We Were Like Everyone Else - Ken Victor (Cormorant Books)

Today's book of poetry:
We Were Like Everyone Else.  Ken Victor.  Cormorant Books.  Toronto, Ontario.  2019.

We Were Like Everyone Else by the soon to be well-known Ken Victor isn't much like anything else.  Books of poetry this fine are as rare as hen's teeth.  Victor writes mostly narratives but unlike the vast herd of poetry monsters out there he is rarely the hero of his story.

Today's book of poetry dove into We Were Like Everyone Else and wham!  Victor's lead off poem kicked my poetry head hard.  I knew instantly that this type of cooking had to be shared.  The man can flat out burn.

The Discovery Of Mouths

At first eating was through skin

like plants: the way they devour sunlight

without teeth or tongue. Foods were

rubbed in, all over. Ripe avocados,

for instance: on bellies, on arms,

buttocks, breasts, scalp. Wherever

the body wanted nourishment. Feeding time

was a potpourri of ecstasies: a banana

on the spine, plums rolled

behind the knees, a sliced cantaloupe

cradling the elbow. All this was

thousands of years before the first

one-minute screen kiss, back

in the very earliest days of Eden,

back when thoughts jumped without

speech across the gaps between them.

Adam and Eve, that is, who never

missed a meal, sampling the Garden

all over their bodies: putting

leaf lettuce between their toes,

pushing ripe baby tomatoes into their ears,

pomegranates turning their genitals red.

How sweet the delicacies of those early days!

Before Freud, before gossip, before hunger.

🔩🔩🔩🔩🔩🔩

We Were Like Everyone Else is one of those grab-bags you dig in to anywhere and come out rich.  Ken Victor writes about all the big stuff; family, father/son relationships, parenting, death and the Angel of.

The poems vary in style but consistently hammer home the same messages, love your community, but family first, faith is an honour not an imposition, community again.

Ken Victor has studied with some of our generations very best poets and it shows; Jack Myers, Tess Gallagher, Philip Booth, Stephen Dobyns, Hayden Carruth and others.  Many of the poems in We Were Like Everyone Else have previously been published in magazines or journals.  We are lucky Victor decided to share them with us.

What Seems To Matter Most

When Ricky Holt, juvenile delinquent, booked into the woods

that day in '81 to escape his early-release program, I yelled to him

that he juked like the Juice, the way he was running in and out

between the scrub oaks and the pines, and Ricky stopped and

glanced back at me with that handsome black face of his, knowing

I could never catch him, so he smiled before disappearing, then

I had to radio for the dogs because we couldn't have him loose

this close to an off-season town on a windy stretch of Cape Cod,

so eventually they got him and hauled his ass back in front of me

and asked me if I wanted to take him back or have him locked up,

well, I said, without a moment's hesitation, you can lock 'im up;

I don't know why I said it, he wasn't a bad kid, just not able to get

his act together, which I understand, I mean was I much different,

I'm not sure I have it together now, thirty years after I said

lock him up, which is when Ricky went back into the system and

I didn't give him a second thought until the Juice again became

a story: his white Bronco going down the freeway, taking me

back to Ricky in those woods, dodging trees like nasty linebackers

aiming to take their crack at him -- blam! you sucker! -- Ricky

thinking he could get away, turn his big dreams into something

real the way O.J. had been The #1 Man for a lot of years, breaking

records and downfield tackles before he went to trial -- black man

white woman -- the whole sorry story driving out all other news

and America brought  back to what seems to matter most to it,

me thinking how I was once the judge and the whole goddamn

jury and I made my decision lickety-split no second chances, you

either get with the program or you git, and I started wondering

where that came from, why there wasn't the slightest bit of mercy

wrapped somewhere inside my ready justice, as if I thought under

Ricky's Converse All-Stars he must have had bootstraps just like

those turn-of-century immigrants, and if he wasn't going to begin

to pick himself up I wouldn't do it for him, and so Ricky returned

to the state's secure facility where he'd started, where he'd wait

to hear what came next: words from the social worker, the juvenile

judge, the facility superintendent, pronouncements woven together

like strands in a rope vigilante citizens were only too ready to yank.

🔩🔩🔩🔩🔩🔩🔩🔩🔩🔩

Ken Victor isn't afraid of taking on the hard truth poem and they can truly be a bother.  Victor doesn't flinch, nor should he.  Many of these poems involve lessons given and learned by his children, given and learned by our poet.  These tender poems are cornerstones, are the blood and bone and love made cornerstones of Victor's foundation.  These poems ring true like pure musical notes.

We Were Like Everyone Else is a book you will want to go back to.  There is so much Today's book of poetry enjoyed but it doesn't all come easily.  Watching those we love diminish and die in front of our eyes is traumatic - some of these poems will tear your heart up.

