Fall 2008

Barbara Klar's third collection of poetry, Cypress (Brick Books, 2008), is a poetic vision quest, a pilgrimage to the inner powers of landscape and a series of transformative meditations. A work of fierce engagement with the Cypress Hills of southwestern Saskatchewan, Cypress reminds us of that place where poetry opens, perilously, onto the sacred.

One of the fascinating virtues of higher technology is how it stokes the appetite for the lowest, most primitive processes. Look at the persistence of lo-fi sound recording in both independent and popular music. You can go even further back, to, say, impressionist painters who used the high technology of light, laying in careful beads of pure color to give the impression of "rough" work. Hi-fi has always been lo-fi’s supporting player. The Red One camera used to film Pontypool has already sparked the "can you spot the difference" debate that inevitably accompanies replacement technology, and that debate will be short lived. It’s a fine camera. It wasn’t the only camera used to film Pontypool.

Every book is partly a puzzle to be assembled, a labyrinth to be explored by its reader, a repository of buried secrets waiting to be unearthed. No surprise that the mystery genre, in all its permutations, is so enduringly beloved, because it is in the nature of all readers to enjoy ferreting out concealed treasures and discovering secrets perhaps known only to themselves. Every city has similar hidden delights, and true city-lovers never tire of ferreting out the mysteries of their metropolis. Here, then, a collection of some of Toronto’s most satisfying literary curiosities.