Crowd of Sounds

Crowd of Sounds

Written by: Sol, Adam

Once in a long while a lyric poet comes along whose technique, emotional pitch, and intellect combine in sublime balance and take poetry to a new level. Witness Adam Sol.

Sol's work is exhilarating in its range. Here he is gentle and mournful, attuned to his surroundings, and suddenly over here he mounts a sneak attack and hits us with erotic joy, erotic threat, history, elegy, comic absurdity, and acts of disturbing ventriloquism somehow stitching it all together with a tightly scored thematic coherence.

For once our eyes are not our first concern, Sol writes, and in poem after poem, as he conducts jay, wasp, streetcar, busker, and lover's breath, he awakens our listening. These poems are about music but they are also about the silence it breaks, and the inevitable recurrence of that silence.

Once in a long while a lyric poet comes along whose technique, emotional pitch, and intellect combine in sublime balance and take poetry to a new level. Witness Adam Sol.

Sol's work is exhilarating in its range. Here he is gentle and mournful, attuned to his surroundings, and suddenly over here he mounts a sneak attack and hits us with erotic joy, erotic threat, history, elegy, comic absurdity, and acts of disturbing ventriloquism somehow stitching it all together with a tightly scored thematic coherence.

For once our eyes are not our first concern, Sol writes, and in poem after poem, as he conducts jay, wasp, streetcar, busker, and lover's breath, he awakens our listening. These poems are about music but they are also about the silence it breaks, and the inevitable recurrence of that silence.

Published By House of Anansi Press Inc — Apr 1, 2003
Specifications 80 pages | 5.63 in x 8.6 in
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Excerpt
Written By Adam Sol is the author of three collections of poetry. He is an Associate Professor of English at Laurentian University’s campus in Barrie, Ontario, and lives in Toronto.
Written By
Adam Sol is the author of three collections of poetry. He is an Associate Professor of English at Laurentian University’s campus in Barrie, Ontario, and lives in Toronto.

Winner, Trillium Book Award for Poetry, 2004