Calm Jazz Sea

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia and is the
co-editor of Four Realities: Poets of Northern B.C.

The cover illustration of Calm Jazz Sea, which shows three wine glasses
sitting on a cracked, leaf-strewn deck, captures the essence of this
collection—a mixture of sophistication and the down to earth. As a
poet, Mike Barnes uses all his creative tools, including a skilful
handling of line, image, voice, and real experience. Like Al Purdy’s,
Barnes’s poems are anecdotal recollections of real-life experiences
that rise above the banal because of his sensitivity and eloquence as an
observer. What could better sum up life’s ironies than his observation
that there is “[n]othing quite like / the relief of a prized
possession breaking” (“Natalie”)?