Origins - Softcover

Whetter, Darryl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1926794109 ISBN 13: 9781926794105

Publisher: Palimpsest Press, 2012

Synopsis

Entombed within a thirty-kilometre-deep seam of rock, the fossils of Joggins, Nova Scotia are pried from a cliff-face by a version of the ocean out of which their creatures evolvedfor the first time on Earthmore than three-hundred-million years ago. With probing metaphors and a keen eye on science, the poems in Origins create a multi-faceted portrait of evolution, extinction and climate change. Centered on the powerful Bay of Fundy, Origins compares the displaced, prehistoric marks of fossils with cultural marks like art and books. These varied poems observe eternal traces and lingering residues, from fossilized footprints to landscape sculpture to pollution and industrialization. With only one bone in a billion fossilized and a perpetually changing planetary surface, these celebratory yet cautionary poems also investigate chance, loss and ruin. The intersection of forces, which both create and destroy, are echoed by poems devoted to transitory art, the human addiction to energy, and an evolving media history (from nineteenth-century field drawings to twenty-first-century digital libraries). Origins is a nuanced ledger for a troubled world.

About this title

About the Author

Darryl Whetter is the author of two books of fiction. His debut collection of stories, A Sharp Tooth in the Fur, was named to The Globe and Mail's Top 100 Books of 2003. His first novel, The Push & the Pull, was released in 2008. He has published fifteen stories and numerous poems in journals and anthologies, including Best Canadian Stories, The Fiddlehead, PRISM, Prairie Fire, The New Quarterly, Descant, ARC, Exile and Coming Attractions. Darryl holds a PhD in English and has published or presented papers on contemporary literature in France, Sweden, Canada, Germany, the United States, India and Iceland. Nearly 100 of his book reviews have appeared in venues such as The Toronto Star, The National Post, The Vancouver Sun, The Montreal Gazette, The Globe and Mail, Detroit's Metro Times and the national CBC Radio program Talking Books. Darryl Whetter has been a professor of English and creative writing at various universities and currently teaches at Université Sainte-Anne.

Review

Whetter's poems are arresting, genuine, full of science and wonder, and reflect the author's tough love for Maritime life. Donna Morrissey

"Whetter's poems are arresting, genuine, full of science and wonder, and reflect the author's tough love for Maritime life." --Donna Morrissey

About this edition

• Publisher: Palimpsest Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1926794109
• ISBN 13: 9781926794105
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 80