Vancouver’s hip alt paper reviews Whiteout. It’s nice to be reviewed with so different a writer (from me) as Markotic and find that both styles can be appreciated for what they are.
Whiteout flexes language with the seemingly similar purpose of showing what can’t be seen, but in a darker way. His work offers alternative visions of whiteout conditions, in which it is impossible to see what lies ahead. A former editor of the Bookninja website living in St. John’s, Newfoundland, he is steely and precise. In the poem “The World Goes Out Like an Old Television” he writes: “infinity and zero meet, saving you/from ever noticing a thing. And when/everything finally goes black, you sit/still, waiting in the dark for such a long time.”
The book continually documents the moment when distinctions once considered to be true no longer hold. The reconciliation of a relationship might be possible, but probably not. In “The New Weather” he writes: “Just before the key catches in the lock/a snowflake lands on your eyelash and blurs/the scene; stretching the instant an instant/longer, slurring outer and inner worlds.”
