The November Optimist - Softcover

Zieroth, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1554471273 ISBN 13: 9781554471270

Publisher: Gaspereau Pr, 2013

Synopsis

The November Optimist is almost a love story. Combining fiction, observation and anecdote, its male narrator conjures a dialogue with a woman his imagined counterpart, his willing or unwilling muse who sometimes lends insight, sometimes remains contrary and elusive. Full of jaunty humanity and black humour, our narrator registers ironies in a light-hearted manner when bemusements arise from his fully engaged citizen-walkabouts and caffeine fantasies. Ordinary events (driving and parking, walking and watching) are transformed by minute representation into something of almost surreal importance. The conversation extends beyond the woman to the city itself, to rain and seasonal change, to books and the escape they offer, the ways they inform what is possible and what is daily. Clouds and quays, neighbours and strangers absorb our narrator, as does fast time in both his city and in himself in this flâneur’s look around.

About this title

About the Author:

David Zieroth is an award-winning poet. His collection The Fly in Autumn (Harbour, 2009) won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry in that year and was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Acorn-Plantos Award for People's Poetry in 2010. He has also published The Village of Sliding Time (Harbour, 2006), a long poem; Crows Do Not Have Retirement (Harbour, 2001), poems; and The Education of Mr. Whippoorwill: A Country Boyhood (Macfarlane Walter & Ross, 2002), a memoir. He won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for How I Joined Humanity at Last (Harbour, 1998); his work has been shortlisted for a National Magazine Award, and his poems have appeared in over thirty-five anthologies. He has also published chapbooks: The Tangled Bed (Reference West, 2000), Palominos and other poems (Gaspereau Press, 2000), Dust in the Brocade (The Alfred Gustav Press, 2008), Berlin Album (Rubicon Press, 2009), and Hay Day Canticle (Leaf Press, 2010). He was born in Neepawa, Manitoba, and now lives in North Vancouver, B.C.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gaspereau Pr
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1554471273
• ISBN 13: 9781554471270
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 88