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Books
YOU
In his latest volume, Hyland gives us poems that address the six usages of "you" - you the reader, the
generalized you ("you take the screwdriver and insert it into the wall socket"), "I" hiding behind "you"
("you know how you feel guilty when you do something bad?") and three others. In "Another Poem About You" he asks,
"Is this poem about you in the sense / everything you encounter is about you?" and answers, "It is about you and like you
will always be / finite and aching to be so much more." In another poem to the self, "This Then," he addresses the fact that
the antecedent behind the pronoun is dying and he is blunt in his assessment that, "Angels will not sing you to your rest." -
Becky Guthrie National Post
Bill Robertson, reviewing this volume for Saskatoon's StarPhoenix, writes: "Hyland's lively intellect - by turns compassionate,
irritated and amused - ranges across the ways in which we can speak about ourselves and others, not just in poems but in day to day
discourse. You know."
In these meditations on life - its meaning and beauty, its quiescence and transience - Hyland does not offer answers, but like any truly
clever human being, he does ask the right questions. You is his finest book, and his most important. - Shelley Leedahl Saskatchewan
Publishers Book Picks
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LOVE OF MIRRORS
Brought to poetry by the tragedies and beauty of the place he's from, Gary has crafted a body of work to be carried close to the heart through all the stages of a life. I can think of no one who has seen so clearly what is around him - people, land, city streets, stories in a magazine or the local paper - and transformed them with such purity
into the love and ache of poetry. From his home in Moose Jaw, he has 'on a lone wing.../soared into the mind of the
universe.' " - Lorna Crozier, from the Introduction
What is immediately impressive about Hyland's Love of Mirrors is
the breadth of his reading, learning, experience, and understanding, as well as his sheer exuberance and compassion for his subjects. And on
top of his relentless desire to push the boundaries of what he will write about is Hyland's zest for experimenting with form. Besides the
free verse, prairie anecdotal style, which he does very well, Hyland turns his hand to such forms as the sonnet, villanelle, pantoum, and
various types of multi-part and prose poems. Besides having an inquisitive mind that will make poems out of anything, Hyland is also an
exemplar of the poet who stares long at something the rest of us take for granted, then writes in a philosophical vein about what he's
seen. - Saskatoon Star Phoenix.
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 HANDS REACHING IN WATER
Here is a poet of many themes: loss, the mechanics of language, lives in spiritual crisis and the anatomy of boredom to name a few. What
makes Hyland's new work so exiting is the intensity and elegance he brings to his poetic delivery. Here is a spirited poet who doesn't shy
from the full spectrum of human possibility, from depression and despair to sensual and exalted pleasures.
With his fine sense of musicality, subtle breath and agile craftsmanship Gary Hyland has staked out his place among the finest poets in the
country and Hands Reaching in Water is perhaps his strongest work to date. His poems give us the sense of being in free fall, while
reminding us that there is deeper to go.
— Canadian Literature
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THE WORK OF SNOW
In this Hyland’s fifth collection of poems, readers will find a poetic map, emotional latitudes and longitudes that trace in precise
language a personal cartography.
The Work of Snow charts a geography of awareness and memories associated with places that both name us and sustain our
sense of belonging, places Hyland makes our common ground. For the manuscript of this book Hyland won the first John V. Hicks Memorial
Award.
“There’s more than a hint of joie de vivre in some of these poems, and wry humour as well.”
— Vern Clemence, Saskatoon StarPhoenix
“ This is reader-friendly poetry from the sure hand of a writer who has clear points to get across, but can be playful when he wishes.
Hyland uses language with precision and respect.”
— Vern Clemence, Saskatoon StarPhoenix
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WHITE CRANE SPREADS WINGS
“The deft formalism of this collection, combined with a lively eye for detail, makes White Crane Spreads Wings a pleasure.”
— Thomas Crofts, New Your poet and editor, Quill and Quire
“Gary Hyland’s complex and resonant collection forays into the dark, empty spaces, and splinters of light appear.”
— Shawna Lemay, NeWest Review
“ . . . loving , wondering, sometimes startling and breathtakingly philosophical address.”
— Bill Robertson, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix
“Hyland brings precision with language to the philosophy we can learn if we are awake and aware as we live our lives.”
— Bill Robertson, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix
“The title piece, a long poem, is harrowing, beautiful. . . . This poem and other poems in the collection are a
sensitive commentary on male violence.”