The Request

The day my son was born

my spiritual practice dissolved.

Whatever I had absorbed

on the wisdom of non-attachment

left in a great commotion. Rope of

-- what else can I name it -- love

pulled me towards his unopened eyes.

Expelled from his first home, he flailed

naked in the new light. I bent over my wife

and tasted the salt sweat beading on her brow,

stroked her hair matted in its disarray,

bent over both of them -- flesh

to flesh to flesh -- and whispered a request:

grant me another hundred years

to spend in my present form.

🔩🔩🔩🔩🔩🔩🔩🔩🔩

Ken Victor has some of the same demons we all carry and some of the other kind too.  In We Were Like Everyone Else his humanistic voice will raise your spirits, some of his dark moments will haunt you, but luckily Victor also doses out enough hope to sustain all you poetry babies.

Ken Victor is first rate, We Were Like Everyone Else will be amongst the best poetry you read this year.

Ken Victor

ABOUT THE POET

Ken Victor moved to Canada full-time from the States in 1990 after spending many summers guiding canoe trips in Northwestern Ontario. A graduate of the writing program at Syracuse University, over the years he has published his poetry in journals on both sides of the border. We Were Like Everyone Else is his first book. Now a Canadian by choice, Victor makes his home with his wife and three children in the Gatineau Hills of West Quebec, where he designs learning for organizations.

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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.

Building On River - Jean Van Loon (Cormorant Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Building On River.  Jean Van Loon.  Cormorant Books.  Toronto, Ontario.  2018.

Building On River is a little unlike any other book of poetry Today's book of poetry has seen in quite a while.  Jean Van Loon has reinterpreted, rendered if you like, biography, extensive research, heresay and conjecture, all of it into a timeless tapestry.  This brocade plays out, almost seamlessly, in the mind's eye, as though the reader were watching a movie.

Van Loon is cinematic.

This is history that you can taste, smell and feel.

Sir Michael Ondaatje (in Today's book of poetry world we knight and honour as we see fit) pave the way for this sort of adventure with his ground breaking The Collected Works of Billy the Kid.  If you haven't read Ondaatje's Billy the Kid and you love poetry.  The very next thing you should do is to put on your coat and go to the bookstore/library and get a copy of The Collected Billy....

John Rudolphous Booth is the subject of Van Loon's expansive narrative about a self-made man on the edge of the Canadian wilderness.  Booth understood what was about to happen and took advantage of it.  His astute sense of what was needed and how to supply it made him a very rich man.  Jean Van Loon witnessed none of it but somehow brings Booth to flesh and bone you care about.

J.R., Age Nine, Builds a Bridge

Runoff bulges the creek

a muscled river

if I look at it right, churning

alongside the field

icing my feet.

Yesterday's turtle

drags again onto its rock

head and legs outstretched

shell scarred. Midday sun

warms my shoulders.

I've cleared the brush

with the hatchet Father

made me. Now I can

spade the bank, anchor

a buttress shaped from

a fireplace log Father

must not notice missing

and the stump I dug out last week.

A dab hand with an axe, Mother said

now two years dead,

who told me Blue Flag

was the flower that looked like an iris

beside the summertime creek

who sweetened my sickbed

with a mug of wild roses.

💫💫💫

As it happens Jean Van Loon and I will be doing a reading in a private home here in Ottawa a couple of weeks from now.  Ms. Van Loon and I have yet to meet.  You're just going to have to take my word for it on the coincidence of timing for Building On River.  

Jean Van Loon researched Building On River by reading tracts from the Historical Society of Gatineau, lumber baron biographies, Donald McKay and David Lee too.  Susanna Moodie and Catherine Parr Traill.  And that isn't scratching the surface.

The result is poems that sound and feel true in all respects.  These poems do bring J.R. Booth to flesh and blood, we see his diligence and imagination make an empire from wood.  

Tale from the Feed Mill

This was before he was rich.

Starting out in Hull with a small plant

for shingles. He'd hitch up and carry a load,

sell it in Ottawa, then make the rounds for supplies.

So he comes to my mill for a quantity of fodder

finds he doesn't have the cash to pay for it all.

I tell him, Go ahead, take what you need

—lord knows, he'd be good for the money.

Well sir. But a few minutes later, didn't he

wheel the horses back and return the part unpaid.

Couldn't unload fast enough. As if it would

burn through his wagon.

💫💫💫

Jean Van Loon isn't going to knock you over the head with fireworks, there is a far subtler game afoot, these poems accumulate, gather momentum, details build, until the story of J.R. Booth carries you, becomes important to you, the reader.  This is a good trick.

