Today's book of poetry: Between Dusk and Night. Emily McGiffin. Brick Books. London, Ontario. 2012.
In 2008 Emily McGiffin won the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers from the Writers' Trust of Canada.
Bronwen Wallace was a very fine poet who died young but not before producing several excellent books of poetry and prose. My favourite Bronwen Wallace book of poetry is The Stubborn Particulars of Grace.
With Between Dusk and Night, McGiffin can confidently enter the same pantheon of excellence.
Here are two examples of why:
Note on Astronomy
Under a salted black sky
you peer into the throng of stars - Orion!
It's what we've hoped for:
a means of converting the deep cold dark
to a friendly giant. Orion to bring home
a fattened fall bear so that we can sit together
all winter on a black rug, chewing jerky in the smoky tallow light
Caught out in bleak November, we've been looking
for bona fide companions. Or a mathematical
equation. For irrefutable signposts on a well-marked path
to trot down blithely, knowing at last how to proceed.
how to slip beyond the confines of our scanty minds
into the real meaning of things.
The fog rolls in off the lake. And I cannot but hope
that a plant deprived of sun will grow on anyway, blindly, bent
on a half-remembered promise. That in this same gesture
of pure desire, dandelions burst through pavement, lichen
devours a skyscraper, saxifrage -- minutely, mutely --
in silence dismantles a wall.
...
After a Journey
There is a language roots write through the soil;
you've begun to learn it, pressing your ear
night after night to the earth
until their words are almost of your body
after so much conspiring with your sleeping bones.
Now you are thinking of your footfalls in a forest
becoming sure as your heartbeat, as rain--
you grow so still a thrush
lights on your wrist, forgetting
to be afraid. And near you a beetle
emerges from under a leaf;
it has found the sun and remembers
its own limbs, its stiff grace.
What it must do.
...
In McGiffin's world it seems the space between nature and human emotion has been breached. McGiffin gives the earth language, yet we understand and appreciate the conversation.
These aren't necessarily easy poems, but the best poetry never is.
www.brickbooks.ca
Monday, April 29, 2013
Friday, April 26, 2013
The Wind River Variations - Brian Brett
Today's book of poetry: The Wind River Variations. Brian Brett. Oolichan Books. Fernie, British Columbia. 2012. (Photographs by Fritz Mueller)
Brian Brett took his aging body on series of river expeditions in the summer of 2003. Brett was a member of a party of environmentalists, Native elders, artists, writers and photographers who journeyed to the remote waters of the Wind River, The Bonnet Plume River and the Snake River. These rivers are all feeders to the Peel River which feeds the MacKenzie. Much of this area of the north is under threat from development.
Brett's poems and prose-poems are almost conversational in tone. At times instructive, it's clear that his eyes are always wide open, he is taking everything in. These poems can be amusing and then demanding - but the read is a reward.
The Short, Natural History Of This Mosquito
These northern bugs, they are everywhere,
behind my eyelids, and under my tongue,
committing suicide in the stew,
dancing above the fire,
drinking lakes,
attacking the insect-eater's beak.
These bugs
invite death
with a single-mindedness
I have to admire -
the fat monster in my tent,
humming every time my breath
hints at the even sound of sleep.
He doesn't know
My eyes are not shut.
...
The photographs by award winning photographer Fritz Mueller give the book an added level of intimacy and precision that is appealing. These are good photographs and suite the poetry without over shadowing it.
No sentimentality but sensitive poems. No heart-strings but Brett's book is as Jan Zwicky says: "the work of a huge heart".
www.oolichan.com
Brian Brett took his aging body on series of river expeditions in the summer of 2003. Brett was a member of a party of environmentalists, Native elders, artists, writers and photographers who journeyed to the remote waters of the Wind River, The Bonnet Plume River and the Snake River. These rivers are all feeders to the Peel River which feeds the MacKenzie. Much of this area of the north is under threat from development.
Brett's poems and prose-poems are almost conversational in tone. At times instructive, it's clear that his eyes are always wide open, he is taking everything in. These poems can be amusing and then demanding - but the read is a reward.
The Short, Natural History Of This Mosquito
These northern bugs, they are everywhere,
behind my eyelids, and under my tongue,
committing suicide in the stew,
dancing above the fire,
drinking lakes,
attacking the insect-eater's beak.
These bugs
invite death
with a single-mindedness
I have to admire -
the fat monster in my tent,
humming every time my breath
hints at the even sound of sleep.
He doesn't know
My eyes are not shut.
