Otter - Ben Ladouceur (Coach House Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Otter.  Ben Ladouceur.  Coach House Books.  Toronto, Ontario.  2015.

Today's book of poetry had written an entire blog/appreciation of Ben Ladouceur's absolutely incendiary first book, Otter, but I called an editorial veto to that tri-blurb blasphemy.

Instead I will start by telling you that Otter has more weight per line than any book I've read since I started this blog.

Nuncle

Our century brims with abstractions, with
clashes: I want to know its taste.
So I chase chocolate with white wine. pair
tilapia with a most acidic merlot.
My evening has been ghastly. I just got

some dark post. A former comrade found his way
to the Seven Sisters, where the moon
huffs waves fro and fro and fro, its breath
cerulean, embossed by frost; where the moon
makes the chalk cliffs cerulean too.

Blind since Amiens, he was led
by a servant of the Red Cross
whose face, I'd wager, was something to touch.
My comrade gave a measly sermon, then
jumped. The little letter told me so. A sermon

fell with is flapping eyeless body
to the sea and still, I'd wager, adheres to the lip
that has lost blush. I'm sorry to tear
up like this. If my wife saw this despicable
spectacle, she'd punch me with her rings

on. Once, in Dvinsk, the suicide and I
found a house already deserted. Latvians
had shat on every surface before their
departure. He turned his bright face away from what
a kettle housed, locked eyes with me and spoke.

I have one son within my marriage, one without it.
How ghastly that half my pedigree shall occupy
our world, and half shall orbit. At once
we made for the nearest bed, and I'd wager
you know what we found there.

...

Today's book of poetry usually chooses three poems for inclusion, today I've chosen fifteen.  Otter is stunning stuff but although these poems all come from Ladouceur's very strong voice any combination of the fifteen reduced to three would most likely lead the reader to expect a different book.  I won't reproduce all fifteen, even though Milo is begging me to.  But I will share a few choice lines as appetizers:

     Crickets scraped song off their bodies with their legs. "OK"

     At night touch me when day breaks.  "Printout Found In Bottle Found In The River Aare"

     All the most beautiful things are things we rarely feel the weight of. "Gibraltar Point"

     I did love him, the crimson acne flecked across his neck, he was like a man a guillotine had made
     an attempt at. "I Am In Love With Your Brother"

Now try this on:

Salutations From Abitibi

Alone clouds refused to cohere.
They darkened the city in blotches.
They rendered the city dalmatian.

I forgot my lover on the bus.
The brakes woke him up
at Abitibi and he found work there.

All year mosquitoes bit his fumbling frame.
The bites were like Grecian constellations
seen on a clear taupe day.

My Zippo was on his person.
I was planning to quit with the smoking
but how shall I now singe the frays

of my only warm coat? When winter arrives
the mosquitoes will expire
and material will cover the bodies of men.

At least I received a blank postcard
on the birthday of my lover, its message
white on white: I am alive I am alone

I am not willing to speak. Some men
are darkened, in the long run, by sun.
Others, more quickly, by clouds.

...

Queer, Queer, Queer.  That is meant as a compliment to Ben.  For the rest of you it a label that you must remember and then immediately forget.  These poems are Queer, have a Queer agenda, and are great Queer poems.  Remove the label, they are just great poems.  All poems work better without labels and these gems would rise to the top of the pile in any company.

Ladouceur is an erudite Eros and these poems glitter with the sheen you get when bodies collide.
Ladouceur has no trouble at all finding the beauty regardless of the beast.

Marigold

As some scrotum
skims my tongue
like a dusted bulb
that might later do
an impressive bloom

I think of Paul
Monette in a bathtub
that's in a kitchen
asking his hosts
to scour his skin pink.

Paul later held his lover
Roger as he lost his
eyesight and enough
blood to give
a fruit bowl a fulcrum.

He is ambiguous here.
Some men can get away with
ambiguity. Tonight it is best
to forget whose bowels
are whose. Whose words.

I want to lose my legs
between our chests.
That is how little
room I want to ask
the world for. I'll be home

before dawn. Home
is the word that come closest.
There's a door I will enter,
a grey bar of soap. A rosiness
I'll scrub my way to.

...

Ben Ladouceur has a poem titled "All Men Are Equal" and nothing could be more true.  But all poets are not created equal.  Not be a long shot.  Ben Ladouceur's remarkable debut Otter will simply push him towards the head of the class, any class.

Great poetry.

Ben Ladouceur

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ben Ladouceur is a writer originally from Ottawa, now based in Toronto. His work has been featured in Arc, The Malahat Review, PRISM international and The Walrus, and in the Best Canadian Poetry anthology. He was awarded the Earle Birney Poetry Prize in 2013.

BLURB
Formally impeccable and richly imagined, Ben Ladouceur's poems track the awe of a mind as it engages with epiphanal moments, both personal and historical. His language is filtered through an intelligence that's queer and graceful, always in search of the singular phrase and a music that startles with its precision.  As each poem unfurls, keen insight gives way to the wonder of words.  Otter is a magnificent debut.
     -  Eduardo C. Corral, author of Slow Lightning, winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize

Ben Ladouceur

 Interview - OTHER MEN Wed Series

Video: OTHER MEN - a web series    

Ben Ladouceur

Tree Reading Series, Ottawa

September 14, 2010

Video: Tree Reading Series

chbooks.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.

