{"id":106,"date":"2011-03-29T17:16:17","date_gmt":"2011-03-29T17:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/test\/?page_id=106"},"modified":"2012-05-17T00:41:51","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T00:41:51","slug":"george-elliot-clarke","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/writings\/reviews\/george-elliot-clarke","title":{"rendered":"George Elliot Clarke"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poetry, Film, History & Biography Reviews<\/strong><\/h4>\n
George Elliott Clarke<\/h6>\n

England is Mine<\/h1>\n

by Todd Swift
\nMontreal, QC: DC Books, 2011
\n106 pp. $17<\/h6>\n

Kerosene<\/h1>\n

by Jamella Hagen
\nGibsons, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2011
\n80 pp. $19<\/h6>\n

The standard, English-Canadian poem is competent and earnest (a most polite form of unrest), and one-part nature and one-part nostalgia. Flora and fauna are observed, and memories are preserved. No harm done. Luckily, there are Canuck poets who escape this limiting structure, and Todd Swift is one. Born in Montreal in 1966, he now makes his home and living (teaching) in London, England, and so is as steeped in contemporary British poetry as he is in that of our native land. This expansive knowledge makes a difference.<\/p>\n

Swift\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s seventh collection of poetry, England Is Mine<\/em>, is a great achievement. It combines intellect and wit, pop culture and canonical riffs. It refuses to be average, and yet is accessible. Swift\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s debts to Brits \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Yeats, Auden, Larkin, and Eliot \u00e2\u20ac\u201c are clear. Less obvious, perhaps, are his debts to the Brit Thom Gunn and, domestically, to Leonard Cohen, John Glassco, and Earle Birney. What he gathers from all these poets is a deft ability to be ironic and learned, but also down-to-earth and plain. England Is Mine<\/em> is a trove of technique and accomplishment. One set of quatrains considers how repressed lust reminds one, in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Each enticing met face \/ \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 not of pleasure, \/ But of pleasure\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s final consequence \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \/ An exhaustion, fine and judicious \/\/ As strong boys wrestling\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Villon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Letter,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d using loosened tercets, is erotic and erudite: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How else may a Frenchman praise \/ an angel who masquerades as Venus?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Can Swift do free verse? Yep: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Out of nothing \/ is August, then \/ unpublishing trees \/ (the fall\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poems) \/ forgotten underfoot.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The lyrics are well-executed, but also fun \u00e2\u20ac\u201c plus, plus, plus: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I feel \/ I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d save her now, too, as \/\/ She is always on my tongue; \/ The beautiful Queen, \/ So good, so young.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Swift doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t only ransack bookstores. He views films and buys records. He can talk about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153going gaga for Madonna, or seeing a Beatle in the pile.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a poem dedicated to Goldfinger (the film); and an elegy for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Q\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Quartermaster \u00e2\u20ac\u201c played by Desmond Llewelyn in 17 Bond flicks. An elegy for the library (an institution predicted to disappear) shows Swift\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Walcottian skill at extended metaphor: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Still, it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t so bad in this page-littered \/ Mausoleum, a permanent autumn of loose \/ Leaves and broken spines; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a ward \/ Where all the injured veterans of old \/ Romantic war lie, under their sheets, to fold \/ Into the future like a memory of wind-turning \/\/ Narration: a novel ride, reading, at the sea\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

These are smart, sassy poems \u00e2\u20ac\u201c sure-footed in metre and incisive in song. See \u00e2\u20ac\u0153122 Lines for Sara\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Place my feelings for Sara, now, here \/\/ in this room \u00e2\u20ac\u201c on the edge of where \/ you are, seeing yourself, words \/ diminishing, and the colours \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \/ the small plenty \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the smell, touch \/\/ of a world \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who you are \u00e2\u20ac\u201c permeates. \/ Place Sara here. Safely. Please know \/ her as I do. Love her as you love \/ whatever or whomever you love\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Indeed: There is naught not to love in Swift.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jamella Hagen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Kerosene<\/em> is a fine debut. Yet, it suffers in comparison with Swift\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work. True: He is more skilful \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and playful. But Hagen seems less accomplished because she is accomplishing less: that is to say, this volume satisfies the Anglo-Canadian average. These lyrics attain the same-old, age-old, old-hat renditions of memories \u00e2\u20ac\u201c pages cut from a diary \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or woodcuts of nature, views lifted from experience, yes, but still no fresher than the verse of Peggy Atwood, Pat Lowther, or even E. Pauline Johnson.<\/p>\n

