What they're saying about Cyclops Press:
(Read reviews of Trains of Winnipeg here)
(
re. Local Scores, by Terrance
Cox)
This CD is ambitious, especially in its use of a wide variety of musical styles to back up readings of Cox's poems. Cox has a rich, theatrical-sounding bass voice. His writing is interesting and varied. The challenge with listening to this CD is that it sometimes seems like the words are more a setting for the music than vice versa. The sound production is exquisite, and the range and quality of the music is overwhelming: there are abstract soundscapes, African-influenced percussion solos, jazz, blues, old time fiddle music, and even a tribute to Stan Rogers.
My favourite piece on the CD is "Of Glory in the Flower," a tribute to Guy Lafleur. Lines like "flower inside blue line skitter / right wing circle wind up" capture the grace and athleticism of Lafleur's style on the ice.
(re. Rush Hour by Catherine
Hunter)
This spoken word CD is very cleanly recorded.
Hunter is already recognized for her powerful, funny and understated lyric poetry. This CD represents a great chance to sample her work.
"Rush Hour" is a haunting piece that encompasses a husband's brutal public murder of his wife and a vision of not only domestic violence but of a city and the place of the poet in understanding that urban world. It is powerful and moving. The CD is bookended by another recording of "Rush Hour," this one with music by Winnipeg band The Weakerthans providing atmospheric background. While music that accompanies spoken word performance is often distracting, this works very well, functioning almost like a movie soundtrack in its unobtrusiveness and subtlety.
It would be nice too to see some kind of interactive element on the CD since Cyclops is using a multimedia format.
If
nothing else, it would be neat to see the text of the poems included ...
and a link to www.cyclopspress.com, the excellent Cyclops Press web site.
(re. RUSH HOUR)
"POET CATHERINE HUNTER RECORDED.
“Reading
poetry is one thing, but Winnipeg's Cyclops Press has taken the genre
a step further by recording a number of Canadian poets, most recently
Winnipeg poet and teacher Catherine Hunter.
"Rush Hour (Cyclops Press, 77 min., $17) is a CD
of Hunter reading her own poetry. The poems have been selected from her
previous collections. Hunter's reading presented a forthright savvy that
might not be evident on the page.
"Her voice moves calmly through Thirteen Lines
in Order to Forget You before nonchalantly concluding that 'if I were
the two-headed woman/on the cover of the National Enquirer today/I would
forget you twice.'
"The true gem on this CD is the second version
of the title poem, Rush Hour, with musical accompaniment by local band
the Weakerthans. The piece is imbued with an unaccountable energy as if
Hunter, like us, is hearing the track for the first time. It is gripping.
"The music adds an ethereal dimension that compliments
the haunting nature of the poem. It makes one wonder how we have dared
to listen to poetry without musical accompaniment."
4Anything.com:
"Run by the artists themselves, this multi-media publisher is on the cutting edge -- check out the animated poems for an unprecedented visual word assault."
"Excellent!"
Judith
Fitzgerald, poet/journalist:
"Hear,
hear! Listening to Al Purdy on CD's an addictive experience. Same for Pat
Lane. Amazing, really, how the aural component does add a further
dimension -- a lovely ear-opening one -- to both poets' wonderful works
due, in no small part, to the incomparable production values everywhere
in evidence on this pair of (soon-to-be) classic discs.
I applaud your spirit, sensitivity, savvy, and smarts
in bringing these classy writers to the people (when the people cannot
always come to them).
Purdy's never sounded better; and, of course, since
he is one of our greatest and since many of his greats are showcased on this tightly organised collection, listeners cannot go wrong.
Nor will they find Pat Lane's CD a disappointment, for
many of the same reasons. As expected, Lane's in top form, laying down
poetic licks and narrative chops that rarely fail to fibrillate the fancy
and endear one (yet again) to the exquisitely moving narrative threads
seamlessly tying Lane's articulate sequences together.
Kudos!"
U. of Pennsylvania English Dept., J. Estaris,:
"Has a calm, artsy minimalist look. ****" [four out of five stars]
"Strong Canadian content"
Books In Canada:
(excerpts from the feature article "Cyclops Revolution")
"It’s the ideal time for a project like Cyclops Press to appear.
"Cyclops titles have a distinctively hip, neo-constructivist look about them.
"The sound quality on all Cyclops titles is impeccable, capturing the subtleties and nuances of each poet’s interpretations of his or her own work.
"...the disc's highlights [Al Purdy's NECROPSY OF LOVE] include some of the finest lyric poems written in the annals of modern Canadian literature... The poet’s dry, near-indifferent tone always contains a hint of self-mockery, playing counterpoint to the masculine burlesque of barroom brawls and cowboys rolling their ‘stagey cigarettes’.
"The Cyclops project is an impressively ambitious set of offerings.”
Tower
Of Song:
“Purdy says the right
things, the right way. Probably this is my new favorite album ever.”
“It’s impossible to feel alienated for long in a room filled with Purdy. Arguably Canada’s finest poet, he’s that rare thing: a truly free spirit with a genius that bridges the vast space between bars and ivory towers. (Charles Bukowski once claimed him as one of the greatest living poets, while Margaret Atwood has listed him as one of her major influences.)
(re. FURY - FICTIONS & FILMS)
“SHARP, ANGRY AND JAZZY
“Clive
Holden’s first book is a collection of work in various forms:
There’s a four-part novella, five short fictions and two transcripts
of experimental films. As well, there are photographs, flip-book animations
and variegated typefaces, should you tire of reading.
