TRANSCONA FRAGMENTS' point of departure is the suburban community of Transcona, a railway town that has been stitched to the city of Winnipeg. The poems move from vivid imagistic fragments that capture the essence of Transcona, to explorations of familial history, to sensitive, self-referential engagement of the "lyric I" – a voice made up of melancholy, anxiety and psychotropic experience. These are poems that offer the reader unique notions of home, memory, and self.
TRANSCONA FRAGMENTS is a part of the Cyclops Press Poetry Series, featuring the very best of our emerging and established poetic voices, in a wide variety of traditional and new media.
Jon Paul Fiorentino was the Founder and Chief Editor of Winnipeg's innovative dark leisure magazine. He was born in St. Boniface Hospital, Winnipeg Manitoba, was raised in Transcona and currently resides in Montreal.
TRANSCONA
FRAGMENTS
Jon Paul Fiorentino
ISBN 1-8941770-11-8
"Jon, you have found the transcona edge, the moment of incision.
Good stuff." – Robert Kroetsch
"truly evocative language ... reminded me of William Carlos Williams" – Stylus Magazine
"transcona fragments is a poetic disavowal, a landscape stripped of pretense. We are left wandering the streets of Transcona, terrified and strangely free. Fiorentino is 21st Century Beat, a Canadian Ginsberg ranting and restless." – Robert Budde "
"This is exciting new work, 'adrenaline verse' – a poetics of place, of spray paint and precious words, a verse of wit and verve. There is music coming from these Manitoba streets!" – Mary di Michelle