Flat side

For the past two decades, Monty Reid has quietly forged a body of unique, provocative poetry that stands among the best in the country. With Flat Side his imagination ranges from bluegrass music to the Burgess Shale, from curling to incinerated body parts - all shaped by a remarkable ability to make the ordinary luminous and to make the extraordinary burn. Moving elegies for departed friends jostle with hauntings by writerly ghosts and shelves full of old phones; bodies find comfort as they seep toward oblivion, and the young are welcomed into a renewed world. Through it all, Flat Side celebrates habit and persistence, and the lives made liveable because of them.