Gifts: The Martyrology Book(s) 7 &

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and
author of Calling Texas.

Nichol’s Gifts is the final volume of his Martyrology series, a series
written over a span of 20 years. It is the final volume because of
Nichol’s untimely death in 1988. His format could have been extended
indefinitely.

The work is playfully serious and seriously playful: it explores
language and emotion which means ranging from visual poetry (even
cartoons) to sound poetry to lyric and narrative. What it all means will
take decades to explore, as with Pound’s Cantos, and its value will be
debated at least as long.

The volume brings together several kinds of work in what appears to be
random order, though Nichol aficionados will perceive the patterns. At
one point, Nichol had hoped to issue this book and the projected eighth
volume as a “shuffle text” on cards; chance was always one of his
guiding principles. There is one trace of this scheme: final fragments
written during his illness are included in a pocket on the back cover,
to be “interleaved” with the book as the reader wishes. The
fragments have tremendous pathos.

Editor Irene Niechoda provides a helpful afterword. The editing and
printing of this book were obviously labors of love: the design is
remarkable.