Apologetic for Joy Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Hiemstra-van der Horst has experienced various locales, including British Columbia, Botswana, Indiana, Michigan, Australia, Ontario, and Sierra Leone, where she currently lives. (Note: Sierra Leone was partly founded by ex-Nova Scotians, that is to say, Black Loyalists, who sailed from Halifax for the West African country in 1792.)<\/p>\n Along her roads taken, Hiemstra-van der Horst has studied linguistics, exhibited and sold her art, peddled ice cream, and learned that the simplest elements are also unfathomably, rapturously complex.<\/p>\n So, the \u201cstanding posture\u201d that is the \u201cstarting point of any description of human anatomy\u201d can be represented by 1) a \u201cHooker at a bus stop\u201d or 2) \u201cMy mother saut\u00e9ing onions,\u201d or 3) \u201cWhat is determined at conception, in that moment \/ when my father faced the wall, my mother \/ stood up to straighten the sheets.\u201d<\/p>\n The interest in anatomizing scenes and moments, for trying to comprehend their resonances and repercussions, is a hallmark of Atwood, down to the insistence on concision: \u201cDo I leave a mark on you \/ when I graze by your chair? \/ Children understand loneliness: \/ They sit in laps, cry \/ until they are empty.\u201d<\/p>\n But there\u2019s a Bohemian sensibility too, if disciplined by science (also an Atwood trait): \u201cDo you think someday I will excavate \/ [Georgia O\u2019Keeffe] from the desert and hold her up to the sky? Remember \/ how often she\u2019s given us new ways to look at the moon \/ through a hole in an old bone. She gave me the recipe \/ for savouring blue\u2026, \/ the silence of an empty skull, somehow \/ the pulse of desert.\u201d<\/p>\n Hiemstra-van der Horst pens painterly poems that close in poignant observation or tease us with whimsy and absurdity. Some lyrics are stacks of delicate images: \u201cThe violin lifts \/ an auditorium with one string\u201d; \u201ca wave \/ spills over the side of the crystal bowl, and love, \/ love displaces even me.\u201d<\/p>\n To move from anatomy to catalogue or inventory is to move from Atwood to Brand, and something of the latter poet\u2019s approach shows up in Hiemstra-van der Horst\u2019s longer, thicker, more descriptive pieces, often touching on an exotic experience: \u201cI feel obligated to cut a cow in half, holler \/ hell. I should. But every time I\u2019m flooded, I\u2019m flooded with splendour.\u201d<\/p>\n Or try this passage: \u201cSongbirds trill from wires, \/ the circuitry of my laptop, the pole casting a shadow \/ on Oma\u2019s stone, the stone that says \/ \u2018I will sing\u2014\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Multitalented, Hiemstra-van der Horst has talent to burn. However, at times, her poetry is pretty-for-pretty\u2019s-sake; or the perceptive becomes platitudinous. She need not apologize for joy; she needs to temper her Brand with her Atwood.<\/p>\n Chris Jennings\u2019s debut verse collection, Occupations<\/em>, is aptly apposite to Hiemstra-van der Horst\u2019s linguistics-informed work.\u00a0 For his part, Jennings so distrusts language, I mean, conventional communication, that his poems seep ironic detachment from subject and sob self-consciousness about the act of writing.<\/p>\n But Jennings is not to be blamed. Our times are damnable; suit-and-tie warmongers bomb children (\u201caccidentally\u201d); mass media sell corporate fibs; banks get \u201cbailed out\u201d but nations face bankruptcy; \u201cdemocratic revolutions\u201d turn into rigged-vote dictatorships. How can anyone trust \u201ceveryday\u201d language or \u201cplain\u201d talk?<\/p>\n Ambling through an estate auction, then, Jennings\u2019s wry persona notes that \u201c[Hazel\u2019s] accumulated offerings \/ escape their sovereign chronology \/ and scatter in a creative entropy.\u201d Sounds like dead Hazel\u2019s hoard of goods is all jumbled up. Jennings could state this info directly, but chooses not to, to ask us to pay attention to the different registers of language, so that we also scrutinize official discourses.<\/p>\n In a sense, we\u2019re back in the world\u2014the trenches\u2014of T.S. Eliot\u2019s Waste Land<\/em> (1922) and Ezra Pound\u2019s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley<\/em> (1920): Except that, now, language itself is, Jennings fears, corrupt. Yep. Handfuls of Bone Kidd examines the world from the bird\u2019s-eye-view of her training as a seabird biologist, career as reporter, current day-job as a physician, and her lived experience as daughter\/descendant, wife, and mother.