Interrobang

The spirit of the interrobang, a punctuation mark merging the questioning and the exclamatory, informs Mary Dalton' s compelling investigations of home and identity in this, her sixth poetry collection- in extraordinary poems of aging; of despised plants once revered; of rites and sites of community abandoned. The " flared mouth" of Dalton' s acclaimed musicality gives voice to lost souls and a lost sense of the earth. The collection' s unique mix of bleakness and beauty is also reflected in various riddle and riddle-like series with their ambiguity, open-endedness, playfulness, and unexpected linguistic shifts. Interrobang movingly fuses notions of exploration - of glancing at things slant- with an emotional range that feels new and visionary. This is a steely, brilliant book from a major Canadian poet.