Sick and I — Katie Fewster-Yan (Desert Pet Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Sick and I.  Katie Fewster-Yan.  Desert Pets Press.  Toronto, Ontario.  2017.

Katie Fewster-Yan's Sick and I is some slick stuff.  Fewster-Yan has more happening in one poem than many poets have happen in a book.  Sick and I reads like some hyper-stream-of-consciousness, from a very richly textured and well-informed stream.

Today's book of poetry is scrambling for the right deferential phrasing because Katie Fewster-Yan brings a great game right out of the gate.  Not since reading Suzannah Showler's Sucks To Be You - and other true taunts (Odourless Press, 2013) has Today's book of poetry been quite so impressed by a chapbook.  Make no mistake, you will see more of Katie Fewster-Yan.

Medicate

On Tuesday, you extract the capsules

from the second compartment,

bend back its cap like a flap

on an advent calendar.

From the fridge, you'll draw

the same waning cheese block,

remove the last two slices

from the bread loaf that has let itself go

without protest. Empty, its bag

bloats like a ghoul, counter-beached.

The triumphant bread clip

by its side holds its arms raised

like an amnesiac wrestler lost

in the glory of its last remembered

match. What is to be done with them,

as with your days, is up to you.

Of what use is the gravy boat,

or the milk carafe decalled

with jubilant cows? Cold utensils,

packed like factory-bred animals

spoon belly up in drawers, sparkling

at the underside of the counter

while each morning rises

like a mouthless child.

How instinctively we decide

how long to chew before we swallow!

As if we were made to. As if each day

were scrupulously portioned,

wrapped like a tiny prize, counting up

or down to what you longed for.

💫💫💫

Fewster-Yan literally took our breath away with her poem "A Moment on the Lips."  These poems come at the reader with velocity, no passive speculation, Fewster is on target and fierce.  And funny.

Sick and I is a slim volume but once you've read it you'll start to feel its weight.  Today's book of poetry has read through it several times and now the damned thing is so heavy we can barely lift it.

Ha.

Today's book of poetry has one of the best jobs in the world on days like this, when I get to share poetry this fine.  It's all part of larger scheme of world domination by Today's book of poetry and our staff.  "First we take Manhattan..."

Today's book of poetry is convinced Sick and I will be a calling-card to much bigger things.  Katie Fewster-Yan is ready.

A Moment on the Lips

My boyfriend holds me by my ex-lover's

genitals. The waistband of my leggings

makes my mother's nipples itch.

When I kissed its insides, curious,

the freezer split my lip, but I will bury

it with me some day in my grave.

Who needs tattoos? I'm hip-swathed

with chip packets and gum wrappers,

evangelical pamphlets and sandwich

coupons. The liver spots that dotted

my late grandfather's IV-pierced hand

ink my midriff like a galaxy. On the subway,

the ladies I'm crammed next to look

less impressed than they should be,

dipping their hips in the Pacific I once

kissed so you might taste the sound

of whales when I returned. When I dance,

a skirt of plankton swirls around me

in a balm millennia sediment-packed

to keep my lips slick. Thanks to history,

to my best decisions cinched around me

like a child's leash. Thank you grandma

for that eight-shaped, candy-studded cake

with all those gilded chocolate dollars

on the top that I sucked clean. Now I am

spangled and frosted at the waistline.

I'm the nucleus in a probability storm

of all my charged encounters.

Go ahead. Just try to shower me.

💫💫💫

The morning read at the Today's book of poetry offices was splendid.  The weather finally broke here in Ottawa and we have the windows open and the air is fresh and cool and good.  Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, lined us all up and assigned the poems.  Katie Fewster-Yan's poems rolled out and around the office like some splendid music, full of charm, wit and the razor.

Fewster-Yan has the knowledge.  If she were a London Cabbie she'd know it all blind-folded.  Her poems are fierce and fiercely intelligent.

Coming Through

I hold a ring of dried pineapple in one hand,

two thumb tacks in the other. Focus

is a shifty faculty. I drop a spoon

into the trash can and cart a cantaloupe rind

back to the sink. You watch your input

vie for my regard on the multichannel system

my attention's splitting into.

