Ricky Ricardo Suites

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia. He is the
co-editor of It’s Still Winter, an online journal of contemporary
Canadian poetry and poetics, and Four Realities: Poets of Northern B.C.

This collection is highly readable, witty, and varied with a wide
breadth of reference to high and low culture. It is also perhaps a bit
too glib, a bit too urban retro cool. The opening cheap shot at Al Purdy
is not called for, especially since Allen’s sensibility is essentially
like Purdy’s, replete with first-person anecdote and self-effacing
humor.

The book is divided into three sections. Section 1, which bears the
same title as the book, is largely humorous and contains several
nostalgic references. Section 2 consists of 46 new elements of a long
poem called “The Encantadas”; each part ends in the middle of a
sentence that is completed in the next part. The section ends in
mid-sentence. Section 3, Yasnaya Polyana, is more introspective and less
lighthearted than the first two sections.

This is poetry from downtown Montreal, where serious Canadian poetry
began.