Hagen crafts good, solid, Creative Writing Workshop verse: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That first winter \/ your mother and I had goats \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \/ we lived upstairs in the bedroom \/ the goats lived downstairs, \/ that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why there are tooth marks \/ all over the living room walls.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an Ondaatje-precision to the unusual images, and in the economy of words: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We butchered for a year.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Still, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no struggle in this language. One never wants to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ah!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The travel lyrics also fail to be more than pleasant postcards: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Higher up in the hills when the windows \/ fog over, I use my hand to clear \/ a little view into the rain. Goats \/ tethered outside small wet houses \/ remind me of home.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I rewrite Sade: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Make more effort, Anglos, if you would be poets.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Lantana Strangling Ixora<\/h1>\n
by Sasenarine Persaud<\/h6>\n

Toronto, ON: TSAR, 2011<\/p>\n

78 pp. $18<\/p>\n

Redemption Rain<\/h1>\n

by Jennifer Rahim<\/h6>\n

Toronto, ON: TSAR, 2011<\/p>\n

112 pp. $18<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The challenge for the intellectual poet is to be accessible without becoming mystical or sentimental. A Guyanese-Canadian resident in Florida, Sasenarine Persaud is dauntlessly brainy, a fact that makes his eighth poetry collection, Lantana Strangling Ixora<\/em>, a bit like reading T.S. Eliot mixed up with Rabindranath Tagore \u00e2\u20ac\u201c two Nobel Laureates, yes (which is an endorsement of Persaud), but they are also notoriously difficult and abstract.<\/p>\n

Jennifer Rahim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fourth collection, Redemption Rain<\/em>, is more immediately clear than is some of Persaud\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work, but also moves between and among worlds so fluidly that one can be mystified about just where the Trinidadian-Canadian is locating herself\u00e2\u20ac\u201din Toronto, or Trinidad, or Haiti or elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Persaud\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lyrics are said to be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153as much about love and people in and out of relationships as it is about origins and the process of estrangement.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d These notes are helpful: Persaud is disturbed by neo-colonial encroachment that resembles that of the lantana \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a South American creeper \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that can engulf other plants, such as the transplanted, Indian ixora. But his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153love\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is airy-fairy.<\/p>\n

Persaud attempts to bear witness to the erasure of Indian culture and thought and heritage in the Americas \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and in the West in general. To this end, he sees \u00e2\u20ac\u0153place as muse\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and engages in witty and scornful excoriation of Indians and Westerners who forget or deny India\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cultural contributions to humanity, who prefer to acknowledge \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u02dcPapa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 [Hemingway] \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 travelling in the hills of Africa \/ or [Pearl] Buck \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 observing the Chinese.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Finding \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A yoga studio\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in Plymouth, Massachusetts, the speaker and his interlocutor recall the imperialism of Christopher Columbus and the roots of Thanksgiving as a de facto<\/em> peace pact between Puritan settlers and the Natives who helped them survive. The dislocation of an Indian cultural practice to a place where First Nations were confused with India(ns) is central to the irony of the poem, but one needs a background in history to see it.<\/p>\n

If you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get Persaud\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s subtlety, or his deep understanding of the subterranean connections among politics, history, and culture(s), you may feel lost, no matter how lofty the verbal transport. One literary debate that Persaud returns to frequently is the argument between two Caribbean-born Nobel Laureates in literature, namely Derek Walcott and V.S. Naipaul, over the proper attitude toward British colonization. In one poem, Persaud seems to say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a plague on both your houses,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but in another he seems to prefer Naipaul\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s British Indianness to Walcott\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Greco-Roman Africanness. Persaud\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poems are unapologetically learned. If you want to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153get\u00e2\u20ac\u009d his erudition, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d best \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bring it\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c i.e. an education.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jennifer Rahim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Redemption Rain<\/em> is, in contrast, invitingly and overtly lyrical. One proof of her reader-friendly simplicity is that her previous collection, Approaching Sabbaths<\/em> (2009), received Cuba\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 2010 Casa de las Americas Prize for best book in the category of Caribbean literature in English or Creole. Even so, Rahim also challenges a reader to keep up with the deft movements of her almost whimsical poems.<\/p>\n

See \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Earthquake 2010,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a meditation on the Haitian disaster, but also on personal ramifications and aftershocks that the poet experiences as a Trinidadian-Canadian. So, when tremors strike Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, the speaker is being questioned by a Canadian border agent in Toronto: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When tectonic plates, \/ began secretly negotiating \/ their catastrophic shift, \/ the officer was asking, \/ \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHow much did you pay \/ for your candy, miss?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The point is made that the questioning, perhaps reflecting a subtle racial harassment, is a minor, small-mind-perpetrated shock in comparison with the actual earthquake unfolding with deadly force in the Caribbean. Arriving at Kipling<\/em> subway station in Toronto, Rahim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s persona recalls \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the injurious [British] poet \/ whose verses pined for \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcHome,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and reflects, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Heaven \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 is a location.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The shuttling back and forth between Haiti\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tragedy and the poet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s T.O. homecoming is an odyssey of sorts. Yet, the fine reflection of most of the poem is not served by the rhetorical conclusion: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If poetry means anything, \/ let this be a mouth charged \/ like Jeremiah\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s call to build \/ with much more resolve \/ the temple we too dimly \/ dream ourselves.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Poetry After 9\/11: An Anthology of New York Poets<\/h1>\n
Eds. Dennis Loy Johnson, Valerie Merians<\/h6>\n

Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2011<\/p>\n

128 pp. $17<\/p>\n

The April 15, 1912, sinking of the Titanic is memorialized in the name of the ship; no one goes around saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u01534\/15,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as shorthand for that disaster. Yet, the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the U.S., have been memorialized as a date, \u00e2\u20ac\u01539\/11,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d an utterance so abstract as to be vacuous. Back then, we were told, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The world changed today.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 11 years later, we see that idea was exaggerated: official war and unofficial terror plague us still, and governments still spy on us\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand lie to us, Wikileaks notwithstanding. Yet, in the wake of the attacks, people reached for poetry to better fathom \u00e2\u20ac\u201c viscerally \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the gravity of events as well as to find solace. In poetry, there is truth that cuts through propaganda, even that dished up as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153news.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Thus, soon after the World Trade Centre\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tallest towers were smashed into, set aflame, and collapsed, there appeared Poetry After 9\/11: An Anthology of New York Poets.<\/em><\/p>\n

Edited by Dennis Loy Johnson and Valerie Merians, the 10th anniversary edition is now available. Herein poets try to identify the heartfelt repercussions and resonances of deliberate brutality. The editors note, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The ashes have blown away; the poems have not.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Verse remains pertinent because \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u009dThere (is) something more to be said that only poetry (can) say.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The volume opens with a 1996 poem by David Lehman, in which his speaker explains how he detested the Twin Towers until they sustained a truck-bomb attack, in 1993. Afterward, for him, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the buildings became \/ A great symbol of America, like the Statue \/ of Liberty at the end of Hitchcock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Saboteur<\/em>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The poem is prophetic about the blind, violent patriotism that the later suicide attacks unleashed.<\/p>\n

Norman Stock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 2001 poem, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What I Said,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d strips away all the judicious, causa bella<\/em> rhetoric to reveal the human lust for revenge: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I said and I said this is too much to take no one can take a thing like this \/ after the terror yes and then I said let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kill them.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Eliot Katz\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When the Skyline Crumbles,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d captures the horror of the Ground Zero murders, suicides, blasts, sirens, massive smoke clouds, jetting flames, debris fields, and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153smoke that torched bodies now tangibly coating tongue & nostrils, dust burning all 3 eyes\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and of how \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the one-eyed giant Terror \/ \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 eats its innocent victims screaming alive, feet flailing\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 \/ how it burns a skyline of fresh bones to fragile white ash\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Nikki Moustaki also recalls vividly the violence: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say the air smelled like smouldering desks and drywall, \/ Ground gypsum, and something terribly organic\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. \/ Remember, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re writing with ashes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Patricia Spears Jones wonders, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In what cinema are the dreams of mass destruction \/ so dear as ours?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

These poems often invoke New Yorker Walt Whitman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s humanism, but also brother \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Appler\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Allen Ginsberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s apocalyptic sensibility in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Howl\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (1956). Thus, Frank Lima\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Good Morning America\u00e2\u20ac\u009d preaches, a la Ginsberg, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the blood of the dead \/ Hangs in space\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6. \/ Freedom is the dramatic dislocation of evil.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bill Kushner\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poem, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In the Hairy Arms of Whitman,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d announces, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I am angry poet Whitman flying at the fragments flying papers ash flesh\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 \/ I am gorgeous Whitman in drag I am Whitman the solemn President \/ In the White House calling all the armies Come back\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u01539\/11\u00e2\u20ac\u009d leads to, then, the War on Terror and the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Shock and Awe\u00e2\u20ac\u009d awfulness of 3\/23\/03, when President G.W. Bush launched his multiply-thousands-slain invasion of Iraq.<\/p>\n

Paul Violi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lyric makes this equation \u00e2\u20ac\u201c prophesizes it, suggesting that the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153House of Xerxes\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is an haute couture<\/em> business, that history is a fashion show of slaughterers: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Sacae! \/ Scythians with a scowl. \/ Plenty of flounce and pout but somehow \/ It all spells powerhouse.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Check out the Thracians: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Javelins, bucklets, small daggers. \/ Fox-skin caps, colourful tunics, \/ Fawn-skin boots, wooden helmets, \/ You just know how great \/ Their gorgeous garb makes them feel.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d David Trinidad links \u00e2\u20ac\u01539\/11\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u01534\/15\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Think Titanic: British luxury passenger liner \/\/ that sank on the night of Apr. 14-15, 1912 \/ after crashing into an iceberg\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The connection is in how pop culture trivializes disaster. Good poetry forces us to account for the tragic consequences of Tragedy.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Alfred Hitchcock: The Complete Films<\/h1>\n
By Paul Duncan<\/h6>\n

