It Doesn't Matter What We Meant: Poems

(Paperback)

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An astonishing new collection of poems that question perception, meaning, and context. An astonishing new collection of poems that question perception, meaning, and context. How does private thinking align with public action And what might it mean to intend something anyhow To name our particulars To translate from the personal to the communal, the pedestrian to the universal In Rob Winger's new collection of poetry, such questions are less a circulatory system--heart and lungs and blood--than a ribcage, a structure that protects the parts that matter most. "I'd like to think," Winger writes, "it doesn't matter / what we meant." But is that right Could it ever be Partly an investigation of system versus system error, It Doesn't Matter What We Meant asks us to own up to our own inherited contexts, our own luck or misfortune, our own ways of moving through each weekday. From meditations on sleepy wind turbines to Voyager 1's dormant thrusters, from country road culverts to the factory floor's punch clock, from allied English-to-English folkloric translations to the crumbling limestone of misremembered basements, this is poetry that complicates what it means to live within and beyond the languages, lexicons, and locations around us.

Reviews

Praise for It Doesn't Matter What We Meant and Rob Winger:

The concluding lines of Wingers collection Id like to think it doesnt matter / what we meant suggests poems present less a shared experience than the coordinates of one, waiting to be populated by each readers specificities.Quill & Quire

It is no accident that this confident, gorgeous book begins with and returns to the space probe Voyager I, still sending back its continuous data, despite everything. On his various journeys as a father, friend, reader, husband, citizen, Winger sends his data back, but this book is not a one-way transmission: with typical implicit grace and generosity, Winger thinks of us, on our journeys too. As he says to Voyager, and therefore to us, I want you to know, sailor, that all of us are with you. These poems continually move with authentic surprise, wry intelligence, and humour, out of the ordinary, and into genuine communion. You can feel the generous attention to a reader, and presence of a companion, beaming you messages you didnt know you needed, but do. Matthew Zapruder, author of Fathers Day and Why Poetry

Wise, worrying, and playful, WingersIt Doesnt Matter What We Meantmeditates on time, hope, complicity, and conscience; in short, on what its like to be alive right now. No matter what we intended the future to look like (Fifteen years ago, well colonize the moon), this moment, for better and worse, is what weve made. Gil Adamson, author ofRidgerunner

How do we see What do we know Curious and unsatisfied, Rob Wingers new collection It Doesnt Matter What We Meant seems to hang in the interval between approach and grasp. A speed trap, a birch tree, comets, neighbourhood restaurants, wind turbines, predictions for the future: all and more are scrutinized in the imaginative, questioning lines of these restless, conversational poems, where observation is both steadied by a level eye and lifted with a lyric buoyancy. David OMeara, author of A Pretty Sight

Shot through with the gorgeous possibilities of an often-impossible present,It Doesnt Matter What We Meantoffers watchful snapshots of both galactic change and pocket change. In the driveway under the incandescent otherworld of space, urgent questions of access, agency, and inheritance thrum on every page. This is a collection that keeps the counsel of many seekers. Read it, and youll be in excellent company.Erin Wunker, author ofNotes from a Feminist Killjoy

Author Bio

ROB WINGER is the author of three previous collections of poetry, including Muybridge's Horse, a Globe and Mail Best Book and CBC Literary Award winner shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award, Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and Ottawa Book Award. He lives in the hills northeast of Toronto, where he teaches at Trent University.