Some Dance - Paperback

by Ricardo Sternberg (Author)

"To be able to pry apart: / this is object, this is subject / even though (confusion begins) / he can be both. Difficult then / to stand at the mirror and reflect: / I am this. This is what I am."

Some Dance is a meditation on stories, the intersection of stories, of things made up, of things imagined, and of things lived - perhaps. Tricks played by memory, scrambling events from life with fiction, are a constant.

Ricardo Sternberg seeks a fixed point from which to understand the world, but finds no resolution save for another poem. Everything is in flux, unstable, and leads to unexpected places: a commune in the 1960s, a drunken doctor who deals in contraband, a palm reader, a classroom visited by Jesus, a dance in a darkened kitchen.

A lively collection that turns towards the commonplace, classical, and strange, Some Dance masterfully balances serious thought, big ideas, and good humour through surprising, elegant, and colloquial expressions.

Author Biography

Ricardo Sternberg was born in Brazil and has lived in Toronto where he has taught Brazilian literature since 1979.