The Gates of Even

Susan McKnight is an administrator of the Courts Technology Integrated Justice Project at the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General.

John O. Thompson is a veteran writer. His work roams from the humorous
to the academic, with an appropriate vocabulary for each instance. His
ability to make a statement about the truths of life works equally well
in short poems like “The Prop” (“The prop lay aslant / the true
line’s empty/ inessential as you / as as askew”) as it does in
longer, more “intellectual” offerings like “Europa
51/Liverpool—London 85.”

Thompson’s poetic approach to understanding the realities of life has
been compared to that of a jazz philosopher. There is the sense of
things gone bad, of things not working out the way one hopes; however,
each one of these realizations is treated with subtle humour or at least
a sense of the solution being attainable. The jazz musician’s ability
to improvise at any given moment is apparent in Thompson’s style.

Thompson is the co-author of Shakespeare, Meaning and Metaphor and the
co-editor of Contemporary Poetry Meets Modern Theory. The Gates of Even
is his third book of poetry.