95 Books In 2006, George W. Bush read 95 books. We will do better.

Reading an Erin Moure book for the first time is a confounding experience. What is she doing this time? How many new languages do I have to know? How many of these people are fake? How many have become real since the last book? All of these questions and more are answered in O Resplandor, written with/sabotaged by the ubiquitous Elisa Sampedrin (with a special appearance by Oana Avasilichioaei, who is fictional here, but real in real life) as a series of translations of both Nichita Stanescu and Paul Celan that may or may not even be accurate (if we’ve learned anything at all from Expeditions of a Chimaera (#5)). The book switches between the lyric translations (often elegies) and diaristic sections by either Moure or Sampedrin dealing with the exchanges between the three women. 

Nikki Reimer’s [sic] is roughly split in two. The second section “corporate whores” is politically sharp and extremely funny without being overbearingly clever. The three sections that surround it take a comparatively more serious tone that throws the humour into relief. Overall the book is a thoughtful and challenging examination of not the urban (as I’ve heard suggested) but of how we organize ourselves in a city setting. Reimer’s poems are lyric but full of jarring leaps of logic, in a poetic of speed and erasure. If anyone from Frontenac House press reads this, more poetry like this please.

-ryan