<div><p><i>If you tore off the tops of canola <br>yellow canola flowers would you<br>jump in a tub of canola margarine<br>just to make the best of despair?</i></p><p>Implored by concerned readers to be classy’ and real’ for once, David McGimpsey has composed a sequence of canonical note­books on all things poetic’ and poetical.’ Birds! Flowers! History! Sad leaders! The word aubade’! They’re all here, in a serial, State Fairbound collection of lyrics set in the working­class belvedere of <i>Asbestos Heights.</i></p><p>Among the refreshing lemon­lime sodas of the world and the rousing lyrics to Bootylicious,’<i>Asbestos Heights</i> amps up McGimpsey’s trademark sideswiping of formal rhetoric and prosody with pop savoir faire to ?nd his boldest collection. Imagine Petrarch in a Tweet war about where to buy a good pair of dad jeans. Imagine Yeats but with a lot fewer swans. Imagine a poet who was told long ago that nothing good ever comes out of a place like Asbestos Heights.</p><p>'David McGimpsey is unfuckwithable, poetry-wise, and I'll stand on John Ashbery's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.' Michael Robbins</p><p><b>David McGimpsey</b> is the author of several books of poetry and short fiction. His poetry has been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award and the A.M. Klein Prize. He is also a musician, a fiction editor for<i>Joyland</i>, and his travel writing is a regular feature of <i>enRoute</i> magazine. He lives in Montréal, where he teaches creative writing and literature at Concordia University.</p><br></div>