ONE OF CBC BOOKS’ BEST BOOKS OF 2023

A jubilant, irreverent, generous collection by a poet facing terminal illness.

Following his New York Times Best of the Year Dark Woods, Richard Sanger's fourth and final book is a clear-eyed and big-hearted inventory of the passions of a life well lived. Understated, tender, archly funny and achingly generous, Way to Go is a joyful catalog of Sanger's loves and a last gift from an irrepressibly jubilant poet.

Richard Sanger's poems have appeared in numerous publications in Canada, Britain and the U.S, including Descant, Fiddlehead, The London Review of Books, Queen's Quarterly, SouthWest Review, and The Times Literary Supplement; his first collection, Shadow Cabinet, appeared in 1996. His plays, Not Spain and Two Words for Snow among them, have been nominated for the Governor General's Award and the Chalmer's Prize.Torontonians were eager to share their favourite haunts and discoveries.

Richard Sanger's profile page

Praise for Way to Go

"Sanger wields the traditional tools of the poet—rhyme, metre and metaphor—brilliantly, and inhabits a range of speakers and situations . . . The collection is more a celebration of life than a lament."
—Toronto Star

"In Way to Go, Richard Sanger uses poetry to explore his passions, give gratitude and provide humourous observations about a life well-lived."
—CBC Books

"This is the work of a poet focusing on what he loves—conversations, jokes and asides—the world around him welcomed. It is personal, emotive but never maudlin, telling of a life well lived, and the sweetness of being alive."
—Evan Jones, PN Review

"Remarkable . . . We should all be so blessed (and brave) to leave such a farewell as Sanger has."
—Miramichi Reader

Praise for Richard Sanger

“The rueful, lucid, deliberately casual poems in Dark Woods can surprise you with their tenderness, but also with their prickly intelligence.”
—New York Times

“Splendidly-shaped and imagistically adroit. These are outstanding poems.”
—Globe and Mail

“In the poems' accentual, lightly metered stanzas we are made conscious of time passing, the body aging, and those quiet moments outside time ... understated and moving.”
—Malahat Review

"[Sanger's] poems are tender and often funny. Sometimes arch, sometimes bemused, he is a humane observer of daily life ... Throughout Dark Woods, his cleverness and verbal mischief enliven traditional forms."
—Canadian Literature

“Spectacular … Sophisticated metrical sense, teasing wit and limitless linguistic resources … The real thing: an original poet of rare talent.”
—Montreal Gazette

“Very accomplished … [Sanger] writes in a voice that is all his own, and its groundtone is a cleverly, progressively sophisticated one which is never merely adroit.”
—Journal of Canadian Poetry