Belly Full of Rocks - Tyler B. Perry (Oolichan Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Belly Full of Rocks.  Tyler B. Perry.  Oolichan Books.  Fernie, British Columbia.  2016.

Tyler B. Perry inhabits fairy tales like Wayne Gretzky handled the puck, with utter disregard for tradition, the other players and a few of the essential laws of gravity.  Perry's poems offer us up an entirely new world or unearthly charms.

How much fun are the poems in Belly Full of Rocks?  More than you thought possible.  Because we all know the earlier versions of these stories Perry has a known template to dive off of, but when he begins to show his marvelous romp skills all hell breaks loose.

Once inside the fairy tales of our youth Perry delights in the helter-skelter reconstruction of an entirely new set of rules.  Perry establishes a new paradigm.  Our dark fears join our dark intentions and Perry almost dares us to peer into the foreboding new light:  Perry is casting light into the dark corners our heroes never admitted to.  Maybe we had the wrong heroes.

So, the wolf has had his bad day, tried to move on, but...

Wolf in the city

I've acquired a small house in the suburbs.

In the city, but close enough to the outskirts

that I can roam the river valley, prowl

the yards of cottages in the foothills.

I don't go into town much, except to buy

groceries and stroll the streets

after dark. At first I was self conscious,

but soon realized I could go

pretty much anywhere incognito.

A heavy pea jacket and a tuque,

fur sticking out from my collar,

snout tucked in. Mostly

I walk. I'm patient now, knowing

I'll have to learn the ways

of the city before I start

to hunt. I snuggle up

to street lamps, run my tongue

along two rows of teeth: shredders

and bone crushers. One day

the girl with the red hood will pass by,

and this time I won't forget to chew.

...

Belly Full of Rocks is a beautiful case of sustained magic.  We know after reading the first delightful poem in this collection that we are not in Walt Disney World fairy tale territory; Perry is more closely and easily aligned with The Brothers Grimm.

Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs have never shared this much venomous rage nor been more like you and I.  On the surface the poems in Belly Full of Rocks play fast and loose with the fairy tales we all know and love.  It's clear to Today's book of poetry that there is ample sub-text at every turn.  There are primal urges vying the limelight right along with with primal fears, these fairy tale creature might be searching for salvation but Perry is reaching for illumination.

Tyler B. Perry deserves our admiration for the consistency of his conceit and how his new universe is such an eerie parallel to our own.

And that damned wolf, he doesn't know when to quit...

My story doesn't end

and I never seem to win.

I've been sliced, stuffed, drowned, skinned,

boiled and eaten, and yet I come again,

slinking with my trickery,

wicked about the eyes, meaning

to spring down upon you

and devour you in the darkness.

You can kill me and kill me and kill me,

but I will feed on your hate

and when the shadows

are their darkest, you will see my eyes:

two lanterns coming towards you

in the night.

...

This morning's read here at the office was a celebration, these poems ripping off of the tongue like bon-bons for the brain.  They only taste like candy, the reality is far more substantial, nutritious.

Belly Full of Rocks was such a pleasure to read that Today's book of poetry is starting to feel spoiled but in truth we read a fair bit of chafe here at TBOP before we find gems like this.  Tyler B. Perry is not the guy want reading to your children before they retire for the night - not if you ever want them to sleep.  This is for the grown-ups.

Tyler B. Perry goes that extra step, he even arranges for you to feel empathy for that notoriously evil old wolf and his sad lanterns.

I want to hunt

but the rocks slow me down,

my claws too loud on city sidewalks.

Streetlamps dampen the glow of my eyes.

Those pigs with their soft flesh and keen snouts

seemed to smell me before I even knocked,

heard the panting of my hungry breath.

By the time I'd reached the clever third,

he was waiting for me. He might as well

have left the door ajar and set out a pot of tea.

I still drip from the broth, my flesh

torn and bones bruised, chewed to a pulp.

My wounds throb, call to the moon.

Even the alley vermin aren't afraid

of me as I collapse and curl against the curb.

They crawl into my folds for heat.

When the white van pulls up I barely notice

until I feel the snare around my neck

and a sharp sting on my haunch.

