Mid-way through our tour of the alternative scene in mags, we head off to Vancouver ... Geist touts itself as "The Canadian Magazine of Ideas and Culture," and editor-in-chief Stephen Osborne has transformed this magazine over the years from a rather dull West Coast literary review into a lively grab-bag of hot writing.

The grabber in the latest issue is a poem called "Why I Love Wayne Gretzky - an Erotic Fantasy." But there are many other entries that provide some genuine amusement and a lighthearted approach to CanCult that's missing from the mags we looked in columns earlier this week. This has the look and feel of a genuine literary review, but with some of the zing of a 'Zine. (If you're just browsing at the magazine rack, quickly check out the Geist Pronunciation Guide and the Correspondents List for a sample of the cleverness. And you'll likely spring the 5 clams to take it home.)

Geist's heavyweight highlight this month is a photo essay by Christopher Grabowski. Grabowski returned to his native Poland last year and was shocked to discover an impoverished community of scavengers in a coal-mining district south of Warsaw. "It's hard to believe that these photographs were taken on an afternoon in 1999," one of the captions reads, "and not in Stalingrad during World War II, or northern France during World War I." Grabowski's photo essay is a testament to the power of art in politics, far stronger than the thousands of words spilled into the overtly political pages of This Magazine (which I reviewed in Monday's column).

Geist's fiction, like most on the racks these days, is uneven from issue to issue. But the photography and non-fiction writing is far and above anything you'll find in the new Saturday Night. The back-page essay by Alberto Manguel is always worth the price of the magazine, and The Geist crossword puzzle beats any in the biz. For a preview, check out the Geist website

Tomorrow and Friday, we focus on to mags with a flair for visual arts.

Earlier:
Monday This Magazine
Tuesday Canadian Forum
Discussion: Do you know of any good Canadian literary mags?

Baroque at the NAC
The National Arts Centre in Ottawa is offering a festive evening of baroque greats tonight. Baroque Plus features Purcell's Chacony, Telemann's Suite for treble recorder and strings, Vivaldi's Violin Concerto RV347, Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #4 and Hayden's Symphony # 83. Peter Oundjian conducts this ambitious program with Michala Petri and Francis Colpron on recorders and Corey Cerovsek on violin.

National Arts Centre: Baroque Masterpieces

Get 'Em While You Can
Great news for Beckett fans. Sir John Neville is returning to Toronto's DuMaurier Theatre for five more performances in Krapp's Last Tape. Neville was here for the DuMaurier Festival but the tickets were scarcer than hen's teeth. If you missed this incredible memory play, get on the hopper and get them while you can. After all, how many chances will you get to see one of the grand old men of the English Theatre do Beckett? I just booked my tickets. Hope to see you there.

Soulpepper Theatre Company
Harbourfront Centre
(416) 973-4000

Drop me a line.