Take your hand and put it on my

volume dial. I want to hold you arrested

and so close to the chest

there's no room for playing cards.

I'm at the edge of a crater

trying to recall what I came here

to pull from it. Someone's hole-punched

the record. You put your car keys

in the freezer, and a shut door

in your memory erases them for weeks.

I'm keeping one eye on you peeling

off your nylons while the other's in the kitchen

shucking peas. You're at your core cleaving

more necks than a hydra. Bring your heads

toward us. I want to hold me in your teeth.

💫💫💫

"I want to hold me in your teeth."  Perfect.  Hilarious.  Dark.

Our morning read over, Milo, our head tech, has the Troggs blaring over our sound system, and now he's followed them up with Nick Cage singing an old Jimi Hendrix song, "Hey Joe."  And now Milo and Kathryn are dancing across the office floor like happy hippies.

Katie Fewster-Yan's Sick and I has left the Today's book of poetry offices in a groovy mood.  Great poetry will do that to you every time.

Katie Fewster-Yan

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Katie Fewster-Yan is currently living in Newfoundland and Labrador.

desertpetspress.com

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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

Conditionals - Peter Gibbon (bird,buried | press)

Today's book of poetry:
Conditionals.  Pete Gibbon.  bird, buried | press.  Peterborough, Ontario.  2016.

Conditionals really only suffers from one minor flaw - it is not long enough.  Today's book of poetry was up for more of this smart stuff.  Today's book of poetry felt strangely at home in Pete Gibbon world even though I've never been to Korea or Australia.  We liked every poem in this too short collection from bird, buried | press.

Gibbon runs us through his adventures working and travelling abroad, laments relationships and pines for his next sip.  The important thing is that these narrative and somewhat confessional poems work. You feel an easy connection to these poems, Gibbon allows for easy access.

Crust Of Wanderlust

Sunglasses were invented for years like these.

Trying to be Aussie, walk to beach barefoot;

by the end, a bloody heel.

In New South Wales most ideas for poems are nightmares. Travel stories make

terrible poetry; expats, terrible love.

As a stagehand I learn shoptalk, but never use it.

Packing trucks American is half-full.

No that Yanks are lazy, but semis, like anything else in Australia, are larger.

After New South Wales, I wash the sunlight off my feet. When you pack road cases

wheels-to-god they mean bottoms up.

Salt water, sunscreen. Never feeling clean. Making sure your knapsack is shut.

What makes me miss my friends the most: sitting on a patio, drinking beer.

And they, back home, doing the same.

...

Pete Gibbon is closely associated with a small cadre of young poets that at one time all resided in Ottawa.  They've scattered but the group included Justin Million, Jeff Blackman, Cameron Anstee, Bardia Sinaee & Ben Ladouceur among others.  Today's book of poetry is convinced that future conversations about poetry in Canada will include a number of these names.

And of this group Gibbon may be the most easily accessible.  His poems are unadorned and entertaining, non-sequined but rock solid.

Seoul

The young women are closing curtains.

Senior couples utter nonsense.

Ajoshis are sore balls

smoking cigarettes

long & thin.

Six foot tall folk statues of penises with penises

for arms, penis arms with penises... all these penises

guard old Seoul.

Statistics disclose 41 Koreans kills themselves

every day. Parents mourn

their country's dwindling birth rate.

Vagabondage (n): Wanderlust's tired

crippled cousin.

Maybe I've become complacent

or my shoes have almost worn out.

Codes lapse

in the time it takes to replace buildings

or print maps.

Maybe things are changing in Korea

but I've only lived in Seoul.

...

Our morning reading included readings from Pete Gibbon's dandy little Apt. 9 Press chapbook Eating Thistles (2010).  Milo, our head tech, has been going to the stacks and bringing back whatever he can find on the poet of the day.  So this morning when Milo came into the office with Gibbon's earlier work Today's book of poetry was tickled.  There is nothing as helpful as perspective.

