Metanoia - Sharon McCartney (Biblioasis)

Today's book of poetry:
Metanoia.  Sharon McCartney.  Biblioasis.  Windsor, Ontario.  2016.

Metanoia  -  "change in one's way of life resulting from penitence or spiritual conversion."

Metanoia is a book length poem where Sharon McCartney lets all of her ya-yas out.  These meditations are robust and fearless and not without humour.

Metanoia is a consciously streamed commentary on what the heart wants and what it is willing to settle for.  Love in uncompromising but loneliness is a compromise waiting to happen.

from Metanoia

The banker snored outrageously and twitched in his sleep.

I could not sleep beside him.

This became an issue.

That last night, I snuck off to the spare bedroom,

hoping for an hour or two.

At 5 A.M., I heard him downstairs, loading

his vehicle, the door slamming, his shoes,

angry. He tromped upstairs, perched on the edge

of the bed in the dark, saying, darkly,

"I didn't want to leave without saying goodbye."

No, I thought, you didn't want to leave without hurting me.

...

McCartney's confessions can sound braggart cold but she is always on the precise pulse of where the skin tears.

Fearing too much Tennessee Ernie Ford in her future, the speaker in Metanoia finds any advice from her parent past antithetical, she wants to break free of all expectations and attempts to, only to crash and break again and again on the sharp shores of her own preconceptions of love, lust, desire and hope.

from Metanoia

I strung the fat man along;

I thought I was sparing him.

A lie. I was sparing myself.

Because I waited too long to speak,

I became revulsed.

The last time we had sex, I said to myself,

"This is the last time."

I did not say that to him.

...

Perhaps we are all mercenaries of love destined to karma payment for our sins and misdemeanours. Sharon McCartney has left Today's book of poetry wanting more with Metanoia, not because of any lack, quite the contrary, Today's book of poetry could read this sort of unselfish wisdom all day long.

McCartney sounds/feels so true that you feel terrible empathy for her unwanted lovers as well as her own unsatisfied angst rattling around in her big dreamy head.  At the same time the poems excite the reader with their candor because whenever McCartney rattles her own cage lust hits a target.

from Metanoia

What I felt so many years ago in the grade 9 English classroom,

how I lost my sense of membrane, of containment, my self

leaching into the Bermuda lawn beyond the sliding glass door,

into the eucalyptus, the succulents, the birds of paradise

...

Our morning read was taken over by an enthusiastic Kathryn, our Jr. Editor.  She insisted that Metanoia needed a woman's voice and she was the one to provide it - she was right.  Kathryn read the heart right out of these poems and into the room.  

Sharon McCartney has shared an emotional pilgrimage with carnal candor and a hopeful heart.  Today's book of poetry is always going to have all sorts of time for anything this dynamic and emotionally honest.  That's how revelations happen.

Sharon McCartney

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sharon McCartney is the author of Hard Ass (2013, Palimpsest Press), For and Against (2010, Goose Lane Editions), The Love Song of Laura Ingalls Wilder  (2007, Nightwood Editions), Karenin Sings the Blues (2003, Goose Lane Editions), and Under the Abdominal Wall (1999, Anvil Press). Her poems have been included in the 2012 and 2013 editions of The Best Canadian Poetry in English. In 2008, she received the Acorn/Plantos People’s Prize for poetry. She lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where she works as a legal editor.

BLURBS

“So much is revealed in so few words … It’s a book that feels light, but its delivery is heavy, and worthy of contemplation … McCartney is merciless in exposing vulnerability, but also builds an intimacy integral to Metanoia‘s achievement.”

     —Quill & Quire

“Sharon McCartney is something else, a poet with a personal vision who, in work after work, digs deeper into the exposed tissue of her own soul.”

     —Numéro Cinq

“McCartney’s poetic voice is direct, confessional, and, at times, philosophical, examining the nuances of family dynamics, romance, friendship, and illness. These lyric narratives are structured in single-stanza bursts of emotion and infused with plenty of raw vulnerability … These poems explore a romance with directness and emotional punch.”

     —Jennifer LoveGrove, Quill and Quire

“No unnecessary word, no dull word, no stock imagery, every new insight or description at once astonishing and just, everything at once new and yet polished, diamond hard. Her language is brilliant, sensuous, startling, sometimes relaxed and cajoling, sometimes savage.”

