Amateurs At Love — Patricia Young (Icehouse Poetry/Goose Lane Editions)

Today's book of poetry:
Amateurs At Love.  Patricia Young.  Icehouse Poetry/Goose Lane Editions.  Fredericton, New Brunswick.  2018.

Today's book of poetry has Pharoah Sanders on the box and he's cracking out a sterling version of his song "Africa/You've Got To Have Freedom" and we are loving it.  That's about as good as it gets.  Today's book of poetry wanted something lively, joyous, up beat to help us celebrate Patricia Young's Amateurs At Love. 

Patricia Young is no amateur.  Today's book of poetry has been down the Patricia Young road twice before.  Once for Short Takes on the Apocalypse (Biblioasis,2016), and once for her Consider The Paragliders (Baseline Press, 2018).  You can see them both here:

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2017/04/short-takes-on-apocalypse-patricia.html

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2018/03/consider-paragliders-patricia-young.html

And here we go again.  It should be clear why, once again Patricia Young has hit us in the poetry sweet spot.

Amateurs At Love is crafted into six sections, each alive with its own magic.  Today's book of poetry got stuck in the first section, "This Could Be Anyone's Story", stuck isn't the right word, neither is paralyzed.  We're going to go with transfixed.  These short prose poems are note perfect, precise and patient.

Young is a pro.

Inside Sleep Country, Bird Murals

INSIDE SLEEP COUNTRY, BIRD MURALS glow on the walls:

peacocks and flamingoes, macaws and parrots. The old man wants

a firm mattress. The old woman longs for a good night's rest.

But the warehouse is a gruelling maze of daybed, canopy beds,

waterbeds, platform beds, sofa beds, truckle beds. Beds the size of

coffins and sandboxes. Beds sluggish as tugboats and shallow as

wading pools. They lean against a child's bunk and remove their

shoes. After you, he says, and she begins her ascent. They climb the

ladder, heads butting through clouds and sunsets, until they roll,

exhausted, onto a super-deluxe, memory foam mattress. Lying on

their backs, they talk about old wounds, betrayals, and whiplash

lust and bursitis. They have children, don't they? Grandchildren,

too? The lights dim. They hear the last customer leave. Doors lock.

Plumage rustles. There's a lone creeing sound. They reach shyly

across the expanse. After all these years, how is it possible? They're

still amateurs at love.

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry sent Thomas, our newest intern, into the stacks to see what else we had in stock from Patricia Young.  Young has published 12 books of poetry and six chapbooks (as well as a novel).  We have eight of her poetry titles on our shelves, in no particular order:

Those Were The Mermaid Days

Melancholy Ain't No Baby

More Watery Still

Here Come The Moonbathers

Night-Eater

What I Remember From My Time On Earth

Short Takes on the Apocalypse

Consider The Paragliders

And now young Thomas, our newest intern, will be tasked with finding Patricia Young's other titles. 

Today's book of poetry would be remiss not to suggest you dear readers do the same; look for Patricia Young books.  We suspect, that like us, you will discover a voice worth your good time and a wit you wish you had.

Amateurs At Love is gold.  Like the afore-mentioned Pharoah Sanders, Patricia Young knows how to come correct.  In "Animal Tales", another of the six sections, Young and anthropomorphism get into a Noah's Ark of four legged and winged creatures.  Young treats them with respect, reveals their wit.  You'll believe every word because Young has the true burn.  It all sounds like the truth.

Rabbit

When the children peered through gaps in the fence surrounding

their play area they were confronted with a shocking sight — a

teenage girl whipping a rabbit with a willow branch. The girl

heard the children's whimpering and came over and threatened

to whip them too. So young and so pitiless, the daycare workers

said as they shuffled the little ones into the church basement where

they sloughed off their Muddy Buddies and rolled out their mats. It

was time to nap. Time to dream. That night the children told their

parents about the girl and rabbit, and the next day their parents

told their friends, who then told their friends, and so on, person

to person, until rumours of the girl's pathology travelled around

the globe, full circle, returning to the rabbit who merely rolled his

pink eyes. The children were fantasists, of course. To the rabbit's

mind, truth was the water dish in the corner of his hutch, the whiff

of clover on a summer morning, the diamond stud in the girl's ski

jump nose.

