Ending with music

Shortlisted for the 2003 John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer and for the 2003 Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for best first book (Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards) Maurice Mierau tackles big subjects -- sex, senility, war, suicide -- without a ponderous bone in his body. His approach to poetry is amazingly vital, with a strong pop sensibility and a wry sense of humour. These poems are ripe with the atmosphere of a Wim Wenders film, with a little Isaac Bashevis Singer sprinkled in -- an unforgettable mix of horror and fable. Jarringly beautiful at times, Ending with Music offers a vivid sense of person and place, encompassing Rilke, the rural Mennonite past, and the atrocities in Srebrenica.