This morning's read was held with one sore crew.  Yesterday's deadline was not met because each and every one of us was outside shovelling snow, again, like we have almost every day since the beginning of November.  Today's book of poetry loves Ottawa and is happy to live here, but this winter was truly a kick right in the old tender parts.  Milo, our head tech, did something to his back lifting wet snow.  Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, did something to her back trying to look after Milo.  And so on.

Today's book of poetry thought Jean Van Loon found the right tension between tough and tender.  Booth was clearly a man of purpose.  And we get the sense that he did care about family and community.  He was a man dedicated to his work.  Van Loon has found the man under all that wealth, behind all that work.

The Weaver's Tale

—found poem

The saw on his left

sets the pace. If the singing blade

rips 50 rough shingles

off the block every minute

the sawyer must reach over

to its teeth

50 times in 60 seconds;

if the automatic carriage

feeds the odorous wood 60 times

into hungry teeth, 60 times

he must reach over, turn the shingle, trim its edge

on the gleaming saw in front of him

cut the narrow strip containing

the knot hole with two quick movements

and toss the completed

board down the chute

to the packers,

                          meanwhile

keeping eyes and ears open

for the sound that asks him

to feed a new block into untiring teeth.

Hour after hour the shingle weaver's

hands and arms, plain, unarmored

flesh and blood, staked against

the screeching steel that cares not

what it severs. Hour after hour the steel

sings its crescendo as it bites

into the wood, the sawdust cloud

thickens with fine particles.

Sooner or later he reaches

a little too far, the whirling blade

tosses drops of deep red

into the air, and a finger, a hand

or part of an arm comes sliding

down the slick chute.

💫💫💫

Building On River is quiet determination realized.  Jean Van Loon has done that rare feat, found the real poetry in history.

Jean Van Loon

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jean Van Loon lives with her husband in a home that is an easy walk to the Ottawa River. Since retiring from a career as a public servant and head of the steel industry's national trade association, she has published poems and stories in literary magazines across Canada. When not at her desk, she often walks through the Experimental Farm, comprised in large part of farmland bought from J.R. Booth, or along the river where he got his start. Building on River is her first book-length publication.

BLURBS
"Building on River is full of lyrical moments and metaphor."
     — Patrick Langston, Artsfile

​"Van Loon’s musical ear drew me into the narrative fast..."
     — Catherine Owen, Marrow Reviews

Jean Van Loon

reads

Video: Arc Poetry

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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

"Building on River is full of lyrical moments and metaphor."

— Patrick Langston, Artsfile

​

"Van Loon’s musical ear drew me into the narrative fast..."

— Catherine Owen, Marrow Reviews

​

​"Building on River is full of lyrical moments and metaphor."

— Patrick Langston, Artsfile

​

"Van Loon’s musical ear drew me into the narrative fast..."

— Catherine Owen, Marrow Reviews

​

Borrowed Days - Poems New And Selected - Marc Plourde (Cormorant Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Borrowed Days - Poems New And Selected.  
Marc Plourde.  Cormorant Books.  Toronto, Ontario.  2016.

When Borrowed Days - Poems New and Selected by Marc Plourde came through the Today's book of poetry doors our "Poetry Bat Ears" tingled.  A few minutes with Milo, our head tech, in the stacks and BINGO.  Touchings (Fiddlehead Poetry Books, 1970) jumped out at us.  This charming Marc Plourde chapbook includes lovely artwork by Noreen Hood (Today's book of poetry thinks Noreen Hood was married to Hugh Hood) and posits Plourde squarely into the middle of the Montreal literary scene circa 1970.

There's a lot of water under the bridge from 1970 to the present.  Borrowed Days doesn't miss a beat, it reads/feels like an old lost friend from Montreal has come for a visit.  An old friend who has seen the world and recognizes his small part in it.

Plourde "stopped writing for some twenty years" and concentrated on translating some of the best Quebecois writers of his generation.  Today's book of poetry is glad to see Marc Plourde back in the saddle.  We can tell you, with confidence, that Plourde could cook before his hiatus and it would seem he has picked up the torch again without missing a step.

In Park Extension

Some kids never go home. Evenings

they're out front of the poolroom, nervous

to get away, too young still

for a motorcycle

they stand-sit on the curb

seems almost

they grow out of the pavement, are always there

like the cops, the butcher shop, the Greek

pastry store, and old European

toadlike women each day crossing the railroad

to the factory

and back again, they come

bodies toddling

with the weight of their shopping bags full.

April and how this weather is

too cold still, tonight Carol, Dominic, Lagetti

will go looking for an apartment

hallway, one they've not been

kicked out of; half the fun the kids say

is waiting for the janitor

and running

Carol runs-walks back bent, feet pointed

inward, so is nicknamed "pigeon toes".

It was glue sniffing hurt her

legs, her joints,

she told me

and I didn't believe her at first;

first time I saw her walk I thought it a joke.

