Don McKay
Biography
Don McKay - Photo Courtesy of poetryinvoicecom
Originally from Cornwall, Ontario, the highly celebrated poet Don McKay released his first book, Air Occupied Space, in 1973. McKay studied at Bishop's University and the University of Western Ontario before earning his Ph. D. from the University of Wales.
While teaching at Western, McKay co-founded Brick Books with fellow poet Stan Dragland. He later taught at the University of New Brunswick, working as an editor for the Fiddlehead.
McKay has released twelve books of poetry and four books of essays. He was won numerous awards, including two Governor General's Awards (in 1991 for Nightfield, and in 2000 for Another Gravity), and the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip (an award for which Another Gravity had also been shortlisted).
McKay was awarded the Order of Canada in 2008 and his collection, Paradoxies won the Canadian Author’s Association for Poetry Prize in 2013. He currently resides in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.
While teaching at Western, McKay co-founded Brick Books with fellow poet Stan Dragland. He later taught at the University of New Brunswick, working as an editor for the Fiddlehead.
McKay has released twelve books of poetry and four books of essays. He was won numerous awards, including two Governor General's Awards (in 1991 for Nightfield, and in 2000 for Another Gravity), and the 2007 Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip (an award for which Another Gravity had also been shortlisted).
McKay was awarded the Order of Canada in 2008 and his collection, Paradoxies won the Canadian Author’s Association for Poetry Prize in 2013. He currently resides in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.
(i) Knife
who comes to the table fresh
from killing the pig, edge
of edges,
entry into zip.
Knife
who can swim as its secret
through the dialogue or glimmer
in a kitchen drawer. Who first appeared
in God’s hand to divide
the day from the night, then the sheep
from the goats, then from the other
sheep, then from their comfortable
fleeces. Nothing sinister in this except
it had to happen and it was the first
to have to. The imperative
mood. For what we are about to take
we must be grateful.
(ii) Fork
a touch of kestrel,
of Chopin, your hand with its fork
hovers above the plate, or punctuates
a proposition. This is the devil’s favourite
instrument, the fourfold
family of prongs: Hard Place,
Rock, Something You Should Know,
and For Your Own Good. At rest,
face up, it says,
please, its tines
pathetic as an old man’s fingers on a bed.
Face down it says
anything that moves.
(iii) Spoon
whose eloquence
is tongueless, witless, fingerless,
an absent egg.
Hi Ho, sing knife and fork, as off they go,
chummy as good cop and bad cop,
to interrogate the supper. Spoon waits
and reflects your expression,
inverted, in its tarnished moonlight. It knows
what it knows. It knows hunger
from the inside
out.
Published in Apparatus. McClelland & Stewart, 1997.
Used with permission by the author.
who comes to the table fresh
from killing the pig, edge
of edges,
entry into zip.
Knife
who can swim as its secret
through the dialogue or glimmer
in a kitchen drawer. Who first appeared
in God’s hand to divide
the day from the night, then the sheep
from the goats, then from the other
sheep, then from their comfortable
fleeces. Nothing sinister in this except
it had to happen and it was the first
to have to. The imperative
mood. For what we are about to take
we must be grateful.
(ii) Fork
a touch of kestrel,
of Chopin, your hand with its fork
hovers above the plate, or punctuates
a proposition. This is the devil’s favourite
instrument, the fourfold
family of prongs: Hard Place,
Rock, Something You Should Know,
and For Your Own Good. At rest,
face up, it says,
please, its tines
pathetic as an old man’s fingers on a bed.
Face down it says
anything that moves.
(iii) Spoon
whose eloquence
is tongueless, witless, fingerless,
an absent egg.
Hi Ho, sing knife and fork, as off they go,
chummy as good cop and bad cop,
to interrogate the supper. Spoon waits
and reflects your expression,
inverted, in its tarnished moonlight. It knows
what it knows. It knows hunger
from the inside
out.
Published in Apparatus. McClelland & Stewart, 1997.
Used with permission by the author.
Critical Analysis: Noticing Things
Emily Donahue (for Advanced Poetry) and Patrick O'Reilley (ACPA Managing Editor 2012)
Don McKay notices things – both which occur naturally, and which seem natural through use and familiarity. His poem “Setting the Table” deals with the latter (in this case, a knife, fork, and spoon), demonstrating McKay's ability to take these commonplace objects and re-categorize them, forcing the reader think about them in a new way: a micro-examination of the commonplace.
