Anxiety Magic

by Gary Barwin

The view is comic and magical. In a suburban landscape where perfect lawns surround the hardwon homes of parents raising everyfamily, all is not as it seems. Heart surgery removes "Thumper" from Walt Disney's chest. A lonely Sigmund Freud action figure begs to be taken home. False teeth, haunted by their former owners, speak with affection to loved ones left behind. An imaginary wall, stolen from a mime, shares Chinese food with its kidnappers. In "Doctor Weep," Gary Barwin has rediscovered worlds within our world: lovely, strange, funny, sometimes frightening, and always refreshingly human.

86 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

GARY BARWIN is a writer, composer, and multidisciplinary artist and the author of 21 books of poetry, fiction and books for children. His bestselling novel [Book: Yiddish for Pirates] won the 2017 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour and was a Governor General’s Award and Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist and has recently been longlisted for the Leacock Medal. His latest poetry collection is No TV for Woodpeckers His work has appeared widely in journals, including Poetry (Chicago), The Walrus and the Paris Review blog. A finalist for the National Magazine Awards (Poetry), he is a three-time recipient of Hamilton Poetry Book of the Year, and has also received the Hamilton Arts Award for Literature. He is was Writer-in-Residence at Western University and the London Public Library and is currently Art Forms Writer-in-residence for at-risk youth and will be Writer-in Residence at McMaster University and the Hamilton Public Library in 2017-2018. Barwin lives in Hamilton, Ontario and at garybarwin.com