Red Blood • Black Ink • White Paper

“New and Selected Poems 1961-2001. This collection includes poems from four of Phyllis Gotlieb’s previously published books. The earlier pieces are dense, each word a tessera placed in a tight literary mosaic. As the reader moves through the work, the later poems open out, growing more freewheeling and adventurous. In both cases, Gotlieb makes every word count, creating some poems like faceted jewels and others like necklaces that link images together, such as the highly original ‘Thirty-Six Ways of Looking at Toronto Ontario.’ Revealing a significant interest in visual art, the poet references Rembrandt, Bruegel, Bosch, Hokusai, Edward Hopper, and others. Always, the startling language that results from acute observation is front and centre: a monkey with a ‘honed critical face,’ ‘fine black pearls of olives,’ ‘phlegmy’ oysters, carousels that ‘mutter jerkily.’ The long poem ‘Ordinary, Moving,’ is a classic of sound and rhyme that uses children’s songs, poems, and sayings (‘Mother Mother I am sick / call for the doctor quick quick quick!!!’) in a playful orgy of music. But Gotlieb is also capable of writing poems of surpassing strangeness, such as ‘ms & mr frankenstein,’ about a monster built of rubbish, or ‘Geffen and Ravna,’ which depicts the weird, cold world of ill-fated lovers. This poet is obviously in love with words–and knows how to use them.” —Mark Frutkin