Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe
- Publisher
- Invisible Publishing
- Initial publish date
- May 2017
- Subjects
- Canadian, LGBT, General
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781926743967
- Publish Date
- May 2017
- List Price
- $9.99
Library Ordering Options
Description
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
About the author
MARCUS McCANN (he/him) is a lawyer who has been involved in a number of high-profile legal projects in the areas of sexuality and LGBTQ rights. He is a former managing editor of Xtra in Toronto and Ottawa. The author of three previous books, his writing has been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert and Robert Kroetsch awards, and won the John Newlove Award and the EJ Pratt Medal for poetry. Born in Hamilton, Marcus now lives in Toronto.
Excerpt: Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe (by (author) Marcus McCann)
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.
Editorial 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
Reviewers