Sono Nis Press - The Colour of Bones in a Stream

The Colour of Bones in a Stream
Brian Brett

A shape change from one of Canada's best poets: long, lush lines and brim-full pages. Brett explores the edges of risk and outrage and then delivers a platter of excess in a series of poems devoted to food.

There's a dead sheep in the mud room. Outside, a raven who steals the eyes of lambs circles above the trees as a cat with bloody jaws brings his gift of feathers to the door. Brian Brett, an ungentlemanly farmer, writes of this place that is also the world – half paradise, half abattoir. He is a man with a huge appetite for words. He offers these poems as he'd offer loaves of bread, fresh, hard-crusted. We break them together and devour, our mouths warm with such a taste. – LORNA CROZIER

Poetry, 108pp, 6 × 9
ISBN 1-55039-084-8, paper, $13.95

Book Review

There's baseball and W.P. Kinsella's novel Shoeless Joe, wrestling and John Irving's The World According to Garp, and now there's soccer and the poem, Buddhism Will Not Save You, Roberto Baggio.

Remember Baggio? He was the Italian soccer star in 1994 who missed the net in a "shoot out" that decided the winner of the World Cup. Brazil won. Baggio's name was mud. Saltspring Islander Brian Brett's new collection of poetry, The Colour of Bones in a Stream (Sono Nis, $13.95), contains the long poem about Baggio, forgotten in this year's World Cup Soccer tournament. "Everyone abused him," Brett says by telephone from his Saltspring farm. "The actual truth was that the guy was injured, it wasn't a case of incompetence."

What's happened to Baggio?

"They tell us you are a Buddhist
now, Roberto, that you are embarked
on the eight-fold path —
you have discovered another meaning for nets."

Brett is unsure whether that's true. Baggio is a Buddhist but the poet suspects the handsome, pony-tailed former star is driving a Ferrari around somewhere.

Judith Isabella, freelance journalist
The Islander, Victoria Times Colonist

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