Dreaming Backwards: The Selected Poetry Of Eli Mandel
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
To read Eli Mandel is to be pulled into a current that flows simultaneously forward and back — toward myth, memory, and the contested landscapes of the Canadian prairies. Dreaming Backwards gathers the most essential work from one of Canada's most intellectually rigorous and emotionally searching poets, a writer who transformed personal history, Jewish identity, and the vast open spaces of Saskatchewan into a singular poetic vision. Spanning decades of creative output, this selected collection presents Mandel's extraordinary range: from tightly wound, formally precise early verse to the more fragmented, meditative lyrics of his mature work, each poem charged with a restless questioning of time and selfhood. Mandel occupies a unique and irreplaceable position in the Canadian literary tradition, bridging the mythopoeic ambitions of the mid-twentieth century with a postmodern awareness of language's limits and possibilities. His work draws on the Talmudic, the surreal, and the deeply personal, weaving together strands that resist easy resolution — and it is precisely this unresolved tension that gives the poetry its enduring power. Dreaming Backwards is not merely a retrospective; it is an invitation to follow a restless mind back through its own origins, and to ask, alongside Mandel, what it means to belong to a place, a people, and a moment in time.
Author: Eli Mandel
Format: Paperback
Published: 1981, Spectrum Poetry Series
Genre: Poetry
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
To read Eli Mandel is to be pulled into a current that flows simultaneously forward and back — toward myth, memory, and the contested landscapes of the Canadian prairies. Dreaming Backwards gathers the most essential work from one of Canada's most intellectually rigorous and emotionally searching poets, a writer who transformed personal history, Jewish identity, and the vast open spaces of Saskatchewan into a singular poetic vision. Spanning decades of creative output, this selected collection presents Mandel's extraordinary range: from tightly wound, formally precise early verse to the more fragmented, meditative lyrics of his mature work, each poem charged with a restless questioning of time and selfhood. Mandel occupies a unique and irreplaceable position in the Canadian literary tradition, bridging the mythopoeic ambitions of the mid-twentieth century with a postmodern awareness of language's limits and possibilities. His work draws on the Talmudic, the surreal, and the deeply personal, weaving together strands that resist easy resolution — and it is precisely this unresolved tension that gives the poetry its enduring power. Dreaming Backwards is not merely a retrospective; it is an invitation to follow a restless mind back through its own origins, and to ask, alongside Mandel, what it means to belong to a place, a people, and a moment in time.