Angular Unconformity, Collected Poems 1970-2014 - Don McKay (Icehouse Poetry/Goose Lane Editions)

Today's book of poetry:

Angular Unconformity, Collected Poems 1970-2014.  Don McKay.  Icehouse Poetry/Goose Lane Editions.  Fredericton, New Brunswick.  2014.

Angular Unconformity means a particular gap between two known strata of rock in a geological formation, at least that's what Milo, our head tech, came back with.  It is the space that occurs between what we know for certain and what we want to believe is true.

Today's book of poetry's personal adventure with the excellent poetry of Don McKay began over thirty years ago in a class on the "long-poem" taught by that Black Mountain/Tish poet Robert Hogg. It was in that class where I first read McKay's Long Sault.

Far more importantly, Robert Hogg's class on the long-poem was where I met the joy of my life, my wife, K.

It doesn't stop there.

It was only a few short years ago that K and I were invited to an elaborate garden party/dinner/BBQ for an old friend who now lives in Newfoundland and Labrador.  Turns out she brought Don McKay with her and I got a chance to meet him.  More accurately, I wouldn't leave him alone until he talked to me.

Since that time I have been lucky enough to share a couple of more meals with the esteemed Mr. McKay courtesy of my Scrabble friend Nurse Rachet.  Don, one of the more humble people on the planet pretends that he is amused by me and I follow him around like a I'm a puppy and he has bacon in his pocket.

We're not exactly buddies but he certainly is a friend.  Long before I met him I wrote my undergraduate paper for the long-poem class on his Long Sault and I have admired his poetry ever since.  In person he is nicer than you can imagine.

From Long Sault

A Feeling Of If, A Feeling Of But, A Field Of Fire Hydrants

For a time, we were

amazement--

     they got

     this house-moving machine with tires so big I can

     show you the picture my brother standing up

     inside the hub he is ten years old that can move

     a house so gentle they just leave the pictures on the walls--

unfettered, soaring in suspension of feeling.

The rhetoric was

a shepherd to us (though later

we might have said superintendent without sensing

any change) the way

we could be inside its shell but never

really know which history

was being made, and never asking

whose.

Here was a map coming out in dotted lines

to be filled in with the right answer.

Here was a rapids in the noose.

Here was a field of fire hydrants waiting for a town.

Here was a marina in the field of fire hydrants

waiting for the water to arrive

to whisper sibilant up to the waiting wharf.

The river was about to swell.

It was doing the Charles Atlas course, would be

the servile giant.

Its language was unlocked: Power & Prosperity, Development & Growth.

Look at that bicep

                              (or that

snake-bit arm we would never completely think,

or think only as far as

the feeling of if

the feeling of but, never to the fettering flag-

planting noun, as though

the making of the feeling and

the making of the dam were cognate

pregnancies

                    (or carbuncles, as we

couldn't have said until we'd seen, a feeling

of if, a feeling of but, a feeling of smelling,

even when we named our humdrum town

'City of Power and Progress,' smelling

its industries still smoking at both ends like cigars.

...

McKay's Birding, or desire came out in 1983 and hit Today's book of poetry right on the chin, we were smitten.  Tight, allegorical magic/music.

McKay has built an unassailable reputation in Canada for his poetry, wait until you read his bio, but Today's book of poetry would be remiss if we didn't tell you all how often Don's name shows up in the back of other books of poetry, when they are giving thanks.  Don's kind poetry hand has supported and encouraged an army of younger Canadian poets.

From Birding, or desire

L'Hirondelle

     To be idiomatic in a vacuum

     it is a shining thing!

Would I pass her by again, as always leave her standing with her head

bowed by her locker, looking like she'd forgotten the combination to

everything? Could I tell her now that no one, not the most depraved of

us, deserves high school? Could I explain the way we locked her in our

lust, never speaking to her but only of, and only in the locker room, how

we turned her into a statue of desire? Could I ask her about the feathers in

her locker, taped to the inside of the door? What would I say to that sad

fabulously breasted creature, now that my clumsiness has gnarled? Walking

down the corridor of metal doors to find you crying soundlessly, black hair

pouring, the weight of the combination lock heavy in your hand like --

I see this only now -- the absence of a cock you loved. In memory, I fur-

nish you with drapes, a used fridge and a bedroom suite ($299 at Zellers)

which I carefully arrange around you. On your cold fake marble floor I

lay this old braided rug I bought and lived on later in Saskatoon. Here

on your coffee table (slightly scratched, half price) I am leaving my copy

of The Birds of Canada. And listen: during the long industrial softball

double-headers of your future, be sure to look up at the lights in case the

Nighthawks may be up there

                sideslip

                                        downglide

             flashing their long barred wings they

                                               intersect with shadflies on the ad lib,

moves we never thought of, never made.

