Anonymity Suite reaffirms David McFadden’s reputation as one of the more interesting and completely enjoyable voices in Canadian poetry. Like a Pre-Raphaelite painter, he is able to join various objects, experiences, voices, and moods in a single canvas. A poem may begin with someone studying Italian on the shore of Lake Como, or drinking kava with firewalkers in the South Seas, and end up with Kelly Gruber and the notorious Skydome heckler. Formally, this is very much a suite of poems, using images from nature, history, and culture to unite thematic strands dealing with sentimentality and anonymity, joy and grief, personality and universality, and a wealth of philosophical and ethical concerns.

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Praise for David McFadden:

“McFadden is a national treasure.”
–Brian Fawcett

“…the arcs of his imaginative flights illuminate whole arks for the soul, places you can enter, come in out of the rain, the storms, and claim as your own.”
–bp Nichol, The Brick Reader

“…invented miniature universes are juxtaposed with the realities of quotation life.…Just as a joint on a finger can articulate a gesture or a chord on a gypsy guitar, so McFadden’s poems ‘articulate’ a desire to link inner and outer worlds.”
–Karl Jirgens, Essays on Canadian Writing

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David W. McFadden has published over twenty books of poetry and prose, including Gypsy Guitar, nominated for a Governor General’s Award in 1987 and The Art of Darkness, nominated for a Governor General’s Award in 1984. He lives in Toronto.

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