Originally published in 1978, Stilt Jack is a series of powerful soliloquies on the complexity of love and the process of living. These are made immediate through Thompson's command of metaphor, his eye for the New Brunswick landscape, his intense, often elliptical way of transfiguring everyday things into shorthand symbols of reality. This remarkable sequence of poems is based on the ghazal, an ancient Persian poetic form which is discussed in Thompson's introduction to the original edition of the book.
