Di Brandt forges new paths with her multi-faceted poetry, experimenting with traditional poetic forms in this new collection. Throughout, Brandt captures the human heart in love, in crisis, or in awe of the world.
Science and poetry fuse with sly wit and sleight of word in Welding and other joining procedures, the first of the collection's three sections. Human love becomes nuclear fusion and other scientific meldings with delightful tongue-in-cheek language.
Hymns for Detroit employs the traditional German hymn to fuse the sense of place of an economically crushed city with current political and ecological climate: "Big trucks drive by/ on big noisy wheels./ Jesus saves./ Mummy said don't eat/ the fish, / watch them on TV."
The last section, Walking to Mojácar, transports readers to exotic eastern Spain bringing the Canadian experience with it. The Calgary Stampede meets the "sunblasted desert valleys" of southern Spain in "Rodeo." Vivid images of Spain juxtaposed with Brandt's prairie roots transport the reader to a world of olive groves, mesetas, flowers and bright colours.