     —M. Travis Lane, The Antigonish Review

“You don’t read these poems, you feel them: Hammer in the head, shod foot on the throat, stiletto in the heart. It’s those combos of wild, piercing insights (or unusual but poignant images); yep, that’s what makes it good for you–or kills you, laughing.”

     —George Elliott Clarke

“Darkly obsessive, For and Against documents the rolling flux of life–the raw wounds of relationships in moments that are, in turn, anguished, edgy, droll, and affectionate. McCartney’s poems are an extreme sport–one well worth playing.”

     —Jeanette Lynes, author of The New Blue Distance

“McCartney has shown a delightful felicity in previous books with stapling phrases into the memory. For and Againstexpands this strength with different material, and it’s a testament to her talent that rawness isn’t diminished by an attention to fluency.”

     —Brian Palmu


“With her unflinching eye and masterful yet never flamboyant command of language, McCartney consistently distinguishes herself from her literary contemporaries.”

     —The Oxonian Review

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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.

Shiner - Eva H.D. (Mansfield Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Shiner.  Eva H.D.  Mansfield Press.  Toronto, Ontario.  2016.
.

Eva H.D. is back and she has brought all her dark charms with her.  Her first book, Rotten Perfect Mouth, stormed through our offices a little more than a year ago (you can read that blog here:  http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2015/07/rotten-perfect-mouth-eva-hd-mansfield.html ) and tore up everything in sight.  Since we opened the doors for business Today's book of poetry has had over 1,500 new volumes of poetry land on our desk and we liked Rotten Perfect Mouth as much as any of them.

So you can understand why expectations were high when Shiner grumbled through the mail slot.   Lucky for us that Eva H.D. sets some very high standards for herself, there are no mimicking birds here.  Shiner is a completely apt description, these poems smack you up the side of the head whether you like it or not.  We wouldn't be the least surprised if they left a mark.

She even leaves some breadcrumbs, small trails of beauty.

Rocher Perce

Woke up and dawn was

slicing the starboard sky, with

the Rocher Perce to our port side. 

Made apple fritters for breakfast.

The dog curled up on the couch

next to me, nose to hind paws asleep,

torqued like a Mobius strip.

The simple, humming life.

Reading on the Reformation

in the dim glow.

The afternoon threw itself

forward like a jittery sprinter,

pitching and scending into dusk.

Blueberry pie in the oven.

Saw the lights of Rimouski

glitter at sunset like it was

somewhere else.

The riverlight

like a filament of gold

threaded through a young girl's

ear,

aging her.

The hold in the rock eyes us

in the night, from afar

while men of freighters

in Quebec City read dirty

magazines,

flip the luminous

pages that flash like morning

fins to greet us.

...

Eva H.D. spends considerable time and energy searching out and speculating over the forgiveness game.  These poems are pulled taut and strummed hard by tension even when they strive for a certain type of peace.  The search for tranquility isn't entirely futile but Eva H.D. is as suspicious about horse-piss promises as she is smitten by peaches.

Today's book of poetry really enjoyed Eva H.D.'s riffing on travelling across Canada.  We too love the idea of eating a bacon sandwich in every province.

The thing about Shiner is how complicit Eva H.D. makes the reader feel, she has an uncommon common touch that draws the reader in close.  Cleverly enough H.D. has added an instant connect device to most of these poems, you are inside them and involved before you knew you cared about Toronto, or baseball or wild salmon.

If Today's book of poetry had to distill Eva H.D.'s style, label it, we'd call it "vigorously hopeful despair."  This is a suspicious poet, doubtful and leery of our best intentions, doubtful and leery about her own.  And then along comes optimism.  It's in there like a twist of lemon in your drink.

Legion

There was a bottle of malt liquor at

the Legion Hall, the small town

Canadian church,

for small men from little towns

who like lager and history

and three-part harmony and falling

in love

as much as they hate bus rides and

yelling and dog dares and heights.

And falling in love, too,

that noisy, dizzying dog dare.

"We just didn't have enough

time," she said,

which is one way

of saying goodbye,

like pulling the plug

is a way of turning out lights

without touching them.

