- A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth
- Stephanie Bolster
- 1926829700
- 9781926829708
- 76
- 2011
- 6" × 8.75"
- $19.00
to buy with PayPal or a Credit Card
Cover art:
The cover image is a detail from "Belted Kingfisher," by Susan Bozic (www.susanbozic.com).
e-book:
The e-book edition of this title will be available by the end of summer 2013.Listen to Poems from A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth
Shortlisted for the 2012 Pat Lowther Memorial Award
An ambivalent zoo-tour, an open-eyed meander through a landscape of made and contained things.
A Page from The Wonders of Life on Earth is a book with a coherent vision of nature—constructed or framed, both in the present and in the recent past—through zoos, aviaries, formal gardens, menageries, and books like the Time-Life one named in the title. Informed by the author’s grand tour of these zoos and gardens, these poems provide a strong lens for considering the many paradoxes of inter-species relations; they open up the possibility of honest, unsentimental elegy. The book is also a model of what might be called investigative poetry, taking the poet’s combination of perceptual acuity, craft, music and sensibility into these richly troubled places (prisons of, monuments to, museums for the lost natural world) where “arcades sell postcards of old photographs of the arcades,” and where questions of what it means to be human, to be animal, to be other and to be art are tangibly in the air. This is Bolster’s best work.
“Bolster’s work demonstrates a surety of vision supported by an insider’s eye for the telling aberrant detail everywhere matched by her impeccable ear . . . ” – Judith Fitzgerald, The Globe and Mail
“What a startling voice she has . . . ” – Patrick Lane, The Vancouver Sun
Second printing
The Proust Questionnaire , with Stephanie Bolster - at Open Book: Toronto
Stephanie Bolster reads at A River of Poetry - Une pluie de mots, de langues, de silences, an hour-long performance featuring poets who teach at Concordia University: Marc André Brouillette and André Roy of Concordia’s Département d’études françaises, as well as Stephanie Bolster, Jason Camlot, Mary di Michele, David McGimpsey, and Sina Queyras of the Department of English. The performance was held on December 1, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. at the Grande Bibliothèque in Montreal. Here is an article with the full performance
Stephanie's readings take place at these minute marks.
6:32 - La vie de l'esprit (Nuit) [French version of Life of the Mind (Night)]; Life of the Mind (Night) - ends at 8:28
32:58 - Life of the Mind (Wanders) - ends at 34:07
44:34 - Rainbow; Life of the Mind (Tapestry) - ends at 46:29
1:03:37 - Date Lament; The Cloisters - ends at 1:04:51
Reviews
- Stephanie Bolster, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth by rob mclennan (rob mclennan's blogspot, September 8, 2011)
- Stephanie Bolster: A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth, Brick Books by Ian Pople (Manchester Review, September 23, 2011)
- PITCH PERFECT - Two new poetry collections display virtuosity in technique and tone by Nick Thran (Quill & Quire, October 2011)
- Gillian Sze casts melancholic eye by Jonathan Ball (Winnipeg Free Press, September 24, 2011)
- A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth by Stephanie Bolster by Heather Craig (Telegraph-Journal, New Brunswick, October 15, 2011)
- Collections take a hard look at history, nature by Bill Robertson (Saskatoon StarPhoenix, November 25, 2011)
- Verse that turns us inside out by Barbara Carey (Toronto Star, October 18, 2011)
- Going Places by John Oughton (Poetry Quebec, Issue Nº 10, December 17, 2011.)
- Familiar and Strange by Moberley Luger (Canadian Literature online – February 15, 2012)
- A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth by Quentin Mills-Fenn (Uptown magazine, Winnipeg - March 1, 2012)
- A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth - Stephanie Bolster by Devin Pacholik (Pages and Patches blog, March 2, 2012)
- The Nature of Things by Abby Paige (Montreal Review of Books, Spring 2012)
- A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth by Candice Fertile (Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Issue #11, January to April 2012 )
- A Page from The Wonders of Life on Earth by Stephanie Bolster by Gillian Harding-Russell (Prairie Fire Review of Books, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2012))
- A Page from The Wonders of Life on Earth by Stephanie Bolster by Inkslinger (Overdecorated Bookcase blog, October 7, 2011)
- A Page from The Wonders of Life on Earth by Stephanie Bolster by Shane Rhodes (Malahat Review, issue 178, spring 2012)
- A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth by Stephanie Bolster by Kevin Shaw (The Bull Calf 2.2, June 2012)
- A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth by Stephanie Bolster by Katherine Sehl (Matrix, Issue # 93, fall 2012)
- A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth by Stephanie Bolster by Maurice Mierau (Event, issue 41.2, fall 2012)
- Stephanie Bolster reading from A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth by Margaret Anne Smith (Lorenzo reading series, UNB Saint John)
