Review
"Here's your poetic license, here's your passport to the world of poetry, here's your poetry nation. Where the word ends and the dream begins, where the dream ends and the world begins, where ears are fists and tongues are whips, where the poem bathes naked in a mind, a book is calling." --
Bob Holman...attention to craft is one of the most striking qualities of the texts in
Poetry Nation. The range of techniques the poets rally to ensure their words work both in performance and print-typography, metrics, accumulation and cataloguing, refrains, repetition-are all bent into service with a fair bit of verve... Of course the anthology is more than its formal concerns, more than how things are said, and
Poetry Nation is consciously inclusive, reflecting the great diversity of new poetries being created. The editors have made an effort to include women, Black, Asian, les/bi/gay and indigenous writers, as well as mixing established-or "more established"-figures (Ginsberg, Evelyn Lau and Cabico himself, for example) with newer voices. This strategy goes a long way to providing the book with a rich texture and a variety of material. --
Peter Dub, Hour March 18, 1999This attention to craft is one of the most striking qualities of the texts in Poetry Nation. The range of techniques the poets rally to ensure their words work both in performance and print - typography, metrics, accumulation and cataloging, refrains, repetition - are all bent into sevice with a fair bit of verve. --
Hour, March 18 1999What stuck me about this collection was the number of both established and lesser known writers, including plenty of Montreal talent, who bridge quality writing and rhythm ... Kudos must go to Swift and Cabico ... for documenting a mode of writing which is fresh and inventive and has revived poetry, bringing it into the next millennium. --
Montreal Review of Books, Fall/Winter 1998-990
About the Author
Regie Cabico is a recipient of a 1997 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry. His work appears in numerous anthologies, including
Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Caf (Henry Holt), and Political Voices, Political Visions (SUNY Press). He was winner of the 1993 New York Poetry Slam, a road poet on Lollapalooza, and the opening act of MTV's "Free Your Mind Spoken Word Tour."
Todd Swift is one of Canada's leading poetry activists. In 1995 he began hosting Montreal's Vox Hunt Slam spoken words series which the Globe & Mail called "unique in North America" for its "Brechtian mix of European cabaret and North American vaudeville." Swift has performed his poetry across North America and co-hosted the 1995 U.S. National Slam Finals. As a screenwriter for television, he has had his work produced for HBO, Fox, and Paramount.
Bob Holman recently produced the PBS series "The United States of Poetry," edited the companion anthology (Abrams) and produced the soundtrack CD (MouthAlmighty/Mercury). He was co-editor of the award-winning anthology, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Caf, and is the recipient of three Emmys.
