Facsimiles of Time

Eric Ormsby is a poet who writes prose that is both graceful and hard-headed. With an outspoken contempt for cant and literary persiflage, Ormsby ranges over a surprising array of writers and literatures. Each essay involves a new and sometimes startling viewpoint, whether on Hart Crane's homosexuality and its effect on his poems or the strange and twisted, yet redeeming, place which Shakespeare held in his own family history. From American and Canadian poetry to Classical Arabic literature Ormsby brings a fresh slant and incisive expression to his prose.

What was Franz Kafka doing at a ski resort in the last years of his life and what did he do there besides tobogganing? Everyone knows that Jorge Luis Borges was bookish, but did you know he was bloodthirsty as well? How is Pat Lowther's posthumous reputation as a poet connected with the brutal circumstances of her murder? These and other mysteries are explored in the 17 elegant essays that make up Eric Ormby's new book.

Eric Ormsby's poetry has appeared in most of the major journals in Canada, England and the U.S., including The New Yorker, Parnassus and The Oxford American. His first collection of poems, Bavarian Shrine and other poems (ECW Press, 1990), won the QSpell Award of 1991. In the following year he received an Ingram Merrill Foundation Award for 'outstanding work as a poet'. His collection, Coastlines (ECW Press, 1992), was a finalist for the QSpell Award of that year. A sixth collection, Time's Covenant, appeared in 2006 with Biblioasis. His work has been anthologized in The Norton Anthology of Poetry as well as in The Norton Introduction to Literature.

Eric and his wife Irena currently live in London, England.