Dominic is part of The Tribe,

the neighbourhood gang; he has a red devil's

head etched

on the back of his jacket

and black gloves he flexes his hands in

and makes "snap" leather sounds with,

one fist

hitting the other opened hand, and he has

motorcycle boots, though no motorcycle.

Carol's also part of it;

her initiation came, she says, last week

at the Saint Anthony's

church basement Friday night dance,

in the toilet, they raped her she says.

Music reaches down Howard Street.

Outside, there are kids leaning on a railing,

lighting matches; the jukebox

song comes to them

in pieces, in the traffic

of people opening-shutting the poolroom

door, and it seems

almost they're dancing: Carol, with Lagetti

bent over her, his arms

moving inside her coat. When she turns away

she is tugging her jeans back

up her hips, she laughs and

swears; the popcorn box tucked in her belt

has spilled, pink kernels covering the sidewalk.

...

Marc Plourde's Borrowed Days places itself at the heart of Canada's two solitudes and that heart beats strongly on every single street that Plourde manifests from memory.  Walking through Borrowed Days tells us more about Montreal than any map or cartographer.

Plourde does venture out of Montreal and his poem "The Shoes of Budapest" tells us all we need to know about the worldly author.  But for the most part Plourde's heart resides on streets of his city where Plourde is a gentle humanist who sees hope in redemption.  These poems see redemption as a duty.

A Prelude

The plot was on a rise;

we had to climb to it, stand lopsided

at the graveside while rain fell

on December snow, on the ground at our feet

like a prelude to the new year's storm.

The family of stragglers was about to leave

when the old woman's youngest son, my cousin,

insisted on shaking everyone's hand

and showily hugged his older brother,

who appeared this morning

after twenty years, jetlagged

and jettisoned in a back pew of St. Francis.

As I entered the church, the younger brother

turned in his seat: I saw a thin face, a goatee,

a removed look. I searched for the boy's face

in the man's and as I looked

the priest began the funeral mass

though he was dying on his feet.

His eulogy remembered Margaret's devotions

at the Stations of the Cross

and her dusting the church statuary,

St. Francis and St. Roch,

but the family knew Margaret in her last year

had got confused, would bang daily

on the rectory door, demanding Sunday mass.

For Margaret, every day had become Sunday.

And the priest, Father Kirouac,

whose most constant parishioner

was demented  -  I wonder,

did he open the door to her?

Was there patience in his face

as he knew, more or less,

they would both be gone before spring?

After mass, seated on the altar steps,

he apologized in shallow breaths

for not accompanying us to the grave.

He outlived her by six weeks.

...

Today's book of poetry's morning read had Pharoah Sander's "Let Us Go Into The House Of The Lord" playing on the box this morning.  We followed that up with Yusef Lateef's sublime "Eastern Sounds" which may be the most overlooked masterpiece in jazz.  These both seemed appropriate choices for the steady and measured voice that Marc Plourde brings to the table.

Maybe it is as simple as this: a particular tone in a voice that tells you it seeks reason and clarity.  Plourde is all over that.

Greyhound to Burlington

It rains and stops the morning long; we sleep

the long drive through mountain clouds.

Tomorrow, who will remember this?

Mist floating like moss in the pine trees,

grey mist blurring the mountains to memory; now

blossoms peck and spatter the glass, the windshield

wipers not moving, not moving yet.

...

Today's book of poetry is always going to have all the time in the world for poetry like Marc Plourde's Borrowed Days.

Whether he is inside the microcosm of a 1970's Montreal neighbourhood or aloft in the big world beyond Plourde's poems engage, inform and entertain.  Just like an old friend.

Marc Plourde

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Born in Montreal in 1951, Marc Plourde established himself very early both as a poet and as a translator. His books of poetry include Touchings (1971) and The White Magnet (1973). His books of translation include The Grandfathers by Victor-Lévy Beaulieu (1975) and The Agonized Life by Gaston Miron (1980). He has published no original poetry in book form in over forty years.

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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

When We Were Old - Peter Unwin (Cormorant Books)

Today's book of poetry:
When We Were Old.  Peter Unwin.  Cormorant Books Inc.  Toronto, Ontario. 2014.

When We Were Old not only echoes the title of the great and under-appreciated Raymond Souster's When We Were Young, the poetry contained within maintains the high standards of Saint Raymond of Souster's work.  That is no small accomplishment.

But it is another excellent Canadian writer that comes to mind when I read and reread these hard packed gems.  Many years ago I had the honour of sharing a scotch or two with Alistar MacLeod. MacLeod  is absolutely one of the best writers ever and I'm willing to bust heads on this one. MacLeod is sacred territory in this house so when I tell you that Peter Unwin's poems impart some of that same sense of hard earned wisdom, that sense of urgency towards kindness, I am not giving faint praise.

