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Like the ever-widening universe, Standard candles expands on Alice Major's earlier themes of family, mythology, and cosmology, teasing out subtle wonders in form and subject. Her voice resonates through experiments with old and new poetic forms as she imbues observed and imagined phenomena-from the centres of galaxies to the mysteries of her own backyard-with the most grounded and grounding moments of human experience. In Standard candles, readers will find an emotional dimension that seamlessly intersects with the dimensions of space and time. Fans of Alice Major will enjoy seeing her work through familiar themes, while readers new to her poetry will discover unexplored universes.
Alice Major emigrated from Scotland at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto before coming west to work as a weekly newspaper reporter. She served as Edmonton's first poet laureate and has been inducted into the city's cultural hall of fame. A widely-published author, she has won many distinctions. Her most recent book is Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science, which received the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction as well as a National Magazine Award gold medal. Her website is www.alicemajor.com.
Let us compare cosmologies
There is a beginning and a middle.
There is an arc of narrative.
There is a word, a large engraved initial.
There is imperative-
a cause, a god. Or not.
There is an end. A purpose.
Or maybe none. There is a plot
with reasons, reason. There is a circus,
a theatre stage of space and time.
There are equations at the bottom
or the top. There is a pantheon
of matter, motion, scattered photons.
And the questions every universe expects:
what came before? What happens next? Canadian poet links cosmology, mythology, and the human heart in a range of poetic forms. "I always look forward to reading a new book by Alice. Her genius is very well represented by your press, in my opinion" Neil Querengesser, Concordia Univesity Notes "Alice Major's 10th poetry collection, Standard candles, covers a huge distance in its slim text, racing through a dozen different poetic forms and countless cosmologies. It references everything from Greek mythology to quantum uncertainty to Henrietta Swan Leavitt, the inventor of the standard candle itself. The book is like an ultra-dense kernel containing all things-history, theology, astronomy, geometry, an infinite list. It's the universe right before the Big Bang, titanic forces contained within a few thousand tightly packed words, almost ready to explode and race endlessly out." [Full review at http://bit.ly/1W6w7s5] #6 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list (Edmonton Nonfiction) for the week of November 06 2015. #10 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list for the week of November 13, 2015. "In her latest poetry collection, Standard candles, Alice Major continues to draw from science as a source of metaphor to ground the big ideas floating around the universe. Like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who bring scientific concepts to a public consciousness in their documentary television shows, Major takes up the poet's essential challenge to make grand concepts accessible and relatable to the reader. The result is a collection of thoughtfully crafted suites that feel mythological or biblical in scale, yet as familiar and common as our offices or kitchens.... In reading Standard candles, there is the potential for a most palpable experience of having one's mind blown. Readers will certainly find themselves putting the book down to stare out the window at the night sky and feel a sense of loneliness wrapped in communion." Prairie Books Now, Fall/Winter 2015 #9 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list for the week of January 16, 2016. "In her poetry she uses her knowledge of specialised – even arcane – fields in the same way that British playwrights Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn have done: to provide startling and vivid analogies with the human dynamics of a complex e
Alice Major emigrated from Scotland at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto before coming west to work as a weekly newspaper reporter. She served as Edmonton's first poet laureate and has been inducted into the city's cultural hall of fame. A widely-published author, she has won many distinctions. Her most recent book is Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science, which received the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction as well as a National Magazine Award gold medal. Her website is www.alicemajor.com.
Let us compare cosmologies
There is a beginning and a middle.
There is an arc of narrative.
There is a word, a large engraved initial.
There is imperative-
a cause, a god. Or not.
There is an end. A purpose.
Or maybe none. There is a plot
with reasons, reason. There is a circus,
a theatre stage of space and time.
There are equations at the bottom
or the top. There is a pantheon
of matter, motion, scattered photons.
And the questions every universe expects:
what came before? What happens next? Canadian poet links cosmology, mythology, and the human heart in a range of poetic forms. "I always look forward to reading a new book by Alice. Her genius is very well represented by your press, in my opinion" Neil Querengesser, Concordia Univesity Notes "Alice Major's 10th poetry collection, Standard candles, covers a huge distance in its slim text, racing through a dozen different poetic forms and countless cosmologies. It references everything from Greek mythology to quantum uncertainty to Henrietta Swan Leavitt, the inventor of the standard candle itself. The book is like an ultra-dense kernel containing all things-history, theology, astronomy, geometry, an infinite list. It's the universe right before the Big Bang, titanic forces contained within a few thousand tightly packed words, almost ready to explode and race endlessly out." [Full review at http://bit.ly/1W6w7s5] #6 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list (Edmonton Nonfiction) for the week of November 06 2015. #10 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list for the week of November 13, 2015. "In her latest poetry collection, Standard candles, Alice Major continues to draw from science as a source of metaphor to ground the big ideas floating around the universe. Like Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, who bring scientific concepts to a public consciousness in their documentary television shows, Major takes up the poet's essential challenge to make grand concepts accessible and relatable to the reader. The result is a collection of thoughtfully crafted suites that feel mythological or biblical in scale, yet as familiar and common as our offices or kitchens.... In reading Standard candles, there is the potential for a most palpable experience of having one's mind blown. Readers will certainly find themselves putting the book down to stare out the window at the night sky and feel a sense of loneliness wrapped in communion." Prairie Books Now, Fall/Winter 2015 #9 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list for the week of January 16, 2016. "In her poetry she uses her knowledge of specialised – even arcane – fields in the same way that British playwrights Tom Stoppard and Michael Frayn have done: to provide startling and vivid analogies with the human dynamics of a complex e
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