The Good News about Armageddon

By Steve McOrmond

Poems that occupy the difficult territory of contemporary crisis with great candour and trenchant wit.

Steve McOrmond’s unflinching take on contemporary life, with its saturnine candour and ironic focus, may remind readers of the anti-poetry of Europeans like Zbigniew Herbert: intense, humanistic and deeply sceptical of inflationary gestures or stagy rhetoric. Shedding illusions, but equally refusing the consolations of despair, McOrmond’s well-tempered satire is carried home on its own crisp music.

The title poem has, as it narrative background, the encounter between the narrator and a young door-to-door missionary, one who sets his worldly and jaded scepticism against her innocence and faith. The Good News about Armageddon poses questions that are difficult and durable (“In these hours of prolific / doubt, how will we acquit ourselves?”), as well as those that are topical (“Are Paris Hilton’s 15 minutes over yet?”) and probes with accurate wit (“We are an argument / for unintelligent design”). This is essential poetry for our time – astute, informed, bitingly satirical, yet grounded in its quest for words that, like Cordelia’s, reverb no hollowness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: Oct 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9781926829272

Steve McOrmond

Steve McOrmond is the author of three previous collections of poetry, most recently The Good News about Armageddon (Brick Books 2010), which appeared on a number of book critics’ Best of 2010 lists and was shortlisted for the 2011 ReLit Award. His second collection, Primer on the Hereafter (Wolsak and Wynn 2006), was awarded the Atlantic Poetry Prize. His debut collection, Lean Days (Wolsak and Wynn 2004), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award. Originally from Prince Edward Island, he lives in Toronto.

Book preview

THE GOOD NEWS

ABOUT ARMAGEDDON

THE GOOD NEWS

ABOUT ARMAGEDDON

Steve McOrmond

Brick Books

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

McOrmond, Steve, 1971-

        The good news about Armageddon / Steve McOrmond.

Poems.

ISBN 978-1-894078-83-2

       I. Title.

PS8575.O74G66 2010         C811’.54          C2009-907387-0

Copyright © Steve McOrmond, 2010

We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.

The cover image is a photograph called Retro Television taken by

Shaun Lowe.

The author photograph was taken by Brad Marlin.

The book is set in Minion and Rotis.

Design and layout by Alan Siu.

Printed and bound by Sunville Printco Inc.

Brick Books

431 Boler Road, Box 20081

London, Ontario N6K 4G6

www.brickbooks.ca

For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking,

marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark;

and they knew nothing about what would happen

until the flood came and took them all away.

– Matthew 24:38-39

Come in. Be lost. Be still.

If you miss us at home

we’ll be on our way to the reckoning.

– C.D. Wright

Contents

Advisory

The Good News about Armageddon

The Hypochondriac Flies to Mexico

When It Comes for You

Directions to the Ark

Night Figures

The Tunnel, the Light

Test Pattern

The End of the World

Autobiography

Strait Crossing

The Light Keepers

The Compensation of Art

Collision

The Secret Admirer

The Anorexic’s Love Song

The Tooth Fairy’s Lament

Penny Dreadful

The Poet

The Fortune Teller

I’d Like to Thank the Academy

Sleeper

Deuteronomy, Abridged

There Is a Chemical

Dark Clouds (Another Apocalypse)

Envoi

Notes and Acknowledgements

Biography

Advisory

1.0   The following program contains language and brief sexuality which some may find disturbing.

1.1   The following program may contain graphic content relevant to the development of character or to the advancement of the theme or plot.

1.2   Women’s bare breasts; man’s bare buttocks.

1.3   The following program may invite dangerous imitation, such as the use of plastic bags as playthings, or unsafe physical acts, such as climbing apartment balconies.

1.4   The following program may contain realistic scenes of violence which create the impression that violence is the preferred or only method to resolve conflict. The audience is advised to