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Poem About The Train - Ben Ladouceur (Apt.9 Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Poem About The Train.  Ben Ladouceur.  Apt.9 Press.  Ottawa, Ontario.  2014.

Poem About The Train is another impressive notch in the belt of the ever astonishing Ben Ladouceur. This marvelous chapbook-type folder is just another confirmation of what many of us have suspected. The young Mr. Ladouceur is one of the most exciting new voices in Canadian poetry.

I've met Ben, I think we may have even shared a drink one evening when he still lived in Ottawa.   But I don't know Ben Ladouceur.  So it can't be considered favouritism when I tell you that Ladouceur is that rare cat who really does have his feet on the ground and his head in the stratosphere.  He makes fine poetry.

Poem About The Train is an entirely lovely romp.  This long poem is printed on individual, loose leaf sheets the size of old train tickets.  They are numbered and assembled in a lovely pocket-sized folder. The ever-imaginative Apt.9 Press continues to impress with its' expanding repertoire of inventive ways to publish poetry.

from I

To hate a place forever, just get lost there once.
               Let greens give pause
to you, let hours flee like white dormice
after a sound occurs. The wild things eat
               hours up, pendulums
hanging from the damned mouths. You'll never come back

...

Poem About The Train is one longish poem about Ladouceur's observations from one train trip.  We can be grateful for whatever journey Ladouceur chooses to take.  He will illuminate it.  The adventure isn't the trip, it is his telling of it.

Today's book of poetry would want to read a Ladouceur poem if it were about drying paint.  He just has so much to share with us, and so far, it has all been golden.  Cherse as Spencer Tracy would say.

from II

Those were the best three cigarettes I've ever smoked.
               Every future
carcinogen will lie in three shadows.
I was grateful for the company, though.
               I know you didn't have
to leave your berth; it had a window, a view.

...

Ladouceur writes a great line, and then he does it again and again and again.

He's also a horny rake and that is in here too.  Read elegant rut.

Along with Queen Anne's Lace, osprey, eggshells and possums and beans.

Ladouceur harvests nature through the window of a moving train along the way to making his journey a somewhat epic adventure, certainly making for a fine read.

from VII

Where I'm off to, cats scavenge, throw their small-hearted
              game on the porch.
Their gifts bloat and develop seams through which
tenants take claim. They burrow in the fur
              and skin, bones and offal,
to find it. With their stingers, they can keep it.

I'll get there when the moon is halved. The dotage
              of these mountains
silhouetted to a percentage, still
cumbersome to a man like me: small, small
              of heart. From windows, herbs
will hang, and from bookcases, and from marquees.

A topless woman will come to the yard, and a
              second woman
will cut the first's brassy hair. Three geese will
chafe their endless necks with the lost trimmings.
              The first woman will take
the other's blouse and scissors and requite her.

The dogs crave heat, where I'm off to, back in sunbeams
              until the dusk,
at which point they bring you their fetching sticks.
Outlasting the simmering riptide of
              the summer, of the day.
Their coats half-moon-lit. Their coats, at least, half-lit.

...

 Poem About The Train is written in what Ladouceur has referred to as "syllabic verse heavily inspired by Marianne Moore".  At first my silly brain thought they were a form of sestina.  It is time for me to go back to school.  Whatever, the result is one of those magic tricks where form vanishes because it is used to perfection.

Today's book of poetry has nothing but jealous praise for the poems of Ben Ladouceur.

Coach House Books has just published Ladouceur's first full book of poetry, Otter, and bless their cotton socks, they sent me a copy.  It is magnificent and you will be hearing more about that here, anon.  It is, without doubt, one of the best books of poems I've read in a long, long time.

Ben Ladouceur

Photo: Pearl Pirie

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ben Ladouceur is a writer originally from Ottawa, now based in Toronto. His work has been featured in Arc, The Malahat Review, PRISM international and The Walrus, and in the Best Canadian Poetry anthology. He was awarded the Earle Birney Poetry Prize in 2013.

Ben Ladouceur

Tree Reading Series

April 26, 2011

Video:  Tree Reading Series

apt9press.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 
Today's book of poetry is a one-man operation, my staff, typists, interns, etc, are all fictional.  But I do have a secret weapon.  Frequently, just after I've posted my blog, my dear old friend, compatriot, mentor, piano-playing poet wizard and lost big brother pain in the ass buddy Ward Maxwell writes me to correct my constant spelling/typing errors.  He bats almost perfect because of all those years of editing.

All of that to say that when my blog is without error it is almost certainly because of Ward's help.
When it is full of errors - that is also his fault.  He just isn't aware of it yet.

Today's book of poetry owes an enormous and on-going debt to the thankless efforts of my pal Ward who has no idea of how much I appreciate it.  Today's book of poetry give an official hat-doffing to Mr. Maxwell, my own private Art Tatum.

You can see some of what Ward Maxwell gets up to here:
http://wardmaxwell.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.