Mirror Land
After eating dinner F and I made the plan to sneak into Cinecittà. Five of us sat on a balcony above a soccer field, watching teenagers in neon cleats warm up for the game. A Sardinian man with black eyes . . .
Tag Archives: Brick 97
Horseplay: Some Poses in Search of Love
Total facts known about Al Purdy: There is a statue of him in Queen’s Park in Toronto. He was called the “People’s Poet.” The statue is called the “Voice of the Land.” I’ve read maybe twelve of his poems. I . . .
Horseplay Gallery
Along with the photographs that accompanied her piece in the print edition of Brick 97 (“Horseplay: Some Poses in Search of Love“), this gallery includes additional, web-exclusive images from Helen Guri’s residency at Al Purdy’s A-frame.
Errata: In the print . . .
The Review: A Memoir of the Warsaw Uprising by Miron Białoszewski, Translated by Madeline G. Levine
Reading Polish poet Miron Białoszewski’s account of the Warsaw Uprising—the long two months in 1944 when Hitler’s forces, retreating, executed their orders to leave nothing of the city standing—feels as though you are sitting in a building that is being . . .
The Review: Testimony by Charles Reznikoff
Charles Reznikoff’s Testimony may be one of the most influential obscure works of poetry produced in the twentieth century. Its first volume appeared in 1934, and the last appeared posthumously in 1978. The sales of all the volumes summed together . . .
The Review: The Search for Heinrich Schlögel by Martha Baillie
In Martha Baillie’s novel The Search for Heinrich Schlögel, a young man from a provincial town in Germany flies to Canada in 1980 to hike in the Arctic. Heinrich’s solitary trek lasts twelve days, during which he experiences a . . .
Helen Guri at Al Purdy’s A-Frame & Pasha Malla on Artist and Audience
We’re pleased to share two more pieces from Brick 97:
Pasha Malla considers the Great Yarmouth Suspension Bridge Disaster of 1845 and what it can teach us about artist and audience.
And Helen Guri becomes Al Purdy, with an image . . .
The Review: Counternarratives by John Keene
John Keene was born in St. Louis in June 1965—the summer, evoked in the opening pages of his first novel, Annotations, “of Malcolms and Seans, as Blacks were transforming the small nation of Watts into a graveyard of smoldering . . .
For C. D. Wright
I remember very clearly when I first read C. D. Wright. A dim winter afternoon in Edmonton, 2005, in Audrey’s Books on Jasper Avenue. Browsing the poetry section, I picked out Deepstep Come Shining. Knew I’d buy it before . . .
Writing the Disaster
On May 2, 1845, William Cooke’s Royal Circus came to Great Yarmouth, a seaside resort town on the eastern edge of England’s Norfolk County. To stimulate interest, the circus scheduled a spectacular opening event: Nelson the Clown would float in . . .
A New Citizen
When the puma was three weeks old, I brought her to the post office to apply for her passport. I brought along her birth certificate, her social security card, a photocopy of my passport, a photocopy of her dad’s passport, . . .
Jim Harrison
Jim Harrison’s name has appeared in our table of contents in almost every issue since Brick 71, Summer 2003. His regular column for us, called “Eat or Die,” was mostly about food, but there were several digressions of a political, . . .
A Note from Our Publisher
Summer 2016
Dear Reader,
Although we’ve yet to publish a themed Brick, I am unofficially naming this one “bittersweet.” Bittersweet because we begin and end Brick 97 in celebration of the life and work of two of our longtime . . .
Dive into Brick 97
Summer is here, and with it, a blockbuster Brick, exploding with wonderful reads and powerful photographs. In Brick 97, we celebrate of the life and work of two longtime contributors and dear friends, C. D. Wright and Jim Harrison. . . .
Save the Date: Brick 97 Launches June 6
In less than a month, we’ll be celebrating the launch of Brick 97 at the Lucky Shrike Bar (850 Dundas Street West, Toronto). Hosted by editor Michael Helm and featuring special guests, it’s going to be one heck of a . . .