How to Avoid Huge Ships

Both “grave and brave, serious and hilarious”—new poems from a Governor General’s Award–winning poet. How to Avoid Huge Ships, Julie Bruck’s fourth collection of poetry, is a book of arguments and spells against the ambushes of time. Parents grow down, children up, and it’s from the uncomfortable in-between that these poems peer into what Philip Larkin describes as “the long slide.” But what if we haven’t reached the end of the infinite adolescence we thought we’d been promised? We’re still here in this world of flying ottomans, alongside a middle-schooler named Dow Jones, and the prehistoric miracle of a blue heron’s foot. We may be afraid, but we’re still amused—sometimes, even awed. Looking squarely at the way things are, glossing over none of the absurdities and injustices of contemporary life, Julie Bruck pays ardent attention to it all. The touch is light, even when the subject is heavy. One has a steady sense of being trusted to catch and feel the intangible muchness housed in these deceptively direct poems.