...
The photographs by award winning photographer Fritz Mueller give the book an added level of intimacy and precision that is appealing. These are good photographs and suite the poetry without over shadowing it.
No sentimentality but sensitive poems. No heart-strings but Brett's book is as Jan Zwicky says: "the work of a huge heart".
www.oolichan.com
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Porcupine Burning - Blair Trewartha
Today's book of poetry: Porcupine Burning. Blair Trewartha. Baseline Press. London, Ontario. 2012.
Porcupine Burning is a series of poems about a Canadian mining town that burned to the ground in 1911 and those who bore witness to the event. Trewartha gives us a Ken Burns historic against a Deadwood drama reality show where gold has literally melted into the streets of ash.
Blair Trewartha has a fierce precision to his language. When he talks about smoke you can feel the acrid taste at the back of your throat.
Parting
I wait for an avalanche. A mountain's chest
to come pummeling down on my head, unearthing me.
I want to be gutted like a sow on a string,
window-framed and hanging.
You were going to be gorgeous.
I was going to be strong.
Now I carry your torso like a chain that can't be unhooked,
my mind a series of sparks waiting to be lit.
This heat is a tree I'd like to climb, barefoot,
breaking through the surface until there's only sky.
I wander through a sea of tents, sweating metallic.
Children run beside me collecting silver droplets in a cup.
My body bleeds itself out,
and the entire town replenishes.
I am a goat splayed open under moon.
A log of timber burning forever.
I collapse beneath cloud cover on a sundial.
Everyone else is keeping warm.
...
Porcupine Burning by Blair Trewartha has only the fault of being too short. A voice with this much wit, charm and intelligence is one worth listening to.
Clearly I liked these poems.
Now I want to talk about how this book looks and feels. Magnificent would be cutting it short. The binding is of St. Armand Canal paper, the flyleaf from Thai Banana paper and the poems themselves on Wansan 70lb. Royal Linen. The very elegant fonts, Perpetua, Forum and Bodoni suit each other perfectly with a faint whiff of the early twentieth century to them.
Karen Schindler is the mind behind Baseline Press and the designer of this stunningly beautiful book.
All of that beauty wouldn't mean much if the poetry of Trewartha didn't hold its' own weight, but it does. This is the sort of book other small presses can aspire to.
www.baselinepress.ca
Porcupine Burning is a series of poems about a Canadian mining town that burned to the ground in 1911 and those who bore witness to the event. Trewartha gives us a Ken Burns historic against a Deadwood drama reality show where gold has literally melted into the streets of ash.
Blair Trewartha has a fierce precision to his language. When he talks about smoke you can feel the acrid taste at the back of your throat.
Parting
I wait for an avalanche. A mountain's chest
to come pummeling down on my head, unearthing me.
I want to be gutted like a sow on a string,
window-framed and hanging.
You were going to be gorgeous.
I was going to be strong.
Now I carry your torso like a chain that can't be unhooked,
my mind a series of sparks waiting to be lit.
This heat is a tree I'd like to climb, barefoot,
breaking through the surface until there's only sky.
I wander through a sea of tents, sweating metallic.
Children run beside me collecting silver droplets in a cup.
My body bleeds itself out,
and the entire town replenishes.
I am a goat splayed open under moon.
A log of timber burning forever.
I collapse beneath cloud cover on a sundial.
Everyone else is keeping warm.
...
Porcupine Burning by Blair Trewartha has only the fault of being too short. A voice with this much wit, charm and intelligence is one worth listening to.
Clearly I liked these poems.
Now I want to talk about how this book looks and feels. Magnificent would be cutting it short. The binding is of St. Armand Canal paper, the flyleaf from Thai Banana paper and the poems themselves on Wansan 70lb. Royal Linen. The very elegant fonts, Perpetua, Forum and Bodoni suit each other perfectly with a faint whiff of the early twentieth century to them.
Karen Schindler is the mind behind Baseline Press and the designer of this stunningly beautiful book.
All of that beauty wouldn't mean much if the poetry of Trewartha didn't hold its' own weight, but it does. This is the sort of book other small presses can aspire to.
www.baselinepress.ca
Monday, April 22, 2013
Ignite - Rona Shaffran
Today's book of poetry: Ignite. Rona Shaffran. Signature Editions. Winnipeg. 2013
An admission, I saw this book as a manuscript/work in progress. Luckily, for us, the reader, so did: John Barton, Karen Connelly, Carolyn Forche, Daphne Marlatt, Susan McMaster, Stuart Ross, Olive Senior, D.M. Thomas and Jan Zwicky. Rona Shaffran is that very rare poet who seeks out the advice of others and then actually uses it. The evidence is here.