Today's book of poetry is convinced these two chapbooks are warning shots across the bow of bigger things to come.  

Today's book of poetry also wanted to comment briefly about bird, buried | press, in good old Peterborough.  Today's book of poetry grew up in Peterborough, mostly, and has never seen a Peterborough chapbook that looked quite this good.  If this is the standard bird, buried | press intends to maintain it means Peterborough finally has a small press of distinction.  

Conditionals

if I am aged a full 30 years

               why do I get sad on days off & cry watching The Avengers

if a sci-fi actor watches their own movies

               why don't they go mad from the dreams

if my parents are hiding grant rejections from us when we visit

               are they leaving drafts of their wedding speech around, including an acrostic

               of your name

if I refer to you as my forever-person

               am I being politically correct

               or am I pretty sure we'll be together my whole life

did I use "pretty sure"

               because I'm scared to death

               or I know life is mutable

if I swallowed vinegar

               would I be clean inside & never drink again

if we have the same rash

               can I scratch yours & be satisfied?

...

Today's book of poetry is convinced that Gibbon has a big book or two in his future. Conditionals should confirm that for anyone lucky enough to get their hands on a copy.

Pete Gibbon

(with Dingo)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pete Gibbon is a Canadian poet. His last chapbook, Eating Thistles was published by Apt. 9 Press (Ottawa) 1n 2010.  Since 2010, he has lived in South Korea, Australia and Toronto. He is also the author of an ongoing limited series of graphic fiction about the life of Canadian author Marian Engel with friend/poet/illustrator Tanya Decarie.

https://birdburiedpress.wordpress.com/

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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.

Blue Night Express - Bardia Sinaee (Anstruther Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Blue Night Express.  Bardia Sinaee.  Anstruther Press.  Toronto, Ontario.  2015.

Today's book of poetry is a big fan of full disclosure - I know Bardia Sinaee well enough that I can call him my friend.  In our short acquaintance I have called him many things, to his face -- but usually when he is out of earshot.  I probably talk about Bardia more that he would be comfortable with, I've been telling anyone who would listen that Bardia Sinaee is, in my mind, one of our very best young poets.

Blue Night Express only confirms what I've been jabbering about all along.  Sinaee's poems are pools of crystal clear water in a world where muddying the proceedings is often the order of the day.

Man On Verandah

Awake in shadows lie
the cats, while armoured, copper-
coloured bugs scale

the wall behind
the laundromat to taste our blood.
So mannered is

the waxing moon
and sheperd-like above a bank
of clouds, I can

almost feel Colville
painting a revolver next to me
to lend the scene

a little tension. but
it's enough to be awake when
others aren't.

To think there is
a lake not far from here. Across
the street, profiled

in computer glare,
a woman sits so fixedly upright
you'd think she

swallowed a cane,
like Whistler's mother if Mrs. Whistler
ever took her

bonnet off. Raccoons
alight from eavestroughs with
their night scopes

on the trash.
A blackened elm with elm disease
dispatches shrunken,

blackened leaves.
A blunt, diffusive dark prevails until
police lights crest

the hill, searching
the side streets for trouble or
trouble's silhouette.

...

I could talk about the different poets I see dancing around in Bardia's brain, his lovely nod to Ezra, just because he knows.  But instead I want to tell you how tickled I was when Blue Night Express came through the door, so tickled I barely noticed it's lovely Anstruther Press compatriot, Kayla Czaga's Enemy of the People.  You will all remember that Czaga won the 2nd annual KITTY LEWIS HAZEL MILLER DENNIS TOURBIN POETRY PRIZE here at TBOP.  Fine, fine company for Bardia and HEY!, Anstruther Press - great work on publishing these two.  History will show how wise you are.

Sinaee's poetry always strikes just the right note between sarcasm and wisdom.  Sincerity has become a dirty word, a saccharine insult, but when done right, like in the poetry of Bardia Sinaee, these poems rise above any cheap sentiment and truthfully, crisply, clearly, cut to the heart of matters.

