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Current Issue: No. 301

Cultural Stoicism & Atlantic Canadian Vernacular: Carmelita McGrath’s Escape Velocity

By Phillip Crymble

A Review of Carmelita McGraw's Escape Velocity (Goose Lane, 2013) I was reminded, in reading through Escape Velocity, of the cultural and aural vernacular that’s so much a part of the literary geography of Newfoundland. The trick, I think, with any brogue, is to try and do it justice without putting the idiomatic phrases and language used in jeopardy of being considered a caricature. McGrath deftly straddles the line in this new collection, and her ability to recognize and resist the impulse to essentially reduce native Newfoundlanders to a comic commodity through exaggerated dialect is one of the book’s great achievements.

Day on Salamis’ Seacoasts: Emery George's translation of Frederich Hölderlin's Selected Poems

By Eric Miller

A Review of Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems, introduced, edited and translated by Emery George (Princeton UP, 2011) What is “nobility”? In a society, such as ours, that makes a fretful, often duplicitous, yet admirable pretence to democratic practice, the word may seem insistently, even discouragingly, to flaunt a feudal livery, contaminating all the situations into which we import it with the ghost of a titular presumption over the rest of society: an intractable case of most ancient bloodlines. But the origins of the word “noble” offer a means by which to parry, even to disarm, such narrow atavism.

Fredericton-Area Literary Events

If you're in the Fredericton area over the few weeks, there are some great literary opportunities on offer. The Fredericton Arts Alliance is hosting writer Forrest Orser as part of its artist in residence program this week. And on June 25, CBC Radio will be recording Grownups Read Things They Wrote as Kids at the Cedar Tree in downtown Fredericton, which promises to be fun and hilarious. Details on both below. 

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