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In this long, layered poem, noted scholar Deborah Schnitzer conducts an examination of identity and motherhood by building a discourse around the life and work of Gertrude Stein. In Loving Gertrude Stein, Stein’s life becomes intertwined with that of Schnitzer’s narrator, and the resulting exploration considers the influence and importance Stein’s work has had–not only for the narrator, but for women in general. Both those who have an interest in Stein’s life and work, and those who come to know her through this book, will be rewarded on many levels, not the least of which being Schnitzer’s rich use and mapping of the language that she uses to create a discourse with this venerable icon of women’s literature.

In the language of the Fraser River fishermen, “low water slack” is that particular tide when everything slows down: the wind, the river, even the human heartbeat. It is a time to reflect, to count the stars in Orion’s belt, to listen for the slow creak of the heron’s wings. During low water slack, the challenges of life on the river give way to something much deeper, and the fishermen find themselves in a world so calm and beautiful that the very water beneath them seems a hushed breath.At once historical and intensely personal, Low Water Slack takes the reader into a vibrant world populated with such characters as a ghost of a nineteeth-century salmon canner and an 800-pound white sturgeon. Here are infamous moments of BC’s past (the Hell’s Gate disaster, the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War Two) alongside childhood memories of a first kiss and meditations on the future of West Coast fish stocks. And moving like a quick shadow throughout is the Pacific salmon itself, whose life cycle mirrors and guides the poet’s own exploration of mortality.