Girlwood<\/em><\/p>\n by Jennifer Still,<\/p>\n Brick Books, 119 pages, $19.00<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Girlwood<\/em>, Jennifer Still\u2019s second collection of poetry, focuses, as the title suggests, on the lives of girls. And the lives of girls are crazy, confusing, and convoluted. Still matches the subject with the forms of her poetry, which range from long-line poems to prose poems to poems of two short lines to poems with words laid out all over the age. The variety suits the topic, but seems a trifle forced occasionally.<\/p>\n These poems are about girlhood in a particular time. Still mentions numerous consumer products, suggesting that the girls are growing up in the seventies, and so the allusions may not be entirely accessible to all readers\u2014and certainly not to male readers. References to Bonne Bell, Conair hair dryers, Mary Kay, and Nivea, for example, situate the material firmly in a girly world, one in which appearance is crucial. And given that appearance has always been and still is a crucible of learning for girls, the messages underlying the products don\u2019t change even if the products do. Easybake ovens dictate one of the major roles of girls\u2014to become domestic workers, and the make-up and clothing references ensure that girls know their worth is often measured by their physical allure.<\/p>\n Still\u2019s girls try to break free of their mothers, and in doing so often lurch too far in other directions. In \u201cWhirlpool,\u201d the speaker notes, \u201cSo we slutted a decade. \/ Or worse, we didn\u2019t \/ and still looked like that<\/em>.\u201d The book makes an arc through girlhood into young adulthood. From toys to make-up to drinking to weddings, Still captures girls\u2019 lives\u2014at least some girls\u2019 lives. These girls are fairly ordinary and I don\u2019t mean that in a bad way. Still is examining the conventional lives of girls, not those of extreme suffering or loss or danger.<\/p>\n The collection is divided into numerous sections, some bearing the title \u201cTrack\u201d with a number as on a record or cd, and others with their own titles and then titles of separate poems (or not). The jumbled effect is good as what is more of a jumble than youth, especially the mixed signals girls get and give?<\/p>\n The book has some excellent pieces. \u201cWedding Cake\u201d is definitely a top-drawer poem. It takes the image of cutting a wedding cake to expose ignorance of the future\u2014the uncertainty of the couple:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The blade is not really there<\/p>\n to cut, only to test<\/p>\n a moment in the lens<\/p>\n when hand upon hand<\/p>\n you don\u2019t know what<\/p>\n you are dividing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Still has the ability to embed a variety of emotions in a seemingly simple act. That is a gift. But sometimes the conventional is just that: in \u201cTrack Four,\u201d the speaker considers careers: \u201cNurse. check<\/em>. Pilot. check<\/em>. Dancer. check<\/em>. The year Stewardess replaced Model (big decisions) and all this based on a learning I would like to forget: you were smart enough to know you were playing dumb and dumb enough to think this was smart.\u201d<\/p>\n One technique (among many) that Still uses with grace and power is the list. Some poems are essentially lists and others make excellent use of them. \u201cbuilt\u201d is a beautiful list poem that begins \u201cwith dandelions in Dixie cups, Cream of Wheat sputter, small bumps, bra bumps, egg cups, ivory lace, with the centre shaped to what is not yet there everything made for what is not yet there<\/em> . . . \u201d; the stream of consciousness works perfectly with the list as the connections are made and developed.<\/p>\n Overall, Still does a good job of revealing the ambiguities and uncertainties of girlhood. She juxtaposes her girls against their mothers, with the strong recognition of the bond they share and the moulds the daughters wish to break. While the collection may have a limited audience, its insight is well worth the time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sharawadji<\/em><\/p>\n by Brian Henderson,<\/p>\n London, ON: Brick Books, 2011<\/p>\n 88 pages, $19.00<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In the notes to his tenth book of poetry, Sharawadji<\/em>, Brian Henderson explains the meaning of the term in a few ways, but the one that captures what he does in this collection is that a sharawadji effect \u201ctakes one by surprise and will carry the listener elsewhere, beyond strict representation\u2014out of context.\u201d The definition is in the context of music, but it works beautifully for what Henderson accomplishes in this arresting collection.<\/p>\n The book is divided into four sections; \u201cTwelve Imaginary Landscape,\u201d \u201cNight Music,\u201d \u201cLike the Sound of a Grass Fire,\u201d and \u201cPreviews.\u201d The first and last sections are prose poems while the second and third are free verse. It\u2019s rather hard not to swoon when the first poem, \u201cPerfecting Thirst,\u201d contains the line \u201cTrilobites of prayer punctuate the walls like shrapnel.\u201d And then Henderson just keeps it coming\u2014page after page with lines that make you stop and slam into new thoughts and visions.