Too Bad: Sketches Toward A Self-Portrait

A prodigious body of innovative writing behind him, Robert Kroetsch turns to a starker lyrical mode in Too Bad. Oscillating between the many moods of a human heart that has lived through so much — from whimsy and scorn through desire, longing, lust, love, and serenity — these sketches mark a candid walk through the tortuous corridors of the poet’s remembering, and exemplify the rehearsed dictum of an old teacher: “Every enduring poem was written today.”

Robert Kroetsch states in his introduction, “This book is not an autobiography. It is a gesture toward a self-portrait, which I take to be quite a different kettle of fish.”