New York, New York: Taschen, 2011<\/p>\n

192 pp. $16.99<\/p>\n

Rightly, Benedikt Taschen celebrates his first quarter-century of publishing books on art, comics, photography, and cinema by releasing Paul Duncan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Alfred Hitchcock: The Complete Films<\/em>. In the packaging of this book, Taschen, the great marketer of visual arts pays homage to Hitchcock, the great marketer of himself (the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most famous profile\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), his films, and cinema itself as an art form of psychological complexity as well as visceral entertainment.<\/p>\n

Duncan surveys Hitchcock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s films, providing a synopsis of, commentary on, and biographical insights into each. He also notes recurrent themes and styles. However, this book is a photo compilation, featuring stills from the dozens of productions, publicity pix, and also personal shots of Hitchcock alongside his actors, his production team, or his wife and collaborator Alma Reville. The snaps both elucidate Duncan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s accessible \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or pedestrian \u00e2\u20ac\u201c commentary, while also limiting his profound or impressive analyses to a statement or two. Because the photos dominate, the author is pushed toward aphorism.<\/p>\n

Still, The Complete Films<\/em> accomplishes what the subtitle indicates \u00e2\u20ac\u201c to give us overviews and inside-takes on the successes or drawbacks of each title, while also judiciously employing quotations from Hitchcock and his associates, or from savvy critics. Discussing Vertigo<\/em> (1958), Duncan sees that the film is a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gothic romance\u00e2\u20ac\u009d between Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) and Madeleine Elster\/Judy Barton (Kim Novak), in which a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cycle of love and death intertwined\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is repeated.<\/p>\n

That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an ordinary reading, but Duncan goes on to notice, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The key to this extraordinary film is when Scottie and Madeleine visit the sequoias\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we learn that sequoia translates as \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcalways green, everlasting.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d So, both Madeleine and Judy (the same woman, anyway) appear \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wearing green and in profile.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Madeleine \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drives a green car and green from a neon light bathes Judy when she is transformed back into Madeleine.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Hitchcock uses the sequoia\/green connection to make the point that Scottie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s desired women \u00e2\u20ac\u0153are objects of love, remade, over and over.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Eyeing The Birds<\/em> (1963), Duncan insists the film suggests, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The characters are attacked by birds for no apparent reason and it irrevocably changes them.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This simplistic thought accords with Hitchcock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own (mis)direction that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The ambiguity of the film\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s meaning is a prime virtue.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Yes, but… In my opinion, those Birds<\/em> characters guilty of either sexual indiscretion or repression \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the typical moral problems in horror films \u00e2\u20ac\u201c are those most fearful of these avian angels of retribution. Tellingly, the scene in which Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) \u00e2\u20ac\u0153undergoes an ordeal trapped in a room of attacking birds,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d looks, to my eyes, a lot like St. Sebastian being pierced \u00e2\u20ac\u201c erotically, even ecstatically \u00e2\u20ac\u201c by phallic arrows.<\/p>\n

Maybe Duncan doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do enough with the church-going Hitchcock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Catholicism, a faith that would have taught him about the lives and deaths of saints, the psychological consequences of sin, and even, as in the Book of Job, the jests and whims of divinity. At least Duncan remembers Hitchcock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s I Confess<\/em> (1953), the auteur<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only film made in Canada in Ville de Qu\u00c3\u00a9bec, including a scene shot \u00e2\u20ac\u201c miraculously \u00e2\u20ac\u201c inside the Assembl\u00c3\u00a9e nationale. (There is a fake Halifax, N.S., scene in Hitchcock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The 39 Steps<\/em> [1935]; it also includes fake Mounties.) I Confess<\/em> centres on the obligations of priests. The atmospheric opening shots of the looming, brooding Ch\u00c3\u00a2teau Frontenac establish that, even in the mid-20th-century, humans are feudal beings, driven by lust, love, and greed, and capable of treachery and murder \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as well as transcendent acts of trust and forgiveness. It is, I think, a deeply Catholic film, and that is why Hitchcock shot it in North America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most medieval-looking city and lit it as if one is always inside a cathedral.<\/p>\n

Although it is possible to question Duncan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interpretations, or even to quibble \u00e2\u20ac\u201cthough less often \u00e2\u20ac\u201c with Hitchcock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own provisos regarding his films and filmmaking, this book reminds us that, to a large extent, Hitchcock invented the way we see and understand cinema. For instance, as Sinclair McKay suggested in 2010, every Bond film takes its style from Hitchcock\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s North by Northwest<\/em> (1959).<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Cinema Italiano: The Complete Guide from Classics to Cult<\/h1>\n

