More on Marlatt / Rock Pigeons

I didn't know until last night at the reading out at Sage Hill that Daphne Marlatt's The Given, about which I've marveled in a previous post, completes a trilogy, as she says, after Ana Historic and Taken.

The work manges its polyphony with the lightest, surest hand imaginable, ranging from the body on out into times and places close and far. It becomes personal and cultural document. It both preserves and explores, answers both to itself and its worlds. Her performing of the writing adds yet another figure, another character to the text.

Put me down as a big fan, in other words, as I have been since working on Ana Historic in my PhD (all but dissertation) work years ago.

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Not to spoil the appreciative tone of this post, but the second of two annual rock pigeon breeding cycles has led to a renewal of hostilities out on my balcony. Seems the newborns haven't absorbed certain lessons all the way into their DNA. I've had to deploy the barbecue lighter, the tinsnips, the high-tension wire laced with mini-barbs (something like this: ---*---*---*---*---).