Angel Overkill

In Angel Overkill. Douglas Burnet Smith , a vital force in Canadian poetry for fifty years, once again displays his mastery of a plain yet allusive narrative style. With the odd pairing of Vladimir Nabokov and Jack Kerouac as the book's tutelary mentors, and with Rilke's angels as over-achieving spiritual guides, Smith takes readers on a journey that begins on a public bus ride through the dilapidated streets of Havana to visit Hemingway's compound which conjures memories of the poet's childhood in the 1950s, of the far-reaching reverberations of the Cuban revolution, and of the polio epidemic raging across North America at the time. The long poem "59," like many others throughout the collection, reveals Smith's concern, or perhaps, more accurately, his obsession, with the past and its power. The journey includes extended, haunting detours to Mexico and Moscow, Florence and Sarajevo, among other places, where meditations on landscape and historical events produce poems suffused with terrifying yet indispensable insight. 

Douglas Burnet Smith is the author of 18 books of poetry. His work has been nominated for The Governor General's Award, Canada's highest literary prize, selected as a Best 100 Books choice by The Globe and Mail, as a finalist for Canada's National Magazine Awards, and awarded the prestigious Long Poem Prize from The Malahat Review. He has been writer in residence at various institutions in Canada, Europe and the U.S., most recently at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, Greece. He teaches at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.