“The Simon Poems, written between 1976 and 1980, is a series of narratives in which a separated father speaks to his pre-school son. . . .  Bell, with deadpan concision, includes a wrenching 13-page account of the 1976 Port Moody kidnapping of Abby Drover by family friend Donald Alexander Hay . . . .  This deeply disturbing poem is beyond cleverness and obliqueness.  It is trying to be useful.  It expresses one parent’s awareness of the fragility of our freedoms; it is chillingly instructive . . . .  It is an unedited news report from the trenches of evil.  It doesn’t edit out the people leaping from the burning buildings.  And it doesn’t direct us as to how we must respond to the reporting . . . .”

BC Bookworld

Review