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42 LITTERS IN CANADA 1998 Kertes, Joseph. Boardwalk. ECW. 253· $16.95 Kinsella, W.P. The Secret of the Northern Lights. Thistledown. 199· $14.95 Kleiman, Ed. The World Beaters. Thistledown. 239· $14.95 Kroetsch, Robert. The Man from the Creeks. Random House of Canada. )07. $)2.00 Marotta, Kenny. A House on the Piazza. Guernica. 203. $18.00 Mayr, Suzette. The Widows. NeWest. 248. $16.95 Munro, Alice. The Love of a Good Woman. McClelland and Stewart. 340. $32.95 Niedzviecki, Hal, ed. Concrete Forest: The New Fiction of Urban Canada. McClelland and Stewart. 296. $19.99 Norman, Howard. The Museum Guard. Knopf Canada. 310. $32.95 Nyberg, Morgan. El Dorado Shuffle. Cormorant. 32 3. $19.95 O'Leary, Sarah. Comfort Me with Apples. Thistledown. 194· $14.95 Osborne, Stephen. Dispatches from the New World. Arsenal Pulp. 200. $17.95 Persaud, Sasenarine. Canada Geese and Apple Chatney. TSAR. 159· $15.95 Remski, Matthew. Silver. Insomniac. 395. $18.99 Richards, David Adams. The Bay oj Love and Sorrows. McClelland and Stewart. 30 7. $29·99 Rogal, Stan. Restless. Insomniac. 155. $18.99 Rooke, Leon. Who Goes There. Exile. 272 . $19.95 Schoemperlen, Diane. Forms of Devotion. HarperCollins. 221. $25.00 Selvadurai, Shyam. Cinnamon Gardens. McClelland and Stewart. 389. $29.99 Smith, Jean. The Ghost of Understanding. Arsenal Pulp. 137· $14.95 Smith, Russell. Noise. Porcupine's Quill. 266. $18.95 Tefs, Wayne. Red Rock: A Mystery. Coteau. 279· $14.95 Toews, Miriam. A Boy of Good Breeding. Stoddart. 268. $19.95 Tulchinsky, Karen X. Love Ruins Everything. Press Gang. 267. $18.95 Tulchinsky, Karen X., ed. Hot and Bothered: Short Short Fiction on Lesbian Desire. Arsenal Pulp. 222. $16.95 Walsh, Dan. Garnes, Dreams and Paper Bags: A Novel in Seven Stories. Second Room. 142 . $14·95 Warwaruk, Larry. The Ukrainian Wedding. Coteau. 298. $14.95 Wesseler, Marlis. Elvis Unplugged. Oberon. 123. $14.95 Wilson, Betty. The Book of Sarah. Coteau. }27- $14·95 Van Herk, Aritha. Restlessness. Red Deer. 193. $16·95 Poetry MARNIE PARSONS 'One hundred per cent handmade music': that's the motto of mandolinist David Crisman's Acoustic Disc label, a label that puts out fine, subtle, joyful acoustic music. Handmade. I hear the intelligence of hands in his POETRY 43 music, their remarkable stretch and grace. The nimble sureness of fingers intimate with pattern, their simple integrity, without teclmological distortion or enhancement. Ibelievesuch integrity ofconnection iswhat the great Franco-Newfoundland fiddler Emile Benoit meant when he said 'from the heart to the head to the hand.' Thatpurity, that care in things well made, handmade, speaks of a s~btle physical relationship between maker and made, between maker and matter - an acoustics that locates the fullness of the made in the moment of making, that transposes heart and mind to hand. Poetry is itself a form of manual labour. So I told a class this year when we were discussing Michael Crummey's beautiful book Hard Light (Brick, 128, $12.95). The hand holding the penciL the hand on the keyboard. The hand in Crummey's book is a form of memory, a 'map of a gone world etched into the unconscious life ... by daily necessities, the habits of generations' ('Ruse). The hand of a poet traces the hand of a fisherman, finds its own story. It's no surprise that Crummey was invited this year to read at an interdisciplinary academic conference on the hand at the University of Western Ontario, or that his book has made its way into this review, when I am so caught up in hands, in what they hold. Handmade, handwritten . How language is handled, what it hands us. Heart in the hand. Last year I began this review with Jan Zwicky's Songs for Relinquishing the Earth (Brick, 88, $12.95), a handmade book. This year I could begin again at Z; Zwicky's book, with Dionne Brand's No Language Is Neutral (McClelland and Stewart, 52, $12.99), is one of two 1998 reprints. Originally published by Coach House Press, Brand's book appears now from McClelland and Stewart; Zwicky's, first self-published, is now available from Brick Books. Both have been republished to make them available...

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