The Good News about Armageddon
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About this ebook
Steve McOrmond’s unflinching take on contemporary life, with its saturnine candour and ironic focus, may remind readers of the anti-poetry of Europeans like Zbigniew Herbert: intense, humanistic and deeply sceptical of inflationary gestures or stagy rhetoric. Shedding illusions, but equally refusing the consolations of despair, McOrmond’s well-tempered satire is carried home on its own crisp music.
The title poem has, as it narrative background, the encounter between the narrator and a young door-to-door missionary, one who sets his worldly and jaded scepticism against her innocence and faith. The Good News about Armageddon poses questions that are difficult and durable (“In these hours of prolific / doubt, how will we acquit ourselves?”), as well as those that are topical (“Are Paris Hilton’s 15 minutes over yet?”) and probes with accurate wit (“We are an argument / for unintelligent design”). This is essential poetry for our time – astute, informed, bitingly satirical, yet grounded in its quest for words that, like Cordelia’s, reverb no hollowness.
Steve McOrmond
Steve McOrmond is the author of three previous collections of poetry, most recently The Good News about Armageddon (Brick Books 2010), which appeared on a number of book critics’ Best of 2010 lists and was shortlisted for the 2011 ReLit Award. His second collection, Primer on the Hereafter (Wolsak and Wynn 2006), was awarded the Atlantic Poetry Prize. His debut collection, Lean Days (Wolsak and Wynn 2004), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. Originally from Prince Edward Island, he lives in Toronto.
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Book preview
The Good News about Armageddon - Steve McOrmond
THE GOOD NEWS
ABOUT ARMAGEDDON
THE GOOD NEWS
ABOUT ARMAGEDDON
Steve McOrmond
Brick Books
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
McOrmond, Steve, 1971-
The good news about Armageddon / Steve McOrmond.
Poems.
ISBN 978-1-894078-83-2
I. Title.
PS8575.O74G66 2010 C811’.54 C2009-907387-0
Copyright © Steve McOrmond, 2010
We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.
The cover image is a photograph called Retro Television
taken by
Shaun Lowe.
The author photograph was taken by Brad Marlin.
The book is set in Minion and Rotis.
Design and layout by Alan Siu.
Printed and bound by Sunville Printco Inc.
Brick Books
431 Boler Road, Box 20081
London, Ontario N6K 4G6
www.brickbooks.ca
For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark;
and they knew nothing about what would happen
until the flood came and took them all away.
– Matthew 24:38-39
Come in. Be lost. Be still.
If you miss us at home
we’ll be on our way to the reckoning.
– C.D. Wright
Contents
Advisory
The Good News about Armageddon
The Hypochondriac Flies to Mexico
When It Comes for You
Directions to the Ark
Night Figures
The Tunnel, the Light
Test Pattern
The End of the World
Autobiography
Strait Crossing
The Light Keepers
The Compensation of Art
Collision
The Secret Admirer
The Anorexic’s Love Song
The Tooth Fairy’s Lament
Penny Dreadful
The Poet
The Fortune Teller
I’d Like to Thank the Academy
Sleeper
Deuteronomy, Abridged
There Is a Chemical
Dark Clouds (Another Apocalypse)
Envoi
Notes and Acknowledgements
Biography
Advisory
1.0 The following program contains language and brief sexuality which some may find disturbing.
1.1 The following program may contain graphic content relevant to the development of character or to the advancement of the theme or plot.
1.2 Women’s bare breasts; man’s bare buttocks.
1.3 The following program may invite dangerous imitation, such as the use of plastic bags as playthings, or unsafe physical acts, such as climbing apartment balconies.
1.4 The following program may contain realistic scenes of violence which create the impression that violence is the preferred or only method to resolve conflict. The audience is advised to