Impeccable Regret

Impeccable Regret travels terrain demonstrating that, as a result of the so-called postmodern impulses driving poetic discourse, culture has replaced nature as humanity’s defining context; that, within the paradigm of the twenty-worst century, the recollection of natural environments seems anachronistic or oxymoronic. The poems in this collection respond to the questions: What happens when natural phenomena no longer provide solace and comfort? And how do we define both self” and other” in postmodern terms when the basis for such assessments fails on a grand scale?

To these ends, the poems concern themselves with the power of politics and the politics of power, both as they surround and confound the individual; both I” and you” in these poems transcend the local in order to undertake the divagation of truths with regard to the way in which, when two (or more) individuals are brought (or thrust) together, the dynamics of power and the political demand that one or more people dominate the others. Taking a stance far from the confessional mode, the work examines elements of our interior/exterior values while concurrently demonstrating how evaluation and devaluation control the work’s central question: how does one remain true to a common valuing of humanistic principles when the world, such as it is and isn’t, presses so insistently against each or all of us? Where do we turn when we wish to disconnect”? Why does impeccable regret become so difficult to achieve, maintain, and sustain (or thrive beyond mere survival)?

In the words of Arthur Miller, all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.”

Judith Fitzgerald is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry as well as two bestselling biographies,Marshall McLuhan: Wise Guy (Dundurn, 2001) and Building a Mystery: The Story of Sarah McLachlan and Lilith Fair (Quarry, 1997).Rapturous Chronicles (Mercury, 1991) was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry; her epyllion, River (ECW, 1995), was both shortlisted for the Trillium Award and honoured with the James McMaster Poetry Prize; and her collection of ghazals and sonnets, Twenty-Six Ways Out of This World (Above/ground Press, 1996), was named one of the six best poetry collections of the year published in English (Globe and Mail’s Top 100).Given Names: New and Selected Poems (Black Moss Press, 1985) was shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award and won a Writers’ Choice Award.

Thomas. Dilworth is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and specializes in Modern Literature and Romantic Poetry. He is the author of multiple volumes of literary criticism, one of which,The Shape of Meaning in the Poetry of David Jones, won the British Council Prize in the Humanities.