math for couples - Adele Graf (Guernica Editions)

Today's book of poetry:

math for couples.  Adele Graf.  Essential Poets Series 242.  Guernica Editions. Toronto - Buffalo - London (U.K.).  2017.

Adele Graf's math for couples reads a bit like you've stumbled into another family's old photo albums.  The poems are snapshots of important and intimate moments of family history along with those that capture an unexpected moment of languor or amusement.

Regardless of the subject Graf has an uncanny ability to straddle the lines between whimsy and frivolity, panic and well paced poise.  Over the course of math for couples we experience poems from the perspective of a child, a young girl, a young woman, a mature woman and a grandmother, I think.  The story changes, characters come and go but Adele Graf's voice remains a constant pleasure.

my mother played Chopin while lamb stewed

what a sumptuous scene, you must think --

you hear Chopin's waltz skim piano keys

smell herbed lamb broth that steeps leeks and carrots

sense chords and aroma fuse in the hall

between hushed rooms and the warm kitchen stove

see my mother rapt in melody

even beaming at our upturned faces

as they catch the light

my mother managed Chopin's waltzes

straight-backed, fingernails clicking each key

plunking phrases she labelled romantic

thought she'd long lost her ardour --

and the lamb stew?

carrots soaked slack, gristly, bland broth

burning off in an acrid puff--

another dry meat in our cold tiled kitchen

but in her way, my mother did slip inside her music

and before we'd heard Ashkenazy play Chopin

we liked her playing, so why would we doubt

she was high-brow, as she called herself

back when we still thought her hours

enthroned at the piano explained

the lack of fragrant family meals --

my mother, queen of appearances.

...

The Today's book of poetry offices just have not been the same since our darling Max went walkabout.  Funnily enough it almost coincided with Odin leaving the nest for greener valleys.

Thankfully Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, and Milo, our Head Technical Officer (and boy, oh boy, does he ever like his new title) are both signed to long term contracts.  Kathryn led the charge this morning with a spirited reading of Graf's poetry.

math for couples is home to some dry wit and some ghosts.  We've had a few old ghosts blow through our offices recently.  It is unsettling at the least.  It can be alarming and strangely comforting at the same time.  Maybe they think we still need them.  Adele Graf seems to have come to terms with her ghosts even if she lets them run around in her poems.

jam

you get just one

piece of toast to spread it on --

still, you try to take as much

jam as you can

you do your best

to grab your slice from

the middle of the loaf

but whatever size slice you get

-- even if you're stuck

with the puny heel --

here's the decision you face

should you spread all

your jam over the whole slice

so each bite has the same

flavour and sweetness?

or use just enough

so each bite leaves

a slight jam taste

then pile what's left

on your very last bite

-- rich and thick and sweet --

since the last is the one

you'll remember?

...

Adele Graf writes some poems that feel like conversations you've already had, they have deja vu written all over them.  It must be the ghosts.  Regardless, Today's book of poetry felt a warm and fuzzy attraction to math for couples.

This is Graf's first kick at the can and out of the gate she's writing strong, vivid poems.  Today's book of poetry has to be convinced her next book with kick serious ass.

hot flesh

you touch me &

my flesh heats up --

flashes of pleasure

zap my brain

surge through

my core --

menopause meets seasoned sex

you tinker till

my circuits cool

buzz & hum

while we recharge --

our ebbing flesh

overhauled in

doze with dual snores

I rise & grope

for bifocals

then brew sweet tea --

samples from the health food store

where I buy herbs

to stave off ills

middle aged women are prone to

...

Today's book of poetry applauds the candor of Graf.  Her honesty is right at her fingertips, all the time.

Winter is coming.  I can feel it in my bones.  The only defense might be poetry.  Poetry that will fill our stomachs and warm our hearts.  Adele Graf's math for couples is a good step in that direction.

Adele Graf

Photo: Ed Overstreet

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adele Graf grew up outside New York City and immigrated to Canada in 1968. math for couples is her first book of poetry, though more than half these poems have been published in Canadian journals including The Antigonish Review, CV2, The Dalhousie Review, Room and Vallum. She lives in Ottawa.

BLURBS

Adele Graf’s poems explore the inner worlds of family, including grandmother, father, mother, husband, childhood self and aging self with an openness and honesty that is stunning, using her pen as both scalpel and microscope. A master of slant rhyme, she is also unafraid to experiment in the far reaches of poetics; and you’ll never think of popcorn in the same way again.
     - Mark Frutkin

Whether she’s revisiting fraught scenes from her past with wry humour or facing them down deadpan, Adele Graf infuses whatever she touches—bric-a-brac, childhood haunts, or stricken relatives—with a vividness that places them stage-centre. Charting a memorable path through several generations of family upheaval and continuance, she evokes her grandmother’s New Jersey milliner shop, her father’s tragic early death, and her own journey to late-life plenitude with a sharp eye for the waystations that lead from disillusionment to delight.
     - Peter Richardson

math for couples is a warm and playful debut collection. You can feel the pleasure Adele Graf takes in the words she juggles and the forms she explores in this very intimate adventure.
     - Stuart Ross, author of A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent

guernicaeditons.com

621

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

guernicaeditions.com

Hermit Thrush - Mark Frutkin (Quattro Books)

Today's book of poetry:
Hermit Thrush.  Mark Frutkin.  Quattro Books.  Toronto, Ontario.  2015.

Hermit Thrush is Mark Frutkin's newest poetry offering and it is a quietly astonishing book of poems. Frutkin is giving a master class of sorts, these poems all point in the same direction as though guided by a poetry compass.