<\/p>\n The poems reflect these varied interests, but also show Kidd\u2019s wide reading in Anglo-Canadian poetry, especially that which is Atlantic Canadian, nature-oriented, and\/or feminist.<\/p>\n Although she shares American poet William Carlos Williams\u2019s profession, Kidd declines whimsy. Where he is playful and folksy, she is clinical and precise. She will even end-stop phrases, to close them off, to separate and isolate them so that we pay attention to exactly what her voice says or reports. Period.<\/p>\n There is power in the procedure though: \u201cThe animal stretch of \/ bread in the hands. A \/ cut of lamb conjuring \/ the slaughter.\u201d<\/p>\n A description of \u201cHarbour Mille\u201d runs: \u201cLater: a fire, a city of gulls \/ and beach wood, bare as bones. \/ Me \u2026 \/ and two men harrumphed beside me \/ on their four-stroke steeds.\u201d<\/p>\n While the clipped phrases of a reporter, a doctor, a scientist, or a film editor convey the terrific lucidity of crisp observation, the poem jumps to vivid life with that great, colloquial verb, \u201charrumphed,\u201d and the vernacular opening: \u201cThis was the last place God made \/ and then the devil claimed it.\u201d<\/p>\n A fine poem that nicely integrates enjambment and end-stopped lines is \u201cCome to Grief\u201d:<\/p>\n \u201cHe wasn\u2019t the first and he wasn\u2019t the last man \/ lost to the water, a foot in the line, a hand \/ slammed fast against the gunwhale\u2014too late\u2026. \/\/ All day, talk on the radio of boats circling like hounds\u2026. \/\/ Find the lumber. Measure it twice. \/ Nail him in. Comfort his wife. \/ Bury him down on the rocky shore. \/ He can never be lost no more.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a nice modulation of effects\u2014a folksy voice, clear description, original imagery, and, in the last stanza, the rhyme and almost rhyme of folk song.<\/p>\n Another poem that rings such changes effectively is \u201cA Large Steak,\u201d written in the voice of Amelia Earhart (1897-ca.1937), the famed American aviatrix who disappeared over the Pacific in 1937, but who also spent two weeks in Newfoundland in 1928.<\/p>\n \u201cNight, and the air smells of salt. The men asleep upstairs, \/ their bellies full of unending mutton. Oh, the mutton \/ I fear I shall begin to sprout hooves\u2026. \/ Who could turn stone into such plenty?\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s also this smart image: \u201cMy breath (materializes) in the fog as if I were \/ Shackleton marching slowly to his grave.\u201d<\/p>\n Gaspereau Press is famed, in part, for its book design, and the 17th<\/sup>-century sketches of the human skeleton, chosen for the cover and title page, suit well Handfuls of Bone<\/em>. Kidd often sounds a memento-mori<\/em> note, a subtle counterpoint to the siren song of the flesh.<\/p>\n Anna Quon\u2019s Mental Illness Poems<\/em> is self-published, just last year, likely in her native Dartmouth, NS. It\u2019s only twelve pages\u2014bearing twelve poems\u2014and printed on 8\u00bd\u201d x 11\u201d paper (consisting of three pages, each folded length-wise once). The dark blue cardstock cover bears Joe Rosenblatt-drawings that are likely Quon\u2019s own.<\/p>\n Quon has always been a poet meriting close attention, and in 2010, she was nominated for an Atlantic Book Award. Mental Illness Poems<\/em>, which may be confessional of sorts, offers strong images that seem folksy, but turn startling:<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes when the pictures are crooked \/ and the pens run out and the cookies burn \/ on the bottom, that\u2019s when sadness \/ hugs you awkwardly \/ and sits on the edge of the bed, \/ with you \/ stroking your hair \/ with blue hands.\u201d<\/p>\n Craziness is \u201cthe horror of roses, collapsing \/ under the weight of their own beauty\/ petals falling out like hair.\u201d<\/p>\n Her angst is accessible; Quon paints pain: \u201cDarkness covers me with its claws \/ And sucks the breath from me \/ Like a cigarette. \/\/ What\u2019s left is dense \/ As a neutron star, \/ Unwieldy as sorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n Quon is one of Canada\u2019s most original poets. Look up her work, please. Read her. Honour her. John Stoke\u2019s Horse There\u2019s a lot here, but the poems never feel too dense. These lyrics have been just as whittled as the toy horse\u2014and the ideas of the poet-as-horseman\u2014that serve as a motif for this book.