Throughout “Setting the Table,” McKay gives the objects new dimension, running the knife, fork, and spoon through a breathless series of metaphors, drawing new connotations to the objects. The knife takes on a Biblical colour, tied in with ideas of kingship and division, and the reader realizes these are connotations the knife (or the sword) have carried all along. The fork is a bird, a musical instrument, old man's fingers. The pitchfork, “the devil's favourite instrument,” is alluded to, and contrasts the knife's resting place “in God's hand,” displaying the surprisingly rich relationship between the two: they work in concert, but against each other.
The spoon, consequently, becomes the most complex, the most interesting piece in the place setting, though it is described as “witless”. Belonging not between the good of the knife and the evil of the fork, but somewhere off to the side, it is mute but eloquent. The words used to define the spoon are about lack, suffixed always with “-less” (74). The spoon becomes something less-than the fork and the knife, something a bit flawed and fallible.
By acknowledging the spoon’s ability to reflect, McKay positions it as a proxy to humanity. The reader – the human – becomes a dumb but fascinating creature, somehow more compelling for existing outside the drama of the knife and fork.
Works Cited (for analysis):
McKay, Don. Apparatus. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1997. 72-74.
Don McKay notices things – both which occur naturally, and which seem natural through use and familiarity. His poem “Setting the Table” deals with the latter (in this case, a knife, fork, and spoon), demonstrating McKay's ability to take these commonplace objects and re-categorize them, forcing the reader think about them in a new way: a micro-examination of the commonplace.
Throughout “Setting the Table,” McKay gives the objects new dimension, running the knife, fork, and spoon through a breathless series of metaphors, drawing new connotations to the objects. The knife takes on a Biblical colour, tied in with ideas of kingship and division, and the reader realizes these are connotations the knife (or the sword) have carried all along. The fork is a bird, a musical instrument, old man's fingers. The pitchfork, “the devil's favourite instrument,” is alluded to, and contrasts the knife's resting place “in God's hand,” displaying the surprisingly rich relationship between the two: they work in concert, but against each other.
The spoon, consequently, becomes the most complex, the most interesting piece in the place setting, though it is described as “witless”. Belonging not between the good of the knife and the evil of the fork, but somewhere off to the side, it is mute but eloquent. The words used to define the spoon are about lack, suffixed always with “-less” (74). The spoon becomes something less-than the fork and the knife, something a bit flawed and fallible.
By acknowledging the spoon’s ability to reflect, McKay positions it as a proxy to humanity. The reader – the human – becomes a dumb but fascinating creature, somehow more compelling for existing outside the drama of the knife and fork.
Works Cited (for analysis):
McKay, Don. Apparatus. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1997. 72-74.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
McKay, Don. Air Occupies Space. London: Brick Books, 1973.
---. Angular Poetry: Collected Poems, 1970-2014. Fredericton: Gooselane Editions, 2014.
---. Another Gravity. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2000.
---. Apparatus. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1997.
---. "Biosemiosis: Some Issues." Fiddlehead. (2016): 75.
---. Birding, or Desire. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1983.
---. Camber. Toronto: McClelland & Stweart, 2004.
---. Deactivated West 100. Gaspereau Press, 2005.
---. Field Marks: The Poetry of Don McKay. Ed. Méira Cook. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2006.
---. "Larix." Fiddlehead. (2016): 71.
---. Leaf to leaf-Foglio a foglia. Toronto: McArthur & Company, 2010.
---. Lependu. London: Brick Books, 1978.
---. Lightning Ball Bait. Toronto: Coach House, 1980.
---. Long Sault. London: Applegarth Follies, 1975.
---. The Muskwa Assemblage. Gaspereau Press, 2009.
---. Night Field. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1991.
---. Paradoxies. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2012.
---. Sanding Down this Rocking Chair on a Windy Night. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1987.
---. The Shell of the Tortoise: Four Essays and an Assemblage. Gaspereau Press, 2012.
---. "Song for the Song of the Catbird." Fiddlehead. (2016): 76.
---. Song for the Songs of Birds. Song for the Songs of Birds, 2008.
---. Strike/Slip. Toronto: McClelland & Stweart, 2006.
---. Varves. Edmonton: Extra Virgin Press, 2003.
---. Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness. Gaspereau Press, 2002.