I hear the trotters on the pavement,

the scurry of mice, feel soft arms

around me and sleep.

...

Today's book of poetry says to jump into this water head first.  Belly Full of Rocks is what we want from a book of poetry here at Today's book of poetry: it's amusing, arresting and alarming in all the best possible ways.  Perry has woven us into these myths, given them back to us to consider once again.  

Fine, fine, fine stuff.

Tyler B. Perry

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tyler Brendan Perry graduated from the optional residency Creative Writing MFA program at the University of British Columbia, and teaches high school in Calgary Alberta, where he lives with his wife, two kids, and a dog. He was captain of the 2010 Calgary poetry slam team, and is one of the organizers of the Alberta provincial high school poetry slam, Can You Hear Me Now? This is his second book of poetry.

BLURB

"You now what stories do, with their subliminally charged plots and scary messages, but do you wonder where they come from and what happens to those characters afterwards? Stay tuned, as Tyler Perry is about to reveal that you carry your stories within you, like stones in the wolf's belly, that you are both reader and author, puppet and puppeteer. Perry's Huntsman, standing outside his daughter's door listening to her breathe and toss in bed, senses the 'thin skin / of glass between her and the forest.' He also understands the gossamer that separates dream from reality. Setting out to carve children from whitebark pine, he finds them already there, ingrained in the wood, having 'seeped into the living / tree from the earth... his hands the engine of their release.' Hold your breath, step inside."

     - Gary Geddes, author of The Resumption of Play

oolichan.ca

608

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.

For Your Safety Please Hold On - Kayla Czaga (Nightwood Editions)

Today's book of poetry:
For Your Safety Please Hold On.  Kayla Czaga.  Nightwood Editions.  Gibsons, British Columbia.  2014.

Winner of the 2nd annual
Kitty Lewis Hazel Millar Dennis Tourbin Poetry Prize

I've never quite experienced the like.  The first few poems of this collection had me dizzy with joy, a little like the first time you saw Wayne Gretzky, or the first time you saw Mikhail Baryshnikov fly.

You've never read family portraits like those in For Your Own Safety Please Hold On.

Kayla Czaga writes like she has 200 years of wisdom coursing through her veins.  She uses language we are all familiar with but somehow escapes the bounds of previous gravity, these plain speaking poems soar.

In my corrupted opinion this is the best book of poetry I have read this year.  No one in the office here at TODAY'S BOOK OF POETRY disagreed.

Another Poem About My Father

I don't get poetry either. Mostly I get cavities,
junk mail. Once, I got eleven hundred dollars
in small change from my father for Christmas.
He said, You've got to work for your money--
meaning you've got to haul it through six feet
of snow to the bank, Good luck, here's a bag.
My father is more like a poem than most poems
are. He once tucked a living loon into his coat
and brought it home to amuse my mother who
loves birds, especially surprised-sounding birds,
especially owls. My nostalgia receptors zigzag
wildly through me when I think of my father
pushing his metal detector across all the parks,
schoolyards and riverbanks of this great nation,
waving it back and forth--like some sort of
yayhoo, my mother would say--until it beeps
solemnly above a nickel. With a butter knife
he cuts such slender metaphors from the earth.

...

Czaga in For Your Safety Please Hold On has a new intensity, you don't see it coming as much as feel it.  These poems are universally personal, crowd-sourcing intimate.

Joyce Carol Oates is vastly under-rated if you ask me, and we here in the office at TODAY'S BOOK OF POETRY all agree on that point, her novels have always had a way of making me feel as though I were inhabiting a world of her design.  What I mean is that her universe becomes yours.  It is a familiar even though it is new terrain.

Kayla Czaga knows the same trick.  When she is writing about family it sounds suspiciously like she is writing about your own.  When she writes about herself she almost makes you think you are looking in a mirror.