Deposition

How harrowing the prospect
That there may be no clandestine agency after all,
Only our clamouring until we've built on spent faith
What we'd sooner take up arms for than name.

By now there ought to be some sort of saying for it:
To march all day through toppled statuary
And flags snapping in a trumped-up wind,
Surprised to find oneself inclined
Toward such hopefully destructive sentiments
As might find expression in a goose step chant.

I love my people, even you who have already yielded
To some private notion of the future,
One that alarms even you, that scales your fortitude
Then pleads for understanding.

...

Here's my memory of meeting Bardia.  At 52 I went back to university full time and jumped into the deep end.  Turns out I came in 2nd in a campus literary competition.  I don't remember my poem at all, although at the time I thought it winning enough, but I certainly remember the 1st place poem. Meet Bardia Sinaee.  As soon as I heard his poem, which I had been in a complete competitive slather over, I resolved two things - tell the man how fine I thought his poem was, become that man's friend.

Luckily I know the executives here at TBOP and have a free pass.  Otherwise, how could I gush so?
When I read Bardia Sinaee's poems they give me hope.  I can not reach any further for a compliment.

Fugue

Like the tide, silence asserts itself
Through a series of microaggressions, it's raining the same rain
On every station, doomsday theories infiltrate
The nations, profligate and free
In theory, we condemn silence in all its
Driftwood and spores, sleeper cells
Ensnare us from within
Like the Trojans, the nations disperse into new names

As silence is issued from clefts in the air
Like rain, I think we should sing
While we are together in danger, doomsday theories get stranger
With every station, a headlong grave
When the train pulls in
Like wreckage on the shore, I think we can be saved

...

Blue Night Express is everything you can ask from a chapbook.  It is both beautiful to look at and filled with beautiful, bright and sophisticated poems.  Sinaee always assumes his audience is as brilliant as he is.

Bardia Sinaee

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bardia Sinaee was born in Tehran, Iran and currently lives in Toronto.  He has poems forthcoming in 

The Malahat Review and The Best Canadian Poetry 2015 (Tightrope Books).

Bardie Sinaee

Reading at the Tree Reading Series, Ottawa

August 9, 2011

anstrutherpress.com

385

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.

Paper Radio - Damian Rogers (a misfit book/ECW Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Paper Radio.  Damian Rogers.  a misfit book/ECW Press.  Toronto, Ontario.  2009.

There are a few people whose opinions about poetry make me pause and take notice.

If you read this blog with any regularity you'll know that Stuart Ross (Small Press Poetry God) is a poet I look up to.  He is my friend and when he tells me to read something it brings a new urgency to the task.

Another person I listen to is Bardia Sinaee (Poet/Editor/Publisher of Odourless Press).  On one of my rare visits to Toronto I was in a secondhand bookstore with Bardia and asked him what I should read. We had been milling over an excellent and vast selection of poetry - he was without hesitation and handed me Paper Radio by Damian Rogers.

I loved it.

That was a few years ago.  As always, Bardia knew what he was talking about.

You cannot imagine my delight when Today's book of poetry got a copy of Paper Radio in the mail from ECW Press/a misfit book.  The arcane rules of Today's book of poetry only allow me to write about books sent by publishers/poets, none that I purchase.  Now I can tell you about one of the books I have enjoyed with relish but was unable to share.

Don't Look

It's like when you eat sour candy,
how the sugar-coated acid
twists your tongue into a knot.

At the Ambassador Roller Rink
no one would slow-skate with me.

A boy rolled over to you during the power ballad
and I turned into a pillar of salt.

No, that's wrong. I mean, I felt a lot like a sand dune. Or like
that baby food jar our family member filled with volcanic ash.

I asked the DJ to help me prove I knew the secret moves
from transforming my body into four different letters --

Y: raise your hands to the sky.
M: touch your shoulders like a mountain range.
C: pull your belly toward the door.
A: place your palms over your head and pray.

He said no. He said we don't play that song.

I said oh. I said wait, hold on;
I am changing into someone
completely different and better.

...

