Hitting the Bricks: Urban Jazz Poems

Bert Almon is a professor of English at the University of Alberta and a
poet. He is the author of Calling Texas, Earth Prime, and Mind the Gap.

Hitting the Bricks will appeal to those who want street-smart,
slice-of-low-life poetry in the manner of the Beats and Charles
Bukowski. Written with lots of gritty details, the poems appear more
formal than they are because of their centred lines. Trower knows about
prisons and street people, and he has real empathy for the
“lonelynight women” and ex-cons he deals with in his poems. The
collection would benefit from more stylistic discipline (Trower could
cut many of his adjectives), but restraint is against its spirit.