Short Haul Engine

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.

Karen Solie writes tough lyrics. The toughness comes in her short lines
packed with vivid images, like the heart described as a “Rust bucket,
little four popper,” or February called “that bleeding month.”
Although she grew up on a farm near Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, there are
no nods toward the Prairie as a magic term. Certainly Western Canada
appears in her poems (“Ill Wind” is a fine example of place), but
not in any stereotyped way. Some of the sequences show a leaning toward
storytelling, and several poems work with philosophical concepts and
facts of physiology. She practices a lyricism that often starts from the
personal but does not remain there. The collection makes a reader eager
to see a second book.