Secondary Sources
Babstock, Ken. "The Appropriate Gesture, Or Regular Dumb-Ass Guy Looks At Bird: An Interview With Don Mckay." Don McKay: Essays on His Works. 167-187. Toronto: Guernica, 2006. MLA International Bibliography.
Bartlett, Brian. "A Dog's Nose Of Receptiveness: A Calvinoesque Reading Of Don Mckay." Don McKay: Essays on His Works. 145-66. Toronto: Guernica, 2006. MLA International Bibliography.
---. “Don Mckay: Essays On His Works.” Toronto: Guernica, 2006. MLA International Bibliography.
Boyd, Melanie. "Longing for Wilderness: The human and the other – vis à vis – in the poetry and poetics of Don McKay." Prism, prism.ucalgary.ca, 4 Oct. 2008.
Bushell, Kevin. "Don Mckay And Metaphor: Stretching Language Toward Wilderness." Don McKay: Essays on His Works. 59-80. Toronto: Guernica, 2006. MLA International Bibliography.
Cook, Méira, and Don McKay. "Field Marks: The Poetry Of Don Mckay." (2006). MLA International Bibliography.
Dickinson, Adam. Don McKay: Essays on His Works (review). Project Muse 79.1 (2010): n. pag.
“Don McKay”. The Banff Centre. 2013.
“Don McKay”. Brick Books. 2013.
“Don McKay”. The Canadian Encyclopaedia. 2012.
“Don McKay”. The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry. 2013.
Draper, Gary. "Don Mckay." Twenty-First-Century Canadian Writers. 179-86. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007. MLA International Bibliography.
Dunkerley, Hugh. "Translating Wilderness: Negative Ecopoetics And The Poetry Of Don Mckay." Poetry and Voice: A Book of Essays. 210-19. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012. MLA International Bibliography.
Elmslie, Susan. "Got To Meander If You Want To Get To Town: Excursion And Excursionist Figures In Don Mckay." Don McKay: Essays on His Works. 81-103. Toronto: Guernica, 2006. MLA International Bibliography.
Ferguson, Jesse Patrick. "Rocking Cosmopolitanism: Don Mckay, Strike/Slip, And The Implications Of Geology." English Studies In Canada 35.2-3 (2009): 165-87. MLA International Bibliography.
Jackson-Harper, Renée. "Unlovely Seeds: Human/Nature/Wilderness in Isabella Valancy Crawford’s Winona; or, The Foster-Sisters." Pivot 7.1 (2019). Pivot, pivot.journals.yorku.ca.
Leckie, Ross. "Don Mckay's 'Twinflower': Poetry's Far Cry And Close Call." Don McKay: Essays on His Works. 126-44. Toronto: Guernica, 2006. MLA International Bibliography.
Mason, Travis Vincent. Ornithologies Of Desire: Ecocritical Essays, Avian Poetics, And Don Mckay. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013. MLA International Bibliography.
---. "Ornithology Of Desire: Birding In The Ecotone And The Poetry Of Don Mckay." Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities And Social Sciences 68.10 (2008): 4304. MLA International Bibliography.
Northrup, Tina. "Aesthetics of the Sublime and Don Mckay's Poetics of Deep Time." Canadian Literature. (2015): 83.
Osler, Richard. "The Wilderness Inside Us." Recovering Words, recoveringwords.com, 30 Oct. 2019.
Tremblay, Tony. The Fiddlehead Moment. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2019. 195.
Wood, Brent. "The Rhythmic Dynamics Of Don Mckay And Christian Bök." Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews 69 (2011): 9-39. MLA International Bibliography.
McKay, Don. Air Occupies Space. London: Brick Books, 1973.
---. Angular Poetry: Collected Poems, 1970-2014. Fredericton: Gooselane Editions, 2014.
---. Another Gravity. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2000.
---. Apparatus. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1997.
---. "Biosemiosis: Some Issues." Fiddlehead. (2016): 75.
---. Birding, or Desire. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1983.
---. Camber. Toronto: McClelland & Stweart, 2004.
---. Deactivated West 100. Gaspereau Press, 2005.
---. Field Marks: The Poetry of Don McKay. Ed. Méira Cook. Waterloo: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2006.
---. "Larix." Fiddlehead. (2016): 71.
---. Leaf to leaf-Foglio a foglia. Toronto: McArthur & Company, 2010.
---. Lependu. London: Brick Books, 1978.
---. Lightning Ball Bait. Toronto: Coach House, 1980.
