Interrobang

The spirit of the interrobang, a punctuation mark merging the questioning and the exclamatory, informs Mary Dalton’s compelling investigations of home and identity in this, her sixth poetry collection—in extraordinary poems of aging; of despised plants once revered; of rites and sites of community abandoned. The “flared mouth” of Dalton’s acclaimed musicality gives voice to lost souls and a lost sense of the earth. The collection’s unique mix of bleakness and beauty is also reflected in various riddle and riddle-like series with their ambiguity, open-endedness, playfulness, and unexpected linguistic shifts. Interrobang movingly fuses notions of exploration —of glancing at things slant—with an emotional range that feels new and visionary. This is a steely, brilliant book from a major Canadian poet.

Reviews

“A consummate poet, she is eminently local, her terroir the idioms and folkways of Newfoundland. Although she has been recognized over the past thirty-five years, her bracing poetry is overdue for widespread acclaim. Inseparable from the easternmost province, it deserves to be read here, there, and everywhere.” -Nicholas Bradley, The Walrus