Don McKay

Don McKay, CM (born 1942) is a Canadian poet, editor, and educator.

'Baler Twine'

 * Poets are supremely interested in what language can't do, in order to gesture outside, they use language in a way that flirts with its destruction.


 * The nature poet may (should in fact ), resort to the field guide or library but will keep coming back, figuratively speaking, to the trail - to the grain of experience.


 * The first indication of one's status as a nature poet is that one does not invoke language right off when talking about poetry.


 * Admitting you are a nature poet, nowadays, may make you seem something of a fool!


 * We inflict our rage for immortality on things, marooning them on static islands.


 * Before the wonderful, terrible wrestling with words and music there is the state of mind I'm calling 'poetic attention' ... a sort of readiness ... a form of knowing.

Other quotes

 * As I grew older the poetic surround becomes more important. I realize that the 'poetic attention' was more important to me than poetry was. The 'poetic attention' being a kind of longing without the desire to possess.


 * The meditative approach acknowledges that one moment will inevitably lead on to the next. We accept immortality instead of fighting it off.
 * 'The Appropriate Gesture' interview with Ken Babstock Dec 2001.


 * There's a place between desire and memory, some back porch we can neither wish nor recall
 * 'Apparatus' 1997 McClelland & Stewart Nov 2014


 * Phenomenology is one name for the path back from the object to the thing, the counterbalance to the objectification or 'progress'.Poetry is another.
 * 'Paradoxides' 2012

Quotes about McKay

 * McKay's meditations on times evidence acquire a similar heft, proposing, in their discipline of mind and generosity of spirit, a way to be at home in the world.
 * Judges Citation 'Strike/Slip' Griffin Poetry Prize 2007

External link

 * Essay -Baler Twine