Fulfilling my obligations to my long-neglected TBR one book a time. Want to know why? I explain it in the first post here. Posting striking lines daily on BlueSky

Well. Here is an old one. I don’t even remember at which garage sale or used book store I picked this slender hardcover volume up. It sat for a long, long time on the TBR not due to the quality of the poetry but because it came from a smoking home. It was the quality of the work that made me by this despite the fact it literally stank – and still kind of does though now the smoke odour has a hint of that intoxicating scent of old paper and decaying glue.

Those of you who had to take a literature survey course in University may have been exposed to Eli at some point on the syllabus, perhaps as a study in contrast to that other, more/most famous, Jewish Canadian poet Leonard Cohen. If not, spoiler alert, Eli is the better poet.

Though I will be honest, the first half of this book doesn’t show that. “Crusoe” is a selection of old and at the time new work chosen by Eli’s pals Margaret Atwood and Dennis Lee. Unfortunately back in 1973 when this volume came out, publishers were apparently not in the habit of detailing which poems came from which previously-published book. A close reading will give you a sense of which blocks of poems came from the same book and I am assuming that they appear in this book by order of publication date because the first couple of blocks are not early as strong as the back half.

“You are impatient
with poetry” my friend writes
from Iceland

I’ve been doing this thing over on my BlueSky account where I’m posting photos of “Striking Lines” from that week’s slow read project. I think you might enjoy starting each day with just a little nugget of poetry. I also think you might enjoy reading more of Eli’s poetry, if you can find it. When you do see a copy in a church rummage sale or public library discard sale, grab it. You won’t be disappointed.