From here to infinity (or so)
Don McKay
McKay delivers “a mild, or homeopathic, dose” of the infinite, the crucial element in the aesthetic experience known as the sublime. With his trademark humour and intellect, he inspects those moments in which our geographical and temporal location shifts as though our familiar road map had been ripped from our hands and been replaced by a chart of the cosmos, moments in which we become immersed in “the wooziness of deep time.”
Here, McKay is a true nature poet whose ecological focus fuses technique and restrained emotion. As he says, “It is one of the tasks of nature poetry to re-open facts to their resonance, to recover their lung space, opening their alveoli, rather than lying inert in consciousness like the accumulated landfill upon which theories are constructed.”
From Here to Infinity (or so)
Don McKay
$20.00
ICR, 2011
48 pages, 4 ½ x 7 inches
ISBN: 978-1-896886-25-1
“One might well choose to avoid any exposure to the idea of infinity, given its popular reputation. There is a widespread belief, or superstition, that excessive exposure can drive you mad as supposedly occurred to the brilliant mathematicians Georg Cantor and Kurt Gödel in the 19th and 20th centuries respectively. It’s not difficult for most of us, unafflicted as we are by mathematical talent, to avoid pursuing it conceptually.
Consequently, we are unlikely to come down with the malady I’m calling “infinitosis” because we willfully risked overexposure the way Marie Curé risked overexposure to radiation. But it is equally unlikely that any of us could avoid it altogether and, in fact, it seems that a mild, or homeopathic, dose of the infinite is the crucial element in the aesthetic experience known as the sublime, an experience prized by such diverse movements as Romantic poetry and tourism.
In such cases — contemplating the night sky, standing on a summit, or even thinking about the grains of sand on a beach — we can feel our sense of reality shift and refocus, or try to. Our location in place alters, as though our familiar road map had been ripped from our hands and replaced by a chart of the cosmos. Our temporal location also shifts from the reliable orientation of a clock and calendar to the wooziness of deep time.”
—Don McKay
Don McKay studied at Bishop’s University and the University of Western Ontario as well as the University of Wales, Swansea, where he earned his PhD with a dissertation on the poetry of Dylan Thomas. He taught Creative Writing and English at UWO University of New Brunswick for 27 years and has taught at the Banff Writing Studio. McKay co-founded Brick Books and was editor of The Fiddlehead for five years. He won both the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip and received the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry for Night Field and for Another Gravity. In 2008, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.
Read an interview with Don McKay in Portal 2011.
Poetry
Air Occupies Space (1973)
Long Sault (1975)
Lependu (1978)
Lightning Ball Bait (1980)
Birding, or Desire (1983)
Sanding Down this Rocking Chair on a Windy Night (1987)
Night Field (1991)
Apparatus (1997)
Another Gravity (2000)
Varves (2003)
Camber (2004)
Strike/Slip (2006)
Songs for the Songs of Birds (2008)
Paradoxides (2012)
Angular Unconformity (2014)
Lurch (2021)
McKay’s non-fiction includes Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness (2001), Deactivated West 100 (2005), The Muskwa Assemblage (2009), The Shell of the Tortoise (2012), and All New Animal Acts (2020).
Poetry
Air Occupies Space (1973)
Long Sault (1975)
Lependu (1978)
Lightning Ball Bait (1980)
Birding, or Desire (1983)
Sanding Down this Rocking Chair on a Windy Night (1987)
Night Field (1991)
Apparatus (1997)
Another Gravity (2000)
Varves (2003)
Camber (2004)
Strike/Slip (2006)
Songs for the Songs of Birds (2008)
Paradoxides (2012)
Angular Unconformity (2014)
Lurch (2021)
McKay’s non-fiction includes Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness (2001), Deactivated West 100 (2005), The Muskwa Assemblage (2009), The Shell of the Tortoise (2012), and All New Animal Acts (2020).
FROM HERE TO INFINITY (OR SO)
Don McKay
McKay delivers “a mild, or homeopathic, dose” of the infinite, the crucial element in the aesthetic experience known as the sublime. With his trademark humour and intellect, he inspects those moments in which our geographical and temporal location shifts as though our familiar road map had been ripped from our hands and been replaced by a chart of the cosmos, moments in which we become immersed in “the wooziness of deep time.”
Here, McKay is a true nature poet whose ecological focus fuses technique and restrained emotion. As he says, “It is one of the tasks of nature poetry to re-open facts to their resonance, to recover their lung space, opening their alveoli, rather than lying inert in consciousness like the accumulated landfill upon which theories are constructed.”
ICR, 2011
48 pages, 4 ½ x 7 inches
ISBN: 978-1-896886-25-1
$20.00
“One might well choose to avoid any exposure to the idea of infinity, given its popular reputation. There is a widespread belief, or superstition, that excessive exposure can drive you mad as supposedly occurred to the brilliant mathematicians Georg Cantor and Kurt Gödel in the 19th and 20th centuries respectively. It’s not difficult for most of us, unafflicted as we are by mathematical talent, to avoid pursuing it conceptually.
Consequently, we are unlikely to come down with the malady I’m calling “infinitosis” because we willfully risked overexposure the way Marie Curé risked overexposure to radiation. But it is equally unlikely that any of us could avoid it altogether and, in fact, it seems that a mild, or homeopathic, dose of the infinite is the crucial element in the aesthetic experience known as the sublime, an experience prized by such diverse movements as Romantic poetry and tourism.
In such cases — contemplating the night sky, standing on a summit, or even thinking about the grains of sand on a beach — we can feel our sense of reality shift and refocus, or try to. Our location in place alters, as though our familiar road map had been ripped from our hands and replaced by a chart of the cosmos. Our temporal location also shifts from the reliable orientation of a clock and calendar to the wooziness of deep time.”
—Don McKay
Tom Wayman holds an MFA from the University of California and worked as a reporter for The Vancouver Sun. He has been writer-in-residence at the universities of Windsor, Alberta, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Toronto as well as at SFU. His bibliography includes over twenty poetry collections, and he co-founded the Kootenay School of the Arts and the Vancouver Industrial Writers’ Union. He has been the Fulbright Visiting Chair in Creative Writing at Arizona State University. He received the Acorn-Plantos Award in 2013 and the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022, and he was named a Vancouver Literary Landmark in 2015.
Read an interview with Don McKay in Portal 2011.
Don McKay studied at Bishop’s University and the University of Western Ontario as well as the University of Wales, Swansea, where he earned his PhD with a dissertation on the poetry of Dylan Thomas. He taught Creative Writing and English at UWO University of New Brunswick for 27 years and has taught at the Banff Writing Studio. McKay co-founded Brick Books and was editor of The Fiddlehead for five years. He won both the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip and received the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry for Night Field and for Another Gravity. In 2008, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.
Read an interview with Don McKay in Portal 2011.
Poetry
Air Occupies Space (1973)
Long Sault (1975)
Lependu (1978)
Lightning Ball Bait (1980)
Birding, or Desire (1983)
Sanding Down this Rocking Chair on a Windy Night (1987)
Night Field (1991)
Apparatus (1997)
Another Gravity (2000)
Varves (2003)
Camber (2004)
Strike/Slip (2006)
Songs for the Songs of Birds (2008)
Paradoxides (2012)
Angular Unconformity (2014)
Lurch (2021)
McKay’s non-fiction includes Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness (2001), Deactivated West 100 (2005), The Muskwa Assemblage (2009), The Shell of the Tortoise (2012), and All New Animal Acts (2020).