Airstream Land Yacht - Softcover

Babstock, Ken

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887847404 ISBN 13: 9780887847400

Publisher: House of Anansi Press, 2006

Synopsis

A love song to the worldless parts of the world, Airstream Land Yacht explores the inexpressible. Partly grounded in the concrete of everday experience and partly floating away in the ineffable, these poems delve into questions of conscience and problems of consciousness. Generating music from paradox, they treat the intellect as equal parts junk heap and life preserver, making for a spellbinding collection that charts a bold new direction for an acclaimed poet.

About this title

About the Author

Ken Babstock is the author of Airstream Land Yacht, which was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award, won the Trillium Book Award, and was a Globe and Mail Top 100 book; Days into Flatspin, which was shortlisted for the Winterset Award for Excellence in Newfoundland Writing; and Mean, which won the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award. Ken Babstock lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Review

...more contemplative, more world-weary, more overtly philosophical (than Mean)....the love poems in this book are a real accomplishment. (Arc Poetry Magazine 2006-09-01)

...one of the most daring, progressive, frustrating, and exhilarating poetry books in years. (Books In Canada 2007-02-01)

As Auden was to the English 1930's, so too is Ken Babstock to the Canadian 2000's - the key figure of the under-40's generation...perhaps the most important poetry book yet from any Canadian born in the 1970's or beyond...a hauntingly thoughtful meditation on awareness and responsibility for others. (Globe and Mail 2006-09-01)

Babstock's ear remains finely attuned. Always adept at capturing speech cadences, in these new poems he plumbs as much from the jumpy rhythms of thought, and what gets sacrificed in accessibility is more than made up for in surprise...Babstock's courageous lack of complacency in deviating so drastically from his excellent past work confirms him as one of the country's finest poets. (Quill & Quire 2006-09-01)

In Babstock's work there is a sense of down-home intellectual, country tunes that David Bowie might compose. (Malahat Review 2007-05-01)

Ken Babstock is no regular middle-of-the-pack poet...there's almost a tactile pleasure in how words sound, and a multitude of striking phrases vivid to both the ear and the eye...Airstream Land Yacht is poetry that hums along in high gear. (Toronto Star 2006-09-01)

Reading Ken Babstock is like following the trunk of a tree upward as it divides and subdivides, fraying into the finest threads until a beautiful but complex circuitry webs the sky. Simply put, he makes the brain hurt, forcing us to exert that dusty 90 per cent we rarely use....a seductive, exquisitely crafted look at the overlay of the wordless visible world and the conscious act of mapping that world. (Edmonton Journal 2006-12-03)

Edition details

• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0887847404
• ISBN 13: 9780887847400
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 104