Apollinaire’’s Speech to the War Medic is to Canadian poetry what Francis Ponge’’s steaming brioches are to Parisian cobblestone. In other words, this is a book that revels in the that-which-gets-left-behind and is just plain old fascinated with the plop of things. Metaphor is plundered as a doorway into the attic of the basement of objects and animals and phenomena, and inside you’’ll find poem-studies about hammers, tigers, grass, fire, cat piss, killing floors and many other oh my’’s. You’’ll also find several poems about the works and days of artsy folk like Samuel Beckett, Cy Twombly, Gertrude Stein, Kathe Kollwitz, Louise Bourgeois, Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Celan, and John Cage. Dear Reader, you’’ll even find to your ev.er.la.sting enjoyment a pantoum about your keyboard and a sestina about your (sorry!) George Bush. You’’ll also see a lyric flashing devil horns. What else? Why, a poem about the sea, a poem about a moose, a poem about a frying pan. Apollinaire’’s Speech to the War Medic is object-stew–please eat it up, yum.
