The Unseen World

The poems in The Unseen World wander just below the surface under water and under the moon, beneath fields and cities, love and family. They bump into dead Spanish poets in bus station gift shops, take coffee with Soren Kierkegaard at IKEA and spot Henry Miller emerging from 14th Street subway. Cameo appearances include two bullfighters, a bear out shopping a pair of pants, a dental assistant? ovaries and a voting pig named Victoria. All the while the action is being filmed by Robert Frank from his perch in Cape Breton to a sound track of the distant barking of dogs.

David Elkins is a poet and short-story writer. His work includes A Bulldog's Guide to Small Engine Repair and Relative Exposures: Felling the Family Tree (co-written with Torben Schioler). Poems have appeared in Harper? Magazine, Panorama, Our Times, Now and others. He is the recipient of International CKG Award for Poetry and has been selected as a finalist for QWF? A. M. Klein Award. By way of keeping the wolf away from the door, Elkins has run rooming houses, made candles, worked as a waiter in honky-tonks, been a journalist and columnist for the Financial Times of Canada, built adobe and straw bale houses and launched a medical media company. He? run 18 marathons and has meditated pretty much daily for the last 30 years. With the possible exception of meditation, he views these pursuits as a distraction from poetry. Things he values most: the love he shares with his wife Valmai, dogs and people who are kind. These days he divides his time between Montreal and Santa Fe, New Mexico.