Poetry. THE SONG COLLIDES takes the reader on a highly personal and internal metaphysical investigation into the state of the natural world—and then back via more lyrical and local enquiries that speak to each and every one of us. Life as an exchange: each of us takes in the world and then expresses it for ourselves and for others. This is a simultaneous and nearly imperceptible process that lasts, we hope, at least until the exit.

"Calvin Wharton's poems in THE SONG COLLIDES pulse and soar with the sounds of beautiful music. Whether a specific one of THE SONG COLLIDES' lyrics, prose poems, sonnets, or elegies mentions music or not, Wharton's mastery of his art never fails to bring his words to resonant life in the ear and mind. He is a connoisseur of precise details that, transformed through his attention to the musicality of language, ring within the reader's memory like a favorite tune".—Tom Wayman

Author City: VANCOUVER, BC CAN

Calvin Wharton is the Chair of Creative Writing at Douglas College in New Westminster, BC, and edited Event: The Douglas College Review from 1996-2001. He is the author of VISUALIZED CHEMISTRY (Tsunami, 1987), Three Songs by Hank Williams (Turnstone Press, 2002) and THE SONG COLLIDES (Anvil Press, 2011). He co-edited the poetry anthology, East of Main (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1989), with Tom Wayman, and co-wrote Rowing (Boston Mills Press, 1994), with Canadian rower Silken Laumann. Aside from teaching, he has managed a variety of jobs, including working as a sandblaster, a gardener, a sawmill worker, and a ranch hand.

Reviews and Other Links
Jonathan Ball @ Winnipeg Free Press