By Howard Hughes<\/h6>\n

London, UK: I.B. Tauris, 2011<\/p>\n

320 pp. $20 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Hollywood\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s global domination of cinema has served to reduce film production elsewhere, except India (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bollywood\u00e2\u20ac\u009d) and Nigeria (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nollywood\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). It is a sad fate, for non-American film offers diverse opinions and perspectives that may not suit Western or North American tastes, but do prove that human experience is a panorama, not one monotonous vision.<\/p>\n

The cinema of Italy, though \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Western,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d exemplifies a once-robust theatre that, in its heyday in the 1950s, enjoyed \u00e2\u20ac\u0153820 million patrons,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but now, is merely a shadow of its former self. Howard Hughes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cinema Italiano: The Complete Guide from Classics to Cult<\/em> laments the disappearance of mass-export Italian cinema as a loss for all cinema enthusiasts. Indeed, the Italian productions, from the late 1940s to the 1980s, constituted a gorgeous \u00e2\u20ac\u0153banquet,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153amazing feast.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d If there were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153turkeys,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d there was also Fellini\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s La Dolce Vita<\/em> (1960).<\/p>\n

Hughes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s catalogue of the most notable films, genre by genre, is a fan letter. He tracks down every conceivable tidbit of info about every film that merits consideration, noticing even the composers and styles of soundtracks, not to mention the looks of costumes and sets and locations, plus which film versions have been cut or censored, and which ones are must-sees. His work reads as if he has watched closely the acknowledged classics as well as the sublime \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or the ridiculous \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cult\u00e2\u20ac\u009d films. His study insists that Italian film had something for every taste \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and was often inventive and influential, even in imported genres such as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153horse operas\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Westerns) and spy capers. Although some Hollywood directors, like Steven Spielberg, move easily between \u00e2\u20ac\u0153popular\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153art-house\u00e2\u20ac\u009d cinema, Italian directors have tended to blend these audiences and blur such distinctions.<\/p>\n

Hughes asserts, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the work of world cinema heavyweights \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Fellini et al<\/em>. \u00e2\u20ac\u201c has much in common with popularist filmmakers such as Sergio Leone (Westerns) and Dario Argento (horror\/thriller).\u00e2\u20ac\u009d One reason for this collage approach is that directors, composers, and actors found employment in satisfying \u00e2\u20ac\u0153frantic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d film craze after craze, which seems to be the history of Italian cinema. After the neo-realism movement of the late 1940s (exemplified by Di Sica\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Bicycle Thief<\/em> [1947]), there were sword-and-sandal spectaculars (1958-64), \u00e2\u20ac\u0153spaghetti Westerns\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (1965-1970), English \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Hammer-studio-inspired \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Gothic horror (1960-65), James Bond-styled spy flicks (1963-67), and then, 1970-onwards, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153comedy, horror-thrillers (gialli<\/em>) and crime films (poliziotteschi<\/em>)\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Intermingled and overlapping with the above were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mythological epics,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153costume adventures,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sci fi sagas, political narratives, World War II flicks, and the great films of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153love and death\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Fellini, Pasolini, Wertmuller, etc.). The zombie & cannibal-flick mania serves, for Hughes, as a suitably gory end to Italian cinema\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s glory days. But the glories were (or are) substantial. Hughes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Top 20\u00e2\u20ac\u009d list of Italian films is eclectic, encompassing all the above genres. Yes, La Dolce Vita<\/em> is here, but so is Pasolini\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Gospel According to St Matthew<\/em> (1964), which Hughes acclaims as the greatest Italian film. One must also see, he says, the pseudo-documentary, Battle of Algiers<\/em> (Pontecorvo, 1966), and the arty drama, Blowup<\/em> (Antonioni, 1966). The archetypal master-criminal (Bond-type) film is Diabolik<\/em> (Bava, 1968), and Illustrious Corpses<\/em> (Rosi, 1975) reveals the blood-sport seriousness of politics. Sergio Leone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly<\/em> (1966), starring Clint Eastwood as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Man With No Name,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is revered, as is Argento\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s giallo<\/em>, Suspiria<\/em> (1977).<\/p>\n

Along with listing incomparable movies, Hughes also nods at flicks of notable fun or thoughtfulness or both, naming The Trojan War<\/em> (Ferroni, 1961), Blood and Black Lace<\/em> (Bava, 1964), Special Mission Lady Chaplin<\/em> (De Martino, 1966), Fellini\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Satyricon<\/em> (Fellini, 1969), The Inglorious Bastards<\/em> (Castellari, 1977), and even Zombie Flesh Eaters<\/em> (Fulci, 1979), among others. Numbering 300 pages, Cinema Italiano<\/em> seems to canvass every picture that anyone could ever care to see. Hughes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inventory is exhaustive, but the blow-by-blow plot summaries are excessive, rendering the work tedious as a cover-to-cover read, if indispensable as a one-by-one guide.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Done With Slavery: The Black Fact in Montreal, 1760-1840<\/h1>\n

