The Good Bacteria

By Sharon Thesen

In crisp, intimate, and uncluttered language, award-winning and critically acclaimed poet Sharon Thesen gives us a layered meditation on energy and endings: the irrepressible energy of life; and the end of the natural world, of home, of love, youth, and safety.Thesen's talent is for catching beauty at the periphery of things -- a glimpse of neighbour's yellow dress, a tube of polysporin, a blue-and-white tin awning the mind momentarily mistakes for a lake.

Thesen's voice -- musical, personable, alive to joy and despair in equal measure -- reminds us of the kind of spiritual yearning that can surprise any of us, even in our most mundane moments. With nods to predecessors who searched for the Ideal in the local -- Frank O'Hara, Robert Creeley, S. T. Coleridge, and John Berryman -- The Good Bacteria is a beautiful addition to Sharon Thesen's considerable achievements.

• Language: English
• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Release date: Mar 22, 2006
• ISBN: 9781770891357

Sharon Thesen

Sharon Thesen is the author The Good Bacteria, which was a finalist for the Governor General’ s Literary Award for Poetry, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and the ReLit Award, and seven previous collections of poetry. She received the Pat Lowther Memorial Award for her collection A Pair of Scissors and she has been for a finalist for the British Columbia Book Prize. She was born in Tisdale, Saskatchewan, and now lives in British Columbia, where she is a professor at University of British Columbia.

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