{"id":824,"date":"2011-09-27T09:39:32","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T09:39:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue10\/?page_id=824"},"modified":"2012-05-17T00:29:44","modified_gmt":"2012-05-17T00:29:44","slug":"candace-fertile","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/writings\/reviews\/candace-fertile","title":{"rendered":"Candace Fertile"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poetry & Essay Reviews<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Candace Fertile<\/h6>\n

Omens in the Year of the Ox<\/h1>\n

by Steven Price,
\nLondon, Ontario: Brick Books, 2012
\n103 pages, $19.00 pp.<\/h6>\n

Steven Price\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first book of poetry, Anatomy of Keys<\/em>, won the Gerald Lampert Award, and with his second collection, Omens in the Year of the Ox<\/em>, Price continues his tough language contortions and densely rich view of the world.<\/p>\n

This volume begins with a five-page poem called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Crossing,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a powerful consideration of moving through time. In it, Price mentions Gerard Manley Hopkins, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s evident that Hopkins has been a huge influence on Price. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not Hopkins\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 sprung rhythm but his concept of inscape and his molding of words that Price has benefited from and which he uses to great effect. Price refers to Hopkins\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 metre as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153marking long great gulps of air,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but his own metre is much more fluid, as befits a poet somewhat obsessed with water imagery. This wonderful poem begins with the speaker on a boat: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153So. At the end of the middle of your life \/ you wake, rain-shivering, to a white railing \/ in a shriven dusk.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And the poem moves through images of creativity (Hopkins, Gaud\u00c3\u00ad) and time and death.<\/p>\n

The book then has three sections, with some patterns of poems. Several poems called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Chorus\u00e2\u20ac\u009d play their titular role and recapitulate the predominate imagery: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I drove through furred fields veiled in rain \/ when road struck sea struck sky.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d A handful of poems are curses by various people: a midwife, a gardener, the blind. The only poems that strike an odd note are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Three Blues,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which use the vernacular of the Blues and which jar considerably with the diction of the rest of the collection, and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dr Johnson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Table Talk,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which seems gimmicky.<\/p>\n

Overall, Price uses firm language and frequent ugliness to question reality and what it means to be alive. In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bull Kelp,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for example, Price describes the algae in fresh ways that anyone familiar with kelp will immediately recognize as disturbing and valid: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153long, long, gleeched and ungulous \/ until it, this, stewed placenta, this puddled thing \/ poked with a stick or walked unwondering past \/ splits its slippery gutline, peels apart in rot– \/ and a knot of larvae boils in that dark and does not clot.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Whew.<\/p>\n

While the imagery has a certain consistency, the topics are wide-ranging. Price includes poems about Icarus (from his point of view), Medea, Odysseus, arbutus trees, a geode, boys, pears, a raccoon, and music. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hardly a complete list. My favourite poem is one of the most positive: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mediterranean Light,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in which the speaker and his pregnant wife travel through Spain. This poem includes passages of prose poetry and in one, the speaker says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The world hurtles through space at speeds nearly unimaginable, yet our lives can remain motionless for years. When the doctor ran the cool sonogram over your belly we heard the fast hard footsteps of a second heart. That was the sound of our own new selves running toward us.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d So beautiful. (Price is married to Esi Edugyan, and they have a baby).<\/p>\n

In Omens in the Year of the Ox,<\/em> Price manages an alluring feat: he combines many forms with various topics while having an overall consistency of purpose. This book is far-reaching in its philosophical inquiries and absolutely awe-inspiring in its imagery.<\/p>\n

<\/h1>\n

The Collected Poems of Patrick Lane,<\/h1>\n

edited by Russell Morton Brown and Donna Bennett,
\nToronto, Ontario: Harbour Publishing
\n$44.95. 544 pp.<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

