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.