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Alien, Correspondent

I’m not sure if it is my ignorance or his low profile (a combination of both?) but up until yesterday I hadn’t heard of Antony Di Nardo, a poet in his sixties who has published two books simultaneously this year: Alien Correspondent (Brick Books) and Soul on Standby (Exile Editions.) Perhaps as a poet laureate I shouldn’t admit this but every time I pick up a book of poetry by someone I do not know I think, because the odds are good, that I’m really not going to like the book very much.

Stuart Ross said it best in his SubTERRAIN article “I Hate Poetry;” he spends more hours reading poems that he hates than ones he loves so it is perhaps more fitting to say that he hates poetry as opposed to some people at the League of Canadian Poets who exclaim that they love poetry. So why do we pick up books that we are pretty sure we are going to dislike? For the hope that one day we’ll open one up and there it will be: a diligently crafted and unpretentious book filled with insight and great poem after great poem. I had this experience yesterday when I picked up Di Nardo’s Alien, Correspondent (I’m ordering Soul on Standby right away.)

Di Nardo is a superb poet. Alien, Correspondent is a great book. So great that I’m happy today, not just because I’ve had the pleasure of reading his work but because I’m feeling less cynical about poetry and I’m imagining all these other great poets who must be scattered across the country keeping a low profile in places such as Oshawa, crafting some of our best poems (even if we haven’t read them yet.) It’s all so very encouraging. Sometimes I absolutely love poetry.

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