Drift - by Kevin Connolly (Paperback)

About the Book

What happens at the very moment when thought moves from the banal and everyday into the oblique and odd? In "drift, " Kevin Connolly investigates this mysterious mental realm that all of us tend to find ourselves in from time to time. Examining the moment when one thought collides into another, Connolly incorporates into his poems such witty, joyous ideas as a meditation on the business end of a sea cucumber and a world in which disfigured historical celebrities are left to wander the consumer grid. Constantly juxtaposing opposites to delightful effect, "drift" meanders into, in Connolley's own words, a place where "what starts the heart stops the world."

Book Synopsis

What are we thinking at any given moment? What happens to a thought as that moment, on its way to oblivion, collides with its successor? Rambunctious, witty, joyous, and bittersweet, drift is an investigation conducted by a truly unfettered imagination. In fluid, sparkling cadences, Kevin Connolly's poems let the mind's downtime have the stage for a change -- the desert sky transformed; Spring Break as viewed by passing skipjacks; narratives of danger and dream narrative; a meditation on the business end of a sea cucumber; figures of history disfigured and left to wander the consumer grid -- such are the entirely odd, entirely current events in Connolly's world, a realm that stands at an acute angle from the place we normally live in but which we all seem to drift into. As one of Connolly's own high-voltage sonnets states, "what stops the heart starts the world." In drift's constant juxtaposition of abundance and loneliness, we hear what it is to confront a new century, having quite likely failed during the last. We're reminded, by a voice unlike any other on the Canadian landscape, that our solitude is painful yet precious.

Review Quotes

Anguish, mockery, the simple, searing truth of being and essence: these are some of the components of Kevin Connolly's astonishing and absolute poetry...These poems are what the Cyclone is to Coney Island - what poetry, at its thrilling, unsettling best, should be.

Kevin Connolly invites readers to step beyond the usual bounds of the lyric, even as it presents the illusion of lyric poetry...drift is funny, yes, but the humour is cutting; it knows too well what its final line says: 'What starts the heart stops the world.'

Peppered with recognizable forms and diction, yet distinctly different in tone and content, drift sets Kevin Connolly apart from his contemporaries as a poet who unexpectedly delights in toying with reader expectations.

Though I'm not usually a fan of poetry too full of wordplay, Connolly (like Paul Muldoon) is one who can pull it off. But his sense of play goes beyond silliness. The poems that result, though completely contemporary, are ageless.

Whitman established his individuality by incorporating multitudes. Connolly, on the other hand, lives in a world where it's nearly impossible to be an individual. Everyone represents everyone else - everything reflects everything, every day another building of mirrors goes up - and everyone, rather than containing multitudes, has become contained by multitudes.