Understander - Softcover

Ironic distance. For Nicholas Lea born a year or two before the first of the millennial generation - irony is a dominating, sometimes paralyzing concern. Lea's first book obsessively ruminates on the tendency of his peers to hide behind hipster poses. And like the very best poets, Lea echoes content in form, breaking up even the hint of an affirmation with questions, equivocations, and slant-rhymes of the truth. Taking the piss is a heady business, but Lea is playful rather than didactic, and he loads his work with gorgeously consonant lines ("somewhere / where dummies wonder, rummage / for rumoured streams") and surprising humour. Marcus McCann, The Globe and Mail book blogHis skill with language is noteworthy and he is at his best when writing barriers of words that merely hem in an idea, leaving you to bounce around inside its field of effect to no particular purpose []. Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston, The Ottawa X-Press"

Ironic distance. For Nicholas Lea - born a year or two before the first of the millennial generation - irony is a dominating, sometimes paralyzing concern. Lea's first book obsessively ruminates on the tendency of his peers to hide behind hipster poses. And like the very best poets, Lea echoes content in form, breaking up even the hint of an affirmation with questions, equivocations, and slant-rhymes of the truth. Taking the piss is a heady business, but Lea is playful rather than didactic, and he loads his work with gorgeously consonant lines ("somewhere / where dummies wonder, rummage / for rumoured streams") and surprising humour. Marcus McCann, The Globe and Mail book blogHis skill with language is noteworthy and he is at his best when writing barriers of words that merely hem in an idea, leaving you to bounce around inside its field of effect to no particular purpose [...]. Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston, The Ottawa X-Press

The second trade collection by Ottawa poet N.W. Lea, Understander continues his investigations of langugage, discourse, and irony through the short lyric.