<\/p>\n Henderson is clearly at the top of his game, and there\u2019s no such thing as a wobble in this book. Most of the time, the poems are simply awe-inspiring, and while it\u2019s hard to choose favourites, I\u2019d have to say that the whole second section is truly remarkable. It\u2019s a series of poems about the speaker\u2019s mother\u2019s death from cancer, and Henderson makes emotion ache across the page. In \u201cUnresectable, 11 May,\u201d he writes:<\/p>\n [ . . . ] Your veins<\/p>\n sprouting plastic lines, small<\/p>\n purses of potassium and morphine<\/p>\n feeding the debt your body\u2019s racked up,<\/p>\n skin nearly the early colouring<\/p>\n of flowering dogwood bloom\u2014<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The ability to show the outside while revealing the inside is staggering, and over and over, Henderson uses a dense abstraction to paradoxically make his language concrete. The 18 poems in \u201cNight Music\u201d are a testament to love and family.\u00a0 \u201cCollection of Photographs\u201d has a heart-breaking stanza about the mother\u2019s death:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Everything has a kind of space around it,<\/p>\n a kind of invisible purity<\/p>\n that\u2019s easily transgressed, every<\/p>\n moment, and each stays<\/p>\n remembered or not, mutilated<\/p>\n or not, as if now I were made of forgetting.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Doesn\u2019t that make your heart clench?<\/p>\n The third section focuses on imagery of water and trees\u2014the natural world is a magnificent spread of beauty\u2014flowers, birds, and even human beings combine in a celebration of life is all its many forms. In \u201cEvery Part of You Has a Secret Language,\u201d Henderson starts by saying:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It is not like anything, vivids, lurids, smoke, some truth<\/p>\n imitating the shiver of music, the river that empties itself<\/p>\n into what we call, for want of a better word<\/p>\n the mind [ . . . ]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n These are poems to be returned to repeatedly.<\/p>\n Like the other three parts, the fourth explores beauty and death. And Henderson has mastery over the prose poem, wrestling it into a lovely and loving shape of ideas, with remarkable cadence, the rising and falling rhythms matching content. Henderson can take polysyllabic scientific terms and make them sing. \u201cA Momentary History of Time, or<\/em> The Sheer\u201d contains the words \u201ccadmium\u201d and \u201ctrichloroethylene\u201d\u2014and they work. The science imagery seems perfectly natural, even when the words are not in everyday use.<\/p>\n Sharawadji <\/em>is a luminous collection offering extremes of emotion balanced by extraordinarily thoughtful phrasing. I found myself frequently tugged in at least two directions\u2014dazzled by the displays of emotion and envious of Henderson\u2019s sagacious use of language.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Truth of Houses<\/em><\/p>\n by Ann Scowcroft,<\/p>\n London, ON: Brick Books, 2011<\/p>\n 117 pages, $19.00<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Quebec writer Ann Scowcroft has an engaging and varied collection of poems in her debut volume, The Truth of Houses<\/em>. The concerns tend to the domestic, in particular motherhood, and Scowcroft has a gentle touch with difficult topics such as child abuse.<\/p>\n The poems range widely from focussing on young sons to aging relatives to romantic love. But he primary topic is motherhood, and in the section \u201c(Palimpsest),\u201d which is preceded by the poem \u201cLetter to my mother\u201d (surely connected), Scowcroft uses the technique of the palimpsest to uncover the mysterious secret of child abuse that has gone through at least two generations. The palimpsest gives the series of poems a dreamy (or perhaps nightmarish) quality in which memory fades in and out and the awfulness of abuse is approached and then retreated from\u2014as one imagines it would be psychologically. This section has 16 poems, and they move beautifully back and forth in time and with varying degrees of concreteness.<\/p>\n The book has an intriguing structural device: each of the four main sections has a quotation from Christopher Alexander\u2019s The Timeless Way of Building<\/em>, along with a small illustration. The first quotation alludes to the overall themes of the collection\u2014that a certain kind of order results in buildings that \u201cwill be the forests and meadows of the human heart.\u201d Scowcroft develops the concept somewhat in revers: that the human heart becomes the housing we inhabit. Sometimes the housing fails us, but the truth will out sooner or later. In \u201c(Palimpsest)\u201d a mother and daughter discover that they have been assaulted by the same man. Instead of delving into the reasons why the daughter is not warned, the two simply move on as there isn\u2019t really anything they can say. The daughter expects her revelation to result in an apology; instead the mother confesses her own trauma. The speaker notes:<\/p>\n What she said instead was, He did that to me too.<\/em><\/p>\n The moment during which all oxygen<\/p>\n departed the planet only seemed long. I\u2019ve<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 never told anyone that<\/em>, she added.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Scowcroft ends the exchange in a surprising but utterly believable way.