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Taking Charles Olson's "Poem 143--the festival aspect" as its provocation and partner in conversation, Michael Boughn's City sets out on a voyage to explore the Three Towns central to Olson's poem and the Vedic myth that it responds to. Combining observations and commentary ... Read more
Taking Charles Olson's "Poem 143--the festival aspect" as its provocation and partner in conversation, Michael Boughn's City sets out on a voyage to explore the Three Towns central to Olson's poem and the Vedic myth that it responds to. Combining observations and commentary on current affairs with references to and considerations of traditional texts by Dante, Augustine, Fra Carnevale, Weber, Bachelard, Whitehead, Benjamin, Agamben, and a host of others, City weaves multiple threads together into a tapestry of urban experience that is always both here and beyond.
Book One: Singular Assumptions opens the journey with a tour of the first town's charms and attractions--a map that moves from bar to arena through a perennial traffic jam, while taking in the occasional parade and other digressions that only the City, with its infinite possibilities, can offer up.
Michael Boughn was described in the Globe and Mail as 'an obscure, veteran poet with a history of being overlooked by the mainstream.' His last book of poetry, Cosmographia - a post-Lucretian faux micro-epic (2011), was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Poetry.
Praise for City: Book 1: Singular Assumptions
Michael Boughn's City isÉ explicit in its celebration of the urban as a pumping heart with architecture. Boughn approaches the Ôcommon' with an open language, knowing full well that some who share the space may not Ôunderstand.' His Walden is a full-canopied forest of neighbourhoods within and around which true solace is found, but only after much searching.
- Victor Coleman
Singular Assumptions (City, Book One) takes a bite out of the holism apple... and sows articulations of wiggle into the densest gridlocks of rigid city posturing.... Boughn sings for the potentials of life's flourish with soaring ripostes, the bittersweet paradox of rigour for jazz, and a congenial shrugging cheer.
- David Peter Clark
Boughn speaks as a combatant, always.... Take care, this book is signed by a barbarian....[with] a history of being overlooked.
- Oliver Cusimano
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