Tomorrow It Will Be Fine by Joseph Vida Published by Your Nickel’s Worth Publishing Review by Justin Dittrick ISBN 978-1-927371-34-3 It should be said at the outset that Joseph Vida’s Tomorrow It Will Be Fine is an outstanding achievement. It is entertaining and absorbing, socially conscious and sure-footed, linguistically extravagant and methodically plotted, sprawling and detailed, witty and trenchant. Its themes are so engrained in Canadian consciousness that the novel’s title can be read as prophetic of the eternal wish and frustrations of immigrants anywhere. Vida has a fine ear for the dialects of both the transplanted and native. His observation of social attitudes and tendencies and his depiction of idioms and jargons are spot on. Yet, the novel goes a little further than that, a little deeper. Few Canadian social novels read like a symphonic work. Joseph Vida’s does. At its heart, the work is a social novel set in Toronto, which is experiencing a boom after the Second World War. It’s protagonist, Endre, is a Hungarian immigrant seen at an anxious, but illuminating, time in his life. He is beginning to tire of working job after job without any reason to expect a better future. He has suffered…

How to Be a River by Brenda Niskala Published by Wild Sage Press Review by Justin Dittrick ISBN 978-0-9881229-2-5 $15.00 Brenda Niskala’s How to Be a River offers to readers a set of poems as diverse as they are nuanced, as piercing as they are enigmatic. Niskala’s writing is crisp and tight, unburdened by sentimentality, and the poems glimmer with an immediate and luminous arousal of recognition, of the sense of truly “being here.” The poems capture surprising crossways of feeling and consciousness, with subjects that range from the tragic, such as in “Blunt Instrument”, a poem about a young man lost to his loved ones and subject to the criminal justice system, to the provocative “Room Full of Men”, a poem whose character, Anita, will arouse much discussion for her free, unquenchable spirit and her ardent devotion to men. Niskala is a poet with exquisite taste in subject matter and a native ability to capture forms and expressions of human connectedness. The poems in this collection are not only luminous, but they transport the reader with their tracings of the numinous. Niskala writes with an attentive human interest, and her work is rooted in seldom explored realms and rhythms…

and i think to myself by June Mitchell Published by Benchmark Press Review by Justin Dittrick $15.00 ISBN 9-78192-73520-1 June Mitchell’s collection of poems, and i think to myself, brims with wisdom, imagination, and experience. It is much more than a collection of poems. It is the product of a lifetime as a humanitarian, much of which was spent in the pursuit of social activism and social justice. It is also the expression of a lifelong passion for literature and poetry, a pastime that bears much fruit, here. Mitchell’s collection must not only be read, but celebrated, for its depths and truths testify to the fullness of a woman’s life, its contents ringing out to the ear with mirth, joy, despair, outrage, and wonder. Written later in life, one of many discoveries in this collection is how it is positioned towards the providential. It is all the more remarkable for being a natural inclination in its speakers, for from this inclination, much wisdom appears. In “déjà vu”, the speaker contemplates the origin of the desire for a better world. In “resolution”, there is an embrace of god in nature, and with it a denial of the artificial. The two go…

The Pious Robber by Harriet Richards Published by Thistledown Press Review by Justin Dittrick $18.95 ISBN 978-1-927068-18-2 Harriet Richards’ The Pious Robber presents its readers with eight stories that will mesmerize, disturb, and delight. Every story in the collection strikes to the bone, and is brilliantly conceived and beautifully realized. One will be tempted to read the collection in one sitting, though the depth of the stories provides much fruit for multiple readings, honest reflection, and some animated and imaginative discussion. Richards is blessed with an unimpeachable understanding of illness, childhood, family, loss, and human psychology. Her narration is cool and detached, her dialogue crisp and seamless. This work is weighty and balanced: highly observant, darkly comic, and always fascinating. This collection especially shines where it examines human frailty within the accepted boundaries that mark convention, produce (unwanted?) self-knowledge, and touch that squishy place in our psyche where we are most vulnerable and recriminatory. There are plenty of cringe-worthy moments in the stories “Tangible Reminders” and “Sometimes it Seemed”. These seem to be the moments in which intelligent people must work with the seemingly harmless social and cultural excesses that make day-to-day life a minefield. In “Tangible Reminders”, the main…

Riot Lung by Leah Horlick Published by Thistledown Press (New Leaf Series) Review by Justin Dittrick $9.95 ISBN 978-1-927068-08-3 Leah Horlick’s debut collection of poems, Riot Lung, offers its readers an inspired celebration of urban and small town experience that will perplex, transfix, enlighten, but also move, those coming of age in a radical time. Most of the poems (except one) are written in the confessional mode, that is, in the second-person. The poems are highly evocative, written with a keen eye for imagery and with a rhythm and free stanza structure that the poet has made her own. The range of subjects varies widely, from sex education in a Saskatchewan town to what the lights in St. Louis reveal in a transient moment of wishing. The poems in this collection demonstrate the complexity of feeling that the confessional poem can bring to those with a longing for life in their poetry. The poems blossom with the senses, with breaks that seldom truncate their line, but rather, extend an image’s duration and resonance. This causes the poems to flow without breath, without an inclination to pause or withhold. Yet, the poetic is somehow controlled. The images are free to arise…

Voiceless by Caroline Wissing Published by Thistledown Press Review by Justin Dittrick ISBN 978-1-897235-98-0 $15.95 What is it like not to have a voice? To be unable to share one’s thoughts and feelings with the people one cares about? What is it like to be alone “Out There” and voiceless? Caroline Wissing’s stunning young adult novel, Voiceless, is narrated by Annabel, who was placed in foster care at Noble Spirit Farm. As the witness of a traumatic event, she has lost the ability to speak and must convey her thoughts and feelings with signs and emotional expression. The first half of the novel takes place at Noble Spirit Farm, where Annabel and her foster siblings live in a world once-removed from the violence, alcoholism, and drug-abuse that have had an effect in shaping them. Annabel recalls in shimmering detail what makes a teenager’s life on the farm so special, so formative. She lovingly describes her relationships with her companions, both animal and human, whose idiosyncrasies will seem poignant and familiar to readers of all tastes. Due to an unexpected event, Annabel must leave Noble Spirit Farm with Graydon, her first lover. The second half of the novel is set in…

Grid by Brenda Schmidt Published by Hagios Press Review by Justin Dittrick $17.95 ISBN 978-192671013-6 There is a moment in Brenda Schmidt’s latest collection of poems, in which the speaker invokes the melodious sing-along of nursery rhyme: Cinderella dressed in white Went downstairs to say goodnight. Made a blunder. Too far under. How many shovels make it right? “None”, the speaker interjects, “The going is slow, conditions poor, traffic/steady. There’s a shovel in every trunk.” In this poem, called “Too Far”, acute observation is combined with commentary that is, at times, humorous and, at other times, distressing. The verses are fragmented, while the images mutate from the wild into the mundane, as though the poem stands interrupted in the collection, as an abandoned nature documentary. Yet, still, it belongs, with a marvelous image of a window onto the world of the poem: “Where in hell/is the scraper? I use my nails./Through the scratch marks/the forest resembles a bit of parsley/left on the cutting board.” That poem feels like a digression, and a telling one. In Grid, moments are approached in their apparent stability only to be swept away in song rife with interruption and fresh stimuli, lending a new perspective….