{"id":232,"date":"2011-05-19T10:25:14","date_gmt":"2011-05-19T10:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/?page_id=232"},"modified":"2011-09-25T01:23:50","modified_gmt":"2011-09-25T01:23:50","slug":"catriona-wright","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/writings\/reviews\/catriona-wright\/","title":{"rendered":"Catriona Wright"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poetry Review <\/strong><\/h3>\n
Catriona Wright<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

Love Figures<\/em><\/p>\n

by Sam Cheuk<\/p>\n

London, ON: Insomniac Press, 2011<\/p>\n

106 pp. $ 14.95<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Reading Sam Cheuk\u2019s debut poetry collection Love Figures<\/em> is like stepping into a film noir. Each poem is \u201can interrogation room\u201d (63) with the speaker at once the detective \u201crummag[ing] through the memorabilia \/ for clues\u201d (74) and the perpetrator confessing, perhaps falsely, to being the one with his \u201chand on the cleaver\u201d (16). A chiaroscuro effect, as likely to be created by 9-11 memorial searchlights as by the shadows between a girl\u2019s crossed legs, simultaneously conceals and spotlights meaning. Doppelg\u00e4ngers and multiple personalities abound. Two-way or compromised by hairline fractures, mirrors disorient and distort rather than reflect. Speakers connect to the others in their lives, most notably parents and lovers, with sincere ambivalence. Here, lying is always the quickest way to the truth.<\/p>\n

The collection is divided into three parts, and although there is a great deal of overlap in terms of imagery, theme and tone, each section has its own distinct preoccupation and feel. The first part is primarily concerned with the bond between fathers and sons and how the narrative surrounding this relationship requires prevarication, exaggeration and mythmaking to survive. For example, in \u201cDramaturgy,\u201d the speaker \u2018supposes\u2019 that a father and son perform a variety of actions that escalate in violence, until the speaker chillingly concludes, \u201cThis is me, your child, pallbearer of your name\u201d (16). This direct address startles the reader into the position of the speaker\u2019s father (a dead one at that), one of the many dekes and twists that characterize this collection. While clearly fascinated by the parent-child relationship, Cheuk is still hesitant to decide how important it is. In \u201cFour Part Elegy,\u201d for instance, the slant rhyme between \u201cliar\u201d and \u201cheir\u201d is revelatory. Is lying an inherited trait or are inherited traits a lie?<\/p>\n

The question becomes more complicated for Cheuk because, in a sense, his collection constructs its own parents. Cheuk\u2019s literary progenitors are primarily fathers. His epigraphs from Barthes, Paul Auster, Bahuddin, and Zhuang Shu Wei and his references to Ondaatje and Shakespeare point to a deliberate genealogy of influence that takes into consideration both Cheuk\u2019s cosmopolitan existence\u2014he divides his time between Toronto, New York and Hong Kong\u2014and his desire to situate himself as the latest generation in a long line of writers and intellectuals. This is contemporary poetry that pays homage to the past while being grounded in the present. It understands that the son will never be an exact copy, or mirror image, of the father.<\/p>\n

The second section concerns the relationship between a lover and his beloved. Written as a series of poetic love letters to a single mother living in Louisiana, this section once again fools around with the lyric form by using the second person, placing the reader in the position of lover. Part two is more stylistically uniform than part one\u2014which includes forms varying from modified tanka to prose to drama\u2014but similarly relentless in the scope of its skepticism. Indeed, at times the entire collection seems to pace anxiously, fretting about whether relationships to other people, especially parents and lovers, can be genuine or whether these relationships are necessarily compromised by lies, falsehood and deceit. How much do we really want to know<\/em> other people and how much do we just want to see ourselves reflected in them, understandable at last?<\/p>\n

In the concluding lines of the first section, the speaker evades this line of questioning when he says, \u201cI want to push further, push myself \/ through my reflection \/ until there is nothing left to reflect and \/ I become the mirror, an eye centered between nothing \/ and the world\u201d (57). Mirrors are present throughout the collection, a nod not only to a common trope in film noirs, but also to a prevalent symbol in the confessional mode of poetry, Plath\u2019s \u201cMirror\u201d and Sexton\u2019s \u201cThe Double Image\u201d being two pertinent examples. Mirrors are attractive symbols because they connote so many contradictory ideas. At once promising transparency, self-knowledge and mimesis, mirrors are also deceptive and illusory, especially when paired with smoke, and are capable of thrusting us into parallel realities, \u00e0 la Alice.<\/p>\n

