Beautifully shaped and with language full of sensuous intimations, here is the latest volume of poems by Steve Luxton. From the tensile short lyrics of "Hermit Crab Song" to the loosely sashaying rhythms of "Morning After: At the Dacha," Luxton's sustained vision compels and fascinates.
As G.V. Downes comments in Canadian Literature, Luxton is both original and aware, a poet "who sees with precision" the Canadian landscape. Like the being in the title poem "Iridium," the reader is urged for a moment to relinquish the grotesque world of appearances to find shapes that sound, touch, and endure — shapes...
" which I, floating on
my usual waking surface,
must drown thoroughly
to see...."
— from Iridium
"...here, for those who know Montreal's east-end porches and staircases, England and Quebec fuse."
— Canadian Literature
"It moves me very much — a soul crying out in the wilderness, with a strange, mad rhetoric...."
— Louis Dudek
"This is a most interesting poet."
— The Victoria Times Colonist
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