💫💫💫

Goose

The goose was in love with three ganders and they loved her in

return. The farmer, however, had no time for romance. Financially,

he was in over his head and also underwater. He needed to

downsize. This worried the animals, especially the goose. A month

earlier, on her birthday, she'd laid her last egg. Now, no matter

how she bore down — not one speckled oval. Like all lovesick

creatures, the ganders were a font of ideas and suggested the goose

feign broodiness. An excellent plan, she said, and refused to leave

her nest, even to eat or drink. Day and night her adoring ganders

gathered around to recite sonnets in praise of her fertility but after

the third debt collector had driven off, the farmer summoned his

hapless  waterfowl. You've laid more eggs than any other goose, he

said, and I am grateful, but you are old, old girl, and now you must

return to the bee balm and sky. Too dignified to make a fuss, the

goose arranged her head on the chopping block and the axe came

down. Instead of blood, a bouquet of dandelions spouted from her

neck. The awestruck ganders watched as the yellow clusters turned

swiftly to seed balls. Puff, they cackled, puff, puff.

💫💫💫

It's a rainy gray day in the nation's capital but we're all smiles here at Today's book of poetry.  When the pros drop in they make our life easy.  The morning read was both humorous and profound.  Young can be Richard Pryor funny and deadly serious at the same time.  Great trick.

Thomas, our newest intern, was introduced to the morning read this morning and of course because he is new he had to read first.  Thomas looked us right in the eyes and then nailed it, read Patricia Young with wit and timing.  We gave him and Amateurs At Love the full standing ovation.  Thomas bowed.

Mother

I took her hand and pulled her toward the park and begged her to

explain why everything I wanted to know was unknowable, like the

boys hanging around the edge of the canal. I wanted to know the 

difference between hypocrisy and lust. Also: the true story of Adam

and Eve. Was the Garden of Eden a foreign country where you

drank from a porcelain fountain or was it the beast with two backs?

I wanted to know: how could a beast have two backs? Other things

too: tricks to stay sane in prison. Should I memorize passages from

the Bible or Dante? Hanging upside down on the monkey bars,

I wanted to know why she, my mother, sitting on a stone bench

unwrapping a small meat pie, had blotted out her past. She bit into

the cold pastry, gravy oozing from the corners of her mouth, and I

wanted to know, would I too have to reinvent myself with duct tape

and flowers?

💫💫💫

Today's book of poetry is clearly a Patricia Young fan, you will be too if you can get your hands on Amateurs At Love.  Just like Pharoah Sanders, you can't go wrong.

Patricia Young

ABOUT THE POET

Patricia Young has published twelve collections of poetry and one of short fiction. Her poems have been widely anthologized and she has received numerous awards for her writing, including the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, the B.C. Book Prize, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, a CBC Literary Prize, several National Magazine Awards, the Bliss Carman Award, and the Confederation Poets Prize. She has twice been nominated for the Governor General's Award for Poetry. She lives in Victoria.

BLURBS

"Amateurs at Love is as delectable as anything I've read in ages. Young delivers her salty truths in dreamscapes that straddle a ridge between drollery and devastating one-two punches. Here you will find prickly pangramics, grousing animalia, family fables, insight and allegory, and — as in the best of teh best — yourself." 

     — Sharon McCartney

"These poems could well be anyone's story, but each told in light touches is particular, the tone sometimes dark, if kept steadfastly whimsical in intent. A horse gorges on fermented daisies. Mice haunt a cottage with their absence. A boy comes to understand his mother has no answers for him. Not Patricia Young. Thankfully, in Amateurs at Love, she has found one for almost everything."

      — John Barton

"In Amateurs at Love, Patricia Young reveals parallel realities, not ghosts but fleeting glimpses of ourselves. Everyday love coexists as drama on a momentary stage, just on the other side of a veil, or it lives in a dreamlike state in which we are not sure if we are being dreamed or are dreamers. Young's extraordinary power of observation draws us in with fine detail, and the resonant precision of her language carries us along." 

     — Patrick Friesen

Patricia Young Reads from An Auto-Erotic History of Swings

Video: Sono Nis Press

gooselane.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.

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.

Consider The Paragliders - Patricia Young (Baseline Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Consider The Paragliders.  Patricia Young.  Baseline Press.  London, Ontario.  2018.