Writing a review of Patrick Lane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s collected poems does not count as work. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more of a labour of love. There, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve laid out my cards: I am a fan of Lane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work. Russell Brown and Donna Morton, two of Canada\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s foremost Canadian literature scholars, have carefully edited fifty years of Lane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poetic output, and this volume contains, as they note, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153all the poems Lane wants to preserve (several revised for this publication).\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The volume opens with a poem by Lane called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Poets, Talking,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which encapsulates how poetry works for Lane: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I could wish poems happened more, but wanting them \/ only leads to the impediment of desire and desire \/ is never equal to the act. . . . \u00e2\u20ac\u009d While Lane applies himself with care to his writing, in this poem and others, he indicates that inspiration is part of the equation. But that fact is hardly an excuse to lie around waiting for one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s muse to send a poem into one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s brain. It takes a certain kind of heart and mind to be open to poetry, and the works (including fiction and memoir) that Lane has produced indicate that intensely curious, thoughtful, and sensitive are key factors to generating inspiration.<\/p>\n

The editors give a short biography, and perhaps one of the most noteworthy aspects of Lane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s development as a poet is the complete absence of formal education. Married and a father at eighteen, Lane laboured for years to support his family. The working class world informs his perspective, and while he took off and did much travel and various jobs, his devotion to poetry remained steadfast. And perhaps from his family background and his years of physical toil came his firm connection to the concrete world.<\/p>\n

Lane has been regarded as a muscular poet, the voice of the voiceless, the guy who can write about violence and poverty and other tragedies with a unique insight. But he can also be tender and loving, and the combination of the various emotions is generally amazing. And while Lane never went to university, he educated himself by reading widely and deeply. And he travelled. From the BC Interior where he grew up, Lane seems to have made the world his setting by fixing place firmly and specifically, whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s BC or Peru or China. And he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s known most of Canada\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s renowned poets and affected many newer poets, either through his books or his stints as an instructor. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Whatever else poetry is freedom,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d claimed Irving Layton. For Lane, the line would have to be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153whatever else poetry is life.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d His personal life has had its challenges. He battled the bottle and finally won. His relationships ended except for his long-term commitment to Lorna Crozier, with whom he has shared life and words for decades and to whom he dedicates this book.<\/p>\n

And everything gets turned into luminous poetry. This collection must not lie on bookshelves. It should be at hand to open and appreciate on a regular basis. Its arrangement is chronological and simple \u00e2\u20ac\u201c by decades. A few of my favourites are the following. From the Sixties is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Elephants,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in which the speaker (presumably Lane as he is the master of the lyric poem) carves an elephant for a boy who doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what an elephant is, and then the two discuss graveyards, the elephant graveyard in the jungle \u00e2\u20ac\u0153which no one has ever found\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and the graveyard of the boy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ancestors \u00e2\u20ac\u0153where no one will ever find it \/ buried under the grade of the new \/ highway.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But Lane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s emotion never slides into the sentimental. Brutality begets brutality and one must fight against that tide.<\/p>\n

In the Seventies section, Lane has several poems from his travels in South America. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Children of Bogot\u00c3\u00a1\u00e2\u20ac\u009d reveals the perspective of a man named Manuel who dismisses the children: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just because they look innocent \/ doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make them human. Any one \/ would kill you for the price of a meal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The poem forces an examination of what life must be like for these children who have no one to care for them and the resulting dehumanizing they are subjected to. Suffering is often Lane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s topic, as it is in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Carpenter,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with its allusions to Christ and martyrdom and its comparison of a carpenter to a hawk building a nest.<\/p>\n

Animals are abundant in Lane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poetry, but so are people and flora and landscape and seasons. In the Eighties, Lane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s long poem \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Weight\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is included. This poem has a slightly more unconventional layout than many of Lane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poems, and it recalls Robert Kroetsch\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Seed Catalogue,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one of the best Canadian long poems ever. Lane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poem is less well-known, but it shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be. And I must mention \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Night,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in which Lane talks about art that is significant to him: Albinoni, Alden Nowlan, netsuke<\/em>, the Caracalla Baths, Cavafy, and his own poems, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the broken ones that will never be seen.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The Nineties contains all the Winter<\/em> poems, and these should be required reading. Of course, calling something required seems to diminish it somehow, so I take that back. (But I still kind of mean it.) Also in the Nineties section is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fathers and Sons,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which I have often taught in a first year literature class, and it has brought tears to the eyes of young men who are struggling with their fathers. I am convinced that this poem has mended some broken relationships.<\/p>\n

