New ebooks From Canadian Indies
Description
Shortlisted, Acorn-Plantos Award for People's Poetry and Dartmouth Book Award
In the "Boogie Nights" era of the 1970s, Betty Browning and her lover, boxer Malcolm Miles, travel from the fog-anchored grime of Halifax, Nova Scotia, to sunburnt Corpus Christi, Texas, and back — meeting tragedy and bloodshed along the way. I & I smoulders with love, lust, violence, and the excruciating repercussions of racism, sexism, and disgust. Rastafarian for "you and me," "I & I" expresses the oneness of God and man, the oneness of two people or the distinction between body and spirit.
In George Elliott Clarke's hands, this existential aesthetic crystallizes in a love story of Gothic grit. The narrative gives this verse novel shape; the poetry makes it sing, straddling folk ballad, soul, and pop music, all the while moaning the blues.
Awards
- Short-listed, Acorn-Plantos Award for People's Poetry
- Short-listed, Dartmouth Book Award (Fiction)
Editorial Reviews
"One of Canada's most important and readable poets."
— <i>TORO Magazine</i>
"Clarke marches and dances and stomps and skates (but never ever shuffles) all over the story. Don't even think about trying to put this musical novel down. Betty Baker Browning [is] the sweetest alter ego this side of Bedford Basin. Or in this life, oh sweet life."
— George Bowering
"The poetry itself is the thing, the overflowing energy of the language in this book — a profusion of rhetorical tropes and schemes and a breathtaking array of literary and cultural allusion. . . . Truly an original creation. It was probably fun to write; it is certainly a pleasure to read."
— Eric Trethewey
