In This Thin Rain

In his first full-length poetry collection since 2004, Nelson Ball, Canada’s most renowned minimalist, offers up compressed meditations Ñ ranging from the whimsical to the mournful Ñ on clouds, birds, insects, trees live and dead, water-stained walls, crumbling windmills, and hyphenation. Ball’s poems are meticulously polished gems that move through the seasons, finding beauty and depth in the most banal and simple things.

AUTHOR

Nelson Ball

Nelson Ball was born in Clinton, Ontario, and raised in southwestern Ontario. He was active as a poet, editor, and small press publisher in the 1960s and 1970s. Since 1972 he has been an antiquarian bookseller specializing in Canadian literature. He edited Frank Harrington’s Kristmiss Book, published by The Mercury Press in 1993, and is the author of three Mercury poetry books, At the Edge of the Frog Pond, Almost Spring, and The Concrete Air. Ball resides in Paris, Ontario, where the Nith and Grand Rivers converge.

Reviews

From his seat at the pond’s edge, the poet learns to hear the language of its elements, and then teaches the reader to do the same.Ó (Nita Pronovost, Matrix)