`Sibum's ability to combine the classical with pop culture is such that one needs to approach his text with an intellect that is as manoeuvrable as a classic sports car. ... This collection's ideal reader is the person whose life exceeds the recommended daily dose of decadence.'
'Like Pound, Sibum finds the world sometimes, and loses it at others, but the struggle, as Sibum looks back past Browning's Renaissance Italy and Pound's Provence to Rome itself, provides a valuable road map to the era of transition in which we live, among the ruins of what even Pound held as certain.'
'Montreal poet Norm Sibum's narrative poems are not everyone's cup of tea; they are, rather, bottles of wine that have been sitting in cellars, collecting the dust of meaning and growing in complexity and peril. His characters and situations are reminiscent of Robert Browning's, but instead of breathing air they exhale and inhale the exhaust of apocalyptic times. This can be seen in the intriguing vagueness of Norm Sibum's title, "Intimations of a Realm in Jeopardy," which, in turn, is re-enacted in each of the twelve long, lyrical, impressionistic poems in this latest collection.'
Montreal poet Norm Sibum's narrative poems are not everyone's cup of tea; they are, rather, bottles of wine that have been sitting in cellars, collecting the dust of meaning and growing in complexity and peril. His characters and situations are reminiscent of Robert Browning's, but instead of breathing air they exhale and inhale the exhaust of apocalyptic times. This can be seen in the intriguing vagueness of Norm Sibum's title, "Intimations of a Realm in Jeopardy," which, in turn, is re-enacted in each of the twelve long, lyrical, impressionistic poems in this latest collection.'
Montreal poet Norm Sibum's narrative poems are not everyone's cup of tea; they are, rather, bottles of wine that have been sitting in cellars, collecting the dust of meaning and growing in complexity and peril. His characters and situations are reminiscent of Robert Browning's, but instead of breathing air they exhale and inhale the exhaust of apocalyptic times. This can be seen in the intriguing vagueness of Norm Sibum's title, "Intimations of a Realm in Jeopardy", which, in turn, is re-enacted in each of the twelve long, lyrical, impressionistic poems in this latest collection.'--Michael Greenstein "Books in Canada "
Mostly, Sibum's triumphs are musical and based not so much on lines as on larger linguistic units: rhetorical repetitions, rhythmic variations, the ebb and flow of phrases that construct stanza-length cadences.'--Fraser Sutherland "Globe & Mail "
One good swipe with the sword at the feet and the skeleton of the poem falls down laughing. That is Sibum's signature. To get an idea of how it looks on the ground, imagine taking an anthology of Victorian, pre-Raphaelite and Modernist poetry, tearing all the pages out, scattering them around on the floor in a central library in Baghdad, letting the looters walk over them for a few days, and then reassembling them -- or what's left of them. The resulting combination of randomness and order would approximate what can be found between the covers of Sibum's bed.'--Harold Rhenisch "Vallum "
