Ghost in the Gears

This collection of poems is steeped in the west coast tradition of storytelling and mythmaking, a tradition Howard White has nurtured for two decades. The poems are as real, down-to-earth and funny as White's award-winning prose. He admits to having a messy yard, describes city street crazies and the late-night "undermind," teaches his boys how to hammer, and sits down to dinner with fancy people. He takes the trouble to figure out that if Canada's unemployed people were laid head to toe, they'd stretch from Vancouver to Winnipeg. His poems are rich with west coast denizens-loggers, fishermen, executives and industrialists, slugs, ravens, loons, and even Old Scabby Mackay, who got his nickname for breaking one strike in 1937 and who says, "We Canadians, we gotta be the stupidest damn race of people that ever walked." "His work is as refreshing, as spirited and melodious as a vibrant April shower. White's style is always crisp, fresh and ebullient." -Virginia Aulin, Vancouver Sun "Howard White is a pure delight to read." -George Melnyk, Calgary Herald "White's is a major coastal voice. . . the best of his work is about seeing." -Charles Lillard, Victoria Times-Colonist

Table of Contents:
Books in Canada ...This leads to the counter-argument posed by Howard White in his introduction to Ghost in the Gears on the subject of "what makes poetry poetry," he writes: "I'm struck with the inappropriateness of placing many of these pieces in anything so static and exclusive, as this pricey little book - for most of them I would have preferred a spot on the local breakfast broadcast or editorial page where they might have provided a chuckle or a moment of reflection and been disposed of. In our world, those are the spaces most in need of what poetry has to offer, the frontier where the battle for cultural survival must be renewed, and my best hope for this motley, collection is that it contains a few steps toward the kind of poem that could do that work." White's folksy manifesto moved me and alarmed me at the same time. His poems are admirable, ethical, warm, humane, self-deprecating, accessible. I'm glad he is speaking, and I'm pleased to read his book. -Margaret Sweatman CONTENTS The Ghost in the Gears Tiresias II Loonshit Sidetrip Scabby Mackay The Oldtimer Talks Economics Invisible Minority The Executive Has Anyone Seen the Working Class? Street Crazies Culture Poem Ending with a Line by Raymond Carver From Book Blurbs to the Bomb Timewarp The Word Dante's Wife City Poets bp nichol October 1, 1988 Closeup Undermined Low Ebb Cups Hanging from Cuphooks The Dog in the Mountain The Paintings of E.J. Hughes I The Paintings of E.J. Hughes II Dead Farms Matilpi Oolachon Grease Domanic Charlie's Last Forecast The Raven Be Careful How You Die The Time My Body Died Invisible Kid The Good Woman Oldtimer Abroad Voices Klein Comes Back A Fairly Honest Guy The Handkerchief Angle The Genius Small Blessings The Made Bed Pinned Down by Love Waves A Study First Poem of the New Space Age Long Term Investment On the Evening News Friends Alter Ego Wanted After the Wake You Tell Me Fucking Slugs For the Birds Lull Kinky

About the Author :
Howard White was born in 1945 in Abbotsford, British Columbia. He was raised in a series of camps and settlements on the BC coast and never got over it. He is still to be found stuck barnacle-like to the shore at Pender Harbour, BC. He started Raincoast Chronicles and Harbour Publishing in the early 1970s and his own books include A Hard Man to Beat (bio), The Men There Were Then (poems), Spilsbury's Coast (bio), The Accidental Airline (bio), Patrick and the Backhoe (childrens'), Writing in the Rain (anthology) and The Sunshine Coast (travel). He was awarded the Canadian Historical Association's Career Award for Regional History in 1989. In 2000, he completed a ten-year project, The Encyclopedia of British Columbia. He has been awarded the Order of BC, the Canadian Historical Association's Career Award for Regional History, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award and a Honorary Doctorate of Laws Degree from the University of Victoria. In 2007, White was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has twice been runner-up in the Whisky Slough Putty Man Triathlon.