By Frank Mackey<\/h6>\n

McGill-Queen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s UP, 2001<\/p>\n

568 pp. $49.95<\/p>\n

A few years ago, a prominent, Canadian statistician and I debated whether there were slaves in colonial Canada and whether their lot was hard \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or as hard as it was for African-American slaves. Our disagreement was so vehement that our parley became a shouting match. One reason for the aroused passion and raised pitch was that we were speaking in the U.S. I suspect that my interlocutor wanted to preserve a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lily-white\u00e2\u20ac\u009d image of Canada, while I wanted to show a more \u00e2\u20ac\u0153truthful\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one.<\/p>\n

I recall this incident because Frank Mackey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 600-page, too-small-print opus, Done With Slavery: The Black Fact in Montreal, 1760-1840<\/em>, could also provoke a scholarly row or two, despite his exhaustive\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand exhausting\u00e2\u20ac\u201dscrutiny of slaveholding and free-black Montr\u00c3\u00a9al over the 80-year-span of his study. Mackey acknowledges that a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Eurocentric\u00e2\u20ac\u009d bias in Canadian culture has dominated historiography, so blacks are left out of accounts of just about everything. His response to this absence, at least in terms of post-British Conquest Montr\u00c3\u00a9al, is to follow the lead of historian Jim Hornby, who, in Black Islanders<\/em> (1991), by scouring trial records, was able to establish a history of the Prince Edward Island Africadian community.<\/p>\n

Mackey sifts through court cases, but also newspapers, diaries, legislative records, and the like (including reading between the lines of a novel or two), to discover the significant personages, slaves and ex-slaves, free(d) men and women, rogues and rascals, entrepreneurs and heroes, to ascertain what their lived experiences can tell us now about what life was like for blacks \u00e2\u20ac\u201c slave and free \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in colonial Montr\u00c3\u00a9al. This study of the records pays off; we get to know roughly a couple dozen Black Montrealers and their families and friends in microscopic and cinematic detail.<\/p>\n

But is it possible to talk about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Canadian\u00e2\u20ac\u009d slavery when there were black slaves in only a few colonies, none of which could have anticipated the creation of Canada in 1867? For Mackey, these difficulties suggest that one cannot discuss a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Canadian\u00e2\u20ac\u009d slavery or racist past because the nation as yet did not exist. However, he himself hits on a solution to this conundrum, and that is to focus on one \u00e2\u20ac\u0153colony\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c New France or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Canada\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or Lower Canada or Qu\u00c3\u00a9bec, and on one city, Montr\u00c3\u00a9al. Yet, I would say that one can talk about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153colonial\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Canada, and, in a sense, Mackey does, going so far as to say, for instance, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To argue that blacks were confined to the lowest levels of the labour pool is to oversimplify\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: His statement is not limited to the blacks of colonial Qu\u00c3\u00a9bec, but is meant to apply broadly. Mackey is most annoyed by the statement that slavery did not end in colonial Qu\u00c3\u00a9bec until the British Parliament voted its abolition in 1834. He argues that the practice \u00e2\u20ac\u0153waned\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in Qu\u00c3\u00a9bec by 1800. He really should have consulted The History of Nova Scotia<\/em> (1829), wherein Judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton points out that slavery was legal, but not practical or advisable.<\/p>\n

True: New France was not Nova Scotia \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or New Brunswick, but it seems from Mackey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own evidence that the virtual end of slavery in colonial Qu\u00c3\u00a9bec followed the pattern that unfolded in the Maritimes: a quiet, judicial nullification that did not go unnoticed by either slaves or their masters. However, this does not mean, as Mackey insists, that slavery was no longer \u00e2\u20ac\u0153legal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It remained \u00e2\u20ac\u0153legal,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d just not enforced. It was not dead, but a dead letter \u00e2\u20ac\u201c until the British Act of Abolition finally \u00e2\u20ac\u0153killed it dead\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (to quote an old Raid<\/em>, insecticide commercial). Mackey casts doubt on previous counts that number black slaves in New France in the low thousands. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s likely lower, once one notes that neither \u00e2\u20ac\u0153black\u00e2\u20ac\u009d nor \u00e2\u20ac\u0153slave\u00e2\u20ac\u009d were definitive categories, and also how easily names were misspelled or falsely assigned. Still, his own count of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153at most about 400 black slaves\u00e2\u20ac\u009d over forty years, in Montr\u00c3\u00a9al alone, is only an educated guess.<\/p>\n