Today's book of poetry has had the pleasure of venturing into Patricia Young territory before.  Back in April of last year Today's book of poetry wrote about Patricia Young's Short Takes on the Apocalypse.  

You can see that here: 

 http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2017/04/short-takes-on-apocalypse-patricia.html

We had Milo, our head tech, retrieve Short Takes on the Apocalypse along with What I remember from my time on earth (House of Anansi Press, 1997), Night-Eater (Quatro Poetry, 2012) and Melancholy Ain't No Baby (Ragweed Press, 1985).  It is a small Young sampling but we have our Today's book of poetry book scouts searching for Young's many other titles.

It is safe to say that Today's book of poetry is an admirer of Patricia Young's poetry.  Consider The Paragliders is what happens when you put a pro in the lineup.  Young will only enhance her considerable reputation with this book of little diamonds.  Poems clear as glass, multi-faceted, sparkling in the right light and harder than nails when needed.

In Short Take on the Apocalypse Young kick-started her poems with the wisdom of various notables and then riffed.  Consider The Paragliders consists of eighteen short sharp prose poems where her grandfather, father and husband come and go but Young always seems braced and ready for flight.

Lost and Found

We found a tan suitcase lying open in the grass outside the Cherry

Bank Hotel. Genuine rawhide, leather handle. I was eighteen and

pregnant. He played Dylan on his guitar, stocked shelves at a liquor

store in the mall. We'd been to a movie, a spaghetti western. Two

hours of human cruelty and searing landscapes. The suitcase was 

stained and worn at the corners, empty except for a postcard of

Niagara Falls. On the back, an apology to Yvette. He said a woman's

script, I said a man's. That night, while he slept, my water broke. I

pulled the suitcase out from under the bed, threw in a toothbrush and

secondhand baby clothes. It was vintage. Satin lining. Brass latches.

Just the right size for a girl on the run.

...

Today's book of poetry found so much to admire in Young's tight little movies.  Perhaps Young is mythologizing the youth of her memory, like all of us, we relive those necessary moments whether they are good or bad.

Patricia Young, in this beautiful little monster from Baseline Press, is like Babe Ruth in the batting cage knocking every single ball into the seats.  These poems are dreamscapes where life is compressed into Young's sharp script and her "words appear on the paper."

The Writing Life

I sat on the edge of a hotel bed, writing in a notepad. I asked for

nothing. Like a canoe leaning against a fence or a peach sapling in

bloom. No, that's not true. I wrote from inside a burning building.

the way Lucy, bipedal ancestor, might have written, standing upright

on the savannah. Words appearing on the paper. Without thinking, I

ran a finger over their cuneiform shapes, I wrote like every girl in a

school uniform, shivering at a bus stop, every boy on a street corner,

weeping into his phone: Will I see you again? My script grew sharp and

angular. My sentences gained traction. My voice lined up with my

body's center of gravity. Don't believe me. I'm a liar. I wrote

everywhere and nowhere. Against all odds. Down a manhole. In the

end I became what I wrote, an old man up a ladder stuffing rags into a

vent.

...

Our morning read was better than Crapitalism and the daily evening news.  The gang gushed our way through Consider The Paragliders and then had a free for all with Short Takes on the Apocalypse, Melancholy Ain't No Baby, Night-Eater and What I remember from my time on earth.

Today's book of poetry has long admired the way Young talks and Consider The Paragliders only adds gravy to her reputation.  We've known Young can burn with the best for a long time.

Matthew 6:28

Logs, escaped from passing booms, washing up on the beach in front

of our house. A devout Christian lived next door. He wore a gas mask

and was often seen praying. On blustery days the sky above the strait

was a festival of brilliant nylon wings. My neighbor paid me by the

hour to shift the boxes in his crawlspace from one corner to another.

Or I'd wipe the hard covers of his religious texts with a damp rag and

organic cleaning compound. The year I turned thirteen, he moved

into a tent in his yard, but briquette fumes from summer barbecues

drove him back inside. He gave me small gifts. From Hawaii, a vial of

white sand. From New Mexico, a stone vase that could hold a single

stem. Some nights I'd open my bedroom window and imagine I saw

God. Consider the paragliders, I'd intone. They fear not, neither do they

worry. See them leap off high cliffs. How the updraft carries them aloft.