Paper Radio was shortlisted for the 2010 Relit Awards and the Pat Lowther Award.  And for good reason.  These poems are electric, fully charged bullets.

Roger's dexterity and intelligence spew out in machine-gun bursts of ideas.  Monster slaying lines like this: "because you woke up hating yourself and thought of me" from the poem "One Lie".

Lines like this stop me in my tracks.  Paper Radio has a stream of consciousness feel that tapers down to laser precise insight at Rogers' whim.

In The Back of a Cab

I lean my body against the door
of a car I'll never ride in again.

In the long line of stores and restaurants
I'll never visit, your name blinks
on a sign that says it has your pizza.
I've never found my name
on any sign, in any city.

So many people move around me,
invisible within the labyrinths
of skyscraper and subway.
They can't know how I planned to save us all
with the secret of human happiness,
which just this morning
I held in my hand like a rock.

But today was too long --
now all I remember is
a few lines from a song,
something about 20,000 roads,
how they all lead back to me,
here, alone in a stranger's car

in the middle of the night,
secretly hoping the driver
who politely pretends I don't exist,
would devote the rest of his life
to taking me home.

...

You, dear reader, will be like me.  So entirely in love with and swept up by these poems.

Okay, a bit out of left field, but these poems, this book, left me feeling somewhat like I'd read one of Jerzy Kosinski's better novels.  Please know the high esteem I hold Kosinski in.  And it is just a feeling, like you've been in a conversation with someone whose intelligence has covered you like a blanket and you hope to hang on to some of that wise warmth.

Milk and Honey

A cardinal flits through the branches
and the bush appears to burn.

Who are we to say we were thrown out?

We fell asleep,
the garden withered.

We turned our eyes inward
toward our dearest lies.

After weeks of late snow
last year's daffodils shove up
beside blue and white hyacinths.

The grass is so green it's shocking.

This may or may
not be true:

I'm only here
to sing for you.

...

Paper Radio gets Today's book of poetry highest ratings.  Coach House Press with be launching Damian Rogers' second book, Dear Leader, on March 24.  Rogers' has also recently been named Poetry Editor for Walrus magazine.

Damian Rogers

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Originally from the Detroit area, Damian Rogers now lives in Toronto where she works as the poetry editor of House of Anansi Press and as the creative director of Poetry in Voice, a national recitation contest for Canadian high-school students. Her first book of poems, Paper Radio, was nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award.

BLURBS

“Damian Rogers’ troubled teens, ecstatic utopians, and distracted deities are evidence of a powerful poetic storyteller. In Paper Radio, nature has multiple personalities, perception sits at the table with emotion and superstition, and meaning speaks in dark, mellifluous tongues. This is a poetry of attack and decay, of synchronicity and sleight-of-hand, alive with sudden, vertiginous moments of clarity. It’s rare to find a young poet so deeply invested in both her own experience and the reader’s pleasure. A splendid, memorable debut.”  Kevin Connolly

“In Paper Radio, Damian Rogers emerges as a poet of startling clarity, intelligence, toughness, and tenderness. Her gifts for aphorism, for sudden swift changes of mood and perfectly rendered emotional landscapes, are those of a dramatist. There is not a dull moment in this book — and while that alone is a high accomplishment in this age of dullness, Rogers keeps us awake to a purpose. She keeps faith with the premise of the lyric, which is that, by speaking most truly from the self, we are able to reach others and stay awake to this business of being human together.” —April Bernard

The poems in Paper Radio are very brave. Many tend to look at the past with a real understanding that there is so much there that will never be made right. But what makes them brave is the way they pivot and then drive on with hope because, well, they have to. —Joe Pernice

“Sometimes memories are so distant, we only remember them when an old friend reminds us of those last events. Damian Rogers is such a friend. She tells us of dreams that sound like our own, shooting little arrows of insight that split the heart to reveal the shocking vulnerability of life. Paper Radio is a jewel of a book that you will want to read over and over and over again.” —Greg Keelor

Damian Rogers

reading from Paper Radio

video courtesy of ECW Press

ecwpress.com 

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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.