Literary Press Group

Literary Theory & CriticismGunmetal Blue: A MemoirShane Neilson • Palimpsest PressGunmetal Blue is an investigation of how to be in the world—how to be a doctor, how to be a poet, andhow to be both. Tempered with memoir and populated with poetic case studies, Neilson learns abouthimself as his patients reveal their frailties. Medicine might be considered the more productive activity bysociety, but Neilson found poetry in every office visit. Taught to research clinical questions, he took thisscientific practice and made it a literary one: how can a doctor better know his patients, and how does thistranslate into self-knowledge? Poetry and medicine are topics intertwined since the time of the Greeks and,in this case, the connection between the two literally becomes his lifeline.Shane Neilson is a physician who practices family medicine in Erin, Ontario. He has published Mensicus,a book of poems, with Biblioasis and Call Me Doctor, a collection of essays, with The Porcupine’s Quill. Hehas been anthologized in Braid and Shreve’s In Fine Form and Carmine Starnino’s The New Canon.Key words: Medicine, Mental health, Canadian poetics, Criticism, BiographyISBN-13: 9781926794020paperback / 200 pp6 x 9 / $19.50May 2011Secret Identity Reader: Sex, Death and the SuperheroLee Easton & Richard Harrison • Wolsak & WynnComic-book superheroes have risen from their newsprint beginnings to dominate films, infiltrate theliterary establishment, and become an integral part of popular culture. Secret Identity Reader: Essays on Sex,Death and the Superhero is a collaboration between two authors who investigate, and often disagree on, keyfacets of the superhero character and storyline. Masculinity, origin stories and the problem of the sidekickare all fair game in this wide-ranging discussion, which also considers the superhero’s place in a post–9/11world and ponders why these characters keep dying and coming back to life.Lee Easton is the associate dean for the school of communications and literary studies at Sheridan College.Richard Harrison is the author of both poetry and non-fiction and teaches English at Mount RoyalUniversity.Key words: Comics as literature, Pop culture, Media studies, Gender constructs, Queer/LGBT identities,Literary criticismISBN-13: 9781894987509paperback / 392 pp6 x 9 / $25.00December 2010Population Me: Essays on David McGimpseyEdited by Alessandro Porco • Palimpsest PressSince the 1990s, David McGimpsey has been producing his unique, pop-acculturated poetry and fiction,indebted in equal parts to TV shows and Shakespearean tragedy. His poems and performances havegarnered a wide readership and acclaim across North America. This collection of essays serves to highlightand explicate the scope and complexity of McGimpsey’s poetic practice. The essays examine McGimpsey’svarious positions on literary history, class, nationalism, humor, love, and aesthetics, all of which are oftenmutually imbricated in his work. The book concludes with an in-depth interview with McGimpsey, wherehe discusses, with all the wit and keen critical acumen we’ve come to expect, everything from his earlyexperiences growing up in Montreal’s East-End to the prospect of sympathy in and through poetry.Originally from Brampton, Alessandro Porco is a doctoral student at the State University of New Yorkat Buffalo. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Augustine in Carthage, and Other Poems (2008)and The Jill Kelly Poems (2005), both published by ECW Press. Porco regularly contributes to a varietyof journals and magazines, including Maisonneuve, OpenBook Toronto, Arc, and Quill & Quire.Key words: Pop culture, Canadian poet, Literary criticism, Canadian national identity, BiographyISBN-13: 9781926794006paperback / 160 pp6 x 9 / $19.50April 2010Literary Press Group / Congress 2013 35