A Serious Call - Softcover

Coles, Don

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0889843805 ISBN 13: 9780889843806

Publisher: Porcupine's Quill Inc.,Canada, 2015

Synopsis

In his latest book of poetry, A Serious Call, Don Coles brings to life a series of everyday moments, objects, and relationships in a touching reflection on the passage of time and the power of memory

About this title

Review:

The memory that stands at the core of "A Serious Call"?two co-workers in the back room of a bookstore with their boots up on the coffee table, only a space heater for warmth, speaking aloud to each other the lines that must be shared?is only the most elegant of many examples. Here we have the memory of the page being spoken aloud one friend to the other as an inspiration for further writing and further memory and further friendship too, because the remembering of the page is a call that only finds its answer in the response of the friend.

Though my own experience of page and memory and friendship was formed in far different circumstances, I can recognize in Coles' description an undeniably correlate experience, as powerful and as valuable a thing?this friendship of the remembered page*mdash;and as any human experience.--Jeremy Luke Hill "From Word to Word "

A Serious Call is a quiet, beautifully rendered story of our relationships to objects, books, and (the memories of) the people around those objects and books. The volume ultimately casts a charming reflection on time and aging; for the literary devotee, it shouldn't be missed.--Josh Cook "Foreword Reviews "

"Aschenbach in Toronto," the indisputible highlight of this short collection, demonstrates that at 88 years of age, Coles's talent remains undiminished.'--Bruce Whiteman "Quill & Quire "

Instead of writing poems that you have to fight your way through, or that actively discourage engagement, [Coles's] lines open themselves up to you as you read, and then remain in your mind, enriching your perception of your own relationships and experiences.'--Brooke Clark "Partisan Magazine "

In his wistful look at life, Coles captures sounds and movements of time and space, from vastness to nesting.

Parentheses, dashes, hyphenations and pauses to pulsate words call attention to Coles' swerving syntax. Subliminally, to-and-fro tennis rhythms make their way into his precise verse.'--Michael Greenstein

The memory that stands at the core of -A Serious Call--two co-workers in the back room of a bookstore with their boots up on the coffee table, only a space heater for warmth, speaking aloud to each other the lines that must be shared-is only the most elegant of many examples. Here we have the memory of the page being spoken aloud one friend to the other as an inspiration for further writing and further memory and further friendship too, because the remembering of the page is a call that only finds its answer in the response of the friend.

Though my own experience of page and memory and friendship was formed in far different circumstances, I can recognize in Coles' description an undeniably correlate experience, as powerful and as valuable a thing-this friendship of the remembered page*mdash;and as any human experience.

- Jeremy Luke Hill - From Word to Word

A Serious Call is a quiet, beautifully rendered story of our relationships to objects, books, and (the memories of) the people around those objects and books. The volume ultimately casts a charming reflection on time and aging; for the literary devotee, it shouldn't be missed.

- Josh Cook - Foreword Reviews

-Aschenbach in Toronto,- the indisputible highlight of this short collection, demonstrates that at 88 years of age, Coles's talent remains undiminished.'

- Bruce Whiteman - Quill & Quire

Instead of writing poems that you have to fight your way through, or that actively discourage engagement, [Coles's] lines open themselves up to you as you read, and then remain in your mind, enriching your perception of your own relationships and experiences.'

- Brooke Clark - Partisan Magazine

My surprise is what I had not expected from Coles: that he should reflect back on a human relationship and that for once I should really care. -A Serious Call- works because, as the product of human relationships and endeavours, it is harnessed by competing forces-one force joyfully skittering along the surface of Coles' reverence for great books, underpinned by a deeper, more unifying force within the lifelong relationship of two men.'

- David Godkin - Canadian Notes & Queries

About the Author:

Don Coles was born on April 12, 1927, in the town of Woodstock, Ontario.

Coles entered Victoria College at the University of Toronto in 1945. He did a four-year history degree, then a two-year M.A. in English, spending two undergraduate summers in Trois-Pistoles, Quebec, learning French, and one summer travelling in Europe. He had several courses with Northrop Frye and Marshall McLuhan, whom he recalls as the best teachers of his life. In between the two M.A. years, he spent a year in London working in a bookstore, then enrolled at Cambridge from 1952 to 1954, and upon graduating was awarded a British Council grant to live in Florence for a year. It was in Stockholm that he met Heidi Golnitz of Lubeck, Germany, whom he eventually married; they lived in Copenhagen and Switzerland before coming to Canada with their daughter in 1965-supposedly for a visit, but they stayed.

It was only around 1967, in tandem with teaching, that Coles began writing poems. His first collection

About this edition

• Publisher: Porcupine's Quill Inc.,Canada
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0889843805
• ISBN 13: 9780889843806
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 64