 What They're Saying About Cyclops Press
If you'd like to hear
some sample MP3 tracks,
from Stylus Magazine: “Cyclops exists with the do-it-yourself ethic of music making which has flourished with increased accessibility to computer and other electronic equipment. “To date, Cyclops Press has eight spoken word compact discs under their aggregate belt, along with a novel, a VHS tape and a web site (www.cyclopspress.com). They released two CDs this past fall: Terrance Cox’s Local Scores and Winnipeg poet/author Catherine Hunter’s Rush Hour. Rush Hour is comprised of Hunter’s poetry, with a bonus version of the title track featuring musical accompaniment by The Weakerthans. Cyclops Press is owned and operated by Editor/local author/poet/performance artist Clive Holden, Associate Editor and award-winning author Alissa York, and Co-Editor and CKUW Program Director/send + receive: a festival of sound Coordinator Steve Bates.
from Books In Canada:
“Cyclops Revolution" Cyclops titles have a distinctively hip, neo-constructivist look about them. Cyclops releases to date feature Patrick Lane, Al Purdy, and Ricardo Sternberg. The sound quality on all Cyclops titles is impeccable, capturing the subtleties and nuances of each poet’s interpretations of his or her own work. The Purdy disc contains the widest range of material, including some of the writer’s best-known poems. NECROPSY OF LOVE features the octogenarian at his crusty best. Weighing in with twenty-four poems (not including the interview excerpts), this CD provides a good basic introduction to Purdy’s long and impressive writing career. The disc’s highlights include some of the finest lyric poems written in the annals of modern Canadian literature: ‘At the Quinte Hotel’, Purdy’s signature piece and the disc’s opening track; ‘The Cariboo Horses’; and ‘Lament for the Dorsets’. The poet’s dry, near-indifferent tone always contains a hint of self-mockery, playing counterpoint to the masculine burlesque of barroom brawls and cowboys rolling their ‘stagey cigarettes’. The selections overwhelmingly concern the theme of impending mortality: ‘Funeral’, ‘Piling Blood’, The Names, the Names’, Elegy for a Grandfather’, and ‘The Dead Poet’, to list a few. The epic tragedy of ‘Lament for the Dorsets’ provides perhaps the disc’s most thought-provoking moment. The poem’s evocation of an aging race of ‘terrifying old men’, hunters, artisans, and heroes all, takes on an entirely new poignancy as self-portrait and potential eulogy for both Purdy himself and the ethos of ‘manly’ poetry that his persona helped create. Ricardo Sternberg’s BLINDSIGHT is a considerable departure from the Purdy disc, trading wild horses, loading dock workers, and small-town drunks for angels, mermaids, and princesses. Born in Rio de Janeiro and now living in Toronto, Sternberg is a narrative poet, whose work has much in common with fairy tales and magic realism. Despite this fascination with and deft handling of classical fantasy, Sternberg’s writing is most compelling when the imagery veers into the surreal, as in ‘The Invention of Honey’, where bees become ‘small engines running on honey’. Sternberg’s more whimsical, vernacular poems, such as ‘Mump and His manners’, demonstrate that he delights in the sounds of words and that his mellifluous lines are well served by oral presentation. The Cyclops project is an impressively ambitious set of offerings. Given time, it could become an important part of Canadian literary culture.”
from 4Anything.com:
from Judith Fitzgerald,
poet/journalist, March 2000: I applaud your spirit, sensitivity, savvy, and smarts in bringing these classy writers to the people (when the people cannot always come to them). Purdy's never sounded
better; and, of course, since he is one of our greatest and since many
of his greats are showcased on this tightly organised collection, listeners
cannot go wrong.
from Zinen, New Media:
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