Quebec Passages - Pearl Pirie (Noun Trivet Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Quebec Passages.  Pearl Pirie.  Noun Trivet Press. Ottawa.  Ontario.  2014.

"we followed the rules we set for
ourselves"

This line from Pearl Pirie's poem "a rail bed of feldspar" just may be Pirie's mantra.

Quebec Passages is the second book of Pirie's that Today's book of poetry has looked at.  The first, been shed bore (Chaudiere Books, 2010) blog can be seen here:

http://michaeldennispoet.blogspot.ca/2013/09/been-shed-bore-pearl-pirie.html

And a disclaimer - I was lucky enough to read many of these poems in manuscript form, and was enthusiastic in response.

Nothing has changed.

Pearl Pirie seems to set projects for herself, dictates rules that demand poems of specific direction and focal point - but more and more the poetry of Pearl Pirie is becoming a clear, crisp beacon, they read universal and remain vulnerable.

hair strokes

     "things recede, everything recedes, everything is far away
     [...] the moon of contemplation on our backs"
     ~Tim Lilburn, Moosewood Sandhills

from every angle examined, yep, still 2 white hairs

as a teen you said: I want to love you till we're grey
we're there...

no, the whole head, and if you go bald, then too.

twenty years, you're still here, your hand thrust into my side,
rooting for a grip to hang on.

...

Pirie's nod to Margaret Atwood's Edible Woman let's us know that Pirie knows her history.

These interesting and articulate poems seem to come from a very deep well.  Pirie may be one of the best kept secrets in Ottawa.

Her dry humour just races around inside these poems like little landmines.  Some of them go off, when you are pouring tea, or turning down the sheets for the night.

Today's book of poetry is challenged by some of the visual poetry in Quebec Passages but isn't dissuaded.  I always hope to broaden my scope even when I'm reluctant to embrace.

Quebec Passages races past the reader like the witty barbs and bon mots of a strange but exceptional seating companion on a train.  Someone who is full of wisdom and a little piss and vinegar.  Someone confident enough to let loose with those assuring assessments, clinical appraisals and whimsical amusements.  They all fly by with staccato-clackety-clack of clockwork, or steel wheels on rails hitting seams.

after the meltdown at Promenade Plantee where shoppers and
suits averted their already preoccupied gaze we returned to
our flophouse de jour

waking to sun,
your hand on my back
was feeling a vertebra
as if testing for
a weak rung

...

Pirie's mature poems are Brautiganian whip-smart and as precise as pinched purpose.

She packs an over-sized emotional heft into many of these brief brios.

Pirie likes to laugh but has to move her tongue out of her cheek to do it.

moss is a velvet cape laid down

welcome back milkweed, lamb's ears,
grapevine and smallest of clover sprout.
good to see you up and about. apple petal.

verdigris pixie cup, dark umbrella lobbed
into the bush's sand, broken and turned
back on itself, oh, hello, rosette of lobes,

tar jelly lichen, what we saw once close up
we can draw in details from a distance.
we know a smudge is weather.

we breathe and know rain's close, we have
no word for the taste of air but know a shift
once our bones feel it. we notice best what

we have an easy word for. what we might
even believe. or else we're stranded in hail
in diagonal sweeps of musical sheets.

...

                       "or else we're stranded in hail
in diagonal sweeps of musical sheets."

That is such a great line.  Today's book of poetry remains convinced that Pirie will continue to cement her reputation as one of Ottawa's finer poets.  Quebec Passages is another big, solid statement to back that assertion.  It is a small book full of big ideas, humour and a searching intelligence.

Pearl Pirie

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pearl Pirie’s next collection, the pet radish, shrunken is with BookThug, March 2015. Author of been shed bore (Chaudiere Books, 2010) and Thirsts (Snare, 2011) which won the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Pirie has over a dozen chapbooks, most recently today's woods (above/ground, 2014) & polyphonic choral of civet tongues and manna (unarmed, 2014).  Host of Literary Landscape on CKCUfm.com, she organized Ottawa’s Tree Seed Workshops 2009-2014. She gives workshops and talks on poetry for various organizations. She blogs and photographs Ottawa’s rich, amazing literary scene.

BLURB

"Part of the appeal of following Pirie’s work over the past few years has always been in not entirely knowing where her work might go next, shifting between narrative forms into more traditional engagements with haiku as well as more experimental forms of language and visual poetry, playing constantly with different shapes and possible sounds. [...] [T]hrough her curiosity, her work manages to accomplish a series of unexpected moments and startling, even jarring, images."

