Review: Globe and Mail

Whiteout gets a nice review in Canada’s paper of record, the Globe and Mail. It’s nice to see the book doing well on its own terms! A taste:

In this book, Murray’s celebrated lyric virtuosity is tempered, or rather, deepened, by the kind of knowing humility that makes for great drinking songs. Whiteout speaks in the wry, stunned voice of a man answering time’s wake-up call.

…

Life, for Murray, veers suddenly from careening down a well-worn track to “exposed planes in which you whirl without direction.” One emerges from Murray’s “book of white nothing” as from a strange state of suspension, with a fresh sense of our capacity for new beginnings.

 

Review: First Review for Whiteout in Quill and Quire

The first review for Whiteout is a good one. Whew. It appears in the April edition of the Quill and Quire, Canada’s book industry magazine, on stands now. Text below:

Whiteout

George Murray; $18.95 paper
978-1-77041-087-9, 64 pp., 51/2 x 81/2,
ECW Press, April
Reviewed from bound galleys

George Murray kicks off his fifth book of poetry with “Dante’s Shepherd,” which revisits Canto XXIV, 1­15 of the Inferno and, in so doing, reveals not only his subject matter but also his formal approach in many of the poems that follow. Like Dante’s master-piece, Whiteout is an exploration of the soul’s journey, and Murray employs terza rima in several poems. The effective use of rhyme testifies to Murray’s mastery of language within strict formal constraints.

The simplicity of “Dante’s Shepherd” belies its depth. A person walks with one hand exposed to the cold, and the sun finally comes out: “It leans down on the hills as though scorning / any doubt that the universe still lives / without my happiness in bloom, warning”. The common activity of walking while being assaulted by the elements points to one of the volume’s pervading themes: the destabilizing effect of being alive.

There’s also death. The eight tercets of “Brushfires,” another poem in terza rima, describe the aftermath of a fire and what is found in the rubble: a couple burned into one indistinguishable mess. “Falling or burning, embraced against the end; / what-was-once-two closes in, supplicates, smoulders down to one corpse, crumbles, ascends.” Several poems deal with accidents, emergencies, or death, and the overall outlook is solemn.

The shorter poems work best, with the ones that make use of rhyme being particularly effective. Fortunately Murray doesn’t force this approach, allowing half-rhymes to stand (or even forgoing them altogether) in the interest of communication. In “Innocent Bystanders,” for example, the speaker and his or her dinner companion listen in on another couple’s argument. Murray switches up the rhyme scheme partway through as the speaker and companion try to focus on each other. Such attention to sound combined with content is a pleasure.

On occasion, Murray’s language is unnecessarily raw, demanding too much attention and detracting from the overall effect. But in most cases, the diction fits beautifully. Filled with allusion, euphony, and thoughtful content, Whiteout is well worth consideration.

Candace Fertile, an English teacher at Camosun College, Victoria.

Event: Canada Reads Poetry

I’m participating as a panelist in the Canada Reads Poetry project hosted online by the National Post and CBC Books. The project was generated in response to last summer’s 10th annual Canada Reads tournament, which very purposefully excluded poetry from the running. This contest runs a little differently, with each of the panelists offering an initial essay in defence of a book of poems, followed by an live chat online in which the panelists will take questions from moderators and the public. Then a public vote will decide “which poetry book Canada should read” together. Mostly this gives me a chance to highlight a book I think deserved a wider audience when it came out.

The panelists and books are:

• Sonnet L’Abbe defending Rita Wong’s Forage
• Jacob McArthur Mooney defending Erin Moure’s Sheep’s Vigil by a Fervent Person
• George Murray defending Dionne Brand’s Inventory
  
• Susan Musgrave defending Alden Nowlan’s Selected Poems
• Anne Simpson defending Anne Carson’s Nox

Great list of books, any of which would be an interesting exercise in communal reading. At this point there are still two essays to come, and then the live chat is next Thursday at 2pm EST. Should be interesting to see how it goes!

Review: Aphorism expert James Geary

Aphorism expert James Geary seems to really like (and have gotten the tone of) my book of aphorisms, Glimpse! It’s a great vindication for a previously unknown aphorist like me. He offers a brief opinion and set of examples at the first link above. After more than a few good reviews now, I am very happy. I also really enjoy seeing which aphorisms people choose as their highlights from the collection. It’s amazing how few repeat!

George Murray is editor of the literary website Bookninja.com and author of Glimpse: Selected Aphorisms. There is a sort of casual surrealism about Murray’s aphorisms, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world to compare worry, for example, to a playground. The metaphors are both pedestrian and astonishing, reminiscent of aphorists like Malcom de Chazal and Ramon Gomez de la Serna. The deep strangeness of the images and juxtapositions takes a while to sink in, mostly because of Murray’s deadpan delivery. Reading his aphorisms is like talking on a phone with a slight delay; you understand what’s been said a beat or so after it has been spoken. And that split-second delay, filled with thoughts and speculation, is where the wonder lies, of aphorisms in general and these aphorisms in particular. The charm of Glimpse is that so many of the aphorisms in it make you do a double take.