23RD Birthday

In this city where all the shops stay open
the people close early. I closed. I told

another person, I cannot
love you anymore, please mail my books
back to me. Then I went bowling

and threw seven consecutive
balls into the gutter. Misery of the five-pin. I slept

in a bathtub. People keep buying me
clocks. Puddles keep collecting
sidewalks. Maybe I'll collect puddles

or clock out like so many people I've seen
on buses, that man who wept

violently into his scarf and the rest
of us trying to ignore him, turning up
our not-listening devices. Tonight

I am twenty-three and looking
for someone gentle enough to hold back

my hair--this could be you, stranger
with your three-point smile and hairdo.
Tonight I want to stop watching the clocks;

I fear I'll become them--spinning
in circles with hands covering my face.

...

I don't know how old Kayla Czaga is -- but I know she is young.  I can't even imagine how fine her future poems will be.  But I am certain I'll be anxious to read them, and after reading For Your Safety Please Hold On you will be too.

"Sometimes
it is the sound the Lord makes
snipping split ends off

my soul."
--from MANY METAPHORICAL BIRDS

So many books and so little time, but this is one I will read again, and then, a while later, again. Why?  Like watching a magician on video with fast forward, slow motion, replay, I want to learn her tricks.

Temporary

At the Ash Wednesday service, waiting
for the priest to cross my forehead, I watched him
touch the faces of the people in front of me,
mishearing him say, Remember you are blessed.
I was horrified when I remembered it
was really, Remember you are dust, with ashes
thumbed into my forehead. Headlights spattered
through the intentionally broken glass
windows of that beautiful downtown church
tucked behind a mall, as I tried to understand
and to dust you shall return. Traffic lights
flickered through Christ with arms nailed
open, Mary robed in blue, mourning into his feet.
After the service, I spilled out of the church
into wet February and public transit hauled me
back into my crumbling ordinary life. What
happens after this? When Jesus died,
it was temporary, the stone rolled away,
but where is he now, and can any of us hope
to go there, or is it all ashes and dust
covered bookshelves? Last week, Liz tried
to explain taxidermy to me, how she peeled
a rabbit, then rigged its pelt back into
rabbit-shape. She emptied a set of robin's wings
to sew onto its back--the flying rabbit.
It looked alive, a stitching trick, the way
my dead relatives look alive, resurrected
in photographs. It reminded me of colouring
Easter eggs with my mother. We blew the yolks
into a bowl before we dyed the shells
blue and yellow. How the eggs looked full
until we held them up to the light.

...

For Your Safety Please Hold On should be front page news for everyone who loves poetry, mandatory reading for everyone who doesn't.

Kayla Czaga

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kayla Czaga grew up in Kitimat and now lives in Vancouver, BC, where she recently earned her MFA in Creative Writing at UBC. Herpoetry, nonfiction and fiction has been published in The Walrus, Best Canadian Poetry 2013, Room Magazine, Event and The Antigonish Review, among others. For Your Safety Please Hold On is her first book.

BLURBS

"Funny, smart, sophisticated, guileless: reading Czaga is like drinking a glass of water in a desert.  Every once in a while there arrives a young poet whose astonishing aptitude for the craft rises so clearly, so beautifully, the relief is palpable.  For Your Safety Please Hold On is Czaga’s answer to Moure’s Domestic Fuel and Solie’s Short Haul Engine... and like Moure and Solie we don’t need to expect great things from her. Great things are already here."

    --Elizabeth Bachinsky

"Kayla Czaga's For Your Safety Please Hold On recalls what was radical about Robert Lowell's Life Studies a half century ago. With wit and empathy, it moves beyond the confessional to reclaim the intimate and personal as an adventurous subject for poetry. Reading it is like being brought into someone's home and told all the family secrets--never an imposition, it feels rather like an initiation into the clan. I thoroughly enjoyed it."

     --Paul Vermeersch

Feature Poet Kayla Czaga @PJ

nightwoodeditions.com

282

THE KITTY LEWIS HAZEL MILLAR DENNIS TOURBIN POETRY PRIZE is awarded annually to the book of poetry that I, Michael Dennis, like the most.  The award was named for Kitty Lewis and Hazel Millar who were instrumental to this blog during its' formative steps.  It is also named for the late painter, poet and all around wonderfully generous Dennis Tourbin whom I loved.  The award is virtually meaningless - except that the winner is entitled to a home cooked meal, with wine, if they ever come to Ottawa.