Genni Gunn

Mating in Captivity is a disturbing and powerful as a recurring dream. The poet conjures up memories of her romantic childhood inItaly -- a charismatic father often absent on secretive business, a loving mother who consoles her family with art -- and translates this relationship into her own experience of searching for genuine love. Like whooping cranes that must be taught how to mate when born in captivity, Genni Gunn offers us a vision of how to make love within the constraints of our arid society.

"Genni Gunn's Mating in Captivity is a long self-documentary poetic cycle comprised largely of prose poems, with occasional poems in verse. Realism and surrealism alternate as the speaker confesses to the distances she has created between herself and others, and between her conscious life and her inner self..." -- Canadian Literature, Spring 1996

"’Variations of Silence’ works especially well, with its combination of sharp images, sensual detail and emotion . . . Unified metaphor transforms this dense work into something resonant..." -- UBC Chronicle, Spring 1994