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The poems about the speaker\u2019s own sons manage to stay tough and unsentimental while retaining the loving concern the mother has. When one child cuts open his knee and needs stitches, the mother considers the response of the tired emergency room doctor, and then goes on to wonder how long it will be that her son seeks her protection:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [ . . . ] When will it stop, this<\/p>\n abject, necessary collapse against my chest,<\/p>\n how many more times will he accept this intimate comfort<\/p>\n before his body closes around itself in its perfection[.]<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And naturally, she wonders in another poem how she can promise to protect him, and she comes to the realization that all she can do is \u201copen [her] mouth, \/ and believe.\u201d<\/p>\n The book is a bit uneven. \u201cRough translation of Ronsard\u2019s Mignonne<\/em>\u201d doesn\u2019t quite fit, and some of the poems could use tightening, but overall, the variety and delicate pacing demonstrate a writer in control of her material.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Writing Out the Notes: Life in Great Big Sea<\/em><\/p>\n by Bob Hallett,<\/p>\n London, ON: Insomniac Press, 2010<\/p>\n 171 pages, $19.95<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In Writing Out the Notes: Life in Great Big Sea<\/em>, Bob Hallett delivers a series of charming essays on music and his life, which in his case are almost the same thing. The 24 pieces in this collection are short and often breezy anecdotes, but at their heart lies Hallett\u2019s devotion to music and St. John\u2019s, his place of inspiration.<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible to dip into the book at any point and read an essay\u2014the organization is loose, and the essays occasionally overlap in content, but fans of Great Big Sea or Hallett\u2019s writing in general or the connection between place and muse will find a thoughtful man\u2019s considerations of music and life. Hallett has the ability to be serious, but never too serious. He enjoys his life, and he tells stories of being on the road (surely a dreary experience at times) without whining. It appears that in the early days the drudgery was wiped out by alcohol, and in \u201cMy Back Pages,\u201d Hallett describes playing bars in St. John\u2019s where the beer flowed like Niagara: \u201cThere were so many alcohol-fuelled indulgences that sometimes it seems like an extended five-year dream.\u201d The rumours about his band\u2019s behaviour in those early days turn out to be mostly true: \u201cWe really did swap instruments at random points during boring shows (whether we knew how to play them or not). . . . We really did an entire show where we played \u2018Lukey\u2019s Boat\u2019 every third song, just to see if anyone would notice.\u201d It\u2019s obvious that they really did have a great time and nearly destroyed their livers in the process.<\/p>\n But the wonderful thing is that Hallett survived and indeed thrived. St. John\u2019s for all its smallness seems full of musicians (and writers) and people who appreciate music. Hallett (born in 1966) writes about the difficulty of hearing traditional music when he was in university, but he was intrepid enough and curious enough to seek it out. He points out that he listened to a radio show and made tapes \u201cto learn new reels and other tunes.\u201d And that happened while he was a \u201ccard-carrying member of the local punk scene.\u201d<\/p>\n His essays often read like stories you\u2019d hear while sitting in a pub listening to a friend. And that closeness makes them all the more compelling, as Hallett has the gift of coming across utterly without guile and with a genuine warmth and friendship, whether making fun of himself and his band\u2019s antics or celebrating the work of others. He pays homage to other musicians and notes importance of learning one\u2019s craft. He seems to have listened to everything with a childlike wonder, and he finds joy in so much that the book is inspiring and uplifting, whether one is a musician or not. He mentions the Moody Blues, Leonard Cohen, The Byrds, among many others, and the list is an inspiring to get one\u2019s mitts on the music (both his own and that of all the musicians he mentions) and listen to it. In \u201cJerusalem\u201d he explains his love of that hymn and argues \u201conly someone with an ear of lead could not appreciate the perfect marriage of form and function that exists in that song. I can only aspire to such heights.\u201d And he ends that essay on a perfect note, quoting Blake: \u201cThe imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n And that is an excellent place to conclude a review on a lovely and loving book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Poetry and Biography Reviews Canadace Fertile Girlwood by Jennifer Still, Brick Books, 119 pages, $19.00 Girlwood, Jennifer Still\u2019s second collection of poetry, focuses, as the title suggests, on the lives of girls. And the lives of girls are crazy, confusing, and convoluted. Still matches the subject with the forms of her poetry, which range […]<\/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-824","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/824","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=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/824\/revisions\/829"}],"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=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}