Quick.

Anne Simpson, who has won several prizes for both her poetry and fiction, including the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize for her book, Loop, writes puzzle poems.  In her poems-to-be-solved are a single line, or even one word, per page placed above or below a centre black horizontal line. When the reader peers closely at such nearly white pages, one notices one or more of the words are in grey ink. “Ceremonies of Water, Ceremonies of Fire” ends with “Unfathered”(p.16) and “daughter”(17). These two final pages are the dramatic closure in a poem of dying and transmuting. Such devices soon jar the reader away from the poem’s focus.

In her poem “The Visible Human,” Cameron wrote long prose-like lines, placing one line at a time in a vertical box, so pages 70 and 71 are read holding her book sideways.   Another poem, “Ocean, Ocean”(95), has blocks of prose poetry on the top half of each page, then a large white page gap to a few lines of ‘Chorus’ at the bottom of that page. By stressing the mechanics of word placement on her pages, Cameron draws attention to herself—the poet—and away from the entity of the poem, saying “Look how clever I am.”  Cameron teaches in the Writing Centre at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S. 

Yet Cameron’s poem “Far-Off World”(46) beautifully displays her creative control of a classic form with set rhyme and rhythm.  Like other contemporary poets, she will capitalize the start of a phrase for emphasis, but that gentle device does not ruin the poem’s poignant flow. “Oranges”(47):  “We ate them when we arrived home / for his funeral. // Large, sweet oranges, peeled and sectioned, / on a white plate. Running with juice.”     

She is an accomplished wordsmith. Many will read Quick by Anne Simpson trying to decipher book award judge’s criteria or what will be the future formats of a poem.