In the Twenty-First Century, Lane includes several prose poems for other poets, and some of the most troubling are the two poems for Roy Lowther (who killed his wife Pat out of jealousy about her success in poetry) and the poem for Pat Lowther. And at the end of this volume is a short essay by Lane called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153A New Awakening\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (written in March 2011), which touches on some poetic influences in his life. And finally University of Victoria English professor Nicholas Bradley provides a brief afterword.<\/p>\n

The added material is helpful and fascinating, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the poems that really matter. And though this volume is a collection, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not the only one eagerly anticipating new work from this remarkable writer. And for the sake of honesty, I have spent some time with Patrick Lane (I interviewed him when his novel, Red Dog Red Dog<\/em>, came out, and as Victoria is a small place our paths have crossed). And any time with the man or his poems is time well spent.<\/p>\n

<\/h1>\n

Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously<\/h1>\n

by Mark Frutkin,
\nToronto, Ontario
\nQuattro Books, 110 pp.<\/h6>\n

Prolific and multi-genre writer Mark Frutkin rummages around in his extensive knowledge of language and treats readers with Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously<\/em>, a small dense collection of mini-essays or thought-pieces. Most are less than a page long, and the title (from Noam Chomsky) clues readers into the experimentation that Frutkin indulges in with lovely results.<\/p>\n

As Frutkin notes, Chomsky used the words to show how something can look like English but be meaningless. The poet in Frutkin has pounced on that view and given an alternative: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153For me, however, the phrase is a concise and poetic definition for dreaming.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d add that it could also be poetry as it explodes language and sends thoughts off in many enticing directions.<\/p>\n

Essentially, Frutkin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s collection offers numerous imaginative starting blocks.\u00c2\u00a0 These pages really do feed the mind and heart, and for those fascinated by language and poetry and story and literature in general, well, Frutkin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s pieces nudge the fascination all over the place. In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The story,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for example, Frutkin pays homage to literature while elevating its status: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I do not believe that literature can make<\/em> a difference. I believe literature is<\/em> the difference. The stories we tell not only reflect our lives but embody those lives in that they define our myths. We are living the story.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This piece has only two more sentences and is an excellent example of what Frutkin does in the book.<\/p>\n

A few more samples will illustrate the pleasure Frutkin has in words and the pleasure he passes along. In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gutenberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s winepress,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d another extremely short piece, Frutkin remarks: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was no mistake that Gutenberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first printing press was adapted from a winepress. One must squeeze the words to their utmost in order to extract the poetry from them.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And this page starts with a commentary about the minimalism and richness of haiku.<\/p>\n

In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Charming chaos,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one of the longer offerings (slightly more than a page), Frutkin muses on language as a tool, the habitual use of language, the need to recognize that a view of reality \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is based on cultural agreement,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the creation of alternate worlds, and the melding of myth and reality. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s remarkable how much punch he packs in a few words, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s crucial to take time to read this slim volume to savour the bits in the same way one should dip in <\/a>and pause when reading poetry.<\/p>\n

In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Alphabetization,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Frutkin discusses the shift from religious importance of text to alphabetization in library organization, and how systems create or destroy hierarchies. And several of the mini-essays take on a specific letter of the alphabet and explore image, sound and meaning.<\/p>\n

Whether or not readers agree with Frutkin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s observations is not the point. This man exhibits a raging curiosity that is delightfully infectious. And his skill with language is also a deep pleasure, along with the content of his pages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poetry & Essay Reviews Candace Fertile Omens in the Year of the Ox by Steven Price, London, Ontario: Brick Books, 2012 103 pages, $19.00 pp. Steven Price\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first book of poetry, Anatomy of Keys, won the Gerald Lampert Award, and with his second collection, Omens in the Year of the Ox, Price continues his tough […]<\/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-824","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/824","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=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1191,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue12\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/824\/revisions\/1191"}],"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=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}