Ox

Christopher Patton

The poems in Christopher Patton's debut collection, Ox, are about seeing clearly, and also about relinquishing the need to see with specific intent. Through this tension they find their idiosyncratic magic. Like the twelfth-century Buddhist parable of the ox-herder, Ox begins with a search, and its open-ended journey-one full of sprawling, strange, syntactically complex, cantilevering byways-establishes the form of its religious and philosophical reach. Moving across lucently rendered North American landscapes, Patton catches a glimpse of his own spiritual setting, and in the process suggests a new direction, perhaps an entirely new scale, for Canadian nature poetry. Brimming with beautifully-controlled descriptions and startlingly precise word-play, Ox is an image of vulnerability before the world's plenitude. It is an astonishing achievement.

Signal Editions
Poetry 2007

Reviews

Praise for Christopher Patton's poetry:

"His work will become indispensable." -Times Literary Supplement

"A formal style reminiscent of Marianne Moore's syllabic verse.... The pleasure of reading Patton's language is so great that it's easy at first to miss the subtle spirituality of what he is doing." —poetryreviews.ca

Christopher Patton's poems have appeared in The Antioch Review , The Malahat Review , and The Fiddlehead , and were anthologized in The New Canon: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry . In 2000, he was awarded The Paris Review 's Bernard F. Conners Prize for Poetry. Patton writes, and tends his apple trees, on Salt Spring Island.
Trade paperback
88 pp 5.5" x 8.5"
ISBN13: 9781550652239

CDN $16.95
US & International
US $12.95