The Family Place

The children are up
even if we are not.

The dew is on the land
even if we are somewhere else.

The mice are in the traps,
even if we prefer to think

otherwise about ourselves.
The brush is in the hair, the birds

are at it, the coffee's cooked
and the day

is about to get cracked
by us.
...

Unwin writes with a great sweetness that is entirely devoid of saccharine.  These poems are never sentimental but they are deeply tender and moving.

There is also a feeling of hope and we here at Today's book of poetry are big fans of optimism of any kind.  These poems make clear that it's a thin, thin line, perhaps even that old razor's edge that Somerset ranted so eloquently about - but there are reasons to hope.  We do have a chance.

As I'm typing this blog up from the tatters of the notes my staff confettied I realized Unwin has a dark sense of whimsy under his encyclopedic noggin'.  Dark whimsy and hope, that's the ticket.

The Cost of Life

It doesn't get any cheaper than this;
to be wide awake at an early hour, partnered
to a sleeping woman who snores softly,
the cat yawning from the corner
of the bed, the stupid but inoffensive
dawn chatter of birds who mean no harm
unless you're a worm. The children
are spent, but soon they will bolt from bed
in search of Cheerios and tales of Athena;
the part where she explodes from Zeus's
head is irresistible to them and they can't
get enough of it. Outside the window
the sunlight puts poetry on the leaves
of the maple tree. I am enriched by this but
I can't describe it, it beggars both
the imagination and the family budget.
We are set for now; there is no milk
in the fridge, the washing machine
is broken and the clock ticks too loudly
but all of the household cancers
are in remission, the medical bills
getting paid by an imaginary uncle
who made a fortune in the Maldives.

...

Unwin's When We Were Old is his first volume of poetry although he is well established in other writing fields - we will be wanting much more from Mr. Unwin.  It is clear he has much to say and now that we know how excellently he says it - we want more.

This is mature poetry and it sings an adult song with humour, grace and intelligent candor.  Raymond Souster would be tickled.

Cabin at Night

At night this cabin is a ship
captained by you and me
lit by kerosene
and lurching to the North Star.

Over us the constellations fall
like harpoons. We have survived
every phase of the moon
you and me, but we will drown

with the smell of each other's hair
in our nostrils. This cabin
will wreck for generations
without us

but it will sail, it will lurch on
with another you tapping
at the face of a compass
and another me, straining at the pumps.

...

Today's book of poetry is very fond of the poetry of Peter Unwin.  Once you read When We Were Old you will be too.

Peter Unwin

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Peter Unwin was born in Sheffield, England, and raised in Southern Ontario. He studied at Carleton University in Ottawa.
His previous fiction includes the short story collection The Rock Farmers, which was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and the novel Nine Bells for a Man.
His non-fiction includes The Wolf’s Head: Writing Lake Superior and Hard Surface: In Search of the Canadian Road.   Peter published a collection of short stories, LIFE WITHOUT DEATH (2013) which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award in 2014.
He has travelled extensively in the Canadian north. Currently, he is a Master’s candidate in Culture and Communications at York and Ryerson universities. An avid practitioner of martial arts, baseball, and literature, he lives in Toronto with his wife and two daughters.

Peter Unwin

Reading his poem "Fighting in Poetry"

Video: clipin

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* * *

Today's book of poetry would like to acknowledge our recent sporadic posts.  I'd like to blame it on my horrid staff of lolligagers and miscreants, but in fact, it is all my doing.  My father, Russell William White, passed away recently and as a result there have been some logistical difficulties.  A great door has closed and in my mind a great man has passed.  My father was as kind as any man you've ever met.  The world is slightly off kilter but we are righting our ship.

We will continue with a flexible schedule for another couple of weeks and then it is back to our regularly scheduled program

* * *

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.

Light Takes - Mia Anderson (Cormorant Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Light Takes.  Mia Anderson.  Cormorant Books.  Toronto, Ontario.  2014.

It Isn't What You Would Think

It isn't what you would think,
divine power.

It is much more like
powerlessness than you would think

or at least that you could
say, or could utter or

give utterance to.
That's where "weakness" comes in

useful, as a kingdom word. It describes a state
we always think we want out of

which is one of the conundrums
the kingdom poses.

It puts up two doors: the Weak
Door and the Strong Door

and most of us are for the Strong.
Empowerment:

such a powerful word. The French
have taken it over without remainder.

But the Strong leads
to the Strongbox. It's the Weak
that opens onto the kingdom.

The Kingdom is not a mighty fortress
except inasmuch as

a fallow field of daisies and wild grasses
is a mighty fortress.

Heaven doesn't seek to trick us.
It wants to be sure we get what we want.

So it gives us the Door to the wide and weedy and weak
and the Door to The Other Place.

