Words and Music: A Conversation with Elena Ruehr Reena Sastri A graduate of the Julliard School and the University of Michigan, and a faculty member at MIT, Boston-based composer Elena Ruehr has created works for chamber ensemble, orchestra, chorus, wind ensemble, opera, dance and silent film. Rhythmically intricate and melodically graceful, her music has seductive surfaces which belie its complexity. I met with Elena Ruehr in January 2012 to discuss her recent cantata, Averno, based on Louise Glück's 2006 volume of that name, and to learn more about setting poetry. The conversation took final shape in a subsequent exchange of emails, but grew out of a warm and animated exchange in the composer's living room last winter.

REENA SASTRI When did you first set poetry?

ELENA RUEHR: I first set poetry when I was about twelve and it was my own poetry. I wrote about ... read more

Yves Bonnefoy I

Look! A flash
Of lightning invades the sky again tonight,
It takes the earth in its hands, but hesitates,
Stands almost still. Did it think

It was a sentence, a signature, no, it flickers,
We watch it fall, illuminating,
In each other's arms,
Sleep and death.

The lightning, an illusion,
Even the lightning.
... read more

Evan Jones KEN BABSTOCK, Methodist Hatchet (House of Anansi) CDN $22.95
STEPHANIE BOLSTER, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth (Brick Books) CDN $19.00
AMANDA JERNIGAN, Groundwork (Biblioasis) CDN $17.95
TROY JOLLIMORE, At Lake Scugog (Princeton University Press) US $16.95
DONATO MANCINI, Buffet World (New Star Books) CDN $21.00

In the 90s in Toronto, there were only two poets any young buck with his tail in the air talked about: Al Purdy and bpNichol. I remember because I was reading George Seferis at the time. Purdy and Nichol were opposites, sort of, in a way, signs of kids hanging out in different kinds of crowds. The one a poet of the nation and the land, of horse-piss beer and backbreaking days, the other zany, inventive, in cahoots with St. Ein and St. Anza. Purdy had shit on his boots, Nichol was barefoot. Both ... read more