Cheuk not only explicitly refers to mirrors, he also implicitly evokes them by playing games with reflecting lines. For example, on the title pages of the first two sections, the title is mirrored (i.e. \u201c1. Punctum\u201d in the upper left corner and \u201cmutcnuP .1\u201d in the lower right), while the third section defies this convention by reflecting \u201cI am you.\u201d with \u201c.uoy era uoY\u201d (89). Similarly, throughout the collection Cheuk uses slightly off repetitions and echoes. The effect is like playing the game where you look at two nearly identical pictures and try to find the differences. For instance, he concludes \u201cReconstructing Father\u201d with the lines, \u201cSay to yourself: my father\u2019s name is Simon.<\/em> \/ Say aloud: my father, his name is Simon<\/em>.\u201d (18). The speaker\u2019s need to alter his internal thoughts before they enter the world body signals a compulsive need to bend the truth, no matter how minor the change. \u201cEven now,\u201d the speaker in \u201cEpilogue\u201d tells the reader, \u201c\u2026the simple truth refuses to surface.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the third section, made up of a final love letter and two epilogues, Cheuk drops an inevitable, but no less satisfying for its inevitability, reference to Narcissus. Famous for falling in love with his own reflection, believing it to belong to a handsome youth, Narcissus is a clear argument against selfish love. Or is he? Tellingly, Cheuk eschews the common story of Narcissus in favour of a slightly different rendition:<\/p>\n

In one version of the Narcissus<\/p>\n

myth, the Beotian hero falls not in love<\/p>\n

with his image, but her image within<\/p>\n

his reflection. Narcissus was no fool,<\/p>\n

he knew the face he saw. He would say<\/p>\n

\u201cI love you.\u201d \u201cLove me.\u201d \u201cLove you.\u201d<\/p>\n

He knew it wasn\u2019t her face either, rather<\/p>\n

His mirroring hers. But who among us<\/p>\n

could abandon a music mellifluous as<\/p>\n

love\u2019s abandon?<\/p>\n

(96)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This variation of the myth gives us a self-aware Narcissus, who instead of being duped by his reflection, actively accepts the knowledge that \u201c\u2026there is no selfless love.\u201d (97). Cheuk relates this lesson about romantic love to the love between a parent and child when the speaker says, \u201cI wanted fatherhood, something to disappear into\u201d (97). The idea of fatherhood as a suspect, even selfish act echoes the final lines of Sexton\u2019s \u201cDouble Image\u201d in which the speaker, pondering why she desired a daughter, concludes, \u201cI made you to find me.\u201d When Cheuk\u2019s speaker tells the reader, \u201cWe all love \u2026 \/ for our own reasons\u201d (97), it is not a lament for a more genuine, authentic connection with each other, it is an honest appraisal.<\/p>\n

If pressed, I could only find fault with one aspect of this collection: its use of literary critical jargon, such as \u201cantisyzygy\u201d (85). The occasional appearance of these words grates because for the most part the collection reads smoothly while at the same time advancing difficult and complex ideas. But this is a minor quibble in an otherwise stunning debut.<\/p>\n

This playful, deeply philosophical collection plays good cop and bad cop with the reader. It shines light in our eyes, interrogates us endlessly and begs us to stare at ourselves in the mirror with the full knowledge that there are others staring back at us, just on the other side of our reflection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poetry Review Catriona Wright   Love Figures by Sam Cheuk London, ON: Insomniac Press, 2011 106 pp. $ 14.95   Reading Sam Cheuk\u2019s debut poetry collection Love Figures is like stepping into a film noir. Each poem is \u201can interrogation room\u201d (63) with the speaker at once the detective \u201crummag[ing] through the memorabilia \/ for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":77,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"authorpage.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-232","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":716,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/232\/revisions\/716"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}