Anxious, twitchy, urgent poems—a collection that’s at once sardonic and “chronically wishful.”

Steve McOrmond is the author of three previous collections of poetry, most recently The Good News About Armageddon (Brick Books, 2010), which appeared on a number of book critics' Best of 2010 lists and was shortlisted for the 2011 ReLit Award. His second collection, Primer on the Hereafter (Wolsak and Wynn, 2006), was awarded the Atlantic Poetry Prize. His debut collection, Lean Days (Wolsak and Wynn, 2004), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. Originally from Prince Edward Island, he lives in Toronto.

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“Creeping dread, bemused wonder, and a species of headlong incredulity inform Steve McOrmond’s processing of the new century’s prodigious cultural jetsam, its ‘wilderness of signs’. Reckon apprehends the strangeness in the commonplace, and the anxiety humming in everyday chatter, fact and argument, whether it be live or digitized. ‘What do they open, the keys that come rotoring down from the maple trees?’ Turns out it’s complicated.”

Kevin Connolly

“The isolation and confusion of the modern age come to life in Steve McOrmond's new book Reckon in a way that is disquieting and strangely comforting at the same time.”

Ron Sexsmith