<\/p>\n The first part of this four-part book presents \u2018object\u2019 poems, wherein the Nova Scotian poet considers various items, describing what they are, yes, but also attempting to define what they mean for him. So rhubarb is \u201cSomewhere between fruit and vegetable\u201d and fists \u201cred knuckles through mud \/ during snowdrifts.\u201d In winter, the edible plant is \u201cabandoned pipes\u201d that, \u201cBreathed through,\u201d sound elegiac.<\/p>\n A nice \u2018object\u2019 poem is \u201cSea Horse.\u201d Sanger weaves science and art deftly in this tongue-in-cheek portrait of the animal: \u201cYou are said \u2026 to make a monotonous sound \/ akin to that of a tambour \/ which becomes \u2026 more \/ intense and frequent in breeding season \/ when a female deposits one hundred \/ and fifty eggs in a male\u2019s \/ ventral brood pouch. This marsupial \/\/ solution makes you fish, bird, \/ mammal.\u201d<\/p>\n In the \u201cCivics\u201d section of his book, Sanger attacks Prime Minister Stephen Harper\u2019s \u201cCon speak\u201d and dubs him \u201cour man in the tar pit.\u201d He observes acidly \u201cThat tyranny is only \/\/ a transitional necessity,\u201d and \u201cEvil \/ a market commodity.\u201d<\/p>\n His despair at our shabby politics\u2014democracy \u2018sold\u2019 with a double-double photo-op\u2014is poignant.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a tinge of Douglas Lochhead in the \u2018object\u2019 poems and Dennis Lee in the \u201cCivics\u201d section. But Elizabeth Bishop emerges as an influence in the suite of poems descending from \u201cJohn Stokes\u2019 Horse.\u201d In this section, the poet rambles nimbly from allusion to memory to observation, joining together references to autobiography, favourite poems, and notions of myth.<\/p>\n \u201cXII\u201d exemplifies the method: the memory of being read-to as a boy ends in a nod to the Japanese poet, Basho: \u201cO, I\u2019d ride such a canter of words \/ until and my horse \/ were one \/ pond, frog, splash.\u201d<\/p>\n These lyrics are very fine and very compressed, even if, occasionally, too compressed.<\/p>\n The fourth section, \u201cLeaping Time,\u201d is a brief memoir sketch of childhood, especially, and it seems strongly reminiscent of Bishop\u2019s prose piece, \u201cIn the Village.\u201d So?\u00a0 It is gracious in its revelation of the origins of the imaginative and exacting poet who has given us this book.<\/p>\n British Columbia poet John Pass shares Sanger\u2019s confrontation with mortality, and he is as equally learned as Sanger, while also being a tad more playful. Crawlspace<\/em> sees him volubly, garrulously, and expansively, and also carefully, limn his sorrow for the turmoil of our time, plus the passing of time and the dying of loved ones. But there is also a defiant recognition of beauty.<\/p>\n \u201cAs the Markets Fall\u201d shows Pass\u2019s skill at interweaving and juxtaposing the pain or pressure of news events with the beauty that survives in nature and in art: \u201cAs the markets fall\u2026 \/\/ I go down \/ the 959 points, dropping \/\/ in at the overstuffed supermarket \/ for milk, lettuce, yogurt\u2026. \/\/ And can you believe Kafka: \/\/ \u2018Anyone who keeps the ability to see Beauty never grows old.\u2019 \/ So who needs that pension plan to hold \/\/ its own?\u201d<\/p>\n While Pass is adept in many forms, the free-verse lyric sectioned off in two-line stanzas is, I think, his forte. It moves musically along, as in his hymn to \u201cSparrows\u201d who have found their way inside of Vancouver airport: \u201cTrapped, they loop and weave their ways among the fixtures \/\/ in a magnified grace, with aerodynamic verve \/ and slide unseen in sparrows outside.\u201d<\/p>\n One poem is a proverb: \u201cIf you miss the point \/ don\u2019t worry. You can be sure \/\/ the point won\u2019t miss you.\u201d<\/p>\n Other lyrics are done for fun, such as Pass\u2019s revision\/translation of a poem by Ronsard that does stand, finely, as its own achievement: \u201cZeus, with a bull\u2019s grand certainty \/ took his Europa, lightly, over ocean and the vast \/ discreet undulations of her gorgeous belly\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n Pass plays Pound.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A Difficult Beauty <\/strong> David Groulx hails from Ontario\u2019s Elliot Lake (site of the recent deadly shopping mall collapse), but is also proud of his Native (Metis) identity, being the son of an Ojibwe mother and a French-Canadian father. A prize-winning poet, A Difficult Beauty<\/em>, is Groulx\u2019s latest collection.