Apparatus

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.

In a poetry collection that shows astonishing variety, Don McKay
explores the material side of our materialistic civilization. He is a
moralist, but not a glib one; he probes deep into our obsessions and the
structures created by our greed and fear. Known for his poems about

bird-watching, he has developed habits of observation that serve him
well as he takes us on tours of the industrial wastes of civilization.
These poems show his fine sense of humor and his wonderfully inventive
imagination as he presents familiar objects—the alto saxophone, the
knife, fork and spoon, drumkits—in fresh and unfamiliar ways.

Wordsworth once wrote, “We have no sympathy but what is propagated by
pleasure.” Through this book of poems, McKay propagates pleasure and
widens sympathies.