Touch Anywhere to Begin

In Touch Anywhere To Begin, Jim Nason’s fifth collection of poetry, poems are set in a physical world where full-throttle desire commingles with love, loss and grief. Although death is ever present ? death of a father, death of a friend ? there is a life-affirming/mystical quality at the core of this book. Nason reminds us that the city is both real and surreal, a place of creatures and buildings, imagination and deep emotions. He celebrates demolition as enthusiastically as construction. The death of a child is no more or less significant than an elderly woman’s sickly body or a young man’s seductive powers. Finalist for the 2015 CBC poetry prize, the long poem ?City With Animals, ? which celebrates one billion transformations in the body per second, is a tribute to Max Ernst.