      —rob mclennan on Quebec Passages at Small Press Review

Pearl Pirie

Poet, Editor, Publisher

with thanks to Illume Espresso Bar

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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.

Words for Elephant Man - Kenneth Sherman (The Porcupine's Quill)

Today's book of poetry:
Words for Elephant Man.  Kenneth Sherman.  The. Porcupine's Quill.  Erin, Ontario.  2012.  (Second Edition)

Words for Elephant Man was originally published by Mosaic Press, Oakville, Ontario, 1983.

Today is a special day for Today's book of poetry, so, a special book.  This is the 300th blog/review for Today's book of poetry.

I was lucky enough to see some of Kenneth Sherman's poetry before Words for Elephant Man was published in 1983.  I was already a big fan.  Words for Elephant Man was a game changer.  It is great to see this lovingly rendered second edition.  George Raab did some seriously fine etching to illustrate Words for Elephant Man but they never get in the way.  Raab's etchings work like the rhythm section of a good band, they hold it all together, make it all sound better.

I've always thought that Words for Elephant Man belonged on that same short list as The Collected Works of Billy the Kid by Michael Ondaatje, Sid Stephens' Beothuck Poems and anything that went through Milton Acorn's hands - as sacred material in the Canadian canon.

Sherman's take on Joseph Merrick's voice is so human, humane and tender it is sometimes hard to bare his kindness  -  knowing what he knows.

The Only Electric Lady

As a young man, Tom Norman paid a penny
to see the 'Only Electric Lady':
                                                sparks
flew like inchworms of light
                                             from her body.
When he touched her hand
                                            the shock of it
bolted him back.

Later, he discovered she was connected
(as was the metal plate under the damp
carpet on which the customer stood)

to an electric coil,
                              It was,
Tom said,
               like seeing the soiled underpants of God.

For his first show, 'Savage Zulus', he
hired unemployed seamen
It was not the show,
                               he used to say,
it was the tale you told,

though with me he never had to say a word.

I was beyond metaphor,
                                      my stench
cutting through the intricacies of fiction.

That is why when Treves came to see me
they had to fetch Tom in a pub,

                                                  he
was drinking,

                       he was dreaming

the Only Electric Lady.

...

These poems bare witness to a stunningly sad tale, moderated only by Merrick's gratitude and gentle wisdom in the face of such eternal horror.  There is no anger in Sherman's Merrick, and the melancholy is usually on delicate restraint.

These poems give splendid voice to a misunderstood and misshapen man sadly afflicted with burdens beyond our imagining - and for many more a myth than a man.

None of us are capable of imagining the true horrors Merrick endured.  But these poems give Merrick a voice of reason, Merrick has a great lesson of humility to teach us all.  These poems are deeply moving and the well researched Sherman makes them vibrate with the resonance of truth.

Nurses

The first one who saw me
dropped her tray and fled.
After that, I am sure it became a challenge -
compassion's final chalice.

                                           The faces
of the younger ones are nondescript
like puffed-up pillows. They mostly
hold their breath
and turn the other way.

                                         The older ones,
gaunt-faced, owl-eyed
from having seen
all there is to see
(so they thought)
                            turn
when I catch them staring.

                                           Lately
I have been wondering
what stories they tell
when they return to their homes

whether they have become famous
on their respective streets
for having touched my sacred flesh.

...

I chose Words for Elephant Man by Kenneth Sherman as our 300th post for Today's book of poetry because this elegant edition by Porcupine's Quill is lovely and absolutely necessary for today's generation of readers.  Sherman/Merrick's beautiful reason is the sort of kindness we should all embrace.

Nowhere

It is evening.
The eyes of animals peer out
from the forest,
shiny and wet.

Too exotic for even their world
I sit on a black rock
which took wind and earth
aeons to create.

I am closer to the moss, to the
fungus
            or perhaps to that flower
blown colourless
by today's storm

its stem bent,
it seems to be held up
by its crutches of thick leaves.

On the road back to the cottage
my moonlit shadow
                               limps ahead.

I will never catch
up with it,

it looks
like the figure
of another man.

...

I loved this stunning book when it was first published more than thirty years ago - it hasn't aged a day.  This is poetry that will fill your socks and then some.  Kenneth Sherman's Words for Elephant Man is a classic at Today's book of poetry.

Kenneth Sherman

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kenneth Sherman was born in Toronto in 1950. He has a BA from York University, where he studied with Eli Mandel and Irving Layton, and an MA in English Literature from the University of Toronto. While a student at York, Sherman co-founded and edited the literary journal Waves. From 1974--1975 he travelled extensively through Asia. He is a full-time faculty member at Sheridan College where he teaches Communications; he also teaches a course in creative writing at the University of Toronto.

