Twenty-Five — Emily Izsak (above/ground press)

Today's book of poetry:
Twenty-Five.  Emily Izsak.  above/ground press.  Ottawa, Ontario.  2018.

Twenty-Five is one interesting little kettle of smart fish.  Emily Izsak currently lives in London, Ontario (where Today's book of poetry was born, just saying), and as such counts Tom Cull and Blair Trewartha among her friends.  Our regular readers will recognize their names as having appeared in Today's book of poetry.  You can see our take on those two gentlemen here:

Tom Cull/What the Badger Saw

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2014/06/what-badger-said-tom-cull-baseline-press.html

Tom Cull/Bad Animals

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2019/05/bad-animals-tom-cull-insomniac-press.html

Blair Trewartha/Easy Fix

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2014/11/easy-fix-blair-trewartha-palimpsest.html

Blair Trewartha/Porcupine Burning

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.com/2013/04/porcupine-burning-blair-trewartha.html

The reason Today's book of poetry mentions London's Cull and Trewartha in the same breath is that Izsak has some of the same quick light in Twenty-Five and Today's book of poetry was wondering "what's in the water?"  All of this to clumsily say that just like Cull and Trewartha, Today's book of poetry is hard struck and happy reading Emily Iszak's poetry.  It burns.

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Cyclists binge on round                 gimmicks

            mash their crabmeat

            with clawed

                             objectives

The matter of sole or psychomotor

            is off topic

                             better to question               which reflex

                             sits madonna                      sidesaddle

At last

in a liminal       bike lane

the decade's accent

slackens and            be

comes apart

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Twenty-Five is one long poem and Today's book of poetry is just offering up snippets for your digestion.  Today's book of poetry believes Twenty-Five is a love poem for Ariel.  Today's book of poetry thinks Twenty-Five is taking the current cultural temperature from ground zero and with the patience of William Carlos Williams.  Today's book of poetry isn't exactly sure what is happening in Twenty-Five but we were constantly jolted, prodded, disassembled, shuffled, intrigued.

Maybe this is one long autobiographical confession delivered by a modern day hipster scat singer.  All Today's book of poetry knows is that "heaven's breadbox is empty."  Izsak has some wicked chops.

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             A semi-  modest defense

                           for inaccessible          manpower

outlasts the downdraft if  push come to   push harder

                          A volunteer cocktease

                                                                     tells him    please

                                                                                                    the people

                                                                                             braid famine into updos

                          for a spot

                                      in the anthology

💫💫💫

Our morning read started with a question that Today's book of poetry will share with you readers.  Does anyone know how to contact Robert Jutras, author of Looncalls?  Today's book of poetry returned home a few days ago to find a copy of Mr. Jutras's lovely book between our doors but nary a note or card.  Today's book of poetry wants to thank either Mr. Jutras himself (or whomever else was kind enough to leave us Looncalls between the doors.

Emily Izsak's Twenty-Five continues the long running tradition of Ottawa's rob mclennan and his proliferate above/ground press - of finding the very best poetry available in Canada and beyond.  

Izsak has a Fran Lebowitz smart to her swagger and a Sue Goyette eye.  Our actual morning read was a bit like over stuffing a pinball machine and it lighting up and spitting us around the room with haste.  Twenty-Five doesn't waste one second of time, it shouts itself out in Tommy-gun bursts.

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By the ruins of contemporary themes

under the cheek of  a limp

pioneer gowned in

faith-based weather    Beyond WCW's

use of prepositions    standing and fallen

Now the offer         tomorrow

the in-laws flense our history

💫💫💫

And Emily Izsak sent Today's book of poetry to our living dictionary, in our case it is Max, our Senior Editor.  Knocked on Max's door and heard grumbling from within.  I don't think I've actually seen Max for several months, when the door opened a funky green slumber of smoke pushed into the rest of the office.  Of course Max knew what "flense" meant.  He was insulted that the rest of us didn't.

So when I went back to reread Izsaks line:

      "                                tomorrow

        the in-laws flense our history"

I did the poetry glee dance.  Today's book of poetry loves to be amused and we love to learn.  Emily Izsak did both, at least Twenty-Five times.

Twenty Five is yet another above/ground press chapbook that you really should read.

Emily Izsak

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emily Izsak’s poetry has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, The Puritan, House Organ, Cough, The Steel Chisel, The Doris, and The Hart House Review. In 2014 she was selected as PEN Canada’s New Voices Award nominee. Her chapbook, Stickup, was published in 2015, and her first full-length collection, Whistle Stops: A Locomotive Serial Poem, was published by Signature Editions in April 2017.

