Wild Horses

FRONT FLAP: Cast during his year as the University of Alberta's Writer-In-Residence, wild horses is Ottawan rob mclennan's deep lyrical engagement with Edmonton, Alberta. He sees the new terrain through his peculiar, sympathizing lens--characterized by impassioned tones that range from brusque to tender. There is something of the magpie in him: nothing escapes his subtle gaze, his flighty wit, his voracious gleaning of experience. His supple lines meander and flit over scapes of love, home, family, and literature, rewarding the magpie-minded with a lucid estrangement to things both unfamiliar and familiar. BACK FLAP: Born in Ottawa, rob mclennan is author of some twenty trade books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction in four countries. His second novel, missing persons, was published in fall 2009, and his other writings have appeared in some two hundred journals in fourteen countries. An editor and publisher, rob runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics, and the Ottawa poetry PDF annual ottawater. He regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews, and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com. He spent the 2007-08 academic year in Edmonton as Writer-In-Residence at the University of Alberta. rob continues to live in Ottawa. BACK COVER: "the girl from abbotsford" the skin could be singed from my toes to my tips & would never still know when your body unfolds & unfolds, like a bare piece of transparent tape am rendered, I thus I am sending a map made of popsickle sticks I am heavy; atlas & have fallen through days a service economy of sounds & fake clouds all the way from the kootenays I am holding your taste on my tongue like a verb