Disturbing the Buddha - Barry Dempster (Brick Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Disturbing the Buddha.  Barry Dempster.  Brick Books.  London, Ontario, 2016.

Barry Dempster has been nominated for the Governor General's Award twice.  Today's book of poetry tackles Dempster's latest, his fifteenth book of poetry, Disturbing the Buddha from the formidable Brick Books stable.

Dempster is no stranger to Today's book of poetry, we have several of his titles on our shelves:

Positions To Pray In, Guernica (1989)

The Unavoidable Man, Quarry Press (1990)

Letters from a Long Illness with the World, Brick Books (1993)

The Burning Alphabet, Brick Books (2005)

Love Outlandish, Brick Books (2009)

and 

Invisible Dogs, Brick Books (2013)

Today's book of poetry has been following Barry Dempster for a long time.  His books never fail to be good reads, this sort of intelligent diligence always delivers.

The thing with Dempster is that he has a polymorphous sense of curiosity.

Be Drunk

First sip has a way of loosening

knots, those clusters of nerves

nagging like bow ties, cutting off

my breath. After a good swallow

my legs shred some texture - hushabye.

Knuckles shoo their useless k's.

From here on in it's one grand gush -

elbows turned to slush.

Be drunk, Baudelaire proclaimed,

the poet crowning. Evening bobs

on rambunctious little waves,

the bottle cradled in my arms

a conch shell, my brain well

on its way to a saint's gibberish,

surrendering my stevedore will,

my Calvinist settle.

The second glass has a bubbly

disposition, flirty, faster

than a somersault. By the third

the couch is surfing. At four,

I'm on the floor playing Kitty-

Kitty. Can't remember five. Come

morning, daisies will be growing

from my lips, my legs squirming

two feet from my hips.

I'll be nameless, like a beast

Adam forgot to add to his scroll.

...

Disturbing the Buddha is mature, 10,000 hour work.  There are no rough edges on these babies.   Dempster has worked these until they are smooth to the touch.

Dempster is comfortable exploring the word of God and the water-skiing prowess of a Barbie doll, Boy George is in here, the Thompson Twins as well.  Beatrix Potter too.  Dempster calls on an honour roll of guests and characters to flesh out his world view and he can be both playful and serious as a heart-attack in the same poem.

Swallows

I decide to call them swallows,

liking how far out my lips go,

and then the reprieve, that o sound

an actual swallow might make

as it tightens its wings.

A swarm of them, not just a flock -  lassos

flinging themselves on distance.

The last time I fell in love it truly

felt like falling. One minute I was

throwing myself at the breeze,

the next landing so hard

even bone caved in. I lay there

shattered, tacking the sky

for explanations, swallowing

endless amounts of grief. Eventually,

I couldn't tell the difference between

a bird and the word. I wanted

to call it something extravagant

like disenchantment or self-destruction,

but settled on thud instead.

...

Any poet who tips a hat to P.K. Page is going to earn points here at Today's book of poetry.  Dempster brings in Mark Rothko, W.B. Yeats, Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, Ann Sexton, Milton, even Amy Winehouse makes one last breathless appearance.  Dempster likes a crowd.  

Actually Dempster deftly uses these touchstone public figures as a launching pad, as both bait and and prop.  If Barry Dempster is curious about it - he will make you curious about it as well.

This morning's reading was held in our non-air-conditioned dungeon/offices.  No one had their voice raise much above a whisper for fear of the heat.  We kept the blinds down.  It was almost liturgical.   The quietly intense poems of Disturbing the Buddha are never sermonizing though, Dempster's poems find the ground between conversation and lesson and let you in.

from DISTURBING THE BUDDHA

5/ Wu-Men

The Great Way has no gate,

no buzzer, no knob, no

iron bars that only breath

can penetrate. It's an entry

wound, skin pushed to the limits,

like the Red Sea's shores. Look

at all the traffic - swallows

hugging their speed, cruise ships

shaking their Jell-O-green pools,

genies shooting

skateboard flares. One toe at a time

and you're through, propelled by

desire's tiniest thrust. One

juicy thought and your consciousness

explodes. It's where your loneliness

was already heading,

where stamps have been flying

on perforated wings. Forget

the foolishness of choice.

You haven't had an unconflicted thought

since your mother's breast morphed

into a plastic Goofy cup.

You knew then and there, fate

was an openness to

folly. the Buddha so

disturbed, his belly rolled

across the lawn like a 

freshly fallen orange.

...

Disturbing the Buddha is another in a long line of very satisfying books of poetry from Barry Dempster.  This is how the pros do it.

Barry Dempster

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Barry Dempster, twice nominated for the Governor General’s Award, is the author of fourteen previous collections of poetry. His collection The Burning Alphabet won the Canadian Authors’ Association Chalmers Award for Poetry in 2005. In 2010, he was a finalist for the Ontario Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and in 2014 he was nominated for the Trillium Award for his novel, The Outside World. He lives in Holland Landing, Ontario.

Barry Dempster

at Words Aloud 9

Video: Words Aloud

brickbooks.ca

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