Man in Love [Paperback]

Outram is never at any time anyone less than a poet armed and a poet prepared to prophesy. -- Peter Sanger, The New Quarterly

That the author is intoxicated by the `universe of words,' that he sees this universe as endlessly fascinating and `inexhaustibly ramified,' and that he believes that his task is to delineate the dazzling complexity of this universe with as much clarity as possible is evident in every entry in this attractive volume. -- Canadian Book Review Annual

With Man in Love, we find Outram writing at his most mature, uncovering hidden resources in language. -- Letters in Canada

`Like Keats, Outram finds that the contemplation of death leads to love and life.' -- University of Toronto Quarterly

Man in Love stems from the certainty that man is in love. Love at once utterly simple, inexhaustibly ramified, and personal. That we are possessed of a capacity, possibly mortal, to blind ourselves and others to this burden and context is evident enough. But it may be that with these poems and wood engravings, word and image as text and emblem conjoin in witness, however partial, to this our self-evident truth.

Outram was born in Canada in 1930. He was a graduate of the University of Toronto (English and Philosophy), and worked for many years at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a stagehand crew leader. He wrote more than twenty books, four of these published by the Porcupine's Quill (Man in Love [1985], Hiram and Jenny [1988], Mogul Recollected [1993], and Dove Legend [2001]). He won the City of Toronto Book Award in 1999 for his collection Benedict Abroad (St Thomas Poetry Series). His poetry is the subject of a significant work of literary criticism, Through Darkling Air: The Poetry of Richard Outram, by Peter Sanger (Gaspereau Press, 2010).

Richard Outram died in 2005.