...

These poems burn.  Shiner affirms what anyone/everyone who read Perfect Rotten Mouth already knows, Eva H.D. is a poetry assassin.  These poems are killer.

Eva H.D.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eva H.D. lives and writes in Toronto. She recently won the Montreal International Poetry Prize for her poem “38 Michigans.”

BLURBS
“… the collection Rotten Perfect Mouth is a miraculous calling forth of melancholy, but drenched with dry wit, very Toronto and deeply musical. Poetry find of the year, easily.”
     —John Doyle, The Globe and Mail

“How does Eva H.D. write? Playfully, gamely: She understands that poetry can be—and can do—anything.”
     —George Elliott Clarke, The Chronicle Herald

“This poem—“38 Michigans”—is a quirky, intense elegy. It works so well, I think, because it makes fresh again an old and powerful basis of lament: one in which all the contours of ordinary reference and experience are forced into a new shape.”
     —Eavan Boland, judge’s citation on awarding the Montreal International Poetry Prize.

“These poems are so packed with energy and weird precise knowing that you almost don’t notice the cumulative emotional groundswell building… Today’s Book of Poetry and our entire staff could simply not recommend a book any higher than this one. It is instant required reading.”
     —Michael Dennis, Today’s Book of Poetry

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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.

kissing keeps us afloat - Laurie MacFayden (Frontenac House Poetry)

Today's book of poetry:
kissing keeps us afloat.  Laurie MacFayden.  Frontenac House Poetry.  Calgary, Alberta.  2014.

kissing keeps us afloat is a sustained torrent, a laughing rush, a relentless scream/yodel of passion.

This red boat has no oars as it crashes against the shores of love, breaks up on the rocks called desire.

And Laurie MacFayden could care less, she's laughing her ass off.

That's not really true.  She cares.  Like the rest of us MacFayden's humour usually comes at some powerful price.

But check this out, a list poems of sorts - and you know how much Today's book of poetry enjoys a good list poem.

to be honest, i lied (my country song)

to be honest, i lied when i said i never meant to hurt you
when i said every single word is true
when i said it was a wrong number
when i said that looks really good on you

to be honest, i lied when i said i can keep a secret
when i said the cheque is in the mail
when i said i wore this just for you, sweetheart
when i said i'd be happy to post your bail

to be honest, i lied when i said i wasn't flirting
when i said i'm ready for this
when i said it doesn't hurt
when i said i've never been kissed

to be honest, i lied when i said i have the answer
when i said i do not care
when i said i'll always love you
when i said i really like your hair

to be honest, i lied when i said you're perfect, angel
when i said i'm never doing that
when i said yes, this is my natural colour
and oh no, that doesn't make you look fat

to be honest, i lied when i said you were the first
when i said you'll be the last
when i said you're the only one for me, darling
when i told you the god's sacred truth about my past

to be honest, i lied when i swore i'd never drink again
when i said i could never be untrue
and baby, i told a big fat juicy whopper
when i said i could never lie to you

...

Fearless, charismatic, funny, elegant, eloquent and frequently so horny you'd think the sky was falling before her final possible hump.  Laurie MacFayden has done something wonderful in the dazzling kissing keeps us afloat.

And we love, love, love the joyous title.  Around the office it won the poll for best title this spring.

This collection is a "page-turner".  You really can't wait to hear what MacFayden is going to burn up and turn red next.

lying woman

once upon a time
i lay a rough canvas on my paint-spattered floor.
i lay down upon it
and traced an outline of myself.

this particular portrait was long overdue.
i used a black felt pen
which was surprisingly co-operative
fluid, even.

the result was not entirely fetal
nor was it a spread-eagle sprawl.
you see, i wanted to make a collage, a map,
an abstract expansionist island of myself,
my body's outline,
its linear essence and bulk; fully clothed
but without the usual armour.

i wanted to put the foothills on my chest,
unleash the prairies across my upper back.
the eyes, of course, would be paris.

i wanted to make little toe drips
at the ends of my feet for findhorn
and tofino and that lake in the muskokas.
i invited aotearoa fern to caress my cheeks
and salt spring orange to gloss my lip and tongue.

