Canadian poet Steve McOrmond is an expert at sifting through the detritus of the modern world and separating the genuine from the phony, as in “Night of the Sitcoms,” where the “bread is sprayed with / lacquer, there’s no plumbing / under the sink, the stairs / dead-end in air.”
– David Starkey, Santa Barbara Independent
“McOrmond’s eye is on our collective fate, and in ‘We: Current Exhibition’ the image of Wile E. Coyote plunging off a cliff ‘hind legs pinwheeling /in an immense Technicolor/emptiness’ serves as a cautionary symbol of where our world may be headed. But elsewhere McOrmond hints at a hopeful view, using snowflakes (with their infinite patterns) as a metaphor for humankind’s potential to change its course.”
– Barb Carey, Toronto Star
"McOrmond excels at weaving patterns of imagery and echoes, something not every poet can achieve so beautifully throughout a collection. He does. The ‘We’ poems, for instance, stagger themselves throughout the collection, acting as markers that point to the overall theme of the book…. The effect of these linked poems is that the reader feels drawn into the work, almost cared for, and able to follow the thread binding everything, even as McOrmond’s collection works away at documenting the fragmented and broken nature of a too-materialistic culture. In doing this, the poet creates a centre, an anchor, a sense of hope and unity."
– Kim Fahner, The Fiddlehead
“Like the snowflakes magnified on the book’s cover, a reference to McOrmond's poem ‘The Photographer of Snowflakes’, these poems hold seemingly mundane moments up to the light to show how they are anything but familiar…. Notable poems in the volume are many. I am partial to the poem ‘I Want To Love More’ which really encapsulates how the poet McOrmond pushes back against run-amok corporate capitalism and its anaesthetizing effects on people.”
– Chris Banks, Table Music
“When someone now asks me what my favourite book of poetry is I am going to have to say The Good News About Armageddon.... This is a must read for everyone, not just poetry fans.... The Good News About Armageddon is definitely one of the top books of 2010.”
“As the title implies, these are poems that tackle contemporary crises, but with a sort of matter-of-factness that is quite powerful and, impressively, never trite. The collection is topical and yet not solipsistic or a warning or offering answers. Cynical, though not without comedy....Its finer moments are nothing less than potent: the language and how it is delivered, the imagery, the humour as a vessel to best carry substance.”
– Chad Pelley, Salty Ink
“Reassuringly, the vulgar, witty snark of tweets and Facebook status updates is underlined by a real melancholy, a real search on McOrmond's part for what, exactly, we're all meant to do now.”
– Ariel Gordon, Winnipeg Free Press
“We’ve been talking about end times for so long – probably since the beginning of time – it’s lost its point. PEI native and Toronto-based poet Steve McOrmond’s titular work re-sharpens it.”
– Sean Flinn, The Coast
“End times call for good poetry. And here's some now: Steve McOrmond's third collection, The Good News About Armageddon, arrives as an antidote to the hyperbole and hysteria that characterize the early-21st Century.”
– Sean Flinn, The Telegraph-Journal
“[McOrmond] sees the predicaments we have placed ourselves in. He acknowledges and respects the challenges of life in the face of an indistinct Armageddon. He explores our weaknesses and strengths with wit and, ultimately, wisdom. The Good News About Armageddon is a substantive and nuanced collection by a skilled poet.”
– Lorne Daniel, Northern Poetry Review
“McOrmond’s book works like this generation’s Howl, which needed to be written through humour, because that’s the only way we communicate now. When the apocalypse comes, it will be a trending topic on Twitter and everyone will have their jokes ready.”
– Daniel Zomparelli, Poetry Is Dead Magazine
“The title-piece is a compelling poetic sequence taking up around a third of the present volume, a set of terse yet loose-limbed assemblages of mordant reflections, lyrical fragments, quips, quotations and found texts held in place by a repeated form comprising 4-8 unrhymed couplets and a recognisably likeable narrative-voice, as ruefully self-facetious as Berryman and as playfully tangent-prone as Ashbery, not so much world-weary as world-exhausted.”
– Oliver Dixon, Eyewear
“Primer on the Hereafter contains more than a few remarkable poems that strike a macabre or visceral note with an electrifying truth, and so here I would say is a poet to watch.”
“In this new collection, McOrmond takes stock with many of the traditional great literary themes: history, nature, mortality, temporality, and individual vs. collective identity. His sweep is great, his ambition on display aplenty.”
– Jason Rotstein, Vallum
“This is strong work by a clearly dedicated poet, and a first collection from a voice to watch.”
"…there's both small-town genuineness and urban polish in his work…"
– Barbara Carey, The Toronto Star