<\/p>\n Perhaps Groulx\u2019s title refers to lines in Ezra Pound\u2019s epic poem, The Cantos<\/em>, in which artist Aubrey Beardsley tells poet William Butler Yeats, \u201cBeauty is difficult.\u201d But the allusion is not essential, for Groulx depics hardscrabble lives in which beauty occurs amid violent, suicidal, and even genocidal circumstances.<\/p>\n This stark perception is made bleaker by the simplicity with which it is uttered. See \u201cI Am Still\u201d: \u201cFrozen were \/ these veins \/ in my throat \/ the blood \/ like chains \/\/ My bones dropping \/ into these rivers \/\/ I am being made \/ into memory.\u201d<\/p>\n The American poet Charles Bukowski could write with strict, unflinching notice of the down-and-outers about him in Los Angeles, could write lines like Groulx\u2019s about \u201chookers wander(ing) home \/ their wallets full \/ as their mouths were\u201d and about all-night-revellers heading home, \u201cscurrying\u201d\u2014\u201clike cockroaches\u201d\u2014\u201cbefore the sun.\u201d<\/p>\n But what makes Groulx more meaningful\u2014more satisfyingly disturbing\u2014than the slumming barfly that Bukowski voices, is the fact that Groulx has a social conscience:<\/p>\n \u201cand the cops \/ are shooting unarmed Indians \/ in ipperwash \/\/ and shooting armour-piercing bullets at them in bc,\u201d and \u201canother Indian died in a cell in kenora \/ from diabetes \/ cops figured he was drunk.\u201d<\/p>\n See also his poem, \u201cElliot Lake\u201d: \u201cDoes anyone remember this place \/ before the Tories moved in \/ planted flower gardens and picked up dog (mess) \/ and kept the money on Bay Street\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n But Groulx is not only interested in objective socio-political critique. He also explores his own tensions and contradictions. In \u201cHalf,\u201d his persona tells his mother, \u201chalf of me is white \/ half of me is brown,\u201d and goes on to state, powerfully, \u201cJesus is a half-breed too \/ half God \/ half human \/ he\u2019s mixed up inside \/ like me.\u201d<\/p>\n This Metis\u2014mixed-race\u2014heritage informs his most awful insights. Thus, he can pair \u201cHimmler and Columbus,\u201d and force us to consider the connection; or he can recall \u201chalf-hungry children \/ and urine breath\u201d; or have an \u201cUrban Indian\u201d declare, \u201cI\u2019m gonna kill and I\u2019m gonna (rape) \/\/ just like you did \/ that little piece of real estate\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n There is tenderness is Groulx; there is beauty alongside difficulty. But he has thunderbolts to throw\u2014to illuminate consciousness and rock consciences\u2014and he throws them, to overthrow complacency.<\/p>\n David McFadden has been significant to Canadian poetry for fifty years. Severally nominated for awards, his poetry has earned admiration due to its commitment to a plain, singing tone that looks back to the Beats, the Black Mountain boys, Beatles-style surrealism, and The University of British Columbia\u2019s TISH movement.<\/p>\n One could easily connect McFadden\u2019s anything-goes tone to George Bowering (TISH-plainness), Richard Brautigan (Beatles-like playfulness), and even\u2014yes\u2014Charles Bukowski (as a deadpan, deadbeat Beat).<\/p>\n More importantly, What\u2019s the Score: 99 Poems<\/em>, is an enjoyably eclectic set of poems, with no aim but to discover, as the poet writes and we read, what it is that McFadden will think of next. This is writing that insists on humour, on joking. Some poems\u2014or poem parts\u2014read like gags.<\/p>\n McFadden\u2019s persona tells us, \u201cIt\u2019s wrong to dismiss an artist on moral grounds. \/ Those with spotless records in that regard \/ simply have not disclosed the total story.\u201d One has to smile: point taken.<\/p>\n Poem 55, \u201cHailstones,\u201d reports, \u201cA hailstorm. It\u2019s too lonely here. \/ I had no one to watch the hailstones with. \/ Come home, my darling. Life is sad and serious.\u201d<\/p>\n McFadden could easily have scripted the Seinfeld sitcom: \u201cEveryone talks about free will \/ but I hate it when I slip on horse manure.\u201d<\/p>\n For McFadden, reality is whatever one contemplates. Amen.