 

News: Best of Year List

Atlantic books impressario Chad Pelley (Salty Ink) has been a great booster for Glimpse, and he does so again, adding Glimpse to a “best of 2010″ list in the Telegram.

“Glimpse,” by poet George Murray; a collection of 409 aphorisms. “It’s not often someone writes a book of poetry this accessible and enjoyable to people who don’t like poetry,” Pelley said. “You can respect it as a form of poetry, or you could see it as a gag book that you have on your coffee table. A lot of (the aphorisms) are really funny, and a lot are really insightful. I think it’s a good gateway for a lot of people into poetry.”

And speaking of gateways, I signed and/or heard-tell-of a record number of copies being bought for usually-non-poetry readers. The radio and paper coverage seem to have done their jobs and piqued the interest of prose readers. Nice!

Holiday Recommendations: Glimpse

Glimpse has appeared on several prominent end-of-year recommendation lists.

• First as one of Lemon Hound’s most-engaging-books of 2010
• Then as a Salty Ink 2010 Top-Notch Book
• and also on the year-end list of Derek Beaulieu

Thanks to the poets and bloggers involved for their kind words and recommendations!

News: How Pedestrian

My Google news feeds picked up my name on a website called “How Pedestrian“, where they get people on the street to read poetry for short video spots. It’s a lovely idea and very well executed. All this week they’re featuring poems from my third book, The Hunter. It’s very flattering that (apparently) average people would take the risk of reading these difficult poems for a camera. That or it speaks highly of the persuasion skills of the site’s proprietors. Either way, I’m glad to be part of it all. The first two are up (the first video below), and it looks as though there’s more to come.

Review: Broken Pencil

Broken Pencil also loves Glimpse!

Four hundred and nine one-liners that send-up the concept of the aphorism, mock the wisdom of poetry and, at the same time, create memorable, eerie, mini-experiences in their own right. George Murray, Newfoundland-based poet and creator of lit website bookninja.com has given us a compelling, singular work. “Resolve to always be the last one clapping as the applause dies, and someday you’ll also be the first as it begins.” Love it! “The currency of a time without imagination is solution.” Say what?!? “The dog repays the extra long walk by rolling in twice as much shit.” I hear ya brother!

Murray is the kind of poet Canada needs way more of: a Kung Fu Buddhist who walks his own pet. Memorize just five of these nuggets of anti-wisdom and you will never, ever, ever be without something to say to the pretty person standing next to you at the party.

Review: Quill and Quire

The Quill & Quire loves Glimpse! What a great review by Michael Lista. Time to get your copy now! Order from your local or from Amazon.ca and .com here. Makes a great Christmas gift for someone you’re trying to introduce to poetry.

George Murray’s fourth book of poetry is a selection of 409 aphorisms – those sometimes philosophic, sometimes sophomoric distillations of thought invented by Hippocrates and perfected by Yogi Berra. Murray is one of the few poets publishing aphorisms in English today, and Glimpse proves he is also one of the best.

…

However wonderful these aphorisms are on their own, Glimpse’s real accomplishment is in its sequencing. The page is its own unit in Glimpse: each group of five aphorisms is subtly interlocked to its page, and each page to the collection as a whole. It’s this sophisticated curation that prevents Glimpse from becoming a kaleidoscope of bon mots or a burlesque of cracking fortune cookies. Instead, we get a glimpse into the soul of a man – eloquent, wry, contradictory, profound.

Article: Edmonton Journal

Here’s a great piece by the Edmonton Journal’s books editor Richard Helm on Glimpse. It’s a really nice combination of profile, review and interview. Hope you like it!

Glimpse is a catalogue of 409 aphorisms Murray has culled from his journals and poetry over the years. Why 409? Murray says he shares with the Beach Boys a particular affection for that number. But why aphorisms rather than regular verse?

In a phone interview this week, Murray traced the book’s origins to a reading he did at Princeton a few years back and subsequent conversation with the American poet James Richardson, who has played with the form himself. Richardson told Murray many of the closing couplets from the sonnets of his last collection, The Rush to Here, would work as aphorisms if removed whole from their host poems.

Murray started collecting them, a bid idly, while working on another book of poetry. Then last summer, at a reading in Dublin, the famed Irish poet Paul Durcan insisted he put the poesy aside and publish the aphorisms. That was good enough for Murray.

“Everybody, not just poets, has these little moments of epiphany where you have a bit of a deeper understanding of the universe,” Murray said.

“It’s a fleeting thing, kind of like grabbing onto smoke: You can’t quite do it. But poets are trained to try to grab that and shape it into something. A poet spends a lot of time laying down artifice upon this moment of epiphany and trying to make it beautiful and trying to make it have multiple layers of meaning.

“These aphorisms try to go straight for the moment of epiphany with the fewest words possible.