The book I saw has vanished and in its' place Shaffran presents us this highly polished gem. Ignite.
The book starts with poems of a quiet desperation, a middle-aged woman's angst over the loss of love as a romantic or platonic pastime. The resolution of which is solved by poems that luxuriate in the ribald pleasure of lust as the relationship is brought back to fiery life.
Rona Shaffran is fearless and these pages blister with rekindled passion as Shaffran builds tension out of touch.
At The Window
A middle-aged couple, we gaze out
our living room window,
my face pressed
against the cool pane.
You tenderize
my earlobe,
hike up my skirt, drop it down
over our hips
and slide into me.
Once again, nerve endings shiver
all through my body
as two silver shadows
slow-tango
across the vinyl siding
of the house next door.
...
Shaffran is wantonly wicked at times but always in full control of her precise language. This books almost shudders in your hands as physical love and emotional passion are entwined. This book is never tawdry, but it certainly is robust. On these pages the horny Erica Jong battles it out with the contemplative Slyvia Plath on an erotic playground until Shaffran has reached an emotionally satisfying conclusion.
This is a stunning first book full of strong poems.
Check out: http://lpg.ca/CoCoPoPro/Poem27 to see more of Rona
www. signature-editions.com
An admission, I saw this book as a manuscript/work in progress. Luckily, for us, the reader, so did: John Barton, Karen Connelly, Carolyn Forche, Daphne Marlatt, Susan McMaster, Stuart Ross, Olive Senior, D.M. Thomas and Jan Zwicky. Rona Shaffran is that very rare poet who seeks out the advice of others and then actually uses it. The evidence is here.
The book I saw has vanished and in its' place Shaffran presents us this highly polished gem. Ignite.
The book starts with poems of a quiet desperation, a middle-aged woman's angst over the loss of love as a romantic or platonic pastime. The resolution of which is solved by poems that luxuriate in the ribald pleasure of lust as the relationship is brought back to fiery life.
Rona Shaffran is fearless and these pages blister with rekindled passion as Shaffran builds tension out of touch.
At The Window
A middle-aged couple, we gaze out
our living room window,
my face pressed
against the cool pane.
You tenderize
my earlobe,
hike up my skirt, drop it down
over our hips
and slide into me.
Once again, nerve endings shiver
all through my body
as two silver shadows
slow-tango
across the vinyl siding
of the house next door.
...
Shaffran is wantonly wicked at times but always in full control of her precise language. This books almost shudders in your hands as physical love and emotional passion are entwined. This book is never tawdry, but it certainly is robust. On these pages the horny Erica Jong battles it out with the contemplative Slyvia Plath on an erotic playground until Shaffran has reached an emotionally satisfying conclusion.
This is a stunning first book full of strong poems.
Check out: http://lpg.ca/CoCoPoPro/Poem27 to see more of Rona
www. signature-editions.com
Saturday, April 20, 2013
The Essential Tom Marshall - selected by David Helwig and Michael Ondaatje
Today's book of poetry: The Essential Tom Marshall. Tom Marshall. Selected by David Helwig and Michael Ondaatje. Porcupine's Quill. Erin, Ontario. 2012.
Twenty years ago this month, April, Tom Marshall died of a heart attack.
Over the course of my life as a poet I have heard dozens of people, in all seriousness, say to me "well, you'll be famous when you are dead." As though that was in any way likely or reassuring. It makes me laugh and it breaks my heart.
Here is a short list off of the top of my head of fine Canadian poets I knew who died young, before their time: Louis Fagan, Linda Pyke, Dennis Tourbin, Martin Singleton, Riley Tench. You most likely never heard of them when they were alive and the odds of hearing anything about now are slim and none.
Tom Marshall, on the other hand, has a body of work and friends who remember him well. They want us to remember him too. The Essential Tom Marshall is a slim primer to remind us that Marshall had a distinctive voice. Tom Marshall published fiction and criticism, he did graduate work on the poetry of A.M. Klein and then D.H. Lawrence. The following is a list of Marshall's published poetry.
The Beast With Three Backs (with Tom Eadie and Colin Norman). Kingston: Quarry Press, 1965
The Silences of Fire. Toronto: Macmillan, 1969.
Magic Water. Kingston: Quarry Press, 1971.