...

Today's book of poetry admires the chapbooks Baseline Press consistently presents as books of poetry, in fact every Baseline Press book is a beautiful little testament to the love of printing and publishing as well as poetry.  

Japanese Obonai Feather paper flyleafs.  Be still my beating heart.  Consider The Paragliders continues Baselines fine tradition of excellent poetry inside of sublime and beautiful artifacts.  Patricia Young will get all the credit for the poems in Consider The Paragliders, and rightly so, but Karen Schindler and her team at Baseline always do the poems every due consideration with their beautiful little books.

Today's book of poetry has been cruising in neutral a little lately.  Not sure if someone put something in our oil or if we got some bad gas.  But we're getting our engine checked and fluids topped up, a proper tune-up and we'll be back to regular service a.s.a.p..

Patricia Young

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Patricia Young has published 11 collections of poetry and one of short fiction. Her awards include the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and she has twice been nominated for the Governor General's Award for poetry. A new poetry collection is forthcoming in 2018 with Goose Lane Editions.

baselinepress.ca
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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

Short Takes on the Apocalypse - Patricia Young (Biblioasis)

Today's book of poetry:
Short Takes on the Apocalypse.  Patricia Young.  Biblioasis.  Windsor, Ontario.  2016.

Patricia Young is the author of eleven previous books of poetry and Today's book of poetry has had our eye on her work for a long, long time.  We had Milo, our head tech, check the stacks this morning and much to our disappointment he came back with a miserly three Patricia Young titles, Melancholy Ain't No Baby (Ragweed Press, 1985), What I remember from my time on earth (Anansi, 1997) and Night Eaters (Quatro Poetry, 2002).  After reading her latest, Short Takes on the Apocalypse, Today's book of poetry is reminded how much we admired this poet's work.

Short Takes on the Apocalypse isn't a party trick but this book does have a catch; each poem begins with some sage epigraph from a resplendent group that ranges from George Bernard Shaw to Marilyn Manson to Kurt Vonnegut.  It all works.  Somehow Young is able to use these witticisms as a springboard and once she takes to the air all sorts of marvelous hell break loose.

Tornado In The Bible Belt

                     Never open... with the weather.

                                       -Elmore Leonard

Strong southerly winds tore through the upper atmosphere. Hot air

clashed with cold. High-speed gusts rotated around a calm centre,

and then a funnel-shaped cloud was sucking up dust and debris and

a small child--my child. For twelve minutes his body spun like a 

blob of butter inside nature's blender. I cursed God and the complex

interactions between updraft and surrounding winds, cursed the

third layer of dry air and His vortex howl. How dare the Almighty

sweep my boy up, then drop him like a cigarette butt far from the

house. All night I searched the fields. Searched and searched until a

voice rang out of the blackness--I am safe in Jesus' arms. And then

silence unlike anything I'd ever known.

...

Short Takes on the Apocalypse, Young's twelfth book of poems, is an exploration.  Young is looking at it all; love, sex, death and her Hungarian grandmother.  Young brings a masterful poise to her narratives, these stories resonate so true - and that would be good enough - but Young is so much more.

This is funny stuff, biting and instructive.  Young has experience and wit and this book swells to bursting with both.  We laughed, we cried.

Vanishing

            I don't believe in an afterlife but I still fully expect

                               to see my brother again.

                                                            - Maurice Sendak

It doesn't matter where I go, what clothes I'm wearing,

which way my head's turned, north or south, if my mouth's

open or shut, if I'm awake or dreaming, I'm always with

you, on a bus in an eastern European town. Same overcast

sky, same up-turned cart in the middle of the road, hay

spreading across pavement, a donkey and farmer, shoulders

slumped: stance of unspeakable resignation. Time's lost

or frozen, the traffic's blocked and the bus driver's cursing

in a language so luminous with rage we understand every

blue letter word. Late afternoon commute, men with wind-

lashed faces and women in bright scarves. Bored girls

flipping open cell phones or the make-up cases on their laps.

