Dunk Tank — Kayla Czaga (House of Anansi Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Dunk Tank.  Kayla Czaga.  House of Anansi Press.  Toronto, Ontario.  2019.

Back in December of 2014 Today's book of poetry jumped on the Kayla Czaga bandwagon, Today's book of poetry wrote about Czaga's For Your Safety Please Hold On.  You can see that blog/review here:

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2014/12/for-your-safety-please-hold-on-kayla.html 

Today's book of poetry was so fond of Kayla Czaga's first book we named it winner of the 2nd annual Kitty Lewis Hazel Millar Dennis Tourbin Poetry Prize.

Czaga's second book, Dunk Tank, is another masterpiece.  The poems aren't all perfect, but damned near.  It doesn't matter what Czaga talks about in her poems because she does the same trick in almost every poem.  The trick is hard to explain because it falls somewhere between happy childhood memories and a profound and darkened whimsy.

Dunk Tank

The volleyball girls wrestle in Jell-O.

Travis Lechner, lead screamer

of Occult Nosebleed, commands

the tenth-grade stoners to live real.

The French teacher struts

like a heron, beige socks hiked up

to his knees. You've been suckered

into a shift at the dunk tank

to fundraise for a school in Tanzania.

You'll be dunked six times—

twice by a boy named Brice you love

but never talk to. When he runs out

of money, he'll throw grass

at you, chunks of hotdog, himself.

You climb up and wave

to your friends eating Filipino kebabs

by the track. Tonight you'll all

drink coolers by the waterfall.

This is the year Dustin Klepsch will drive

his ATV off a cliff. You sit

above the drunk goggle obstacle

course and rootbeer-guzzling contest

and you know you know everything—

can diagram reproductive systems

of worms, know exactly when

two trains travelling 60km/hour

will meet in Kitwanga for lunch.

This is the year your mom's kidneys

will fail while you're in History

and the year Kristie will stop talking

to you and painting sad-lovely

portraits of her dogs. Brice pays

two dollars to throw three balls

at you. The wind sighs like it's locked

its keys in its car. You're sitting

on your chair, smart girl, only

your chair drops and before you fall

there's this moment you're sitting

on nothing and you think maybe

you won't fall after all — maybe

you'll just hover here forever.

💫💫💫

Kayla Czaga is a smart woman, just like her poems tell you.  She is also a social historian and an academic juggler.  Today's book of poetry suspects that somewhere Czaga has a shrine that includes Lucille Ball.  Why?  Because Czaga has the same genius timing and the same ferocious gaze.

Ok, silly Today's book of poetry.  Our Jr. Editor, Kathryn, showered considerable scorn in our direction over the Lucille Ball idea.  Kathryn said look at Suzannah Showler, Catherine Owen, Sharon Olds instead of Ms. Ball.  And of course Kathryn, as always, was right.

Today's book of poetry wasn't suggesting the Dunk Tank is a comedy, nope, Dunk Tank is as serious as it gets, we get love, sex and death, old dinosaur bones and more.  But Czaga never loses her ability to laugh it all, herself included.

Bibliophilia

I am very avant-garde in what

I use for bookmarks. That

look on your face would do.

A clump of my hair in a pinch.

At sixteen I dumped

coffee into Jane Austen

and still she crackles open

on a botched proposal.

I am a monster dogearer.

I use Joan Didion as a napkin.

Before I became a person

my dad lived on a farm

with no electricity, only

Louis L'Amour for toilet paper.

So it is my birthright to defile

the printed word. Instead

of depositing my book

into my bag when my hands

are doing other things

like masturbating or thumbing

avocados I dangle it

from my teeth like a retriever

presenting her retrieved.

If you love something so much

why do you keep it

up on that shelf and never 

touch it? It's like you want

a virgin wife while all

I want is a girl I can bend

backwards over tombstones

lick Pringles from her cracks

and cackle with. We stay

up all night with seances

and french-braiding and neither

of us ever wears white.

💫💫💫

Even when naming villains Czaga is affectionately honest.  Dunk Tank lets us in fairly easily but it's hard to get out of it.  Does Czaga cast a spell over the reader?  Today's book of poetry thinks so.

There is so much to like in Kayla Czaga's sophomore collection.  Today's book of poetry fell for Czaga's garlic-eating grandmother and you will too.

Our morning reading was more a celebration than the normal read, everyone in the place was glad to have Czaga back in the house.