i intended to leave space between shoulder and ear
for the city that never sleeps, but perhaps that should be lower down.
i wanted the desert of ghost ranch in the small of my back
and i would place a bit of boreal forest under each arm,
maybe a malta temple on each buttock.

i wanted new orleans between my legs

the plan was to lie back and let fierce waters wash over me.
the wet colours would be random and delightful.
the tides would go maelstrom on me in brilliant psychotic precision
not so much wreaking havoc as quickening me to a familiar moon,
or 12 moons really, all of which would float and bob
around my laughing head
just behind my imperfect right ear.

i wanted my outline to be a lying woman.
never a nude but an honest woman simply lying
a self-seeded simple woman lying
in the truth colours of her own skin
stretched to the limit and varnished by sky and sea
and probably a bit of blood.

i wanted none of the words to need to make sense.
i wanted none of the words.
i wanted the hues to be primal, and selfish,
and unwilling to open the usual locks.

i wanted the abstract interventionism of it all
to spontaneously combust, leaving just my paris eyes twinkling
and my new orleans delta burning,
all glorious damp and jazzy.

...

What MacFayden has done over the course of kissing keeps us afloat is to romp ribald, I mean Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Erica Jong rutting - and like those excellent writers, reach so much more of the reader than simple erotica ever could.  In these poems love does not always win, passion is not always requited.

That's not the point.

It is the celebrations, the joy you remember that gets you through the dark.  The promise of joy that brings us to the threshold of another dawn.

All that jazz and more is in the keen, crisp kissing keeps us afloat.

Watch what she does in the last lines of "Liars' Motel".  Perfect.

liar's motel

we plotted for months
but now that we have arrived
at this unfamiliar place
packing cherries and beaujolais,
both of us are nervous,
she, tentative

rented sheets, pay-tv
mountain view
we have also brought
toothbrushes, hiking shoes
pears and honey for the morning
but no cellphones
or laptops
nothing to distract us from
each other

are we really going to do this?

it is just you and me
the weekend infidelity rate
and this awkward, scoundrel weight
heavy on both of our chests

so we fidget and stall
open the cheater's wine
sip across the room from each other
and discuss the drive

made good time
thought there'd be more traffic
...nice little town

nice. little. town.
and suddenly the curtains are on fire
your mouth is on mine
we forget how to speak
we forget how to breathe
neither of us remembers
how this got its start.

this.

...

That Laurie MacFayden, she's a howler.  An Allen Ginsberg howler, celebrating hope and hard love.

Today's book of poetry thinks MacFayden's kissing keeps us afloat steps up and delivers big time.   Love isn't all sweetness and light, she knows everything.

Laurie MacFayden

http://www.lauriemacfayden.com/

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Laurie MacFayden grew up in southern Ontario and has lived in Edmonton since 1984. Her debut book of poetry, White Shirt, won a Golden Crown Literary Society award and was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary awards. A painter, poet, photographer and avid traveler, she spent more than 30 years as a sports journalist. Her work has appeared in The New Quarterly literary journal, Queering The Way, and DailyHaiku I: A Daily Shot of Zen. When not wordsmithing or playing with light, she enjoys drinking strong coffee in faraway places. She blogs at spatherdab.com and her art lives at www.lauriemacfayden.com

BLURBS

“Swinging and searing verses, meditative narratives, honky-tonk tunes and catalogues of favoured things (including what lovers bring — or leave behind), all merge to make Kissing Keeps Us Afloat a book for tongues and lips to sing. MacFayden knows painting and music, and she loves words and women. The result is art without limit, craft without regret, and poetry that faces trauma and embraces the erotic. MacFayden’s poetry is both red-hot and cool-blue, white lies and film noir, memory and truth. In the supposed mundane, she shows us, transcendence awaits.”
     - George Elliott Clarke

“The colour red infuses Kissing Keeps Us Afloat as blood, anger, and love infiltrate our lives. Red flows as wondrous crayons shading in the shape of a life lived passionately. With flashes of humour and the occasional playful rhyme, MacFayden urges us to keep loving, losing, caring, and colouring. Not always with the red crayons, but these poems remind us to keep those ones — in their hues of crimson and lust — well-sharpened.”
     - Kimmy Beach

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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.

