Completed Field Notes: the Long Poems of Robert Kroetsch [Paperback]

Robert Kroetsch (Author), Fred Wah (Introduction), Introduction by Fred Wah (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0888643500 | ISBN-13: 978-0888643506 | Publication Date: November 10, 2000

A series of diary entries. Marginalia from Pausanias's description of Greece. A nineteenth century ledger. Postcards from China. What do these ostensibly unrelated things have in common? Little or nothing, except when transformed into verse by Robert Kroetsch, one of Canada's most accomplished writers. Completed Field Notes showcases 20 of Kroetsch's long poems, spanning some 15 years of creative activity.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

A series of diary entries. Marginalia from Pausanias's Description of Greece. A nineteenth century ledger. Postcards from China. What do these ostensibly unrelated things have in common? Little or nothing, except when transformed into verse by Robert Kroetsch, one of Canada's most accomplished poets.

Completed Field Notes brings together 20 of Kroetsch's long poems, spanning some of 15 years of creative activity. Remarkably versatile in both form and content, these extended meditations bear witness to Kroetsch's modernist inheritance and his well-known commitment to postmodern jouissance. Whether it be in an evocation of an Australian beach or in an account of the stone hammer used by the poet's father, we find again and again the delight, elusiveness and mastery of everyday language that have become trademarks of the author's oeuvre.

In "Letters to Salonika" Kroetsch writes: "Time rewrites every book. We try so to construct a book / that time, rewriting, will make it better." This newly typeset edition of the original, with an introduction by poet Fred Wah, has certainly been re-cast by time. But this is not to say that these "field notes" have reached any stage of completion. On the contrary, they will remain open to a new generation of readers-in process, protean, "Kroetschean."

About the Author

Robert Kroetsch was born in Heisler, Alberta, and published his first novel, But We are Exiles in 1965. His The Studhorse Man won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction.He has steadily elaborated his indelible mark on Canadian writing ever since with his fiction, nonfiction, poetry, teaching, and scholarship. He lives in Leduc, Alberta.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 268 pages
• Publisher: University of Alberta Press (November 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0888643500
• ISBN-13: 978-0888643506
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,219,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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