Endgames by Andrew Stubbs Published by Thistledown Press Review by Shelley A. Leedahl $17.95 ISBN 978-1-897235-72-0 I don’t know the writer and University of Regina professor, Andrew Stubbs, but I’m certain he’d make a great dinner guest. I make this claim after devouring Endgames, his new book of poetry with Thistledown Press. It’s the breadth of interests and knowledge that wow: Stubbs writes intelligently about theology, psychoanalysis, history, and, most importantly to this reader: love in the here and now. Character-based titles reveal his range: from heloise\ abelard” (tragic lovers) to “the count of monte cristo” and “bond james bond”. One part of the book is dedicated to a poetic portrait of Daniel Paul Schreber (d. 1911), a judge, “failed candidate for the Reichstag,” and artist who suffered from paranoid fantasies that attracted the attention of Freud. The author includes an illuminating introduction to this section. Many of the pieces are written in a minimalistic, “snapshot” style. To illustrate, here’s the poem “foreign affairs” in its entirety: foreign affairs it was a town. it had a beach, vacancies. chat over brandy, bartok. morning: tim’s on the run lunch in the car. somewhere up north. Look at the references here: from…

White Light Primitive by Andrew Stubbs Published by Hagios Press Review by Andréa Ledding $17.95 ISBN 978-0-9783440-8-5 Breathtaking and profound, White Light Primitive is the first poetry collection of Regina writer and University of Regina English professor Andrew Stubbs, and reads like a collection from a seasoned and well established poet in his prime. Stubbs fills the beautifully written pages with wisdom, diversity, and detail. An author of three other books, a teacher of composition and rhetoric, and a student of Eli Mandel, Stubbs demonstrates his belief in Mandel’s claim that “memory is sacred” throughout the collection. A brief but moving essay opens the book, explaining the inspiration of the first section, “War” – poetry inspired by a shoebox of photographs from his father’s experiences during World War II. In exploring and speculating upon his father’s generational memories – which included the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – Stubbs carefully crafts language to hand over to the reader delicately rendered snapshots of life based largely around war, memory, and loss. “As I went through my father’s pictures I learned a lesson. You can look straight at a thing and not see it, despite the cool, apparently natural co-operation of…