The Trick of Staying and LeavingThe Trick of Staying and Leaving

From Governor General's Award-winning poet David Zieroth comes a new collection about history, connections and travels in Europe. Impromptu English lessons in a North Vancouver coffee shop, and subsequent trips to Bratislava, bring the speaker in these poems a warmer appreciation of friends and family as well as a wider vision of the interplay of folklore and culture, and of the human-made and natural world. These poems speak of affections that cross borders-- geographical, historical and interpersonal--and that show us ways to love each other. Here are villages, people and landscapes in Slovakia, a post-Communist country with a complicated past and present, where Zieroth seeks what unites us across barriers. He brings this deeper sense of connection home with him, even when a part of his new sense of self and others lingers along the Danube.