God Telling A Joke by Dave Margoshes

God Telling a Joke and Other Stories by Dave Margoshes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Once I started reading this splendid new collection of stories I could not put it down, one story led seamlessly and effortlessly into the next. Notwithstanding his 16 books of short fiction, novels, non-fiction and poetry and his many awards and citations, Dave Margoshes remains a relative unknown, which is perplexing for such a fine writer who has been producing consistently good writing for decades. This new collection is as good as anything he's ever written, graceful, moving, witty, polished stories filled with a diverse range of authentic memorable characters. Even better is the humour that runs through the book - which might be Dave's funniest - but I don't mean Jerry Seinfeld funny, I mean a rich resonant earned humour that is the product of a seasoned pro. This is a writer who's in it for the long haul, who understands that clever does not mean good, and that the journey is greater than the destination.


View all my reviews

A New Year Poem by Dave Margoshes

A New Year poem from Dave Margoshes in my inbox is becoming an annual event. It's a way to start the year for which I'm grateful.

DEFINITELY NOT

“We are not alone!” So the tabloids say,
just below the latest on the Mayans,
the bleak countdown. Not alone,
without indication of God or just some gods
or curious travelers from far abroad.
Well, yes, there are stars, supernovas,
black holes. Clouds cumulous
and cirrus, gamma rays, ozone holes,
the rank odour of modernity and progress.
All around us, evidence of intelligence
and stupidity, the betting not yet settled.
Sunrise, sunset and the heart-piercing cry
of a loon, the hungry wail of a cat in an alley,
a speeding siren, more heartbreak.
And back to those stars, blinking
down with neither passion nor compassion,
nor comprehension. No, we are not alone.

- Dave Margoshes, copyright 2012

A New Year poem

A pleasant surprise to receive this poem in my email inbox on New Year's day from the Saskatchewan Book Award winning poet Dave Margoshes. I think it properly captures the held-breath sobriety of the day; our aims, the goals we set for the New Year, and the feelings of hopefulness mixed with uncertainty at that moment when the midnight clock's hand is about to strike.

A stopped clock

The spiraling ball hovers in the plangent air,

a bullet misdirected. It could go either way,

straight to its true mark, or as far wide

as all the error we are capable of, all

the weight of our hopes skewing its course.

Win or lose is beyond the point, each winner

harbouring a loss within, each loser right

at least once. Tomorrow country, they call it

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,

all our tomorrows spiraling just out of reach,

a ball sinking at last to a confounding certainty.

- Dave Margoshes, copyright 2010

Wishing us all brighter tomorrows

Underappreciated Margoshes

Regina-based writer Dave Margoshes has won two Saskatchewan Book Awards for his short fiction collection Bix's Trumpet and other stories (NeWest Press.) I was happy to hear it. I haven't read this particular volume but if it's anything like his earlier work it's worth reading. As much as one senses that this recognition comes as a nod and a smile for Dave's ability to hang in there (he's been publishing fine poetry and fiction since the mid-eighties) and not really for a best book, it's well deserved. I've always thought Margoshes an underappreciated writer. He's been consistently producing fine fiction and poetry for two decades. I had the pleasure of spending some time with Dave back in the late eighties when he dropped in to the Jewish Public Library in Montreal for a Canada Council sponsored reading. We toured the JPL's collections, which include one of the largest publicly accessible collections of Yiddish books in the world. At which point Dave told me that his grandfather was once the editor of Der Tog (a New York Yiddish daily with a massive circulation in the early part of the 20th century) and he wondered if the library might have a copy of his memoir published in Yiddish in the 1920s. It was quickly found in the stacks. I still have an image of Dave holding the dark, worn volume between his palms, gently flipping through the brittle, off-colour pages, stunned speechless. I suppose some of the reasons Dave's been flying below the radar lo these many years is that he has the misfortune of 1. publishing exclusively with the small presses, 2. writing out of the regions (as opposed to Toronto) and 3. being one of that generation of writers who came into their voices in the post-literate 1980s.