It's our choice, to the uttermost.
Ours is the only power there is.

...

Today's book of poetry thought these poems were absolutely fearless and sometimes ferocious.

Many of these poems read like stories we already know, anecdotes passed down from one wise voice to another, common knowledge wisdom sagely reported.

You don't have to know that Anderson is an Anglican priest to feel the presence of the Church in these poems.

I personally usually find a way to shy away from most work too closely affiliated with any specific dogma.  With Mia Anderson's Light Takes, Anderson took it out of my hands.  These poems work, work, work.  I'm not a Christian and it certainly didn't seem to matter, I enjoyed these poems for the fine poems they are.

Like Maggie Helwig, another Anglican priest who happens to be an excellent poet, Mia Anderson is far too smart, her world view far too broad and encompassing to be hampered by any particular label.

We Are Premature

We are premature babies.
The world is our neo-natal ward

in which we are entirely dependent
before we know we are,

in which we are required always
to live beside something

larger than us. And that is
as it should be.

Rebirth is the divine template.
But some of us aren't good at it.

When we've come of age
or like to think we have, we

don't think much of that neo-natal
ward, we hold it in low esteem

even cities do not remind us
that anything is larger than us.

Someone said, "live next to a cow."
That would do it. A mountain would do it.

This fleuve here does it, and
I know of a woman

for whom the fruit fly was enormous
and granted a lifetime of study

and I can understand how
the fruit fly could be huge enough to open

the doors of perception
as they did for her

onto that great plain called the kingdom
that goes on and on and on

and on as far as the mind can feel,
the eye seeing, the heart beating

and we are always right beside it.
It is always right beside us

but bigger than us.

We have to learn this.
This is the view from the pram.

...

(fleuve/river)

Mia Anderson's Light Takes is fecund with religious scholarship, literary as well.  But those are different conversations.  In this conversation Today's book of poetry wants the reader to know how Anderson's riffs on the purpose of jobs and employment, the emotional attitude of water, and so on... left us wanting more of this particular type of wisdom.

Anderson does not proselytize.  She swims in some awfully deep and heavy water and distills this into navigable terrain, smart showers.

Today's book of poetry thought these were elegant and eloquent poems.  Kinetic when Anderson wanted them to be, literally pulsating with sustained and intense intelligence.

Today's book of poetry always likes smart.

Some Poems Just Squat

Some poems just squat
    and hold to one place.
That's them shitting.

Some waft in the air
all moonbeamy-dreamy
    ethereal charm --
Tinkerbell flimsies.

Some go fast,
go far and hard
    pulling a lot of luggage:
sled-dogs in their prime
    winning the Iditarod.

And some run hard
    on one spot and make of it
hallowed ground --

others, with such joy of speed
    they reach their target before
the arrow they've loosed, like
the folk hero getting it in the behind.

And they don't mind,
    those poems, they don't mind.
Some trudge through snow
surviving all odds, putting one fricative in front
    of the other. They
make it to the cabin before the cold
can take them and drape them over the last
    fence but one.

    They make it home
and home welcomes them.

But there are some
    poems which standing
stock still, statue still, thought
    still, fly
without moving an inch
without moving a muscle
without moving a word.

They're the ones
    who by staying soar.
There goes their arrow of desire

which travels everywhere,
as long as it's aimed at
one place only.

...

Mia Anderson's Light Takes is sweet medicine and necessary tonic.  Anderson takes a big step forward with Light Takes, she should take a deep bow.

Mia Anderson

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MIA ANDERSON lives outside Québec City with her husband. She was for many years an actor, then a shepherd and grower, then an Anglican priest in Québec City. Her theatre career included the Stratford Festival, CBC, Theatre Plus, MTC, Centaur, Manchester Library, the Royal Shakespeare Co. and the Traverse, Edinburgh. Her one-woman performance, 10 Women, 2 Men and a Moose, which toured nationally, showcased then-recent Canadian writers and presaged her own involvement in the writing life. Farming in Ontario she produced, as well as sheep, two Malahat ReviewLong Poem Award-winning poems, one of which also took a National Magazine Award gold. Anderson’s “The Antenna” won the Montreal International Poetry Prize 2013. Her last poetry collection, The Sunrise Liturgy, was shortlisted for the 2013 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry.

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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.

The Other Side Of Ourselves - Rob Taylor (Cormorant Books)

Today's book of poetry:
The Other Side Of Ourselves.  Rob Taylor.  Cormorant Books.  Markham, Ontario. 2011.  2nd printing 2012.

Rob Taylor is around 31 years of age and that came as a surprise to me.  Not knowing the young Mr. Taylor personally, my assumption was that I was reading the poetry of a much older man.

Not that the poems are oldish, or old fashioned, or even dated, no, but they sure sound/read experienced.