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bob Dylan in America<\/strong> There have been many studies and bios of Dylan (1941-), but what distinguishes Wilentz\u2019s work is that he examines the history around what he deems to be pivotal Dylan albums and concert performances, interweaving biography, cultural study, and American histories of politics and song as well as his own memories, to attempt to explain the lasting relevance of landmark Dylan recordings and tour stops.<\/p>\n A trained historian, Wilentz is adept at chasing down sources of influence, through obscure movies, composers, and singers, to Dylan\u2019s studio releases, films, books, and radio program.\u00a0 Encyclopedic in its reach, the book is rife with footnotes, suffused with photos, and packed with endnotes, an index, and bibliography. It is a serious work; yet, its \u201csurprises,\u201d as such, are meagre.<\/p>\n One discovery is the connection between one-time, Communist-sympathizer and consummate American composer Aaron Copland and Dylan\u2019s own efforts, through folk, gospel, and rock genres, to provide works of inspiration and critical reflection for \u201cthe common\u201d citizen; to review and mix news events and historical happenings to highlight that the present, whenever it is situated, belongs to the past.<\/p>\n Another \u201cfind,\u201d for Wilentz, is that it is Jack Kerouac\u2019s \u201cspontaneous bop prosody,\u201d free-flowing poems, especially Mexico City Blues<\/em> (1959), that undergirds Dylan\u2019s \u201celectrified\u201d rock of the mid-1960s, more so than the \u201codd tandem\u201d between poet Allen Ginsberg and Dylan, that morphed from mentor-prot\u00e9g\u00e9 to Ginsberg becoming Dylan\u2019s \u201cmascot.\u201d<\/p>\n In his rendition of the making of Dylan\u2019s benchmark album, Blonde on Blonde<\/em> (1966), Wilentz corrects the omission from the record credits of Band member Rick Danko plus Bobby Gregg and Paul Griffin.\u00a0 (Another Band member, Robbie Robertson, was another session player.)<\/p>\n But Wilentz also stresses the importance of Nashville sidemen\u2014 not just \u201clong-haired New York hipsters\u201d\u2014to the procuring of the successful tone that Dylan wanted for this \u201coddly configured double album, the first of its kind in contemporary popular music,\u201d namely, in Dylan\u2019s compellingly poetic speech, \u201cthat thin, that wild mercury sound.\u201d<\/p>\n Dylan\u2019s Rolling Thunder Revue Tour of 1975-76 is chronicled as a white-face-minstrel homage to a French classic film, Les Enfants du Paradi<\/em>s (1945), a provision of material for Dylan\u2019s own feature film Renaldo and Clara<\/em> (1977), and a statement of his interest in the theatricality of the circus (which connects Dylan to the filmmaker Federico Fellini).<\/p>\n Dylan\u2019s 1983 recording of \u201cBlind Willie McTell\u201d becomes the basis for a look at the development of blues field recordings, the life of the itinerant singer himself (1897-1959), the relationship between folk, gospel, and blues, and Dylan\u2019s own profound interest in African-American history, song, romance, and performance styles.<\/p>\n There\u2019s more\u2014a lot more\u2014in this fat, detailed book that is as up-to-date in the end as 2009. But Wilentz\u2019s general thesis is that what makes Dylan such a wily and gifted interpreter of others\u2019 songs and creator of his own is that he knows the history of American song, in all of its ethnic permutations and racial combinations.<\/p>\n In short, Dylan is not only beholden to the \u201carchives\u201d of people\u2019s songs of whatever sort; he is an archivist\u2014a historian\u2014himself, who will quote other artists\u2019 words, not out of plagiarism, but as a means of recuperating past art\u2014that must not be passed over.<\/p>\n Wilentz defends this controversial aspect of Dylan\u2019s method by insisting, \u201cevery artist is \u2026 a thief; the trick is to get away with it by making of it something new.\u00a0 Dylan \u2026 has the singular ability not only to do this superbly but also to make the present and the past feel like each other.\u201d<\/p>\n As aptly researched and finely nuanced as this work is, there are many occasions where Wilentz is simply forced to guess, to suppose, to speculate. That is fine; Dylan is like scripture\u2014available to all, but still rich with suggestion, mystery, paradox, dream, and contradiction that seem to beg explanation.<\/p>\n One last quibble: The book title is absolutely provincial.\u00a0 How American.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris <\/strong> Author David King is an American scholar of European history, and his research credentials are established in his extensive bibliography, forty pages of notes, index, and even a list of illustration credits.