The Earth Book. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1974.
The White City. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1976.
The Elements. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1980.
Playing with Fire. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1984.
Dance of the Particles. Kingston: Quarry Press, 1984.
Ghost Safari. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1991.
Some Impossible Heaven of the Senses. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1994.
Tom Marshall's poetry puts his Kingston as the center of his universe (and it is where his heart resides). But his poems are as big as the whole wide world. Marshall was a Canadian historian and isn't reluctant to bring history alive in his poems. In his poem Politics, Louis Riel, MacKenzie and Montgomery all struggle to make it out alive, unlike the unlucky Pierre Laporte.
This selection of Marshall's work by David Helwig and Michael Ondaatje is the work of dear friends. They recognized in Marshall, that his plea "give me the whole fire of your heart" from his poem Astrology, was also a promise, a dramatic stake of claim, a declaration of Marshall's intention to give the whole of his heart.
Marshall quotes his hero D.H. Lawrence's poem The Ship of Fools for the title of his own poem "we are dying, dying, we are all of us dying". In this poem Marshall prophetically proclaims "we have our moment and then become the past". David Helwig and Michael Ondaatje are doing what they can to prove this false. Marshall's poetry, as strongly demonstrated here, will endure.
We should all be so lucky to have such friends.
Other Qualifications
(flat feet, the odd sprained ankle, recurrent flu
running nose, a share of sexual failure
loneliness, boorishness, malice
melancholia, alcoholic shakes
at times, inexplicable black fatigue
of soul, absence of feeling or caring
for days, months of vacancy, nobody home
at the shit-and-blood machine, last seen
asleep, functioning, nobody home but me
Tom Marshall
http://porcupinesquill.ca
Twenty years ago this month, April, Tom Marshall died of a heart attack.
Over the course of my life as a poet I have heard dozens of people, in all seriousness, say to me "well, you'll be famous when you are dead." As though that was in any way likely or reassuring. It makes me laugh and it breaks my heart.
Here is a short list off of the top of my head of fine Canadian poets I knew who died young, before their time: Louis Fagan, Linda Pyke, Dennis Tourbin, Martin Singleton, Riley Tench. You most likely never heard of them when they were alive and the odds of hearing anything about now are slim and none.
Tom Marshall, on the other hand, has a body of work and friends who remember him well. They want us to remember him too. The Essential Tom Marshall is a slim primer to remind us that Marshall had a distinctive voice. Tom Marshall published fiction and criticism, he did graduate work on the poetry of A.M. Klein and then D.H. Lawrence. The following is a list of Marshall's published poetry.
The Beast With Three Backs (with Tom Eadie and Colin Norman). Kingston: Quarry Press, 1965
The Silences of Fire. Toronto: Macmillan, 1969.
Magic Water. Kingston: Quarry Press, 1971.
The Earth Book. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1974.
The White City. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1976.
The Elements. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1980.
Playing with Fire. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1984.
Dance of the Particles. Kingston: Quarry Press, 1984.
Ghost Safari. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1991.
Some Impossible Heaven of the Senses. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1994.
Tom Marshall's poetry puts his Kingston as the center of his universe (and it is where his heart resides). But his poems are as big as the whole wide world. Marshall was a Canadian historian and isn't reluctant to bring history alive in his poems. In his poem Politics, Louis Riel, MacKenzie and Montgomery all struggle to make it out alive, unlike the unlucky Pierre Laporte.
This selection of Marshall's work by David Helwig and Michael Ondaatje is the work of dear friends. They recognized in Marshall, that his plea "give me the whole fire of your heart" from his poem Astrology, was also a promise, a dramatic stake of claim, a declaration of Marshall's intention to give the whole of his heart.
Marshall quotes his hero D.H. Lawrence's poem The Ship of Fools for the title of his own poem "we are dying, dying, we are all of us dying". In this poem Marshall prophetically proclaims "we have our moment and then become the past". David Helwig and Michael Ondaatje are doing what they can to prove this false. Marshall's poetry, as strongly demonstrated here, will endure.
We should all be so lucky to have such friends.
Other Qualifications
(flat feet, the odd sprained ankle, recurrent flu
running nose, a share of sexual failure
loneliness, boorishness, malice
melancholia, alcoholic shakes
at times, inexplicable black fatigue
of soul, absence of feeling or caring
for days, months of vacancy, nobody home
at the shit-and-blood machine, last seen
asleep, functioning, nobody home but me
Tom Marshall
http://porcupinesquill.ca
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