In 1982, Sherman was writer-in-residence at Trent University. In 1986 he was invited by the Chinese government to lecture on contemporary Canadian literature at universities and government institutions in Beijing. In 1988, he received a Canada Council grant to travel through Poland and Russia. This experience inspired several of the essays in his book Void and Voice(1998). Sherman, author of the acclaimed Words for Elephant Man, and The Well: New and Selected Poems, lives in Toronto with his wife, Marie, an artist.

BLURBS

‘While the story of the Elephant Man may be familiar to many, Sherman’s poems take readers to the heart of understanding the intelligent, tender-hearted man who lived within his “bales of skin.’ Containing etchings by George Raab, Words for Elephant Man moves beyond the reach of poetry readers, making it an essential book for anyone interested in Merrick’s life and times.’
—Jennifer Fandel, ForeWord Reviews

‘Better than either the movie or the play, Words for Elephant Man delves under the pitted skin of John Merrick before emerging with a masterfully articulate portrait.’
—Poetry Toronto

‘Sherman’s subject has produced from him poetry as bare and original as Beckett’s best. Merrick is, by deft and and incisive association, a crucified Christ, a creator full of irony and power, victim and victimizer, ‘the age’s Doppelganger/its underside/its Hyde.’
—Canadian Forum

porcupinesquill.ca 

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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.

Brood - Rob Thomas (A Bywords Publication)

Today's book of poetry:
Brood.  Rob Thomas.  A Bywords Publication. Ottawa.  Ontario.  2014.

Winner of the 2013 John Newlove Poetry Award

Best best best cover since Christian McPherson's The Sun Has Forgotten Where I Live.

Rob Thomas has a hell of a sense of humour. 

Check this out:

cereal killers

we have Rice Krispies

just where we want them.

we're gonna make'em talk.

carry on, Snap, with your terrible

death rattle, no crying over

spilled secrets, Crackles.

is that really all you have

to say for yourself, Pop?

next we break the Wheaties

and cast the Cheerios

before that horrendous tiger

with his frosty grin.

...

Rob Thomas takes some well known nursery rhymes memes and turns them on their heads with a light handed flip of direction and intention.  Thomas has a deft hand of unexpected tricks and treats for more than just Halloween.

These turgid little/short poems carry disproportionate weight as Thomas darkens the edges of everything just a little with Brood.

iv, missing children

that golden girl

isn't she that golden girl? Papa Bear remarks.

the one who was sitting in my chair.

Mama Bear swats the carton from his paw

and peers at the pixelated image.

you mean the one who tasted my porridge,

she corrects.

Baby Bear belches and levers

a hunk of gristle from his teeth with a claw.

and they say she's missing?

...

Rob Thomas entertains the hell out of the reader in this chapbook from Bywords Publications.

His Brood is that quiet whisper you hear that tells dark secrets.  

These are the new nursery rhymes that taunt all of life's safe moments, they bring little comfort but they are amusing  as all get out.

That discordant clang of a church bell in the distance, ringing when there is no need for it to be ringing.  This clarion call is quietly, malevolently reproaching the notion that the future will work out for the the good..

message in the bottles

sometimes you wish

you could squeeze the kids

into the trunk and drive

to Florida

where the toaster

sun brands the likeness

of you-know-who

into each well-braised

and sand-powered backside

where vegetables

swim in your cocktail

and you might swim as well

because here's cold

too cold to forget

or remember to even think

of paint bottles --

kaleidoscopic --

swelling in the trunk

...

Why does Today's book of poetry enjoy grim  -  the same reason the best humour cuts close to the bone.  Sometimes you just want to run around the fun house, getting startled by the scary clowns, the monsters in the dark.

Rob Thomas

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rob Thomas is a stay-at-home Dad.  He's had an incredible life and you can read about it all here:  

http://www.robthomas.ca/bio.html

BLURB

The poem is succinct, funny, and disturbing all in one.  An irreverent revery about escape, and its potentially dire result.  The words are carefully chosen, but not precious, and effectively shaped into a potent little poem.

      --  Alice Burdick - 2013 Bywords John Newlove Poetry Award Judge

bywords.ca

299

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.

Bird Facts - Dave Currie (Apt. 9 Press)

Today's book of poetry:
Birds Facts.  Dave Currie.  Apt. 9 Books.  Ottawa, Ontario.  2014.

Dave Currie does the almost impossible, he makes, for a short period of time, birds the most interesting subject on the planet.  Currie's creative micro-fiction/prose poems soar.