Under Construction

You'd think that empty lot

had slaughtered their mothers

the way those men torture it

with yellow machines. With how

little sleep you've been

getting, you think a lot

of sinister things, especially

these mornings when light

is the translucent grey

of fake teeth. Your dad

used to bring you home

dinosaur bones from the foothills

he razed to lay highways.

You can't remember when

you realized trucks run

on a broth of ancient lizards

but now they'll never not 

feel haunted. It's important

to get places but you doubt

another condo tower

beside the train line

will do more than rattle

like a Yahtzee cup tossing

professional couples.

You keep the fossils

like jewelry on your dresser,

stroke their tar settings

until they look wet. A view,

more sleep, a new life

with fewer machines—

you've wanted so

much for so long you

don't remember living

without the fuel light on.

An invisible raptor stands

behind you in a business

suit, factoring in inflation

with his talon on your hand.

💫💫💫

Quite simply, Kayla Czaga's poems are far more interesting, hopeful and confident than Today's book of poetry knows how to express.  Today's book of poetry can tell you how eagerly our entire staff waited to read Dunk Tank.  Our assessment was unanimous, everyone in the shop gave Dunk Tank the full burn.  Our highest marks.

Don't trust our puny point of view.  Go out and get a copy of Dunk Tank, now!

If you don't like it - Today's book of poetry will refund your money.  That's how strongly we'll stand behind Dunk Tank.

Copper Koi

My heart can barely spell

arrhythmia but still inflates

my fingers. A day like any other—

my hair worries my scalp

and I want to know what 

skin is made of. What wets

my mouth? Since learning

I harbour a uterus

I've been afraid of it

popping. Maybe while walking

or downward dog. Or when

our bodies play towards

one body. Maybe it's more

like a fish bobbing

in a small pond—copper

koi in the moon basin. Let me

cross this avenue lit with cherry

blossoms. Let me forget

pints of blood circling

my bones like nervous dogs.

On grandma's farm, I spent

entire afternoons lifting

cats, blissfully unaware of

the uterus flickering in me.

I believed if you cracked

me open, I'd be filled

with caramel or else

soft and hollow as a doll.

💫💫💫

Make no mistake Kayla Czaga is just warming up.  The future of Canadian poetry is in great hands with poets like Czaga.

Kayla Czaga

ABOUT THE POET

KAYLA CZAGA is the author of one previous collection of poems, For Your Safety Please Hold On (Nightwood Editions, 2014), and the chapbook Enemy of the People (Anstruther Press, 2015). Her work has been awarded the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Canadian Authors Association’s Emerging Writer Award and has been nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and the Debut-litzer. She lives in Victoria, B.C.

BLURBS

“These poems of love, service-industry jobs, and small-town boredom . . . buzz with fierce restlessness and longing.”

     — Toronto Star

“Dunk Tank trades in specificity, intimacy, weirdness, colloquialism, and dark humour.” 

     — Globe and Mail

“The author is always inventive in her metaphors and images . . . All in all Dunk Tank is smart and heartfelt.” 

     — Walleye

“Czaga manages to capture moments of maturation with the wisdom of a backward glance . . . Approachable and skillful in its poetics and narrative detail.” — Quill & Quire

“Seemingly effortless but brimming with craft, Czaga’s art results from her enviable agility with phrasing and expression. The poems in Dunk Tank are as immediate, honest, affectionate, raw, anxious, jokey, and thoughtful as an impromptu confession over an evening’s confab. Sparkling with recollection’s rich details, associative leaps, colloquial doses of energy and imaginative reach, Dunk Tank is exhilarating.” — David O’Meara, author of A Pretty Sight

“The author is always inventive in her metaphors and images . . . All in all Dunk Tank is smart and heartfelt.” — Walleye

“Czaga manages to capture moments of maturation with the wisdom of a backward glance . . . Approachable and skillful in its poetics and narrative detail.” — Quill & Quire

“What a profound, effortless spell Kayla Czaga conjures with this collection. In communion with an array of private and public selves, these poems convince me authentic connection is possible. Desirous and impulsive, problematic as any one of us, the speaker never exempts herself from the world she tallies in tacos, panties, inherited stress, taps on Instagram posts, seagulls heaped like Kleenex. When she confesses ‘it felt / like we could say and finally mean / something,’ I’m enlivened, senses heightened, as if my name is being called by someone who never calls me by my name.” — Sheryda Warrener, author of Floating Is Everything


PRAISE FOR KAYLA CZAGA AND FOR YOUR SAFETY PLEASE HOLD ON


Winner, Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
Finalist, Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry
Finalist, Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
Finalist, Debut-litzer Prize

Featured Poet Kayla Czaga

Video: The Video Guy

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