<\/p>\n His work follows in the wake of the success of Canadian historian Margaret MacMillan\u2019s Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World<\/em> (2002), a prize-winning, bestselling book that established that recherch\u00e9, academic history can find a popular audience.<\/p>\n King\u2019s subject is not world-changing in any way, but is fascinating in its narrative of the cunning with which Petiot manipulated German terrorism, French gangsters, and the clandestine machinations of the Gestapo and the French Resistance, to recruit would-be refugees for his false escape-route, supposedly leading from Paris to Portugal and, from there, to Argentina.<\/p>\n Instead, his victims showed up at his two-and-a-half-storey town house at 21 rue Le Sueur (\u201cin the heart of Paris\u2019s fashionable 16th<\/sup> arrondissement\u201d), with all of their negotiable wealth\u2014currency, jewellery, furs\u2014and quickly disappeared.<\/p>\n Although Petiot would later produce postcards and letters, supposedly sent by successful escapees, no actual trace of them would ever turn up, except \u201ca pile of skulls, tibias, humeri, broken thigh bones, and human debris of all kinds\u201d\u2014body parts found near or inside a furnace; but most\u2014along with intact cadavers\u2014found in a lime-filled pit on the property.<\/p>\n The large scale of Petiot\u2019s serial liquidations, undertaken for sheer profit (the theft of his victims\u2019 cash and goods), was underlined by the discovery in a cupboard of 36 cosmetic tubes, 22 toothbrushes, 22 perfume bottles, 22 combs, 16 lipstick cases, 15 boxes of face powder, plus scalpels, fingernail files, hand mirrors, eyeglasses, powder puffs, cigarette holders, gas masks, tweezers, umbrellas, \u201ca walking cane, a penknife, a pillowcase, a lighter, and a woman\u2019s bathing suit.\u201d<\/p>\n 50 suitcases were also located, some also bearing contents linked to prospective escapees.<\/p>\n Despite this significant list of articles, and the 27 identified persons with whose murders Petiot was charged, King scruples to point out that \u201cno one has ever established the total number of victims, which could be anything from a handful to 26 (the court\u2019s opinion),\u201d 63 (Petiot\u2019s claim; he said that he slew \u201ctraitors\u201d to France), or 150 plus (other experts\u2019 estimates).<\/p>\n Yet, the mounds of body parts, stolen goods, and discarded articles are strongly reminiscent of Holocaust evidence, and support King\u2019s conclusion that \u201cA predator had brutally exploited opportunities for gain, slaughtering society\u2019s most vulnerable and desperate people, the majority of them being Jews fleeing persecution.<\/p>\n \u201cDr. Petiot had become the self-appointed executioner for Hitler, gassing, butchering, and burning his victims in his own private death camp.\u201d<\/p>\n The story is grisly and gruesome. What is perhaps most disturbing is that Petiot\u2019s victims were seduced by his charismatic megalomania as well as the seemingly credible tale of his affiliation with The French Resistance.<\/p>\n Worse, those with suspicions about Petiot had nowhere to turn.\u00a0 If they were Jewish and went to the French authorities, they could come to the attention of the Gestapo, who were ever zealous in organizing incarcerations, deportations, and mass murder.<\/p>\n Then again, Nazi Occupation meant a free-reign for \u201clegalized\u201d criminality: the confiscation of property; the arrest, torture, and killing of \u201cenemies\u201d; the organization of brothels, et cetera. No wonder that German authorities recruited French crime bosses as underlings: In a sense, they were on the same side.<\/p>\n In the middle were a few good French police, like Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, who, despite German interference, did their best to bring \u201cregular\u201d murderers to justice.<\/p>\n The story of a good police officer caught between a politically connected criminal and criminal-minded politicians reminds me a bit of the 1983 film, Gorky Park<\/em>. King\u2019s history is abundantly competent, but its real audience will likely be in the cinema.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Undesirables: White Canada and the Komagata Maru <\/strong> Indian-born, Toronto-based filmmaker Ali Kazimi has garnered awards on three continents for his 2004 feature documentary about the Government of Canada\u2019s refusal to allow less than 400 South Asian prospective immigrants, arriving on the Japanese vessel the Komagata Maru, to make landfall at Vancouver, B.C., in May 1914.