A Temporary Stranger

Poetry. A TEMPORARY STRANGER is the final manuscript that Jamie Reid was working on when he died unexpectedly in June of 2015. The book is comprised of three sections: Homages, Fake Poems, and Recollections. In Homages we find poems of reverence and honour, tributes to writers who had opened up the world of poetry to Jamie and served as guides as he made his way as a poet in the world. There are poems to Spicer, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Breton, Francis Ponge, Tristan Tzara and others. The centerpiece of A TEMPORARY STRANGER is Fake Poems, so called, the author says in his introduction to the poems, because "There is no art on earth that can fully represent the exact and flowing experience of viewing stone within the flow of water and the waving light within the water and around the stone, and the subsequent sense of awe and beauty that arises in the interaction between the seer and the seen... In that sense, all art is fake..." The third section, Recollections, is an assemblage of Jamie's articles—paeans, really—that he wrote and published over the years. Here are pieces in praise, and in memory of Warren Tallman, John Newlove, Curt Lang, bill bissett, Nellie McClung, Gerry Gilbert, Artie Gold, Kim Goldberg, Kate Braid, Heidi Greco, Catherine Owen and others.