 The Pissing Women of LaFontaine
Award-winning poet Roger Bell brings us a whimsical narrative set in the hamlet of Lafontaine, Ontario.
The work grew out of a commonplace notion that in order to keep animals out of the gardens, the best method was to spread human hair or resort to the "deployment" of human urine around the perimeter.
This led to a series of poems that Bell shared with his audiences at his readings. When listeners discovered he was writing these poems, people came forward to tell him more "pissing" stories. Bell has turned these into a delightfully funny book.
Poetry, $18.95
ISBN 0-88753-408-2
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 When The Devil Calls
One of the truly outstanding books of poetry to be published in many years in this country.
John Wing on the Mike Bullard Show
When Roger Bell's first book of poetry, Real Lives, came out, it was praised for its small town flavour in that it depicted what life is like at a grass roots level.
Bell returns to that subject, but broadens it to include the neighbourhoods, the countryside, and the territories of small towns on both sides of the border.
0-88753-336-1
$17.95
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Real Lives
Roger Bell writes about growing up in a small Ontario town, and what it was like turning 18 while watching hockey great Bobby Orr, also 18, play at Maple Leaf Gardens. Bell's lyrical style, reminiscent of the Canadian poet Al Purdy, maintains a crafty balance of both the serious and the humorous.
0-88753-305-1
$15.95
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 Larger Than Life
Celebrity! It's "when we clamber upwards in men's eyes/up on the lacquered rungs of praise" according to Roger Nash.
This anthology, edited by Roger Bell, explores celebrity through the eyes of writers and poets.
0-88753-363-9
$19.95
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By the Hockey Hall of Fame I sat down and wept
Foolish in a man my age, perhaps,
but Beehive Corn Syrup
Tim Horton brushcut and
Jacques Plante diving and
cards and coins and pennants
and echoes in my chest turned on some ache
so I sat down on the bench of sighs
and wept for narrow beds shared with brothers
pillowed borders down the middle and
elbows in the night if you strayed over
and I wept for simple Saturdays
in theatres with matinees and
pink elephant popcorn
cliffhangers and shouting
and I wept for Roy Rogers tin six-shooters
low on my hips and how fast I was
and for drawers and drawers of comic books read
and reread under a rain-pelted roof
and I wept for balloon tires
riding through the leaves of fall
long after dark when bonfires filled the air
and mothers called
and green apple fights
and my first cat dying
and Norma Lynn Gallagher on the back of my tricycle
with the handlebar streamers painting the day
and I wept for Roy's Confectionary
three candies for a cent and the half-dollar sack
Robert McKay and I bought, heavy as pirate gold
and ate in the dark of Friday films
under the prowling nose of Mrs. Lesperance
and Ella Bolander's coffee cake still warm and sugar brown
and Mackenzies' milkshakes
served up cold and threescoop thick
by summer girls with hair in braids
and I wept for the night
I touched Rocket Richard
and found out he was only flesh
and I wept and wept for the way breath seems
on the sharp frozen river of December dawn
to just slip away, transparent, like all those years
so easily
and is gone
from Losers First
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