Orion Sweeping is a poetry of observation and conversation, a lyric for “the reckless earth.” Poems across the collection, clustered thematically, consider the cosmic, the particular and the personal. Anne Marie Todkill. Orion Sweeping. Kingston, ON: Brick Books, 2022. The first section, “Earth,” contains work describing scenes of the legacy…
This debut collection of poetry from Shaun Robinson generously expands upon his work previously published across Canadian literary magazines and his chapbook
Manmade Clouds from Frog Hollow Press (2017). Poems contained in this volume range in tone, from bleak to comic. The mind of each piece is both intelligent and calculated. This is captivating, lyric work.
Common throughout is the adept handling of figurative language. “The Cop-Shop Deer
” is a great example, in which the speaker narrates a deer’s journey through a small town, building a rich portrait of place. Robinson is able to operate comfortably in the smallest details, complemented by strong verb work that stands out. The deer “slip / into the trailer park to gum tomatoes / from a wooden trellis they think no more / of their fate than the infant just inside the window, / burbling the night away like a crock-pot.” Here, his similes serve images, extending them in a kind of endogenous voicing to provide a round