I am a Canadian who has lived in Iowa City for many years. When I inherited a packet of unpublished poetry by fellow expat P. M. Samson (who died at 84 in 2021), given carte blanche to do with it as I pleased, I was stunned by the sheer amount of material and so felt keenly the responsibility placed upon my shoulders.
Along came K.Lipschutz, with whom I have worked remotely for years, who needed to get out of San Francisco (something “domestic,” he cryptically alluded) and “hide out somewhere” for a month. Iowa City turned out to be that place, in the sweltering summer.
We spent days and nights and nights and days looking for the crux of the biscuit, as it were, winnowing over 500 manuscript pages down to a potent autobiographical sheaf of Samson’s work. A posthumous treasure trove.
K. then enlisted noted critic Barnard Swallow to critique each poem and – Bob’s your uncle – the result was AN ACCELERATION & A CALM, which marries Swallow’s pith and pluck with Samson’s eye-opening, stealth lyrical confessions. And is seeing the light of day thanks to above/ground press.
Beyond this brief background, we decided to step out of the way and let Samson and Swallow speak for themselves. Following are salient excerpts selected by K.
-Jon Cone, Iowa City, January 18, 2026
EXCERPTS FROM AN ACCELERATION & CALM
Fire
drill, fire plug, fire escape.
Where’d you put the dog?
My truck,
not your truck.
Barking in the fog.
(from KINDERGARTEN MEMOIR)
A child of the North plays pick-up sticks with the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of his inception.
(from the COMMENTARY)
* * * * *
It
was Leibniz
who
prepared me
for
not understanding
Wittgenstein.
(from DRESS FOR THE JOB YOU WERE JUST FIRED FROM)
. . . burrows overdressed into the urban wilderness of the inner life, the attempt to secure succor and shelter in the classroom while others are getting on with it at refrigerator repair school, graduation from which actually comes with the prospect of employment.
(from the COMMENTARY)
* * * * *
Irving
Layton had a sneezing fit, rubbed his temples, cleared his throat.
Margaret
Atwood answered questions with thought and care.
Marshall
McLuhan did not sport a badge.
Alice
Munro proved something of a flirt.
(from O CANADA)
The pantheon of Gargantua’s “Neighbor to the North” is, put simply, impressive. Munro trailblazed a path to the Nobel. Can Atwood be far behind?
(from the COMMENTARY)
* * * * *
No
teeth no hair face heavily pocked
Dead
at 42 from pancreatic sepsis:
the
fate that launched a thousand doctoral theses
Make that a thousand and one
(from PORTRAIT OF AN 18TH CENTURY CONSUMPTIVE)
You could find individual volumes back in the day. I never witnessed the full complement of all 17 on a single shelf, but volume 9 is on the bookshelf behind me.
(from the COMMENTARY)
* * * * *
I made a
soup.
It was
awful, inedible.
When I
poured it down
the sink,
the sink complained.
(from FEBRUARY MARITAL REPORT)
The simplicity of the need for something warming breaks one’s heart. But whose?
(from the COMMENTARY)
K.Lipschutz and Jon Cone have never met. In addition to shepherding this sheaf into print, they have produced the manuscript Conversations about Cats and the full-length play Beckett and Borges Work It On Out. Cone’s works include New Year Begun: Selected Poems (2022), Liminal: Shadow Agent, pts 1 & 2 (2021), and Family Portrait with Two Dogs Bleeding (2009). K.Lipschutz’s works include This Drawn & Quartered Moon (Anvil Press, Vancouver, BC, 2013), The Erection of Scaffolding for the Re-Painting of Heaven by the Lowest Bidder (1985, o.p.), and Premeditations (2019).
