Essential Essays

The itinerary of Faithfully Seeking Franz comprises an irregular quest for dead mentor, modernist author Franz Kafka-in places he lived, worked, vacationed and convalesced, and in the body of work he left: fiction, diaries, notebooks, and correspondence. The search for the man inside the writer is both a personal journey and a joint venture of two in the field: E. and M. in pursuit of K. The story might even be said to unfold as a love note to triangulation.

Her Own Thinker: Canadian Women Writers as Essayists explores the thinking, ideas, and insights that Canadian women fiction writers have chosen to express in essay form rather than in fiction form. It looks at this substantial body of writing with a primary focus on collections of essays, and on those published since the 1960s. In all, it considers over 40 collections, offering an overview and appreciation of this generally overlooked work and its contributions to cultural and intellectual thinking in Canada.

The Walled Garden is a unique collection of short essays addressing a wide variety of subjects. From an exploration of the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and Federico Fellini to an update on the linguistic theories of Ernest Fenollosa, from a look into the true nature of time and the present moment to a discussion of 'psychic birthplaces', from reflections on Paleolithic caves, poetry and art, The Walled Garden includes the wild, the tamed and the stunningly unusual.

What you will find in Echoes of Growing up Italian are accounts of the immigrant experience as told through the eyes of women. The Italian diaspora is one of the most significant of the 20th century, with a far-reaching impact in the Americas, Australia and Northern Europe. The Italian immigration narrative is a universal one. The stories in this book of the Italian woman in North America and how she learned to survive as she lived with two cultures in her heart and home. This collection provides the reader with a candid glimpse into the lives of fifteen women from across North America: some were born and raised in Italy while some have only been there on holidays; some are mothers and grandmothers and some are single; some only know a few words of Italian, while others are fluent, but we all have a discerning perspective on what it means to live with two cultures.

Dervish at the Crossroads isn't a music guide so much as an autobiographical exploration of the experience of music from 2000 to 2020, with commentary on what makes the experience of music during these two decades radically different from all that came before. As the title of the book implies, due to the unique conditions of our time we can no longer think of ourselves as points on a series of evolutions; we're now much more present to all of music, from the beginning of written and recorded music, all of which turns around us like spokes on a wheel. This grants us a unique vantage point from which to appreciate music in itself. The book alternates text with a comics and infographics detailing the history of the author's discoveries as a music journalist during this time, along with personal experiences and ruminations and interviews.

The Confederation Poets: The Founding of a Canadian Poetry, 1880 to the First World War is a study of poets born between 1850 and 1866, focusing on the work they produced up until the end of World War I. Through this investigation, the climate of opinion that animated Canadian society following Confederation is brought to light. Poets covered range from the famous (Lampman, Roberts, Crawford, Carman) to the less well-known, but still important (Cameron, Herbin, Coleman, Wetherald). 55 Confederation poems, many hard to find today, are quoted in full.

Desire Lines features an eclectic collection of Toronto writer/poet Ewan Whyte's astute essays and reviews on art, poetry, and culture, both high and low. Among the subjects included: the Roman poet Catullus, the bondage photography of Maria Coletsis, the rain paintings of Viktor Mitic, Ai Weiwei, Vladimir Azarov, Anne Carson, Leonard Cohen, Christopher Logue's Homer, Janet Cardiff, Alex Colville, Pasolini, Priscilla Uppal, Anish Kapoor and Canadian performance artist Istvan Kantor, better known as Monty Cantsin. Spontaneous and contemporary, essays for those who like to re-think.

This lively collection is an overview of the history of Italian Canadians in Toronto from the 1960s to the present. The author deals with particular moments of community development, starting with a period of disorganization and individual effort, then marking the achievements as a community from participation in many aspects of daily life: church, unions, sports, culture, business, and political activism. The author writes from his perspective as a witness and as a participant in community institutions such as the Federation of Associations of Canadian Italians (FACI); the National Congress of Italian Canadians; Villa Colombo and Villa Charities; and many other organizations. The author also looks at how these events coincide with particular moments in Canadian society: the Centennial celebrations in 1967; the Trudeau years and multiculturalism; the repatriation of the Canadian constitution in 1982, with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; and the evolution of Canadian identity in the late 20th and early 21st century.

Interviews with ten Great Canadian poets. In The Writers' Words Volume 2 is a collection of interviews of ten significant contemporary Canadian poets: Brian Bartlett, Roo Borson, George Elliott Clarke, Travis Lane, John B. Lee, Daniel Lockhart, Bruce Meyer, A.F. Moritz, Sue Sinclair, and Colleen Thibaudeau. In this book, the writers speak in-depth about the importance of personal events in their lives, their aesthetics, the social and geographical contexts, historical background, the influence of other writers and the evolution of their poetry during their careers. These poets give a larger sense of the nature and the development of contemporary Canadian poetry.

Inspired by American playwright Sarah Ruhl's 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write, his book is a series of miniature reflections, meditations, and ruminations on subjects encompassing matters of theatre and poetry, two subjects very close to Garebian's heart. The titles alone speak to the little book's uniqueness: Watching Your Father Die on Stage, Do Actors Love the Audience? Filthy Shakespeare, Great Roles Can Be Cannibalistic, Japanese Death Poems, Poetry and Persian Wrestling, What Story Does Poetry Tell? Armenian Poetry, and Can There Be Poetry After Donald Trump? Perceptive, witty, and intimate, the mini musings bubble with a sense of wonder, excitement, and intimacy. A vibrant, provocative series of mini musings that also affords insight into a particular artistic sensibility as several pieces are really slices of memoir and autobiography.

Shakespeare Beyond Science: When Poetry Was the World approaches Shakespeare as rhetorician. This means jettisoning the yearning to find the true meaning of Shakespeare's texts, as Shakespeare wrote at a time when poetry was not meant to be interpreted, but experienced as a window on the world. Sky Gilbert looks at Shakespeare in the context of the style wars that obsessed the early modern period, placing Shakespeare on the side of Lyly, Nashe, Sturm and the Greek rhetorician Hermogenes, against the new forward-looking more scientific approach to literature, as expressed by early modern philosopher Petrus Ramus (whose followers in England were Sydney and Gabriel Harvey). In the end Shakespeare was a post-structuralist, more concerned with form than content, and confident of the dangerous magical power of words not only to persuade but to construct our consciousness.

Bob Dylan has created a body of work unparalleled in popular music. As a songwriter and as a singer, Dylan expanded the boundaries for song. In this substantially revised and updated second edition of The Bob Dylan Albums, Anthony Varesi analyzes the massive Dylan canon through a detailed discussion of each of the artist's officially released albums. The book follows Dylan's career chronologically from 1962's Bob Dylan through to 2021's Bootleg Series release Springtime in New York. All of Dylan's studio albums, live albums, collections and archival releases are examined in the text and in the detailed, annotated, cross-referenced discography, as are Dylan's notable soundtrack contributions, side projects and benefit concert appearances. The Bob Dylan Albums, 2nd Edition also discusses Dylan's other writings, such as Chronicles and his Nobel Prize lecture, and reviews the films Dylan has appeared in or been the subject of. The book contains frank analyses of the more controversial aspects of Dylan's career, including songs Dylan wrote about George Jackson, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter, Joey Gallo and Lenny Bruce, the use of Dylan's music in advertisements, and Dylan's 2011 trip to China. The book looks at recurring themes in Dylan's songs, the influence of other artists on Dylan's music, and the ongoing relevance of Dylan's work. In the process, The Bob Dylan Albums, 2nd Edition unearths new meaning in both Dylan's most famous works and in his songs and albums that have received less attention..