cover image Complicity

Complicity

Adam Sol. McClelland & Stewart (Random House, North American dist.), $18.95 trade paper (112p) ISBN 978-0-77107-927-6

In his fourth book of poetry, Sol (whose Crowd of Sounds won the 2004 Ontario Trillium Award for Poetry) vacillates between empathy and guilt as he explores trends that have come to define contemporary culture. The opening poem, "Dwarf," sets the tone for the collection, fusing meditations on art, politics, and planetary nomenclature. The planet in question is Pluto, which has been "demoted to a dwarf planet/ by the IAU's Working Group on the Definition of a Planet." As the poem reaches its climax, Sol bends these lines until they become an interrogation of language, miming that "art has been declared a dwarf pursuit/ by the IAU's Working Group on the Definition of Pursuits." The reader is left to ponder the link between seemingly disparate disciplines, and the connectivity of the poem's cultural signifiers. It's a breakout moment in a book that's built on extended meditations that often defy categorization. Other highlights include "Security Camera" and "Note Found in a Copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream," the latter of which deftly melds the content of a note found in a schoolbook with the Shakespeare plot therein. Sol has firmly established himself as one of Canada's finest young poets. (Apr.)