Poetry
Gift Horse
- Publisher
- Véhicule Press, “Signal Editions” series
- Published
- October 1, 2011
- Pages
- 72
- Price
- $18.00
- ISBN
- 9781550653229
- Language
- English
On the publisher’s site (opens in a new tab) In bookstores (opens in a new tab)
Gift Horse, Mark Callanan’s second full-length collection of poetry, was largely written following a near-fatal medical emergency in 2007. The poems offer up the story of a young man whose gratitude at being alive is undercut by Lazarus-like confusion and ambivalence. Brandishing a newly acute sense of mortality, Callanan emerges as an Atlantic flâneur stalked by terrifying sea legends, death-steeped domesticity [where even supermarket lobsters “weigh in against oblivion”] and the extinct Newfoundland Wolf. Understated, sinister and unsettling, Gift Horse is a work of considerable craft and vision.
Reviews
Praise for Mark Callanan:”Breathtaking, such mastery in a poet so young… it seems to me he is a diviner who has mastered metaphor and much else besides.” —Fiddlehead
“Mark Callanan’s voice is distinctive and confident, funny, grave, occasionally visionary, and his technical gifts are multifold.” —Books in Canada
“Callanan has talent to burn, whether producing his seascapes or nature studies or human-subject poems. His eye is exact, his discipline imagist.” —George Elliott Clarke
Description from the publisher Véhicule Press, seen in October 2026 · Source ↗
From Véhicule Press
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We Drove All Day for This Bruce Taylor
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Qaf’s People Sadiqa de Meijer
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My Summer Vacation Zeenat Nagree
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Cannibal Rats Richard Greene
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Morgan’s Castle Jan Hilliard
-
How to Move On Joel Yanofsky
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Private Number David Homel
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Fan Mail Jason Guriel
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The Inferno Dante Alighieri
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Quietly, Loving Everyone Curtis John McRae
