The Social Life of String is Len Gasparini’s first book of poetry since his Collected Poems (2015). With characteristic vigor and honesty, he continues his investigations into the themes that have absorbed his work from the beginning—the struggle to give expression and meaning to the experience and understanding of our situation in the world. Gasparini meditates on youth and mortality and natural phenomena in poems that pulse and shimmer with imagination. He writes with the vitality of a man coming to terms with his own life. Anyone who reads “Halloween 1945,” “A Walk Through Lanspeary Park,” or “Dog Star” can only agree.

“I think of Len Gasparini as not so much a Canadian poet as a North American poet—the best of his generation: an outsider who tells the truth and nothing but.”
~ Seán Haldane, author of The Devil's Making

Len Gasparini is the author of numerous books and chapbooks of poetry, five short-story collections, two children’s books, and a one-act play. His work has been translated into French and Italian. His collection of short fiction When Does a Kiss Become a Bite? was published by Ekstasis Editions in 2009. He has lived in Toronto, Vancouver, New Orleans, and Washington State, and now resides in his hometown of Windsor, Ontario.