Guide to the best and worst contemporary fiction of the last 40 years. In Israel, as in many other parts of the world, libraries are in terrible decline. Within a few hours of hitting the shelves last month, the latest Harry Potter book was available in pirated e-form over the web. Tuesday the Association of American Book Publishers and Microsoft announced plans to fight e-piracy. We certainly need an advocate for poetry.
Poetry is the least honoured and the most respected of our art forms.
And Canadian poetry, in the main, is horrible, consisting primarily of nuanced references to woodchippers, and surprisingly vulgar accounts of childbirth. To crown a laureate then would be something like appointing a pantomime artist to remember the dead for us each November - a poignantly awful idea. His most recent subject of focus has been the struggling African county Eritrea. And that sense of clarity is not just reassuring, it also demands less of the reader who does not have to suspend disbelief and of the writer, who does not have to work as hard at rendering a story believable. Xlibris, the book self-publisher believes it will make money in increments.