Taylor won the 2010 Alfred G. Bailey Prize for Poetry, The Other Side Of Ourselves makes that look like a good choice.

In its' second printing The Other Side Of Ourselves is ample mirror to the different facets of us silly human beans.

Teaching Myself to Shave

I was some generic hair growing age
and my Mom had already bought
me a pack of deodorant (when I'd
started to stink) which happened
to contain a little shaving kit.

So when my first stubble crept out of my follicles
I prodded at it with my fingers for a few days then
walked to the bathroom, lathered up the cream
and dragged the razor about,

then I threw on the aftershave
and didn't even scream
(though I was prepared to)
and wherever I cut myself
I put a dab of toilet paper
just like Homer Simpson

And that was that--
my stubble was gone,
my father was still dead
and the Sunday evening cartoons
weren't about to watch themselves.
...

That's the way Taylor does it.  A perfectly crafted coming of age story with the sledgehammer ending, just like in real life.

Taylor spent some time in Ghana, Africa, and his poems travel there and back.  His experience broadening the scope of everything.  One minute he's watching a Canadian boy on a Canadian street drag his hockey stick and the next we are in an African slave prison trying to catch our breath.

Taylor's scope, his canvas, is an inclusive panorama.  He's a full palate painter.

Creation Stories

She has her narratives, he has his,
and together they move through the world.

Their scripts are filled with the same set pieces, same characters,
yet they are blocked differently, recite different lines.

His parties end at 11:00, hers at 2:30.
they attend neighbouring churches, cheer for rival hockey teams.
She waters the lawn on Tuesdays, he mows it on Saturdays.
Their cars point in opposite directions each morning.
Their children attend different universities.

But we're only having one child, a girl,
he notes to her, drowsily.

She stares at the ceiling, smiles faintly.
It has taken so little for him to unmoor her.

Then our child will live on an island between us,
she concedes, rolling on her side.

And us? We will live an ocean apart?
He curls his arm around her, cocooning her in blankets.

He is long asleep before she can answer him,
but she whispers nonetheless, to the vaulted darkness,
We will beach ourselves upon her shore.

...

I have always believed that we are each in our own movie, I've never heard/seen it described quite so perfectly, just the right touch of elegant.

Taylor has an Art Garfunkel tirade that is more than worth the price of a spindly afro any day.  Taylor has a wicked sense of humour and an almost perfect grasp of gravitas.  He's plenty serious when he needs to be.

That One Semester

I thought about the 95 Theses
and how scared Martin Luther must have been
with his wooden mallet and the weight
of an empire pinned to his vestments.

I thought about Plessy v. Ferguson
and being separately equal and equally separate
and how Langston Huges taught me
that a black man can clean the pews of a white church
so long as he don't pray.

I thought about Robert Oppenheimer
and how he cried himself to sleep that night
when the sky glowed purple and soldiers
in bunkers two miles from the blast site
reported being able to see their own bones.

I thought about this whole God thing
and how maybe we've missed the point.
He isn't omnipresent or benevolent,
compassionate or clairvoyant,
he's simply there, all the time,
with a hammer and a broom
and frail human bones
flexing just under the skin.

...

Another thing that we here at Today's book of poetry really liked -- Rob Taylor confidently tackles the big issues -- God, love and morality.  But he isn't preachy, he leaves us to draw our own conclusions.

Today's book of poetry can only conclude that this is finely tempered poetry, strength built from being held close to the flame.

Rob Taylor

(Photo by Marta Taylor)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rob Taylor was born in Port Moody, British Columbia, and now resides in Vancouver with his wife, Marta. He has travelled widely, most recently to Ghana where he co-founded One Ghana, One Voice. Ghana's first online poetry magazine.  His poems have appeared in over forty journals and anthologies, including Prairie Fire, Riddle Fence, The Antigonish Review, and Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary BC Poetry. An earlier version of The Other Side Of Ourselves won the 2010 Alfred G. Bailey Prize for best unpublished poetry manuscript.

BLURB

“Rich with promise … anyone who can write a good poem – as Taylor does – about writing bad poetry, is a poet of talent.”

     -George Elliot Clarke

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No End In Strangeness, New and Selected Poems - Bruce Taylor (Cormorant Books)

Today's book of poetry:
No End In Strangeness, New and Selected Poems.  Bruce Taylor.  Cormorant Books Inc., Toronto, Ontario.  2011

You read some books of poetry and you still have little sense of who the poet is.  This does not happen in Bruce Taylor world.

Taylor gives us an encyclopedic open book to his world and how he sees it.

No End In Strangeness is not strange at all.  Taylor mines a very rich seam of the on-going conversation he is having with the world.

The Waterfall

Here the river, in a rage

of fury and self-hate,

annihilates itself.

It tears itself to pieces like a page,

and leaps from its own rocks,

a thousand times a day.