My memory isn't what it once was, neither is anything else, but I think a cat named Riley Tench introduced me to Mark Frutkin in the late 70's.  A number of "Peterborough Poets" had travelled to Ottawa for a poetry event at Saw Gallery and Mark was our contact, if not the organizer.  Point being that I've know Mark Frutkin for over 35 years.

                                                                           But I don't know him well at all.  Yet I could have predicted my reaction to these poems.  Solid, solid, solid.  Frutkin knows exactly where he wants to go with a poem.

Cathedral of Chartres

Thirty-thousand workers

build a cathedral in silence - 

A few sounds linger:

masons tock granite, carts clatter,

men grunt under loaded hods -

but even the warblers cease their singing

A workman sneezes

and those nearby look up -

what a strange and marvelous noise

The consumptives too try

to do their part,

swallowing their coughs

The architect clutches a board

and a knob of charcoal,

quick to sketch

what before was spoken

They all turn at the sound

of thunder approaching

from miles across the plain,

and hear a nearby brook

unable to curb its babbling.

...

Today's book of poetry knows Mark Frutkin well enough to address him by name but we've never shared wine, broken bread.  We do know how much we admire these well crafted poems.

Hermit Thrust is spotted with 20 or so almost perfect haiku.  You might think Frutkin writes those to amuse himself and tease the gods.  Certainly amused us here.

Frutkin has a range of interests and a broad encyclopedic noggin and he applies his vast resources to poems full of guests and wonder.  Sung Po-jen and Basho stroll through these pages and rub shoulders with Edith Piaf while she sings to a reflection of Baudelaire.  There is even the appearance of a French flaneur which will please my flaneur-friend Lea Dunning very much.

Today's book of poetry is only scratching the guest list surface with this name dropping - what we'd really like to make clear is just how much we enjoyed Frutkin's mature and certain voice.  These poems are crystal, clean as a glass.

Life with Artists

for Faith

Stamped on the back of our china -

Van Gogh,

canned soups in the cupboard

by fifteen-minute

Andy Warhol,

still famously wrong

after all these years,

we own a broom and dust pan

likely by Duchamp

The back garden designed

by Monet, the blur

through the fogged-over

windows quite Impressionist

The living room

quietly breathers Edward Hopper

The cumulus clouds in the sky over the house

remind me of Georgia O'Keefe's

monumental mural in New Mexico,

and when I read the newspaper

I keep glimpsing scenes

from Cartier-Bresson

I linger in bed

and stare at the ceiling

etched by Mondrian

Many a room in this house

could have been designed

by the Russian Constructivists

But when I look at your face,

it's pure Leonardo

and I feel dancing inside

like Klee or Kandinsky.

...

Can we say it?  These are happy poems.  Hermit Thrust is quietly but assertively joyous.  You feel good, even uplifted, after reading these intelligent poems.  In today's monstrously clusterf**ked mad world it is reassuring to encounter such reasoned and sustained hope.  Mark Frutkin's poems call on us to read with our better nature at the forefront.  Today's book of poetry believes Hermit Thrush is a contemplative rhapsody on moving forward with hope.

Our morning read in the office today was a gas.  Everyone in the room was sporting a big Frutkin smile.  We all took turns reading the haiku, Kathryn, our Jr. Editor, led the charge and seemed to have the best handle on them.  But they were enjoyed by all.

Listening for Silence

A sliver of wind

slips between the piano key

slats of the fence,

I hear a single leaf

land on the deck

A white butterfly

tracks its erratic path

like traces of thought,

impossible to describe

but linked

Someone closes the door to a shed -

I will go on listening

for silence

until nothing but silence remains.

...

                 

Hermit Thrush was the perfect tonic for Today's book of poetry, it raises the bar on Dagmar.  We loved lines like these:

                                "every blank page is a poem about snow"

Copied several of them into our notebook, jealous admiration coursing our veins.  Today's book of poetry could feel something like joy radiating the room.

Mark Frutkin

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Frutkin, who currently lives in Ottawa with his family, is an author by trade with an interest in the geography of the imagination. He has published a slew of poetry and prose, which have appeared in Canada, the USA, England, Russia, Poland, Holland, South Korea, Turkey and India. In 2007, his novel, Fabrizio’s Return, won the Trillium Award for Best Book in Ontario and the Sunburst Award. In 1988, his novel Atmospheres Apollinaire was short-listed for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction as well as the Trillium Award.

BLURBS

“In Mark Frutkin’s marvellous Hermit Thrush, the words are listening to themselves so acutely that the reader can’t help but listen too. This attentiveness has something to do with precision and something to do with wonder. “A bird outside the window / sounds like it’s / gargling sequins.” Can’t you just hear it! The other senses are treated with equal respect. You can actually see the ineffable from many of these lines, can feel it brushing against your palm, can smell it in the binding of this very book. It’s up to you whether you eat these poems whole or take your time, nibble by nibble.”
     – Barry Dempster

“Any day you can’t coax a chickadee to land on your palm you can always read a poem by Mark Frutkin and get in touch with a mind that is quick, minimalist, and profound. A person could list the friends and relations of these deft gestures – Basho, Szymborska, Simic, the Zen koan, Ponge – but Frutkin’s voice is wholly its own creature, assured, sly, metaphorically robust, and whimsically intent on undoing the habits of familiarity. These poems are deceptively simple as the button that is “a flying saucer / flitting through a slit / into the next dimension.” Running through them there’s a humour that’s cosmic and domestic, a kettle–and–button wisdom that leaves you open, empty, and grateful.”
     – Don McKay

Mark Frutkin

Talkin' Poetry Part II (2011)

video courtesy: Olgajanina

from the film Heard of Poets by Josh Massey and Ben Wallace

quattrobooks.ca

493

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.