Bit Parts for Fools
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Goose Lane Editions
Published:1st Oct '13
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Shortlisted, Archibald Lampman Award
In this lush collection of linguistic concatenations, Peter Richardson lines up the quotidian and the metaphysical, the personal and the fictional, and assigns equal standing to their rich complications. Whether his cast members take the ironic stance of an apostate jazz pianist or the hardball approach of a recovering stand-up comic, they invite us on an exuberant exploration of self that rewards multiple readings.
Ranging from a literate vernacular to high diction, the language of Bit Parts for Fools hints at a new hunger driving the poet's quirky observations and confirms once again that Richardson is a fine craftsman — all confidence and mischief, "whistling from scuffmark to scuffmark."
"Peter Richardson is pulling our legs in a rather spectacular fashion. One would have to search high and low, near and far, to find poetry as entertaining and flamboyant as that found in Bit Parts for Fools. These are poems that demand you read them two or three times, for the fun of it of course, but also for clarity. Richardson's exuberance is our reward in these richly textured works. ... Richardson is completely committed to the universe of each poem. ... Bit Parts for Fools by Peter Richardson is an immensely rewarding read. Can't recommend it highly enough." * michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca *
"Bit Parts for Fools crackles with innovative language, in the deliciously quirky titles and the poems themselves: elaborate, complex, and often wonderfully ambivalent. What might happen if you invent a language and use one phrase (‘broischni hydranya’) as an incantation, or page through a very unusual ‘mourner's abecedary’ that somehow combines ‘bestiary and breviary? This uniquely disarming voice uses chance and change to provide vivid takes on past and present lives and their unpredictable circumstances." -- Jan Conn
- Short-listed for Archibald Lampman Award 2014 (Canada)
ISBN: 9780864924902
Dimensions: 203mm x 140mm x 8mm
Weight: 152g
88 pages
First