“Which is not to say the text needs all this graphic
support. Far from it. Holden’s lyric prose is quite strong enough
to stand by itself. The main work, the novella, uses three narrative viewpoints:
an Irish immigrant, his lost daughter and her Québécois
lover. It’s a smart piece, by far the most cohesive in the book,
managing to maintain an evocative tension through its 90 pages.
“The shorts are very short, some only a page or
two each, leaning more toward poetry than prose. They’re like popcorn:
As soon as you finish one, you have to start the next. In this compulsive
manner, the book rattles by.
“The final piece, the “filmpoem” Hitler!,
is not only short, but there are fewer lines to the page, images are introduced
to the text and the point size of the type keeps changing. Once it’s
read, you can look at the pictures and flip the animations until you dip
into it again. Fun stuff.
“Holden’s subject matter, however, is a harsh
Canadian roadscape, merging country and city. He focuses on small things:
the betraying incident, the stray thought or image, rather than the larger
dramas. A stolen bicycle reveals guilt over a lost brother. A fishing
line becomes a metaphor for domestic upheaval. Ultimately, his stories
are about failure. Not one of his characters succeeds. The collection
is tale after tale of unrelenting loss.
“In lesser hands, this could be bleak. But thankfully,
Holden’s jazzy, poetic style allows his stories to transcend the
stagnant fates of his protagonists, and he gives us something that approaches
philosophic tolerance.
“Holden’s characters are all loners: transients,
migrant workers, bus-drivers, labourers, drunks. And almost all male.
His one female character, the lost daughter in the novella, is a news
anchor, and stands out like a clean thumb. Funnily enough, she ends up
donning male garments and wandering through Montreal in drag.
“The topics, too, are all masculine: fathers and
sons, brothers and motorbikes, machine shops, drinking, driving, boating,
fishing . . . all served up with a sharp-eyed aggression and a peculiarly
Canadian laissez-faire.
“Take it or leave it, there’s a cruel, laconic
style at work here.
“Halfway through the book, the vignettes start
to merge, differing voices and points of view notwithstanding; broken
homes and abandoned lives; gentle portraits and scathing monologues. But
one has to admire the fury of the title, evident throughout the book.
Images sear into our imaginations. We get lost in the grandeur of Canadian
landscapes: the northern lights, the mountains, the lakes. Against this
backdrop of nature, the characters become obsessed with their automobiles,
motels, bars, girlfriends and concrete-neon existences. Every so often,
one of them will stop, look up and notice his larger surroundings.
“It’s in these moments of recognition that
we, too, become aware of something greater.”
Montreal Review of Books:
(re. FURY - FICTIONS & FILMS)
“In a narrative style reminiscent of Robert Altman’s film ‘Short Cuts’ [based on the writings of Raymond Carver], ‘Fury’ tells the story of an Irish immigrant to Canada, the daughter he’s never met, and her terrorist lover—three people whose lives intertwine in obvious and sometimes mysterious ways.
“Holden’s male protagonists are marked by physical strength from years of manual labour, emotional powerlessness, and inarticulate anger. The main female character has the opposite problem—she has to work to constrain her uncontrollable emotions. The metaphor of power runs throughout the novella, shaping interactions between characters and culminating in a powerplant explosion which leaves Montreal in a city-wide blackout.
“Fury is at times gripping and has moments of meaningful honesty.
“Holden
has a talent for describing harsh circumstances and hard men ...
emotionally raw and intense.”
Filling
Station, review by paulo da costa:
(re.
PATRICK LANE IN CAB 43)
“Patrick Lane In Cab 43 is a jewel of a CD for those who prefer their
poetry administered orally. Now, to sneak in a poem on those long road
journeys, you don’t have to take every rest stop. With this CD, Lane recite his poems to us wherever
we might be. Some of the poems were recorded in a taxi cab, a downtown
park, the poet’s backyard. Vintage Lane is included: The Happy Little
Towns, Dominion Day Dance, Elephants, among many others, as well as newer
ones such as Cunt, now published in his latest book.
“These recorded poems are interspersed with fragments
of an interview that nicely breaks the intensity otherwise present in
listening to an hour-long sequence of poetry. The sound quality is superb
too.
“And finally, do explore the Cyclops Press catalogue
( www.cyclopspress.com ) where they have other poetry CD gems. Al Purdy
is one of those gems.”
from Stylus Magazine:
“Cyclops Press dedicates itself to the exploration of technological opportunity. Cyclops’ fiction and poetry are not offered strictly within the bound medium of books; they also appear as performance, spoken word recordings, graphic and animated configurations, and in the words of Cyclops Press, ‘word driven’ experimental film, video and audio and avante garde, electronic and new music.
“Cyclops exists with the do-it-yourself ethic of music making which has flourished with increased accessibility to computer and other electronic equipment.
“To date, Cyclops Press has eight spoken word compact discs under their aggregate belt, along with a novel, a VHS tape and a web site (www.cyclopspress.com). They released two CDs this past fall: Terrance Cox’s Local Scores and Winnipeg poet/author Catherine Hunter’s Rush Hour. Rush Hour is comprised of Hunter’s poetry, with a bonus version of the title track featuring musical accompaniment by The Weakerthans. Cyclops Press is owned and operated by Editor/local author/poet/performance artist Clive Holden, Associate Editor and award-winning author Alissa York, and Co-Editor and CKUW Program Director/send + receive: a festival of sound Coordinator Steve Bates.
“As Clive, Alissa and Steve forge into the future with Cyclops Press, be aware that Cyclops Press will thrive.”