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Description
Evade your eye. Try to see as others do
what is desired or refused. What went wrong.
Or right, then wrong. Objectively, what hangs.
Pull yourself together. Years are neither kind
nor cruel. You drag on. The girl is gone.
Consider that it might be time to call in
a professional. Blood is fearless, runs
to meet a touch, indiscriminate, remembering
the first time it fell in love with the world, unaware
that now you are alone.
From "Mirror"
In Modern and Normal, Karen Solie takes her on-the-road fascination with being between places to a new level, exploring conceptual and perceptual states of in-betweenness - for example, between what is perceived and what is actually there, or between and among the patterns the world repeats from the cell to the structure of the universe - to find points of intersection. Solie finds a middle ground between the discourses of the hard sciences and the intuitive, a realm of weird overlap wherein lie questions of probability, fate, determinism, chance, luck, and faith. She writes about fractals and physics, but also about bar bands, broken hearts, and the trappings of desire. Some splendid landscape poems celebrate nature while mourning the way in which it's often exploited and used. Once again Karen Solie offers readers her lovely dexterity and skill in poems which entertain as they move.
Contributor Notes
Karen Solie was born in Moose Jaw and grew up on the family farm in southwest Saskatchewan. Over the years, she has worked as a farm hand, an espresso jerk, a groundskeeper, a newspaper reporter/photographer, an academic research assistant, and, presently, an English teacher. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in numerous North American journals, including The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Event, Indiana Review, ARC, Other Voices, and The Capilano Review. She has also had her poetry published in the anthologies Breathing Fire (Harbour, 1995), Hammer and Tongs (Smoking Lung, 1999) and Introductions: Poets Present Poets (Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2001) where her work is presented by Don McKay. One of her short stories is featured in The Journey Prize Anthology 12. She currently lives in Victoria, BC.
Editorial Review
"...A work simultaneously wide-ranging in scope and unified in depth...Its language is muscular and strong-willed, its poems executed with deadly seriousness and a side-long smirk. Karen Solie is among the best poets of her generation. Modern and Normal is the work of a seasoned, established poet at the top of her game, but in the disguise of a humble second book."
-George Murray, The Globe and Mail
"Her technical and formal skill is beyond reproach; in 90-odd pages of ringing, percussive lyrics...she never seems to put a foot wrong or waste a word."
- Lyle Neff, The Vancouver Review
"Her voice is wild and loving all at once, her poems...are lit by a language so fresh that you long to hear it in private."
-Michael Redhill, Nuvo Magazine
"Instead of pat answers, she offers us something more central, more interesting, and more moving, 'the long valley opening at the centre/ of a constant world.'"
- Rob Winger, Arc Poetry Magazine
