wild horses

rob mclennan's indefatigable literary passion and acumen can be seen in his countless works of poetry, fiction, reviews, essays--in print and online--as well as his work as publisher and literary impresario. rob lives in Ottawa.

"Arguably his generation's finest practitioner, mclennan's myriad strengths predominantly lie in his life-long quest to stay afloat in language's slippery straits, its treacherous depths, its perilously heady spindrifts where polyphony's the aim and compression's the game. New readers step into the flux, the flow, the undertow of a mclennan 'poem' in much the same way landlubbers brave an ocean's waves on a wing and a prayer: Half the challenge involves conquering each cresting onslaught, the other half resides in coming safe home to common ground (buttressed by the notion the captain's skill knows no bounds)." Judith Fitzgerald, The Globe and Mail, May 12, 2010

• Introduction -- A Prairie Accent; The Measure of a River; Oklahoma -- Meditations on Home & Homelessness; Hanley, Saskatchewan; "Their Own Emancipators" -- The Agrarian Movement in Alberta; Statues of Liberty -- The Political Tradition of the Producer; Populists, Patriots & Pariahs; We Are All Treaty People -- History, Reconciliation, & the "Settler Problem"; What is the Farm Crisis? -- Seven Short Commentaries; Two Albertas -- Rural & Urban Trajectories; A University at Home in the Rural; Notes; Index.