Essays, stories and poems on the interior lives of bookstores. Nick Thran’s volume of essays, stories and poems is a quietly powerful meditation on a life of reading, writing and bookselling. Thran, who returned to bookselling when he moved with his family to Fredericton, NB, captures the rare magic of reading communities. Here, the bookstore itself sits in the middle of an expanding root system, connecting lives, nurturing interests and stoking passions. It is a place for both private daydreaming and the small talk that staves off loneliness. And it is the fertile ground on which so many authors—including Thran—find the courage to write.
In this, his highly anticipated debut collection of poems, Nick Thran fuses a whimsical pop sensibility with an urgent poetic gravitas that refuses to sell the human heart short. The resultant poems are emblematic of the clash between our private enthusiasms and the cool diffidence of the world around us.
Mayor Snow is about both the abdication and acceptances of responsibilities and inheritance: be they civic, personal, poetic. It begins with speaker-less evocations of corrupt and oppressive political atmospheres and ends with first-person narrative tales of domestic life in Al Purdy’s refurbished A-frame. All of these poems work in a shadow, be they forebears, tabloids, cultural markers or government watchdogs. In the opening and closing sequences, narrative devices act as smokescreens to abstract illustrations of power, with the central sequence reflecting on the subject of dislocation. Parody and paradox are closely intertwined throughout, with the authority of power disrupted through dark humour, unexpected images and the deep resonances existing in apparently innocuous things: a well-worn (and literally “powerless”) cabin, a baby daughter, a poem. The question of groundedness, whether literal, literary or familial, explores the terrain between the fearful and the familiar: “Go outside. / Listen to dogs howl. // How do we live / without power?”
Earworm, the second book from acclaimed poet Nick Thran, expertly combines wicked cleverness, adept craftsmanship and a uniquely insightful perspective in an entertaining yet substantial tour de force. Building on the success of his debut, Thran has enhanced his compelling pop culture rhythms and distinctive voice with bolder formal experimentation and greater poetic maturity. This eclectic collection takes in topics ranging from cartoons to Caravaggio to cicadas, expressed in a comparable variety of poetic forms. Despite this diversity, the book is unified by its perfectly balanced blend of thoughtful observation laced with Thran's characteristically whimsical sense of humour. Earworm is also interspersed with several poems inspired by works of art in a variety of media. Whether he's reinterpreting Picasso's Blue Period, encapsulating a moment from The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, or lending a narrative to one of Dennis Oppenheim's conceptual sculptures, Thran is able to distill the essence of the original while adding a fresh twist.
Mayor Snow is about both the abdication and acceptances of responsibilities and inheritance: be they civic, personal, poetic. It begins with speaker-less evocations of corrupt and oppressive political atmospheres and ends with first-person narrative tales of domestic life in Al Purdy’s refurbished A-frame. All of these poems work in a shadow, be they forebears, tabloids, cultural markers or government watchdogs. In the opening and closing sequences, narrative devices act as smokescreens to abstract illustrations of power, with the central sequence reflecting on the subject of dislocation. Parody and paradox are closely intertwined throughout, with the authority of power disrupted through dark humour, unexpected images and the deep resonances existing in apparently innocuous things: a well-worn (and literally “powerless”) cabin, a baby daughter, a poem. The question of groundedness, whether literal, literary or familial, explores the terrain between the fearful and the familiar: “Go outside. / Listen to dogs howl. // How do we live / without power?”
Essays, stories and poems on the interior lives of bookstores. Nick Thran’s volume of essays, stories and poems is a quietly powerful meditation on a life of reading, writing and bookselling. Thran, who returned to bookselling when he moved with his family to Fredericton, NB, captures the rare magic of reading communities. Here, the bookstore itself sits in the middle of an expanding root system, connecting lives, nurturing interests and stoking passions. It is a place for both private daydreaming and the small talk that staves off loneliness. And it is the fertile ground on which so many authors—including Thran—find the courage to write.
In this, his highly anticipated debut collection of poems, Nick Thran fuses a whimsical pop sensibility with an urgent poetic gravitas that refuses to sell the human heart short. The resultant poems are emblematic of the clash between our private enthusiasms and the cool diffidence of the world around us.
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