Then, in the smash and mist,

it shudders up again

to hang there like a fist,

shivering with self-disgust,

impatient to be done

and failing, as it must.

It roars like something in a cage,

scraping the walls with its nails.

Even as I lie not-sleeping

in my tent, it pounds and chafes,

milling itself to a fine rain.

Yet in the morning it is there again,

tall as a pinetree

but weaker than pipesmoke,

and always producing that roar,

a sound like everyone alive

talking at once.

I have come a long way

to watch this water fail.

I have paddled down rapids,

through keepers and sweepers

and carried my boat on my head.

I have punched through waves,

walked around logjams

and peeled out from the oil-black calm

into the rushing hydraulics

of the main channel

where the dark water flexes

and slides right under itself.

I came without capsizing once

to the place where the river

spends what it has in one throw,

and my plan is to stay for a while

with a plume of hysteria

rising inside me, as spray

cools my cheeks and my shirt

becomes drenched and just stare

at this collapse that lasts all day,

this demolition dangling in the air

as if caught in a tape loop.

And I can't tell if those are

fluted columns of long white hair

or whether this thing is strong

or effete, steadfast

or fleet. It slides

but abides, sways

but stays. One moment it is trembling

like an Edwardian maiden in her filmy dress,

pressing the back of her hand to her head,

and the next it's as stable as marble,

older than letters,

stiff as the bone in my arm

and standing before it

with shame and self-love

plunging and recirculating

inside me, I can't seem to tell

if this is a wise thing

or a foolish one, a teacher

or an idiot child,

a beginning or an end.

...

It's hard to tell you how gentle I found these poems.  When I tell you there is a gentle nature to Taylor's vast gaze I want you, the reader, to know it is a high compliment.

It's always easy to crack the whip, but a little wisdom and experience, a well placed word, will always get the job done better.

William Wordsworth, Dwight D. Eisenhower, St. Thomas Aquinas, Theodore Roethke and Samuel Taylor Coleridge all stop in to chat over the course of No End In Strangeness.  There are also orangutans and fireworks.

Checks in the Horn Timer,

and a Hogged Sheer

What the would-be

boat-restorer bought

for half the value of its wood,

was an unused future,

which had stood

for five years

in a quiet spot

behind the builder's widow's

house;

           and what he got,

apart from a pretty good trailer,

was a new supply

of fresh, unsampled days,

and also the builder's

hope that, by and by,

he would be loading up

the thing he'd made

and sailing it away

to where the sky

is interleaved with orange

like a mixed drink,

and happiness arrives in waves

of salt and fronds

and green volcanoes wafting

in a horizontal haze.

That's what the builder thought.

But where he ended up with

was a brownish spot

that never went away,

and there is his Fiji,

flush with rot

in the long grass,

seedy with dreams,

the sun's heat slowly

opening her seams.

Meanwhile, the buyer

has a nautical

vocabulary to acquire,

a trampled field

to learn it in,

a patch of well-packed dust

on which to pour his liquid hours,

and make is own damned

ocean, if he must.

...

Taylor is a steamroller poet.  Steady and certain.  All of these poems take place within some fairly formal constraints Taylor insists upon.  As a result this collection reads with a remarkably consistent tone, Taylor keeps the temperature constant.

Shadowed

A cougar will attack from behind,

I'm told, and it will feel

like somebody cracking a two-by-four

over the back your neck.

Later, you may show the reporters twenty-nine

neat metal staples down your spine,

and what you will say is: I guess it just wasn't

my time.

And later still, in the deep night,

you will be alone with the uncontrollable

shaking, but that isn't you being afraid

of a lion, it is only your body,

that great confused baby,

attempting to figure things out,

too simple to know

that the past

has passed.

Anyway, it is something to think about

as I walk too quickly

up this gravel road, alone.

Except, it is regret

that is stalking me

with quiet steps,

while the past keeps pace

in the steep bluffs and dark foliage

on either side.

...

Bruce Taylor's No End In Strangeness reminds me of the great Raymond Souster.  Both eloquently simple and covering grand ground.  It's not that Taylor sounds like Souster, it is more the feeling the poetry inspires.  You always feel like you are part of an intelligent conversation with the world.

These are stories of the true human heart and who doesn't want to read those?  These are poems about that journey to understanding and happiness, love and loss, all that universal stuff that makes us so bleeding human.

Bruce Taylor

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bruce Taylor is a two-time winner of the A.M. Klein Award for Poetry. He has published three books of poetry: Getting On with the Era (1987), Cold Rubber Feet (1989), and Facts (1998). He has been a teacher, a puppeteer, and a freelance journalist. He lives in Wakefield, Quebec.

Bruce Taylor reading his poem "Life Science

For the Biblio File"

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