— Shawna Lemay, NeWest Review
“There are many fine and delicate poems in White Crane Spreads Wings, poems that ‘ note what isn’t
there,’ as the archaeologists investigating cave paintings do in ’Throats of Stone.’ ”
— Shawna Lemay, NeWest Review
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AFTER ATLANTIS
After Atlantis is terrific, very sophisticated poetry, some of the best I’ve read from Saskatchewan . . . from Ontario . . . from .
. . .”
— Sharon Thesen
Hyland’s a good poet with surprises to offer and once again I should add that his admirers are justified.
— Phil Hall, Books In Canada
“There lies at the heart of these poems a singularity of aching wisdom gained unintentionally through the
many disasters human beings involve themselves in by loving, or not loving enough.
— Bill Robertson, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix
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STREET OF DREAMS
“This is the poet as ordinary man chronicling the surprising wonder of ordinary life.
— Francis Zichy, Canadian Literature
“Hyland redeems the wonder of life precisely through the gaining of adult knowledge, a kind of modest prairie magic
realism.”
— Francis Zichy, Canadian Literature
“There is nothing false or contrived about the portraiture, the relating of comic incident.”
— Richard Stevenson, NeWest Review
“The book is refreshingly free of the poet’s stock-in-trade.”
— Richard Stevenson, NeWest Review
“The book is a compelling read.”
— Richard Stevenson, NeWest Review
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 JUST OFF MAIN (not available for sale)
“[Just Off Main] should be required reading for those who insist contemporary Canadian poetry is boring,
unreadable, esoteric.”
— Sheila Robertson, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix
“He avoids any romantic sentiment toward youth, avoids any nostalgia for the period, and succeeds in differentiating his
characters first subtly, and then more dramatically. The language is varied and lively. What emerges is a compassionate and many-faceted
portrait of a group and its milieu.“
— John McDermid, Books In Canada
“Hyland here reconstructs high school days with verve, charm and markedly realistic dialogue.”
— M. Travis Lane, The Fiddlehead
“[Just Off Main] is a memorial and a tribute to a time and a sub-culture now gone.”
— Doug Barbour, Quarry
“Many of the sixty-eight poems in this collection are poems to make the reader think. Hyland is unabashedly an
interpreter as well as a guide.”
— Prairie Journal Press, Calgary
“Giving the experience of adolescence a local habitation, Hyland has brought it to entertaining life.”
— Doug Barbour, Quarry
“Hyland can be very funny.”
— Ed Dyck, NeWest Review
The language is poetic and, despite its apparent colloquial looseness, crafted quite well.
— Michael Williamson, Canadian Book Review Annual
“The narrative strikes a universal chord while remaining faithful to the particularities of regional speech.”
Richard Stevenson, Cross Canada Writers Quarterly
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Books Co-edited by Gary Hyland
NUMBER ONE NORTHERN
Hyland teamed up with Bob Currie, Barbara Sapergia and Geoff Ursell, to produce Number One Northern, Saskatchewan’s first
comprehensive anthology of poetry. Published by Coteau Books in 1977, it covered the period from 1946 - 1976 and featured such people as
Lorna Crozier (writing as Lorna Uher), Andrew Suknaski, Mick Burrs, Glen Sorestad, Anne Szumigalski, and John V. Hicks.
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100% CRACKED WHEAT
Coteau Books issued 100% Cracked Wheat, “the exciting new breakfast cereal in book form” in 1983 with “all kernels
personally selected by” Bob Currie, Gary Hyland, Barbara Sapergia and Jim McLean from a Saskatchewan crop. A big seller, it went through several
printings and led to two sequels. The great illustrations are by Bill Johnson.
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A SUDDEN RADIANCE
Published in 1987 and edited by Hyland and Lorna Crozier, A Sudden Radiance demonstrated the great leaps Saskatchewan poetry had made
since Number One Northern ten years earlier. When that book came out, very few of the poets had had a single full-length book published. With
a criterion that writers had to have at least two books in print, thirty poets made the cut for this anthology.
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200% CRACKED WHEAT
200% Cracked Wheat (1992) was the first sequel to 100% Cracked Wheat. It was edited by Hyland, Barbara Sapergia and
Geoffrey Ursell and included writers from Manitoba and Alberta as well as Saskatchewan. Once again, the humorous illustrations are by the
talented Bill Johnson.
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