SOURCE: "Sleight of Tongue," in Canadian Literature, No. 106, Fall, 1985, pp. 112-15.

In the following excerpt, Sowton discusses intertextual aspects and influences of False Shuffles.

One very fine effect of the intertextualities at play in False Shuffles (among cards/book of tricks/Urquhart's poems) is the witty problematization of a three-generation history: grandmother, mother, narrating daughter. The interleaved lexicon—of false shuffle: transparent swizzle stick: magician: sleight: tricks—genially but persistently interrogates our shaky everyday equilibriums between narration and what is narrated, between verbal signs and their purported herstorical referents. Consider this gem from [Blackstone's Tricks Anyone Can Do] which Urquhart deals in just before the section on "False Shuffles": "This is a real false shuffle. It will require considerable practice to render it deceptive"; in their earlier site these remarks are straight; here, in their later site, they undergo a deep intertextual seachange and glow with gorgeous multiple...