The Mechanics of Submission is poet Phil Tabakow's visionary guidebook to middle class North American life. Sometimes dark as their rust-belt settings, these are poems with a scouring, ruthless humour, courtesy of a muse with attitude that won't be trained. Examine these as small exploding diagrams, graphing the boundaries between the self and the world, behind which lie our deepest fears and desires.

An ex-factory worker himself, present-day professor, Phil Tabakow lives near Boston. He has written about contemporary English Language Poetry in Quebec, about the contrasting styles of Canadian and American Landscape Poetry, and about individual Canadian writers such as F. R. Scott and Douglas Glover. He is a member of the Canadian Studies Council at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts where he teaches creative writing as well as 20th century Canadian and American Literature.

Philip Tabakow's profile page

"Phil Tabakow's new book couldn't be more contemporary or wild if it got its navel pierced. The title, The Mechanics of Submission, and the image on the cover—a boxing machine attacking a man helplessly strapped in—give us a taste of what's inside, namely, a world in which our inherited sense of morality gets a constant and brutal beating by the amorality of modernity."
—Arc, Summer 2005

"The poems in The Mechanics of Submission, show us the pains, the magic, and the mundanity of the modern world. The poems — some of them brilliant, all of them good — speak of lives full of love and heartbreak, death and redemption, and childhood rich with new experience."
—broken pencil #28

"The depths of this man's humanity is shockingly displayed in the playful and deadly seriousness of this necessary book."
—Bin Ramke
"Phil Tabakow's poems satisfy like ripe fruit and aged cheese. Some of his phrasing is so original, the English language leaps up and cheers!"

— James Bertolino, author of
Snail River and Pocket Animals

“Phil Tabakow’s new book couldn’t be more contemporary or wild if it got its navel pierced. The title, The Mechanics of Submission, and the image on the cover—a boxing machine attacking a man helplessly strapped in—give us a taste of what’s inside, namely, a world in which our inherited sense of morality gets a constant and brutal beating by the amorality of modernity.”

—Arc, Summer 2005

“The poems in The Mechanics of Submission, show us the pains, the magic, and the mundanity of the modern world. The poems — some of them brilliant, all of them good — speak of lives full of love and heartbreak, death and redemption, and childhood rich with new experience.”

—broken pencil #28

“The depths of this man’s humanity is shockingly displayed in the playful and deadly seriousness of this necessary book.”

—Bin Ramke

“Phil Tabakow’s poems satisfy like ripe fruit and aged cheese. Some of his phrasing is so original, the English language leaps up and cheers!”

— James Bertolino, author of Snail River and Pocket Animals