Danforth Review
by Elysia Bryan
Blissful Times is the Groundhog Day of poetry volumes. It is in fact the same poem 63 times, translated into different forms. The initial poem is taken from Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days and reworked into video, dialogue, and reverse acrostic, among many others.One of the poems, ‘Anglo Saxon Guidebook’ is a found piece from the newly, sort of defunct, Oxford Canadian Dictionary. You get the sense through the original, that Blissful Times is about two people who can no longer be as they were, this is made all the more tragic after countless pages of reiteration.
Alland’s innovation probably comes from her background as a multimedia artist, poet, and publisher. Not one to be tied down to one title, it is no surprise that her work cannot be tied down to just one form.