Some of Us and Most of You are Dead
Peter Norman
OCTOBER 2018
80 pages | ISBN 978-1-928088-68-4
Peter Norman's new poems combine formal sophistication with sublime imagery. In this, his fourth collection, Norman has mastered the poetic form known as the terminal, where a poem takes the last word of each line from the corresponding lines of another poem. These are poems with past lives – animated by rhythm while haunted by memory – poems that conjure moments of the supernatural while they wrestle with the boundary between our world and the half-remembered one lurking just beneath its surface.
Praise for Peter Norman
"Norman's imagery crackles and his language feels biblical in its force." – Winnipeg Free Press
"Norman's proved you can write poems unmistakably of this time – hilariously so – while writing others that are beautiful in the most old-fashioned, romantic sense of the word. And sometimes you can do both at once." – The Puritan
Interviews
Quoted: Peter Norman's Some of Us and Most of You Are Dead (All Lit Up, 31/01/2019)
"For me, the ideal poem cannot be paraphrased; its unique sequence of words does unique work. If you summarize or rearrange it, the alchemy dissipates."
Errata
Appendix A
To Me You were Invisible, p. 13
Stuart Ross, “Moon,” in You Exist. Details Follow. (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2012).
About the Author
Peter Norman has published a novel and three previous poetry collections. Born in Vancouver, he has lived in Calgary, Edmonton, Windsor, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax and Toronto, where he now lives with his wife, author Melanie Little. He makes his living as a freelance book editor.
