Expressway review

The American poet Carl Sandburg said that 'poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.' He meant that poetry has the freedom to bring together disparate elements in the world and align them into something surprisingly new.

A new crop of poetry books from Montreal and beyond illustrate the persistent power of poetry to engage in the search for coherence and clarity amid incongruities.

Among the boldest and most original volumes within the group is Expressway, by Montreal poet Sina Queyras.

Sina Queyras' new poetry collection battles the numbing speed of modern life, a hallmark of which the web-savvy poet excels at in her blog about life and the arts, Lemon Hound (also the title of her 2007 Pat Lowther and Lambda Literary award-winning poetry book). Chipping away at the expressway's faux-finish tarmac in favour of a more natural past, these poems offer contemplation as an antidote to a too-fast-and-furious fate.

In her first book of poems since her collection Lemon Hound, Montreal-based Sina Queyras employs the Romantic tradition of pastoral poetry to create passionate indictments of our consumerist, car-obsessed culture and our fast-lane mentality. In 'Solitary,' a woman stands near the I-95, where 'a patch / of emerald turf' is besieged by doggy bags,' the nearby expressway '[s]moothing each nuisance of wild, each terrifying / Quirk of land.'