Jon Paul Fiorentino's new collection is a whip-smart poetic investigation of anxiety in all its many manifestations. Anxiety caused by geography, anxieties of influence and looming worries about loss inform the poems as they weave narrative threads that highlight both the treachery of language and its necessity in shaping human experience.

The poems here build on Derrida's ideas about the psychological implications of memory and the archival impulse and on philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce's semiotics of 'the index.' Indexical Elegies is a rich, emotionally charged work that showcases Fiorentino's talents at their feisty, engaged best. From its Post-Prairie pamphleteering and Montreal musings to its moving elegies, this is provocative poetry that never loses touch with the reader's pleasure.

Praise for Fiorentino's The Theory of the Loser Class:

'Fiorentino is smart and deft … By turns compassionate, funny and filled with self-loathing, The Theory of the Loser Class is never without the possibility of redemption.' – Globe and Mail

Jon Paul Fiorentino
Jon Paul Fiorentino’s first novel is Stripmalling (ECW, 2009). His most recent book of poetry is The Theory of the Loser Class (Coach House Books, 2006). He is the author of the poetry book Hello Serotonin (Coach House Books, 2004) and the humour book Asthmatica (Insomniac Press, 2005). His most recent editorial projects are the anthologies Career Suicide! Contemporary Literary Humour (DC Books, 2003) and Post-Prairie — a collaborative effort with Robert Kroetsch, (Talonbooks, 2005).

Robert Kroetsch
Robert Kroetsch is a Canadian novelist, poet, and non-fiction writer. In his novel, The Words of My Roaring (1966), he began to use the tall tale rhetoric of prairie taverns. Both The Studhorse Man (1969), which won the Governor General’s Award, and Gone Indian (1973) call the conventions of realistic fiction hilariously into question.

In 2004, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Jon Paul Fiorentino's profile page

Inventive wordplay, juxtapositions

by bookgaga