Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe

By (author): Marcus McCann

Half wisecracking tour guide and half flirtatious trick, the poems in Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe examine how we respond to overwork and overstimulation. McCann’s third collection speaks to a world that is too busy and too anxious, delivering the material with zero reverence and with loads of self-deprecating, disarming, observational – and sometimes catty – humour. Inviting readers to be his “bandmates / on life’s slutty bus tour,” Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe marks a fresh new direction in Marcus McCann’s poetics.

“McCann’s work is a must for any lover of poems.”Northumberland Today

AUTHOR

Marcus McCann

Marcus McCann is the author of three collections of poetry. His work has been awarded the EJ Pratt Medal and John Newlove Award, and was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. Born in Hamilton, McCann lives in Toronto and is a part owner of Toronto’s Glad Day Bookshop. Learn more at marcusmccann.com.


Reviews

“Swaying flirtatiously between themes of aging, apology, self-awareness, and sex, poet Marcus McCann’s tight, percussive compositions – which are best read aloud, slowly, and with someone listening – are a reminder of why intimacy, along with all its attendant disappointments, is still worth striving for.”Quill & Quire‘s 2017 Books of the Year reviewers’ picks

“McCann’s work is a must for any lover of poems.”Northumberland Today

Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe offers wry commentary on the modern world’s miniature nightmares.”Winnipeg Free Press

“Marcus’ poetry collects the anxieties built from a combination of interactions within the city, between people, and with oneself. We are asked to slow our pace a heartbeat and observe those interactions. Document the anxieties. Laugh at them a little. Marcus guides us through a Toronto where the calm exists within the chaos, and we are only a car wreck away from finding it.”Broken Pencil

“The poems that make up Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe are, one might say, an incredible mouthful: smart and sassy, thoughtful and wise, thick with swagger, impulse and a great deal more experience than his prior two collections.”—rob mclennan


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Excerpts & Samples ×

In Praise of the Sun-Cloud-Rain-Lightning Icon

Pictograph of our actual days  

with a chance of everything.

Patience, honey. Air will send

live updates.

Sit still with your unsatisfied heart.  

I know you want

“an answer”

but

oh, to abandon odds  

for a thumbnail hinting

all options are equal

so none is exactly likely.  

Or in the long view,    

given infinite skies  

the probability of all events  

tends toward one.

But no. To abandon odds

is to abandon panic, panic

that cancels picnics,

sticky bike trips to nowhere.

The wheel has one bright spot

and that is enough.

Add your applause   

to the tentative plaudits  

of its makers:

imagine the colloquium  

at the Conference of New Meteorology    

—convened in a field  

of thistles, bugged wind,  

rim lit up in pre-storm glow—    

to adopt for the future  

an ideogram of doubt    

and sing its song  

maybe, maybe.

Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

80 Pages
7.0in * 4.75in * 0.2in
0.2lb

Published:

May 15, 2017

ISBN:

9781926743936

Book Subjects:

POETRY / Canadian

Featured In:

Pride Reads

Language:

eng

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