End of Greatness
Here is a collection of all the poems that were written during the year 2009 by Toronto author and anthologist John Robert Colombo. Is there another poet anywhere in the world who is issuing a volume of verse a year … and has been doing so for the last dozen years?
End of Greatness offers the reader 160 or so poems on a great range of subjects, with tributes to Louis Dudek, Phyllis Gotlieb, Fletcher Markle, Treasa O’Driscoll, Carl Sagan, et al. The collection concludes with the latest installment of the poet’s ongoing dream diary. In one of the poems in this collection the poet writes as follows: “We do not need to be asleep to have dreams. / We do not need to be awake to have nightmares.” Toronto: Colombo & Company. ISBN 10-894540-57-3. Trade paperback. vii + 141 pages. $30.00. Four-colour cover with a superb design by Bill Andersen.
Concurrent Life Sentences
Over 110 vivid and expressive poems, a good many of them autobiographical in nature, are included in Concurrent Life Sentences. They were composed by Ruth Colombo and they are certain to surprise the reader with their wit and willingness to talk about lives, loves, and loathings.
The collection is a revision of the QuasiBook Edition that appeared in 1999. The poet’s aim is expressed in a line in “Ode to the Person” … “to become well and truly my own person!” The headings of the book’s sections give a good idea of the psychological territory covered by the poet: Epigraphs, Preface, Acknowledgements, Life Sentence, Preliminaries, Parental Family, Mother, Ruth’s Family, Reflections on the Family, Love, Holocaust, Religion, Truth and Lies, Language and Education, Meditations. Toronto: Colombo & Company. ISBN 10-1-894540-56-5. Trade paperback. viii + 286 pages. $30.00. Four-colour cover with an intriguing design by Bill Andersen.