Although Mackey deserves kudos for his large tome, for unearthing facts and figures \u00e2\u20ac\u201c persons \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who deserve our fresh and concentrated attention, his ambition to overthrow previous assessments finds him overreaching. Even so, more scholars must show such reach, even if some matters must escape our grasp.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815-1860<\/h1>\n

By Amani Whitfield<\/h6>\n

Burlington, VT: University of Vermont Press, 2006<\/p>\n

200 pp. $24.95<\/p>\n

Harvey Amani Whitfield’s history, Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815-1860<\/em>, is one of those books that one promises oneself to read \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153as soon as possible\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but, then, one never seems to find\u00c2\u00a0 enough time…. Until, at least for me, the War of 1812 bicentennial rolls around, and one is asked to give fresh attention to the Black Refugees.\u00c2\u00a0 So, though I’ve held this book proudly in my possession since 2006, it is only now that I am able to provide this assessment: It is a fine study, especially because it is written for the plain reader and is not festooned with charts specifying numbers, dates, and percentages.<\/p>\n

No, Whitfield writes history as an informed storyteller, not as a remote scientist, and so he brings to life, dexterously, the context and the complexity of the 2,000 or so African Americans\u00c2\u00a0 who, as a result of a war policy, found themselves “liberated” by British forces and dispatched to Nova Scotia between 1812-1815. His work serves an ongoing effort to overturn the propaganda that has besmirched the reputations of the Black Refugees \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and, by extension, all African-Nova Scotians (or Africadians) right down to the present. That mythology holds that the Black Refugees had few skills, would not farm or work, and were utterly illiterate, and so “worthless,” in effect, that they were only good for slavery, and should have been shipped to the U.S. South, or to Trinidad, or to Sierra Leone, as soon as funds could have been raised for their transport.<\/p>\n

No less a personage than Thomas Chandler Haliburton, colonial Nova Scotia’s great author, made like arguments in Sam Slick sketches, in political statement, and in his History of Nova Scotia<\/em> (1829), where he holds that the ex-slaves \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sighed for the roof of their master, and the pastimes and amusements they left behind.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In the 1970s, one scholar held that the Black Refugees were so destitute that they didn’t even possess a heritage of song and music. Other scholars felt that, once the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cream\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of the Black Loyalists shipped to Sierra Leone in 1792, the Africadian communities, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153old\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153new,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d were left leaderless and felt listless, and that the refugee blacks, arriving poor and hungry and cold, only added to the common woe.<\/p>\n

Through searching newspaper articles and other contemporary records, Whitfield reminds us of some facts: The Black Refugees were given, in essence, squatting privileges on tiny, unsustainable plots of poor soil that nobody could farm; even when they could try their hands at agriculture, they needed new skills to go with the new crops that they found in Nova Scotia; they arrived in Nova Scotia to a poor economy, an I’ll-prepared government, and a hostile public. That they starved, froze, and went begging was the consequence of the miserable land that had been deliberately <\/em>allotted to their subsistent<\/em> sustenance.<\/p>\n

Yet, Whitfield shows, they evolved coping strategies. First, they protested and petitioned, over 40 years, for actual ownership of more \u00e2\u20ac\u201c if not arable \u00e2\u20ac\u201c plots of land. This maneouvre served to develop a land-base that, if not good enough for economic independence, was good enough to sustain a sense of community and separate culture. \u00c2\u00a0In practice, the colonial Africadians identified liberty with land ownership; owning land \u00e2\u20ac\u201c even a patch of scrub \u00e2\u20ac\u201c allowed one the pleasure of feeling rooted in a community, while one also worked, perhaps, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153in town\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or in the non-Nova Scotian world.\u00c2\u00a0 But they also created institutions \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the African Baptist Church, the African Methodist Church, the African Abolition Society, etc. \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that fostered a modicum of political, religious, and communal activism. And they brought forth leaders \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Rev. Richard Preston, the great orator (a worthy match to Joe Howe, some said)\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand the military hero, William Hall, V.C. I have said elsewhere that the first Africadians sought \u00e2\u20ac\u0153liberty, land, ‘ligion, and literacy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Whitfield’s study cements me in that view.\u00c2\u00a0 I also agree with Whitfield \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and Prof. James Walker \u00e2\u20ac\u201c that the Black Refugees developed a distinct identity, simultaneously African American and British, and that dual connection continues, even if \u00e2\u20ac\u0153British\u00e2\u20ac\u009d has been replaced by \u00e2\u20ac\u0153 Canadian.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

I’m less convinced by Whitfield’s musings on African-Canadian identity. Here the complexity of Canadian regionalism perplexes the African-American professor of history at the University of Vermont.\u00c2\u00a0 But one possible answer is, there isn’t only one African-Canadian identity, but a polyphony of heritages. Still, whatever Africadia is, it is indebted to the struggles and successes of the Black Refugees.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention<\/h1>\n

