The Cheat of Words

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

The title of this book refers to the postmodern cliché that language is
an unreliable medium, full of slippages. Poets in every age have known
that language is slippery and they have sought to avoid the slippages,
to make enduring statements.

Steve McCaffery is an important member of the group of American and
Canadian poets known as “Language poets.” He is one of the best, and
his poems in this collection show wit and verbal invention. In fact,
they are often so lucid that he may be risking his avant-garde status.
The longest piece, “Teachable Texts,” makes the theory behind the
poetry as clear as it might be without compromising it. Those interested
in what is going on with postmodernism would profit from reading this
book.