“If Men Lived On Earth is the glorious fruit of one man’s articulate contemplations of the real—nature, mortality, everything that ignores theories.” George Elliott Clarke, Halifax Sunday Herald
Out of stock
After a fifteen-year hiatus, If Men Lived On Earth heralds the return of Atlantic Canada’s premier nature writer to his first love—poetry. Mining the image-rich mythologies and landscapes of his Maritime home, Thurston demonstrates a passionate understanding of both human society and the natural world with which it is intertwined. From the Bay of Fundy to the Galapagos Islands, Thurston takes us on a journey of discovery, charting our terrestrial location with an accuracy unmatched by any global positioning satellite. These poems embody an intimate understanding of what it is to be truly both of and on the earth.
[A] grand accomplishment…Thurston is a marvelous poet; his third book is not only his best but also one of the best to be published in, well, 15 years.
—George Elliot Clarke, The Chronicle Herald
I love Thurston’s drive to possess physical knowledge, and I love the corporeal grasp of his language (language that itself seems mined from the damp, coarse-grained weft of Maritime scrubland and seascape)…something is amiss when a poet as interesting as Thurston can missile across our literary scene for 15 years and not trigger any of the warning systems set up to alert us to incoming talent.
—Carmine Starnino, The Montreal Gazette