Bird Facts is a deliciously snarky collection of prose style poems that painstakingly break down the ornithological mutterings of an etymological Birdman of Alcatraz if he were a modern Scheky Green.

Chicken

There are more than twenty four billion Chickens living on planet Earth, and nearly all of them lead miserable lives. No large-scale pharmacological solution has ever been attempted to deal with this epidemic of  Chicken misery. However, science is ever changing.
     By the mid-15th century BC, the Chicken's quick egg deployment brought the species worldwide stardom. Presumably somewhere around this time scrambled eggs were invented.
     Chickens have individual personalities. When allowed to live outside of the prison industrial complex, they are actually quite gregarious. As can be intuited from children's cartoons, Chickens attract mates through choreographed dance routines. Not on display in cartoons is the headlong mounting that ensues immediately following these dance routines.
     Apart from using these socially inclined animals for nuggets, humans like to train them for "Fancy Chicken Shows." In some places, ten thousand people will show up to catch a glimpse of one of the three hundred birds on display. Fancy.

...

Dave Currie really is marvelously funny in a sustained and disciplined poetic vigor.  It might have been an easy project for Currie if he allowed himself to release the hounds of comic poetry but the smarter poet, that being Currie, is a restrained as he is brilliant.

You don't show all your feathers at once.

Unless you're a peacock.

Each and every one of these slightly alarming avian deconstructions follows a particular rigour. These prose poems are as consistent in form and style as they are in fowl punch line.

Ostrich

Ostriches do not bury their heads in the sand. They never have -- no one has ever seen them do it. Not even once.
      Ostriches only eat the highest quality of foods. They can run 50km per hour. They never got tired of walking. Ostriches like to keeps things casual. Freewheeling hippy birds do not pair for long but they do split parental duties. Except of course laying eggs, which the lady ostrich does every second day. Ostriches tend to be democrats. Egyptian Vultures attack unguarded Ostrich nests by tossing stones at the enormous ostrich eggs.
      The infant mortality rate for Ostriches is 85%. If let to die of old age, Ostriches die in their fifties. An ostrich does not chirp -- it booms. Ostriches look ridiculous when they dance. Adult Ostriches spent the majority or their time alone. Their eggs are the largest and smallest on the planet; they are largest in size but smallest in comparison to species. Spinster Ostriches often help guard nests. This comforts them in their ugliness and makes them feel useful.

...

Once again Ottawa's Apt. 9 Press ups their design game.  Bird Facts is as attractive as it is amusing.

Dave Currie can be very proud of his avian poetry.  Cameron Anstee can be proud that he continues to find work that lives up to his handsome designs.

This is not Colonel Saunders or finger-licking good -- but these fowl poems are hard to put down, you will want more of this delight.

Roadrunner

The Roadrunner preys upon rattlesnakes. The Roadrunner preys upon bugs. The Roadrunner is the only one who can take down the Tarantula Hawk Wasp. Roadrunners live in the desert, they nest around cacti.
     They have been known to grab humming birds at nectar feeders. At family reunions they avoid the Cuckoo like the plague. They can control their own body temperature by adjusting their position to capture sunlight on their black spots. Roadrunners, in their family units, claim territory and never leave. Fleeing is for the weak. Roadrunners are also called Snake Killers, which is pretty damn badass.
      Roadrunners make good parents. They often eat the last baby to hatch, as a family. Cannibalism is their yahtzee, infanticide on family game night. Maybe this is why they are the state bird of New Mexico.

...

Dave Currie has given Today's book of poetry the first big poetry laughs in a while.  Bird Facts is the most fun you will have without pulling the feathers off of something.  The most fun you will have until the crows come home to roost.

AUTHORS BIO
David Currie currently lives in Ottawa.

apt9press.wordpress.com

298

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.

The Cave - Tom Holmes (The Bitter Oleander Press)

Today's book of poetry:
The Cave.  Tom Holmes.  The Bitter Oleander Press.  New York, N.Y., 2014.

Winner of the Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award for 2013

How do you make human those first moments of transition when a species is animal and then they become human?

Is it contained in that first deliberate painting on a cave wall?

Tom Holmes might have you feeling that.  The Cave posits those moments of the transformative human past and gives them scope, room to percolate in our active and overburdened minutiae.

The First Painting

I had no urge except to sleep
with her in the cave, but I felt
sympathy, I cared. I sensed
intelligence in a crevice. I saw

life. I saw a bison's back
in a crack, I saw
the whole world, the whole sky,
all of night. The night

with the bisons, the horses, and rhinos
before me, before my eyes -- I saw
a backdrop with all the beasts.

