The Prairie Journal of Canadian Literature

I liked Candice Bodnaruk’s poem, “o’keefe in the gallery” because the images are evocative enough to put you right there in the gallery with Bodnaruk: “i saw georgia in the gallery/looming large behind the/cow’s skull above the clouds”. In contrast to Bodnaruk’s work, most of the poems in this issue don’t manage to evoke any sense of place — any sense of anything, really: “Given the chance to play his hand to its hilt,/filling the air with gusts of smoke and rye/tumbled well for outside of his cell, Lucifer/gambles seven strides over to the Templar’s gate,/locked but never healed against a touch of bane.” There’s lots more of this puffed up, overwritten hot air happening here. Greg Evanson, in his poem, “text fifty six” sums up PJ perfectly: “there is no meaning in the writing/there is only the writing of the writing”. (KS)

#28, 48 pages / publisher: Prairie Journal Trust / main creator: Anne Burke (editor) / $8 for however many they do in a year / P.O. Box 61203, Brentwood Postal Services, Calgary, AB, T2L 2K6

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