Good Wolf, Bad Wolf
Poetry Other languagesEditor: Poetrywala (Mumbai)
Year: 2020
ISBN: 978-81-943157-2-8
Pages: 72
Translated by Kristin Addis
Tack-sharp and with a wry humor, Cano’s speakers let us know the backstory of the good wolf and the bad wolf, the burdens of the bass player and the household that lives with a tiger: “Never mind how it got here.” Cano has nailed the natural law of excuses: “new excuses / will rise from the old. // You must always try to be better: / search and replace.” And, as the lyrical “Pianist on the Bridge” intimates, he also has personal knowledge of the major paradoxes: “only someone with good eyesight will hear the score."
Urbane, sometimes street-smart, knowing in the best way, these poems trace the record of a canny intelligence devoted to the mission of writing the twenty-first century in Europe’s oldest language.
A stunning collection of eminently rereadable poems.
Elizabeth Macklin
