Postscript

Geoffrey Cook

"An astonishingly assured and powerful debut... [Cook's] fierce, fine books gathers cosmo influences; [John] Thompson, but also Joseph Brodsky, Derek Walcott, and Rainer Maria Rilke, while his sonnets may also tender [Charles] Bruce. Even so, he is an original. [...] Considering photos of [poet John] Thompson, Cook turns in ghazals as good as those of the Welshman: 'I jabbed one into mine once: a (spruce) needle straight into the eye / like a sharp stick stabbed into the glassy candy-apple's core.' Each couplet possesses the tang and sting of expert imagism: 'Everything is up against the wall, is cold, / as if black and white were best for poetry.' [...] Cook's rhymes dazzle: 'Goldenrod bunches / braid the sun / and unhinge hunches / weighing down / the over-anxious.' [...] Postscript marks a remarkable debut."-George Elliott Clarke, Halifax Chronicle-Herald

"Bode[s] well for the new generation of Canadian poets... Show[s] that the poetry of place continues to be vital--place as seen through a sojourner's interval, rather than a visit's brevity or half a lifetime's familiarity. This is a poetry of dwelling, of staying in a place long enough to experience relationship, community, and self-change, but not long enough to stop feeling 'unsettled.'" -Books in Canada

"Cook's work is cosmopolitan without losing touch with Maritime settings." -Montreal Review of Books