Kenward Elmslie's way with words cuts a singular swath through a polymath variety of forms. This collection of poems and ephemera treats language sometimes as paint to be thrown on canvas, sometimes as a series of fascinatingly odd concrete objects and throughout, Elmslie takes full advantage of the word's status as an infinite well of signification. Elmslie's work navigates between the comic and the serious, between the personal and the political, and between the oblique and the straightforward so deftly that the reader is left breathless. Nite Soil is yet another great book by one of today's leading radical poets.