By Manning Marable<\/h6>\n

Penguin, 2011<\/p>\n

608 pp. $18<\/p>\n

It was a sunny day, Monday, February 22, 1965, and I was in Kindergarten, in Halifax, NS, when other \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Negro\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Coloured\u00e2\u20ac\u009d kids (as we were called back then), announced, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Malcolm X got shot.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d True: The Pan-Africanist and Muslim orator had been assassinated in New York just the day before, but the strange surname is what caught my childish attention.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t until high school that I began to understand the importance of the African-American agitator and Islamic evangelist, and also finally read The Autobiography of Malcolm X<\/em> (1965), as told to Alex Haley. X\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s evolution from disappointed student to Malcolm Little, to Detroit-Boston-New York gangster \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Detroit Red,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to Nation of Islam firebrand, to, finally, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, is more than a tale of self-invention and transformation. It is also a how-to-guide for speaking political truth, articulating black identity, and fashioning new styles of black masculinity: The first major black hero to wear glasses, X made intellectualism \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cool,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d not wimpy.<\/p>\n

In Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention<\/em>, Columbia University history professor Manning Marable sets out to clear the myths and misconceptions about X, and render his life and importance as plainly as scrupulous scholarship allows. Marable declares that he wanted to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153deconstruct\u00e2\u20ac\u009d X\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Autobiography<\/em>, to separate facts from convenient fiction. Combing through X\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Diary, police surveillance files, Nation of Islam papers, and little-referenced newspapers from Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, plus utilizing interviews with survivors and contemporaries, Marable succeeds in recreating X\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life with its captivating contradictions, stressful challenges, and successes\u00e2\u20ac\u201dpersonal and socio-political.<\/p>\n

Though X became, in death, a symbol of radical black nationalism and black power (and Marable credits X correctly with influencing the development of the Black Panther Party and of black cultural and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153consciousness\u00e2\u20ac\u009d movements in mid-1960s and later), Marable positions him as having been, more meaningfully, an exponent of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153modern \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Pan-Africanism, based on a global antiracism,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as well as a bridgehead (or beachhead) between Americans and Muslims. Marable also admires X for advocating the importance of the black bloc vote, while also deploring his frequent suggestions that there were no parties worth voting for.<\/p>\n

Marable distinguishes nicely the different contributions of X and Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King to the drive toward full citizenship rights for African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s. But he never states explicitly the major distinction: King\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s movement secured the right-to-vote, and that strategic success allowed for general black empowerment. But X\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cultural preaching, so to speak, transformed \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Negroes,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Coloureds,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Blacks\u00e2\u20ac\u009d into African Americans (and African Canadians); that crucial shift wedded self-affirmation to self-determination. While Marable explores the meaning of X\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life, he also does correct major omissions and fabrications in the Autobiography<\/em>. Carefully sifting the evidence, he argues, credibly and convincingly, that Detroit Red was no glamorous hood, but a penny-ante crook, who stole his own sister\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fur coat and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153snitched\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on his friends.<\/p>\n

Moreover, though he later seemed ascetic and condemned \u00e2\u20ac\u0153vice,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hood\u00e2\u20ac\u009d days, X likely was bisexual, and derived some income from a white male lover. In the Autobiography<\/em>, X\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sister, Ella, seems a solid citizen. In Marable\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bio, she is a store detective turned shoplifter. Too, X\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s marriage was no courtly black romance.\u00c2\u00a0 It was so full of sexual tensions that, if gossip and innuendo are believed, by the last year of his life, both X and his wife, Betty, found pleasure with others. Importantly, Marable reconstructs X\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s African and Middle Eastern travels to reveal that these journeys inspired the humanist and socialist tendencies in his mature thought.<\/p>\n

Marable terms X a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153misogynist,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and his rhetoric was also, at times, simply racist and anti-Semitic. Given to making extreme statements, X helped to trigger his own murder by provocatively denouncing the Nation of Islam. Yet, his faults do not cancel his accomplishment, which was to reconnect African North Americans with Africa\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0153by any means necessary.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Certainly, if U.S. President Barack Obama seems currently only a slightly more successful version of one-term, U.S. President James Earl Carter III (1977-1981), he came into office with an analytical world-view that owed more than a little to X.\u00c2\u00a0 He might yet fashion a great presidency if he remembers one lesson of that analyst: Foes \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Wall Street, the Republican Party, etc. \u00e2\u20ac\u201c merit defeat, not debate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poetry, Film, History & Biography Reviews George Elliott Clarke England is Mine by Todd Swift Montreal, QC: DC Books, 2011 106 pp. $17 Kerosene by Jamella Hagen Gibsons, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2011 80 pp. $19 The standard, English-Canadian poem is competent and earnest (a most polite form of unrest), and one-part nature and one-part nostalgia. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"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-106","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1188,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106\/revisions\/1188"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}