Emily Izsak

Augur Magazine - Preview Issue

Video - Augur Magazine

abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

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Easy Fix - Blair Trewartha (Palimpsest Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Easy Fix.  Blair Trewartha.  Palimpsest Press.  Windsor, Ontario.  2014.

Easy Fix reads like a video of a major league baseball batting champion at batting practice.

Ka-Pow!  Another one out of the park.

Time Lapse of a City

Across the city someone wraps
a lit apartment around their shoulders,
reads a book until
the last word is sleep.

A doctor grips the steering wheel,
pulls a scalpel front beneath the seat
and prays for the next red light,
a sudden traffic jam.

An engineer spreads his wings
and jumps. Telemarketers still
dial their Mothers' numbers
at the start of every shift.

Somewhere a man forgets
his address at Starbucks
and sits for hours, body
pressed up to the window
until he's baptized.

Somewhere loud music hits
and the city becomes a flock of pigeons,
cooing. An entire world
with its ducks
in a row. Feathers brushing
against feathers for warmth.

...

I had the pleasure of reading and writing about Trewarthas' chapbook Porcupine Burning from the impeccable Baseline Press.  You can see that here:

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2013/04/porcupine-burning-blair-trewartha.html

That was a chapbook that raised expectations.  Easy Fix exceeds all expectations.

As usual, I trundled off to bed last night with a pile of poetry to read.  First poem I read - I started swearing in kind of a hushed awe, one of those muttered "Oh what the f**k"s.  I know, I'm vulgar at bedtime.  The second poem had me exclaim, rather loudly, "Damn it!"

By now I was interrupting my wife's quiet reading.  She was deep into Malcolm Gladwell's David and Goliath.  She knows I only swear at the very worst poetry - or the very best.  She could tell from my muttering that I had stumbled onto gold.

The Darkest Day of the Year

For a split second, the snow
is a glacial overhang,
a frozen levy ready to melt
the moment I step indoors.

I picture myself swinging
from a web of hydro wires
in a snowsuit: crashing
through windows and slapping

husbands, kissing their wives.
Lighting my blowtorch
in their bedrooms to bring spring.
Everyone cheering for the man on fire.

...

Trewartha doesn't adorn his poetry with baubles, he is a straight ahead, straight-out no-holds-barred assassin of good poetry.  I loved this book and threatened to dismiss any intern who didn't.  I'm a tyrant.

It all happens so seamlessly, effortlessly, and with such little fuss but the resulting poems hit like beautiful sledgehammers.

Procedures for Escape

The train hovers along the track
between Oshawa and Belleville
and I sit in seat 14
in the aisle across from the emergency window
with a little red hammer
in a small gray box--
the one which every kid, including me
would give up their seat
just to smash

The attendant explains the procedures of escape
to the family of five sitting ahead of me
She's a cute brunette with high cheekbones
and low lips and probably close to my age
and she asks me if in the event of an emergency
would I be willing to climb out the window with her first
and help her assist all the woman and children off the train

I tell her yes, and stare back out the window
at the blurred trees and old telephone wires
listening to the sounds the train wheels make
across the rails
which always sound a bit like thunder
or a steel mill in a full work-day swing
and I imagine the two of us, hand in hand
leaping out the shattered window
looking like two children jumping off a small cliff
into blue water on a sun-blind afternoon
using our fear of heights
as a meager excuse to hold hands

I look back at the tiny red hammer
in the little gray box
displayed like a javelin
and repeat her question over again in my head
thinking, yes I'm willing to do that
you're just the first person
to have asked

...

If I were giving out any prizes today Trewartha would be the first in line.  This is poetry you want to see more of.

Excellent, simply excellent.

Blair Trewartha

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Blair Trewartha is a Toronto-based poet whose work has appeared in Carousel, Prism, CV2, Event, Existere, and Qwerty. His first full length collection, Easy Fix is published this fall with Palimpsest Press. He has published 2 chapbooks, Break In, (Cactus Press in 2010) and Porcupine Burning (Baseline Press 2012). Formerly co-host of the Toronto reading series, The Vagabond Trust, and a co-editor of Misunderstandings Magazine, he currently lives in Sudbury.

BLURBS

"Released from the myth of historical telos, these poems dare to articulate the idiosyncratic tics and mercurial oscillations of our present moment."

     Chris Hutchison

"Trewartha's poems are encounters with both recklessness and stoicism...steeped in the urban and rural histories of a poet aware of the gamble of love, and the lucid dreams.

     Nyla Matuk

palimpsestpress.ca 

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