These poems are what happens when you stay out on the dance floor instead, dancing the staggers. The full moon rises from the ocean and you lurch with astonishment that we live on a rocky sphere whirling in space. Or the bird in your hand—a pipit or a storm petrel — conveys the exquisite frailty of existence. And there's the complex of lurches as we contemplate our complicity in the sixth mass extinction.

Throughout Lurch, language dances its ardent incompetence as a translator of "the profane wonders of the wilderness," whether manifest as Balsam Fir, Catbirds, the extinct Eskimo Curlew, or the ever-present Cosmic Microwave Background.

What is the difference between a love song and an elegy? (From McClelland & Stewart)

Don McKay is the author of 13 books of poetry, including Angular Unconformity, Camber and Strike/Slip, which won the Griffin Poetry Prize. McKay has taught poetry in universities across the country. He currently lives in St. John's.