Angular Unconformity

By (author): Don McKay

Angular unconformity: a discordant surface of contact between the deposits of two episodes of sedimentation in which the older, underlying strata have undergone folding, uplift, and erosion before the deposition of the younger sediments, so that the younger strata truncate the older.
— Michael Allaby, ed., A Dictionary of Earth Sciences, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)

Angular Unconformity shows us a life’s work in cross-section, a restless and humane intelligence, ever searching, ever shifting, finding meaning in our blink-of-an-eye existence against a backdrop of geological time unimaginable in its scale.

In this volume, the first comprehensive collection of Don McKay’s poetry, this pre-eminent Canadian poet displays his gift for thinking through metaphor, channelling a profound philosophical discourse through plain language and striking imagery. In his poetry, disciplined attention and contemplation break through the commonplace and illuminate an ecological understanding of the world as it is.

AUTHOR

Don McKay

Don McKay is a poet, teacher, and editor. He has published more than a dozen books in a career that spans five decades. He has twice won the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry, and won the Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip in 2007. His previous essay collections include the GG-shortlisted Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness, Deactivated West 100, and The Shell of the Tortoise, winner of the 2011 BMO Winterset Award. McKay lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.


Reviews

An angular unconformity is a border between two rock sequences, one lying at a distinct angle to the other, which represents a significant gap — often millions of years — in the geologic record. (Imagine a biography that has several decades simply unaccounted for.) It might also be described as a fissure through which deep time leaks into history and upsets its authority.

Angular Unconformity shows us a life’s work in cross-section, a restless and humane intelligence, ever searching, ever shifting, finding significance in our blink-of-an-eye existence against a backdrop of geological time unimaginable in its scale.

A shrewd observer of teh sounds and the poetics of nature, Don McKay attunes his senses to bird song and music, to human presence and geological formations, to vernacular speech and inanimate silence. In his eloquent, yet exuberant encountes with the wilderness, he walks the fault line between the known and the unknown, testing the uncertain mechanism of language and its imperfect gestures toward meaning.

This first comprehensive collection of Don McKay’s poetry displays this pre-eminent Canadian poet’s gift for thinking through metaphor, for channelling a profound philosophical discourse through poetic imagery. In poem after poem, his disciplined attention and contemplative mind break through the commonplace, illuminating an ecological understanding of the world as it is.


“This book is as compassionate as it is essential. Essential at the very least because it collects poetry that has been out of print and thus difficult to access for readers, teachers, and students. Further, this book of collected poems is essential because McKay has been a significant voice in Canadian poetry for the past three decades.”
Canadian Literature

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Excerpts & Samples ×

Angular unconformity: a discordant surface of contact between the deposits of two episodes of sedimentation in which the older, underlying strata have undergone folding, uplift, and erosion before the deposition of the younger sediments, so that the younger strata truncate the older.
— Michael Allaby, ed., A Dictionary of Earth Sciences, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)

Angular Unconformity shows us a life’s work in cross-section, a restless and humane intelligence, ever searching, ever shifting, finding meaning in our blink-of-an-eye existence against a backdrop of geological time unimaginable in its scale.

In this volume, the first comprehensive collection of Don McKay’s poetry, this pre-eminent Canadian poet displays his gift for thinking through metaphor, channelling a profound philosophical discourse through plain language and striking imagery. In his poetry, disciplined attention and contemplation break through the commonplace and illuminate an ecological understanding of the world as it is.

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

584 Pages
9in * 6in * 1.7962in
994gr

Published:

October 07, 2014

Publisher:

Goose Lane Editions

ISBN:

9780864922403

Book Subjects:

POETRY / Canadian

Featured In:

All Books

Language:

eng

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