When he is not writing, he is at the pool hall wishing he were a better pool player. He lives in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. There's a bit of a Canadian tradition along this line, a lineage composed of a few well-chosen words with maximum impact. This poet's first book, Sledgehammer , is a step forward for this intriguing and ironic notion of Canadian machismo. It's a book with great verve and emotion, for all its sparseness.
Sledgehammer does evince, though, some of the weaknesses of the approach.
Stoicism's the controlling idea here, though MacKenzie can ably juggle many intriguing themes. MacKenzie tosses both styles into his formal blender and gives us a splendid book of spare poetry with intellectual heft. Lyle Neff is a Canadian poet who lives and works in Vancouver.