Fives and Sixes

Alan Thomas is a professor of English at the University of Toronto.

This well-designed little book from Porcupine’s Quill isthe fifth book of verse by John V. Hicks, of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. The title refers to the form: a collection of brief five and six-line poems on set categories, in groups of twelve. The categories range from objects and shapes — basketries and sphericals — to equines (under which Hicks gathers historical, literary and mythical beasts, including Black Bess, Pegasus, and Copenhagen). These subtitles serve as pegs on which to hang neatly fashioned and often whimsical comment; this is a poetry of modest restraint and control, when it reaches the grotesque it does so with deadly understatement, as in “Guillotine” (part of “basketries”):