Book Review
Title: Wiser Pills
Author: Richard Stevenson
Publisher: Frontenac House
Released: 2008
Pages: 94
ISBN-13: 978-1-897181-20-1
$15.95 CDN  

Reviewed By: Taryn Hubbard (Vancouver Correspondent - Canada) 

Have you ever noticed that so much entertainment that is supposed to be a glimpse in to "real peoples" lives more often than not forgets about a little thing I like to call work? It's funny considering that a vast majority of people go to that special place they themselves call work for a few hours a day, a few days a week. It seems like a great omission that many books, movies, and TV shows often dance around the act of working. Maybe it's because entertainment seekers don't really want to think about work or work related activities when they are not at work. If that's so, while I don't blame them, I don't agree with them. Work is a part of our lives and it's interesting when a poet takes to interpreting it through their writing. In Richard Stevenson's Wiser Pills, work, among other topics and themes, is presented with the wit of a quick-tongue and the eye of someone who may have held a few mundane jobs in their time.

In Wiser Pills the reader is introduced to a variety of different characters, some from the past, some from the present and some that seem like they couldn't ever belong in either time period. My favourite is Bob the stock boy trainer in "Making an Angel for Bob." The speaker describes learning how he is learning to correctly master stocking "twenty little boxes of cherry Jello/ into the empty space between lemon and orange" from Bob. But unfortunately everything goes horribly wrong and Bob, with his red apron and thick glasses, knocks everything on to the floor. But he can't handle this imperfection and walks out of the store he has devoted so much of his life to. Stevenson is able to portray such a small event in a typical grocery store with such accuracy that the reader is struck with how small actions can mean the world to people. Stevenson's poems are those that go beyond sweet language and descriptions of landscapes and straight into the gritty daily lives of usually completely and utterly uninteresting people. He's more likely to describe the boy tossing pepperoni than the girl nursing the wounds of a lost love and we thank him for that. 

Richard Stevenson's Wiser Pills is one quarter of Frontenac House's Quartet 2008. Other titles include Sharron Proulx-Turner's she is reading her blanket with her hands, Sheri-D Wilson's Autopsy of a Turvy World, and Karen Hofmann's Water Strider. You can find reviews for all of these collections on the A 'n' E Vibe magazine.