Wherever I go a dull wash is descending upon the same

mud-splattered scene. We're twenty-two, we're forty-five,

we're sixty-eight, but no matter, day will lurch into night

and then into another day, the seasons will shift, the planets

align, the spilled hay will be cleared for passage, the driver

will sat back down, his diesel engine will sputter and combust,

we'll look out the back window as farmer, donkey and cart

grow small, then smaller, the dead will chatter into

the vanishing point. The bus will continue down the road.

...

It occurs to us here at Today's book of poetry that Young must be some sort of serious reader of the highest order to have found the range of epigraphs that frame these poems like paintings.  As it happens these poems are painterly, Short Takes on the Apocalypse is like a grand vernissage curated by Young.  It's a life story and Young doesn't flinch for a second, her panorama covers the past, present and future.  

Today's book of poetry has always, or at least since 1985, felt a kinship with Young's voice but perhaps that is only wishful thinking.  She has the plain, clear, intelligent voice Today's book of poetry aspires to.

Father Suite

             A father is always making his baby into a little woman.

                 And when she is a woman he turns her back again.

                                                                             -Enid Bagnold

In his shirt pocket, a package of Gitanes. I loved that package.

Wanted to be the Spanish lady shaking a tambourine. In Canada

my father became the model immigrant. Worked hard. Built

chimneys for a living. The feather in the cap, he'd say, his accent

stubborn. He laid brick, stone, concrete blocks. Climbed ladders

to the sky. He was king of flues and updrafts. Threw his little girl

into the air. So proud of her English. How she pronounced spark

arrestor, wall thimble, directional cowl. I was polished and pretty. At

sixteen landed a bit part in Rossini's La Cenerentola. On closing

night, kissed my backstage hero inside the folds of the velvet

curtain (how did my father know? what did he see?). When the

applause stopped, I was shipped off to Eastern Europe to die like

the grasses, rot in the earth.

                                                          *

Squatting before the hearth, my Hungarian grandmother ate

meaty potatoes right out of their skins. Scrubbed the floors of her

cramped apartment with a vile-smelling soap. Squirted vinegar

on the windows. Wiped them down with crumpled newspaper

until the glass squeaked. Sometimes I'd catch her looking at me

as though she understood my fundamental flaw. Her words were

foreign and disjointed and pierced with disappointment. At night

she wept. The delicate sound of her sadness was hard as nails.

She still longed for her son, my father. All those years later she

still missed the man I now hated. And such hatred! Ferocious.

Operatic. It rattled my bones.

                                                            *

I returned home to find him asleep on the front porch, big grey

wolf guarding the door. An empty bottle of plum brandy tipped on

its side. I shook him. Nudged his leg. He was still handsome in an

aging playboy sort of way. The cab driver, watching from the street,

was waiting to see me safely inside. I wanted to run back, ask him

to take me away. Instead, I slid down beside my father and began

to talk about my years in Budapest. How I stopped eating. Took up

smoking. Grew to love my grandmother. I talked about my soul-

deep passion for the backstage boy who'd painted the backdrop of

Don Magnifico's rundown mansion. You almost killed me, I said,

and pulled a blue and white cigarette package from my purse. My

father roused. Opened an eye. Squinted. He looked at the faceless

gypsy woman with a clinical and tender curiosity.

...

Our morning read was excellent.  How could it not be?  Both Milo and Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, made lists of the names Young referenced.  They are both determined to be good readers and are willing to jump off of any springboard they can find.

Young, a Governor General Award short list nominee, twice, is a true pro.  Every poem in Short Takes on the Apocalypse stands on it's own, adds some light where there was dark.

Patricia Young

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Patricia Young is the author of twelve books of poetry, and one book of short fiction, Airstream (Biblioasis, 2006). A two-time Governor General’s Award nominee, she has also won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award, the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, the CBC Literary Competition, the British Columbia Book Prize for Poetry and the League of Canadian Poets National Poetry Competition. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

BLURBS

“Young is a masterful technician. She masons each brick into place just so. …She thrives on ambiguity and twists while fostering a rapt interest in them in the reader.”

     — Prairie Fire

“With her sure hand wielding the knife of understanding, Young cuts not just to the bone, but well beyond into realms that transcend the here, the now and the merely personal.” 

    — Monday Magazine

“Accute and quirky observation which cumulates at insight.” 

     — Freefall

biblioasis.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.