Crying Dress by Cassidy McFadzean

A poetry collection exploring intersections between noise and coherence

Image | Crying Dress by Cassidy McFadzean

Caption: (House of Anansi Press)

The poems in Crying Dress, acclaimed poet Cassidy McFadzean's third collection, explore the multiplicity of meaning that arises from fragmentation, rhythm, competing sounds, and ellipsis. Rooted in the tradition of lyric poetry, these strikingly original poems revel in musicality (rhyme, beat, and alliteration) while deploying puns, idiom, and other forms of linguistic play to create a dissonance that challenges the expected coherence of a poem. From the ghosts and gardens of Brooklyn and Sicily to the clanging of garbage chutes in Uno Prii's modernist high rises in Toronto, to quiet moments of intimacy in domestic spaces, and the early days of sobriety and grief, Crying Dress explores the intersections between noise and coherence, the conversational and the associative, the architectural and the ecological, while reaffirming the poet's sonic, vertiginous lyricism and gift for overlooked detail. (From House of Anansi Press)
Regina-raised Cassidy McFadzean is a past finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize(external link) and The Walrus Poetry Prize. Her poetry books are Drolleries and Hacker Packer, which won two Saskatchewan Book Awards. She also wrote a crown of sonnets called Third State of Being. She currently lives in Toronto.