---. Long Sault. London: Applegarth Follies, 1975.
---. The Muskwa Assemblage. Gaspereau Press, 2009.
---. Night Field. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1991.
---. Paradoxies. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2012.
---. Sanding Down this Rocking Chair on a Windy Night. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1987.
---. The Shell of the Tortoise: Four Essays and an Assemblage. Gaspereau Press, 2012.
---. "Song for the Song of the Catbird." Fiddlehead. (2016): 76.
---. Song for the Songs of Birds. Song for the Songs of Birds, 2008.
---. Strike/Slip. Toronto: McClelland & Stweart, 2006.
---. Varves. Edmonton: Extra Virgin Press, 2003.
---. Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness. Gaspereau Press, 2002.
Secondary Sources
Babstock, Ken. "The Appropriate Gesture, Or Regular Dumb-Ass Guy Looks At Bird: An Interview With Don Mckay." Don McKay: Essays on His Works. 167-187. Toronto: Guernica, 2006. MLA International Bibliography.
Bartlett, Brian. "A Dog's Nose Of Receptiveness: A Calvinoesque Reading Of Don Mckay." Don McKay: Essays on His Works. 145-66. Toronto: Guernica, 2006. MLA International Bibliography.
---. “Don Mckay: Essays On His Works.” Toronto: Guernica, 2006. MLA International Bibliography.
Boyd, Melanie. "Longing for Wilderness: The human and the other – vis à vis – in the poetry and poetics of Don McKay." Prism, prism.ucalgary.ca, 4 Oct. 2008.
Bushell, Kevin. "Don Mckay And Metaphor: Stretching Language Toward Wilderness." Don McKay: Essays on His Works. 59-80. Toronto: Guernica, 2006. MLA International Bibliography.
Cook, Méira, and Don McKay. "Field Marks: The Poetry Of Don Mckay." (2006). MLA International Bibliography.
Dickinson, Adam. Don McKay: Essays on His Works (review). Project Muse 79.1 (2010): n. pag.
“Don McKay”. The Banff Centre. 2013.
“Don McKay”. Brick Books. 2013.
“Don McKay”. The Canadian Encyclopaedia. 2012.
“Don McKay”. The Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry. 2013.
Draper, Gary. "Don Mckay." Twenty-First-Century Canadian Writers. 179-86. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2007. MLA International Bibliography.
Dunkerley, Hugh. "Translating Wilderness: Negative Ecopoetics And The Poetry Of Don Mckay." Poetry and Voice: A Book of Essays. 210-19. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012. MLA International Bibliography.
Elmslie, Susan. "Got To Meander If You Want To Get To Town: Excursion And Excursionist Figures In Don Mckay." Don McKay: Essays on His Works. 81-103. Toronto: Guernica, 2006. MLA International Bibliography.
Ferguson, Jesse Patrick. "Rocking Cosmopolitanism: Don Mckay, Strike/Slip, And The Implications Of Geology." English Studies In Canada 35.2-3 (2009): 165-87. MLA International Bibliography.
Jackson-Harper, Renée. "Unlovely Seeds: Human/Nature/Wilderness in Isabella Valancy Crawford’s Winona; or, The Foster-Sisters." Pivot 7.1 (2019). Pivot, pivot.journals.yorku.ca.
Leckie, Ross. "Don Mckay's 'Twinflower': Poetry's Far Cry And Close Call." Don McKay: Essays on His Works. 126-44. Toronto: Guernica, 2006. MLA International Bibliography.
Mason, Travis Vincent. Ornithologies Of Desire: Ecocritical Essays, Avian Poetics, And Don Mckay. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013. MLA International Bibliography.
---. "Ornithology Of Desire: Birding In The Ecotone And The Poetry Of Don Mckay." Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities And Social Sciences 68.10 (2008): 4304. MLA International Bibliography.
Northrup, Tina. "Aesthetics of the Sublime and Don Mckay's Poetics of Deep Time." Canadian Literature. (2015): 83.
Osler, Richard. "The Wilderness Inside Us." Recovering Words, recoveringwords.com, 30 Oct. 2019.
Tremblay, Tony. The Fiddlehead Moment. Montreal: McGill-Queen's UP, 2019. 195.
Wood, Brent. "The Rhythmic Dynamics Of Don Mckay And Christian Bök." Canadian Poetry: Studies, Documents, Reviews 69 (2011): 9-39. MLA International Bibliography.
