Description Triny Finlay's debut collection of poetry is a meditation on the self's negotiation with the material world. Finlay pushes poetic form and language, creating images of love and loss that are at once playful and profoundly disturbing. The poems in this collection are rife with metaphorical leaps and unexpected associations: the troubled self as conjoined twins or as a flatiron building; the predatory lover as axe-wielding gardener; coming-of-age as a surgical procedure. Blurring the line between subject and object, the voices in these poems explore individual experience from multiple points of view, never privileging any one possibility. These voices fill the book with startling discoveries of conflict and hope, simultaneously stitching and ripping the fabric of female identity. "Inventive, quick, charged with appetites, these poems realize a lively, engaged poetic intelligence. Triny Finlay's Splitting Off is a marvelous debut, a highly accomplished book, versatile and confident in pleasure and form."-Sharon Thesen–Sharon Thesen"In Triny Finlay's Splitting Off, all objects are erotic--they reach out to you: pinking shears, seductive omelettes, a fine-boned teacup. A kiss and there are 'flashes of sweet, gapped-teeth lacunae infuriating the room.' She knows the innards of words, and has a painter's eye for detail. A mistress of impersonations, she plays riffs on family, friends, freaks. A wonderful debut collection."-Rosemary Sullivan–Rosemary Sullivan"Triny Finlay's voice is unique, sensual and muscular. Her poems are threatening and seductive; we're pulled in by our faith in the everyday objects that fill them and find ourselves led willingly into a sinister domestic wilderness that surely lives somewhere just down the block. This is poetry of intense, feral beauty."-Sean Johnston–Sean Johnston"Finlay's dry mixture of cynicism and epicurean delight struck me as very much of the moment, capturing a particularly modern disillusionment that comes from searching for love in today's landscape of gender politics."-Sonnet L'Abbe, Globe and Mail–Globe and Mail"Splitting Off is a best-case scenario debut. ... it aptly demonstrates that the potential for inspiration abounds."-Laurie Fuhr, bloom oon Canadian Surrealist Journal–bloom oon"Triny Finlay's Splitting Off is declaratory poetry. She writes a fast line: an arrow shot with little trajectory but great speed... Her approach is sensual/erotic/wet, this in a country parka-ed, toqued, and frozen for half the year. She's moving mountains to bring us exotica. 'You think I am different./ You don't know difference' (35). That is indeed what we wish our poets to do: make a difference/ make it different."-Andrew Vaisius, Prairie Fire–Prairie Fire"Splitting Off is a tour through a talented early poet's rigorous testing of her own voice, through a range of poetic styles and devices, from momentum-heavy prose pieces to taut couplets and sonnet-variations to one of the best glosas I've ever read: "Winter Ritual," which avoids the standard pitfall of paling in comparision to the four-line quotation around which it is built...Finlay is sharp, rhythmically masterful, and playful."-Anita Lahey, ARC: Canada's National Poetry Magazine–ARC: Canada's National Poetry Magazine"Throughout Splitting Off, intimate scenes are created and emotions are transmitted without extraneous melodrama, without histrionics. Finlay has presented a relaxed rationality so the reader can revaluate symbolic objects. Via her speakers, she has render a humble stoicism, a private logic."-Michael Lockett, The Fiddlehead–The Fiddlehead"Finlay's first collection of poems articulates her contemporary woman's sensibility while quoting, paraphrasing, and alluding to literary works of the past. Finlay's incorporation of literary forebears structurally and thematically gives depth to the poems...her poetry in Splitting Off, is already brilliantly accomplished. -Thomas M.F. Gerry, Canadian Book Review–Canadian Book Review"Finlay's ability to create unexpected, colourful images is impressive..."-Melissa Price, The McGill Tribune–McGill Tribune"This is the work of poetry; this is the kind of talent I require to hold attention; this is the debut that seems as if it could have been written instead by a pseudonymous ten-book poet; this is poetry that seems so shaped, so aged, so ripe, so playful, so idiosyncratic (save for the snake in the grass cliché) that it can only come from one consciousness -- splitting off, as it were. With this book, Triny Finlay has made her mark."-Shane Neilson, PotryReviews.ca–Shane Neilson Details Nightwood EditionsISBN: 9780889711983Paperback / softback5.25 in x 7.5 in - 88 ppPublication Date: 23/03/2004BISAC Subject(s): POE011000-POETRY / Canadian / General, POE000000-POETRY / General Thema Subject(s): DC-Poetry
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