More Songs the Radio Won't Play: Poems
By (Author) Stan Rogal
ECW Press,Canada
ECW Press,Canada
4th June 2025
24th April 2025
No Edition
Canada
Paperback
120
Width 140mm, Height 216mm
98g
The idea for More Songs the Radio Wont Play came to Stan Rogal while he listened to singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwardss One More Song the Radio Wont Like. In these poems, he takes formerly popular tunes (from various genres) and transforms them. Self-referentiality; mashups of the erudite and the profane; allusions to other arts and sciences; the insertion and bending of biographical and historical facts; problematic snippets of philosophy and literary theory, quotes, and bastardizations; deploying non- or a-poetical language to challenge notions of how a poem should work; sampling; and off-kilter humor work together to update Rogals playlist for a present-day audience.
While his poems unavoidably serve to comment on the world today, Rogal resists a central message; the true emphasis of this collection is on the process of creation. Its not the destination but the journey that is of significance. Not mere cover versions, not exactly parodies (though parodic), these poems are redactions, mutations, Frankensteins they resemble the original somewhat yet are also grossly different. And its Rogals sincere hope that the originating artists, like his readers, accept these burnt offerings as tributes.
Born in Vancouver, and now living in Toronto, Stan Rogal is the author of 27 books, including eight novels, seven story collections, and 12 poetry collections. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies in Canada, the U.S., and Europe. Rogal is also a produced playwright and the former coordinator of Torontos popular Idler Pub Reading Series.