the id kid by Linda Besner
Linda Besner: the id kid
Publisher: Signal Editions / Véhicule Press
Author Site: Maisonneuve interview
Price: $18.00
ISBN: 9781550653137
Genre: Poetry
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The Recommend
I keep my hair cut short so that I can maintain an appearance of relative non-dishevelment when the book that I’m reading blows me away.
the id kid is the razor strop for a very close shave by gale force winds.
Besner’s book left me blinking like I’d just stepped out of a tunnel into relentless daylight. It moved things around in my brain.
I became ignorant of where my stops were on the bus route that I take across town because I was too absorbed by the poems in this book and ended up back-tracking for blocks.
This is a book of living language.
As the Dude says, the parlance of our times.
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About Sean Cranbury
Sean loves Pho!
Sean Cranbury lives and works in east Vancouver. He is the Host and Executive Editor at Books on the Radio, Curator of the W2 Real Vancouver Writers’ Series, co-creator of the Advent Book Blog and former independent bookseller.
He works as an independent consultant and strategist for organizations in arts and health care.
You can follow him on twitter: @seancranbury and @booksontheradio.
That was how you felt. But I’m no closer to knowing about the poetry. What was any of the content?
Hi Pearl
It is a recommendation as opposed to a review. As a former bookseller I realize that enthusiasm sells more books than any sort of analysis and that’s what we try to do here at the ABB.
However, astute readers demand more and here’s some thoughts on the poems. Note that I do not pretend to have any facility with the art of writing critical reviews so this is merely a reader’s take on the text.
Knick Knack is a poem that occupies pages 23 thru 25. Love the chop and sway of this piece. This is RZA trading secrets with Johanna Newsome. Memories and hard rhymes. Long loops of melody, the train traveling repetition of wheels hitting infinitesimal gaps between the cold hard rails.
The language – the living language the parlance of our times that I mention above – is brand new, it’s unaffected and playful and direct and elliptical. It does to me what good poetry does to me when it’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing – surprising me, reminding me that there’s people out there doing the good writing who still have a sense of humour, who care, want more, find more.
Hope that helps.
S