In his new collection of poems, Carmine Starnino writes of mid-life within the context of family life, testing traditional views of masculinity against contemporary experience. Adopting the swagger of the “unoutshoutable big shots” of that generation of cabbies, factory-lifers and hard-ass dads that sired us, Starnino pursues the leviathan machismo that seemed to propel them. How does it square with the urbane young fathers he encounters taking their toddlers to play in the park, or the gear-obsessed quest for the perfect weed-free lawn? Moving from putting his restless child to bed to the hospital bedside of his dying father, Starnino’s poems offer an intimate if unresolved portrait of an apprenticeship into manhood.

Carmine Starnino is the author of three collections of poems: The New World (which was nominated for the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award), Credo (winner of the C A A Jack Chalmers Poetry Award), and With English Subtitles. His reviews and essays have appeared in a wide range of newspapers, magazines and literary journals, including the Globe and Mail, the Montreal Gazette, Matrix, Arc and The Montreal Review of Books. Starnino is the editor of Vehicule Press` Signal imprint, poetry editor at Canadian Notes and Queries, and editor-in-chief of Maisonneuve. Starnino lives in Montreal.

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