And I Alone Escaped To Tell You - Sylvia D. Hamilton (Gaspereau Press)

Today's book of poetry:
And I Alone Escaped To Tell You.  Sylvia D. Hamilton.  Gaspereau Press.  Kentville, Nova Scotia.  2014.

"The settlement of African peoples in Nova Scotia is a richly layered story encompassing many waves of settlement and diverse circumstances–from captives to ‘freedom runners’ who sailed north from the United States with hopes of establishing a new life. The poems in And I Alone Escaped to Tell You endeavour to give these historical events a human voice, blending documentary material, memory, experience and imagination to evoke the lives of these early Black Nova Scotians and of the generations that followed. This collection is a moving meditation on the place of African-descended people in the Canadian story and on the threads connecting all of us to the African diaspora."
      ...from the Gaspereau Press website introduction to And I Alone Escaped To Tell You by Sylvia D. Hamilton

As a white man who is approaching sixty years of age, history would tell us that I've grown up with a catalogue of privilege.  So I might not be the best equipped reader to handle the incendiary poetry of Sylvia D. Hamilton, but I'll give it a shot -- and you should too.

Melville Island

                                                                                                                                                           1814

                                                                                                                                 Silenced by the snow

                                                                                                                        they wondered if even God

                                                                                                                          had finally forsaken them

home a stone prison
temporary officials say
we used to temporary

come in from the fields one day
to find out we been up and sold
we invented temporary

when they line us up
after they drag us
off them waterbeds of death
we ready for a new kind of temporary

nova scarcity
seed potatoes turnip tobacco
good crop in the fall
now all froze to the floor

and if we still here
in spring
we try again

...

Hamilton's And I Alone Escaped To Tell You is a sad litany, a terrible history and a necessary part of our tapestry.

If some of these poems are hard to read -- imagine how hard they were to write  -- imagine how hard they were to live.

Today's book of poetry rarely talks about form or technique and the firm, terse, precise and haunting narrative Hamilton hammers out moves with such compelling force and content that the form hardly matters.

Excavations

7.

English Level 4, Book 2 c.1962

Lesson: Listen to the Language

I worked like a ____________________.

He's a real ____________________ driver.

She ____________________ over a hot stove
all day to cook his supper.

He cracked the _________________ to make
them work harder.

Today's Announcements

INT. HIGH SCHOOL -- DAY. C. MAY 1966

FADE UP: EMPTY PALE HOSPITAL-GREEN HALLWAY, BEIGE
LOCKERS ON BOTH SIDES:

IN VOICE-OVER, MALE VOICE, THE PRINCIPAL

...And next week will be our slave auction. All those participating must
remember that you can't have your slave do anything that is illegal or
embarrassing. Only those students participating will be allowed to attend
the school dance of Friday. Funds raised will go to the student council.
The glee club will meet today at noon in the Library. The boys' basketball
team will have a home game...

CROSSFADE

...

Racism in its' many guises razes havoc across the globe and here at home.  We here at Today's book of poetry think there is only way of conquering racism and all it's evil spawn and that is through mutual understanding, tolerance and respect.

Books like Sylvia D. Hamilton's And I Alone Escaped To Tell You offer a small portal, an open door, to just that much more understanding.  Hamilton has given us access, nay, forces us to take a look at a dark part of our collective story.

We are all richer for the light.

Malcolm's Question

I was fourteen when Malcolm X was murdered. I didn't know him then.
Later in that b/w file when he asked me where did you get your name, I
had no answer. Tarbaby, Sambo, Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, Topsy--they
weren't my name but that's what people called me. Don't let anyone call
you out of your name, the Sunday School mothers said. You got but two
cheeks, defend yourself. When I told my white grade four teacher that, she
didn't believe me, strapped me anyway.

...

Hamilton reads like the very best of George Elliot Clarke and that makes her very, very good.

Sylvia D. Hamilton

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sylvia D. Hamilton is a filmmaker and writer whose awards include a Gemini and the Portia White Prize. Her poetry has been published in The Dalhousie Review, West Coast Line, The Great Black North andUntying the Apron: Daughters Remember Mothers of the Fifties. She was a contributor to, and co-editor of,We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us Up: Essays In African Canadian Women’s History. She lives in Grand Pre, Nova Scotia.

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