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Said Like Reeds or Things
Warning: this book may encourage a series of ungrammatical thoughts!
Welcome to the poetic landscape of Mark Truscott, where less is more than you bargained for. Said Like Reeds or Things is a book of micropoetic and linguistic koans. With a quirky, off-centre sense of humour, these poems uncover a language that has malfunctioned only to find itself in the form of a gesture.
Minimalist in form, these small gatherings of words, a.k.a. 'poems', seek strangeness in familiar language; their effect is harmonic dissonance within the mind – like an overturned toy box in your path to the television set, these poems are a fresh and amusing diversion from the everyday from which they are derived. Mysteriously entertaining and precise, these succinct, visual lyrics say as much about the world as they do about their own status as objects for reading, and they persist in the hilarity and contemplation of their own enigmatic possibilities.
'Mark Truscott's Said Like Reeds or Things is the work of a mischievous conservationist with a shadow of Basho in the mix. It's sometimes snappy, sometimes calm, and always an exhilarating tease. This is the place where little pieces of perfection ride along a sublime horizon line.' – Lisa Jarnot
Welcome to the poetic landscape of Mark Truscott, where less is more than you bargained for. Said Like Reeds or Things is a book of micropoetic and linguistic koans. With a quirky, off-centre sense of humour, these poems uncover a language that has malfunctioned only to find itself in the form of a gesture.
Minimalist in form, these small gatherings of words, a.k.a. 'poems', seek strangeness in familiar language; their effect is harmonic dissonance within the mind – like an overturned toy box in your path to the television set, these poems are a fresh and amusing diversion from the everyday from which they are derived. Mysteriously entertaining and precise, these succinct, visual lyrics say as much about the world as they do about their own status as objects for reading, and they persist in the hilarity and contemplation of their own enigmatic possibilities.
'Mark Truscott's Said Like Reeds or Things is the work of a mischievous conservationist with a shadow of Basho in the mix. It's sometimes snappy, sometimes calm, and always an exhilarating tease. This is the place where little pieces of perfection ride along a sublime horizon line.' – Lisa Jarnot
- GenresPoetry
88 pages, Paperback
First published October 19, 2000
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 27, 2022
Power
cuts
out
cats
brush
dark
windows
* * *
close a
dark
wind
wall
stutters
* * *
It's true, air conditioning
makes you feel more in control.
The grass between tents at the picnic
is getting worn down. Prepositions
pass the muster. Lisa
passes the salt. Who
will tip the waiter?
Bush speaks urgently in the Rose Garden.
Misunderstanding is its own reward.
cuts
out
cats
brush
dark
windows
- Circularity, pg. 15
* * *
close a
dark
wind
wall
stutters
- November 1, pg. 47
* * *
It's true, air conditioning
makes you feel more in control.
The grass between tents at the picnic
is getting worn down. Prepositions
pass the muster. Lisa
passes the salt. Who
will tip the waiter?
Bush speaks urgently in the Rose Garden.
Misunderstanding is its own reward.
- Canadian Poetry, pg. 56
Displaying 1 of 1 review