American Standard/Canada Dry

(Paperback)

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With Canada / US relations in the proverbial toilet (American Standard, of course), Stephen Cains third book blenderizes pop culture, politics and poetry to befuddle the border.

From the Howl-like opening rant about the militarism of the US to the satirical History of Canada, this collection interrogates nationalism and cultural identity on both sides of the 49th parallel and attempts to show that Auden was wrong: poetry can make things happen.

American Standard/Canada Dry includes odes to video games, poems culled from Viagra junk mail and CNN reports on the war, ruminations on Canadian poets, travelogues, concrete poems, mistranslations of bird poems, and riffs on peculiar Canadianisms, including homophonic translations of Qubcois lyrics.

Deftly oscillating between vitriolic verse and humour, the poems in American Standard/Canada Dry interrogate poetics, nationalism and Tim Hortons as thoroughly as a burly border avant-guard; theyre your passport to the land of a new political poetry.

Author Bio

Stephen Cain (b. 1970) is the author of dyslexicon (Coach House, 1999), Torontology (ECW, 2001) and American Standard/Canada Dry (Coach House, 2005). His sound poetry can be heard on Carnivocal (Red Deer, 1999) and his concrete poetry has appeared internationally. He lives in Toronto where he teaches at York University.