This much-awaited collection of poems is the third poetry book written by the former Rainy River First Nations Chief.  In Beautiful Razor: love poems and other lies, Al Hunter explores the span between the sensual and the profane; the distance of which can sometimes be vast or on the razor’s edge.

“In this fluid collection we enter a galactic expanse where absence, distance and fire repel and attract love-bodies in a winged-whirl of magnetic mad flight. Loss, emptiness, space, desire, blood, memory; all devour themselves in the combustions of love without self. The you/other may be interchangeable, never static or frozen or attainable. In these sharp-beaked bird-words there is ‘no going back’—at best, bodies meet only ‘flame to flame,’ mutable and razor-like in feathery, impermanent forms. I find Hunter’s new work a rare melding of Blues, Kabbalah, and personal transcendence—a piercing, hard-won angelic love mantra. A blazing tour de force!”
—Juan Felipe Herrera, California Poet Laureate

“What lies here are the vagaries of a heart wounded, shattered and redeemed by love. Such generosity of spirit deserves acclaim. A bravura work.”
—Richard Wagamese, author of Indian Horse

Read a brief interview with Al Hunter about Beautiful Razor on All Lit Up.