There is a kind of wonderfully innocent bravery at work in someone who’d publish a poem entitled “Without You: For Mom On Her Retirement,” which contains the line “without you there’d be no sunrise, no sunset, no rainbows.” Well! I’m jealous. That’s one heck of a mom. We also learn that, without Jim’s mom, there’d be no Thanksgiving, no juice-tin candle holders, no carmel [sic] corn, no “primal ability to stand and tell it like it is with unmatched ferocity and conviction”, no Mr Rogers, no Robertson Davies, and no Jim, which, of course, is Jim’s point. These poems read like folk paintings: sweet, earnest, playful and riddled with clichés that are easily pardoned because they are not the clichés of laziness. (Shaun Smith)
litzine, $5, 24 pages, James P. McAuliffe, ed. Norma McAuliffe, 140 Mercer Ave., Kitchener, Ont, N2H 1X8