I saw blood on my finger.
The arc of a bison's back
appeared with one stroke.
The second urge arrived.

...

Tom Holmes is explaining who we are today by stepping into our giant footprints and deciphering what it is that makes us sentient, capable of thought and therefore choice.

These big question poems pose a challenge to the readers understanding of what it means to be human.

It is all in here, The Cave, the start of faith, the beginning of manufacturing, of commerce.  Holmes is outlining or at least providing a hypothesis for nothing less than the beginning of our conscious time on this planet.

Plato is just hanging out around the corner, Holmes has his own cave and in it all is explained in time.

The First Prayer

Father, it is cold for spring,
snow lingers in shadows
below cliffs and trees,
the ground is not giving,
and the beasts smell you.

The fat and dried meats
dwindled away days ago
as did your final breath.
The fire is warming.
Forgive us our next meal.

...

Holmes assesses the future using the tools of the present.  He has discovered and/or decided to share time travel.  He is in every moment, Holmes somehow spirals through time.  The poems in The Cave
are our first revelations as we move away from the black glass monolith, bones in our hairy fists.

Sorry, Kubrick obsessed intern writing copy for a moment.

Today's book of poetry thought these poems were cut with a digital laser, precise as that.

A Brief Autobiography Of The First Artist

I was carving
the sharp end of a spear
when I sliced myself
and my blood spilled out.

It was smooth and thick
and salty.
I tried to rub it off,
it spread evenly and thin.

More pulsed out
in rhythm with my heart.
I clutched my chest.
The blood continued its pulse.

I smeared my arm
and then my thigh.
I slapped a rock.
The blood held its place.

I found a red hand
on the rock. My red hand
detached and peaceful
like a greeting or foreboding.

My blood stopped.
I sliced myself again.
I made more hands
and flung red drops from my fingertips.

There was so much red
before it all went black.

...

Tom Holmes

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Holmes is the editor of Redactions: Poetry, Poetics, & Prose and the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently The Cave, which won The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award for 2013 and will be released in 2014. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize seven times and his work has appeared a number of times on Verse Daily. His writings about wine, poetry book reviews, and poetry can be found at his blog, The Line Break: http://thelinebreak.wordpress.com/.

BLURBS

Hand art on Paleolithic cave walls is the artery, but observations like cut gemstones are woven into Tom Holmes' exciting tapestry of The Cave with its hunger for mystery to balance you along the edge: "When the wall opens, / I am lightning in the antelope's antlers / and the stripe along its jaw." These poems wrestle with the concept of time. They want to capture time, yet realize that time is elusive. So, they attempt to understand time through concrete experience, which poses its own dilemma. Even The Needle, a vehicle which hopes to stitch the fabric designed to apprehend time, is ephemeral: "Let me tell you about the needle. / It is and it is not. It points / to what will be, and what it isnt..." Undeterred, the poet continues his quest. Enjoy this exciting journey through the primordial future.
--Alan Britt, judge for the 2013 Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award.

A deep and selfless imagination anchors The Cave. Tom Holmes gives himself over completely to his vision and his project is nothing less than inhabiting the spirit and the flesh of our collective ancestors. The speakers here, in the daily specifics of early life on earth, retell the beginnings of our consciousness as it rises from fire and rocks to images illuminated on the cave walls and in the night sky. Each poem is a distillation of the individual efforts of art that result in the common bonds of our humanity. From “blood on his finger” and “burnt wood and ash” to “where the wind took form” we retrace our physical and spiritual past in song and paint. The voices in these poems are absolutely credible, and Holmes’ writing is “a song it carries from a star.”
– Christpoher Buckley, author of Back Room at the Philosopher's Club

A writer looks at the famous Paleolithic cave paintings in France, and then he becomes an ancestor at art’s birth, birthing himself as a writer at the same time. Tom Holmes “set down [his] bowl of burning animal fat / to illuminate this hollow the world” in poems that embrace what it means to be a fledgling human and nods toward Platonic allegory in poems that delight and sometimes sear. In “An Origin of the Other” the sacred and the earthy conjoin in manifesting this human world, what we have been, what we have become and are becoming still. An ambitious and strange book of intelligence and empathy.
– Laura McCullough, author of Rigger Death & Hoist Another

Today's book of poetry cut and pasted two of those blurbs from the excellent poetry site Redactions. Which you can see here:  http://www.redactions.com/our-books.asp 

Tom Holmes

Three Bad-Ass Poets: Tom Holmes - Reads Paleolthic Poems

Video by Semlohsa Moht

spdbooks.org 

297

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.