like Sylvia Plath and Patrick Lane. The resulting meditations are by turns spiritual and earthy, accessible and complex, thoughtful and wrenching. Question and Answer announces the arrival of a brave and extraordinary new poetic voice.

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

ALISON PICK'S best-selling novel FAR TO GO was nominated for the Man Booker Prize and won the Canadian Jewish Book Award. It was a Top 10 Book of 2010 at NOW magazine and the Toronto Star, and was published to international acclaim. Alison was the winner of the 2002 Bronwen Wallace Award for the most promising writer in Canada under 35. Currently on Faculty at the Humber School for Writers and the Banff Centre for the Arts, she lives and writes in Toronto.

Reviews

[Cecilia]

I found this book at a thrift store and gave it a try. I shouldn’t have. The idea in this book were okay and most poems felt very repetitive. The idea of a Q&A was good, especially when referencing iconic figures and works of literature and other quotes, but it fell short because most times the poem lost its meaning and I was wondering were the poet was going with the writing.

Anyways, I didn’t really find anything special about the poems or the collection, the writing was unique and the ideas were okay and not communicated well.

[Jessie B.]

Solid collection

[Michelle Barker]

Exquisitely structured. I loved the idea of the Q&A using various poetic questions. Loved the way, in Still Life, poems about fruit alternate with those about her grandparents and war. And the flow from poem to poem in The River Reflected was fabulous. A few fruit poems felt forced, which is the only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars. This is one I will reread.