...

Today's book of poetry enters a Don McKay book with the certainty that with eyes and ears open we are about to be amazed.  Angular Unconformity, Collected Poems 1970-2014 weighs in at a hefty fill your boots 584 pages and does not disappoint.  It is a necessary treasure.  We here at Today's book of poetry believe Mr. McKay still has a library of fine poems yet to write but this tome will bring you up to date.

Today's book of poetry is always surprised by how McKay gives us access in his poems.  The topography and subject range always vary but the emotional accessibility is a constant.  The poems are always intelligent whip-quick, as though there were a built-in codex we all knew.

From Strike/Slip

Pond

Eventually water,

having been possessed by every verb--

been rush been drip been

geyser eddy fountain rapid drunk

evaporated frozen pissed

transpired -- will fall

into itself and sit.

                            Pond. Things touch

or splash down and it

takes them in -- pollen, heron, leaves, larvae, Greater

and Lesser scaup -- nothing declined,

nothing carried briskly off to form

alluvium somewhere else. Pond gazes

into sky religiously but also

gathers in its edge, reflecting cattails, alders,

reed beds and behind them, ranged

like taller children in the grade four photo,

conifers and birch. All of them inverted, carried

deeper into sepia, we might as well say

pondered. For pond is not pool,

whose clarity is edgeless and whose emptiness,

beloved by poets and the moon, permits us

to imagine life without the accident-

prone plumbing of its ecosystems. No,

the pause of pond is gravid and its wealth

a naturally occurring soup. It thickens up

with spawn and algae, while,

on its surface, stirred by every

whim of wind, it translates air as texture--

mottled, moire, pleated, shirred or

seersuckered in that momentary ecstasy from which

impressionism, like a bridesmaid, steps.  When it rains

it winks, then puckers up all over, then,

moving two more inches into metamorphosis,

shudders into pelt.

                              Suppose Narcissus

were to find a brown pond

to gaze in: would the course of self-love

run so smooth with that exquisite face

rendered in bruin undertone,

shaken, and floated in the murk

between the deep sky and the ooze?

...

This morning's office read was legendary.  The Today's book of poetry offices were over-run with poet traffic this weekend.  Poets Justin Million and Elisha Rubacha from Peterborough spent the weekend here on Dagmar.  They are the heart and soul behind bird|buried press.  They scoured the stacks and were able to find poetry to take home from our "extras" shelf.  

On Saturday Robert Hogg came by to say hello.  You might remember Robert Hogg's fine books Heat Lightning, Of Light, Standing Back and There Is No Falling.  I had Milo go back in the stacks and bring out some Robert Hogg material that wasn't signed.  It's signed now.

Today's book of poetry wouldn't want to put words in Robert Hogg's mouth but we both agreed that Michael Ondaatje might be the best Canadian poet.  We also agreed that Don McKay was Canadian poetry royalty, although I'm sure Don would never see it that way.

The visiting poet vibe was all over the office this morning and it showed in the reading.  Mr. McKay would have enjoyed it  -  we certainly all enjoyed Angular Unconformity.

Don McKay

ABOUT THE POET

Don McKay has published numerous books of poetry and several books of essays. The poetry has been recognized with a number of awards, including two Governor General’s Awards and the Griffin Poetry Prize. His most recent book of essays, The Shell of the Tortoise, received the Winterset Prize for Excellence in Newfoundland and Labrador Writing for 2011. Paradoxides, his most recent book of poems, winner of the E.J. Pratt Prize for Poetry, includes meditations on geology and deep time, while pursuing ongoing obsessions with birds and tools. He lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.

not sure why

Poet Don McKay reads the poem "Sometimes a Voice" from Another Gravity, shortlisted for the 2001 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize.

Video: Griffin Poetry Prize

gooselane.com 

587

DISCLAIMERS

Poems cited here are assumed to be under copyright by the poet and/or publisher.  They are shown here for publicity and review purposes.  For any other kind of re-use of these poems, please contact the listed publishers for permission.

We here at TBOP are technically deficient and rely on our bashful Milo to fix everything.  We received notice from Google that we were using "cookies"

and that for our readers in Europe there had to be notification of the use of those "cookies.  Please be aware that TBOP may employ the use of some "cookies" (whatever they are) and you should take that into consideration.