Girouard Avenue |
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Coracle Press, Stephen Morrissey is a poet who writes with cadenced language, as he circles over his ongoing poetic themes: family; ancestors; a sense of history; geography and spirit of place; the legacy from one generation to the next. In this present collection, Girouard Avenue, Morrissey’s eighth book of poetry, the poet travels outward, inward, back to the past, and forward to where he currently lives. Girouard Avenue consists of four long poems, each in several parts, plus a prologue and epilogue poem. These long poems are each one a poetic tour de force, brilliantly eloquent in their evocation of the Montreal of Morrissey’s childhood; the city of his Irish ancestors; and the present locale for the poet’s sensibility. This highly evolved a poetry book only comes along every once in a while, in the canon of Canadian poetry. |
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Critical praise for Girouard Avenue
Here we find a poet-historian with a fine sense of detail... Morrissey has fulfilled the task he set for himself. He has traced the uprootedness of his ancestors and the chasm of loss. He has dredged up that great stone and inscribed it in commemoration.
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