Description
The False Laws of Narrative is a selection of Fred Wah’s poems covering the poets entire poetic trajectory to date. A founding editor of Tish magazine, Wah was influenced by leading progressive and innovative poets of the 1960s and was at the forefront of the exploration of racial hybridity, multiculturalism, and transnational family roots in poetry. The selection emphasizes his innovative poetic range.
Wah is renowned as one of Canada’s finest and most complex lyric poets and has been lauded for the musicality of his verse. Louis Cabri’s introduction offers a paradigm for thinking about how sound is actually structured in Wah’s improvisatory poetry and offers fresh insights into Wah’s context and writing. In an afterword by the poet himself, Wah presents a dialogue between editor and poet on the key themes of the selected poems and reveals his abiding concerns as poet and thinker.
Reviews
Wah's attention to the local is meticulous. It is also very inventive.... Cabri's...critical work in False Laws provides a sophisticated, wide-ranging analysis of Wah's generic/theoretical concerns (the collage epic, the sound of language, hybrid identity) and his main historical influences (William Carlos Williams, the Black Mountain poets).... [A] well-edited collection and a solid step towards the wider circulation of Wah's poetry.
- David Barrick, matrix, #85, 2010 March
It's about time...that someone came along to write a book such as this. And it's a pleasure to see it as part of the Laurier Poetry Series, which has achieved a standard of excellence that other institutions should be admiring and emulating.... The False Laws of Nature is an excellent selection of Wah's poetry from his earliest to his most recent. Cabri demonstrates not just an understanding of but a profound respect for Wah both as an individual and as a poet. Cabri has created the standard by which all others should be judged.
- John Herbert Cunningham, Prairie Fire Review of Books, Volume 10, number 2, October 2010, 2010 October