<\/p>\n In turning from the film medium to print, Kazimi, a York University film professor, has created illuminated pages that delineate, not only a crucial episode in Canadian support for white supremacy, but also the complex dynamics\u2014machinations\u2014of British imperialism.<\/p>\n In fact, the arrival of the Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu voyagers tested the principle that, as British Indians\u2014as British subjects\u2014they had as much right to enter the Dominion of Canada as any \u2018white\u2019 Briton\u2014or Australian or New Zealander or South African.<\/p>\n The eventually court-backed refusal to allow them entry to what was termed \u201ca white man\u2019s country,\u201d had international consequences, for it proved that British Indians were not equal subjects within the British Empire.<\/p>\n The spurning of the Komagata Maru spurred on Indian nationalism\u2014and the independence movement that ended the British Raj in 1948. (Thus, Elizabeth II is Queen of Canada, but not Empress of India, and few in India rue the absence of the British Crown.)<\/p>\n Kazimi demonstrates convincingly \u201cthe global ramifications of local racism.\u201d Indeed, the British used diplomacy and espionage to try to establish a delicate balance, permitting Canada to impose a head-tax on Chinese, restrict Japanese\u2014quietly, and bar Indians\u2014but not explicitly.<\/p>\n Japanese settlers had to be admitted because Japan was an ally of the British Empire\u2014and, by extension, of Canada. (Kazimi notes that during World War I, \u201cthe Japanese Navy patrolled and protected the west coast of Canada.\u201d) However, Japan agreed, secretly, to Canada\u2019s request that it issue only 4oo emigration passports per year.<\/p>\n Because China was considered weak, racism was openly practiced against its migrants. (That Canada once boasted a bureaucrat whose title was \u201cChief Controller of Chinese Immigration\u201d underlines the then-prevalence of anti-Asian sentiments.)<\/p>\n But Indians\u2014British Indians\u2014were a challenge for white supremacist Canucks: How to bar them from Canada without inflaming anti-British sentiments in India, the \u201cjewel\u201d of the Empire?<\/p>\n William Lyon Mackenzie King, then deputy minister of labour in Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier\u2019s cabinet, proposed the solution: a regulation insisting that immigrants to Canada had to undertake a \u201ccontinuous journey\u201d from their homelands.<\/p>\n Any voyage from India could not be \u201ccontinuous\u201d; thus the regulation had the effect, without naming India, of reducing Indian immigration to almost nil.\u00a0 (This same provision was used to bar entry to Jews seeking refuge from Hitler\u2019s Germany.)<\/p>\n Yet, while Canada was trying desperately to prevent South Asian and East Asian immigration (or citizenship), it was doing all that it could to attract Britons, Americans, Scandinavians, and Western Europeans, and, to a lesser extent, Eastern and Southern Europeans, who were also, as an incentive, given \u201cfree\u201d land.<\/p>\n The policy was clear: northern North America, wrested from the First Nations, was to be wide-open for Caucasian Christian European expansion and exploitation, but closed to any substantial immigration from Asia and Africa.<\/p>\n Kazimi\u2019s rich and fascinating study clarifies just how the Komagata Maru voyagers challenged this racism, becoming the first \u201cboat people\u201d to be turned away from Canada, to have their ship turned into a marine \u201cGitmo,\u201d and to even have the still-new Royal Canadian Navy summoned to escort them back to international waters.<\/p>\n Really, they must be celebrated as exemplars of the ongoing struggle for racial and socio-economic equality for \u201cmigrants,\u201d not only in Canada, but everywhere in this so-called globalized world, where capital \u201cflows,\u201d but labour \u201cpools,\u201d even being, at times, locked up in prisons\u2014or drowned at sea.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Paperback Art of Jim Avati<\/strong> This is the lesson of The Paperback Art of Jim Avati, <\/em>a paean to \u201cThe King of the Paperbacks,\u201d U.S. artist James Sante Avanti (1912-2005), whose 40-year-career saw him illustrate popular covers for novels by William Faulkner, Ayn Rand, Alberto Moravia, W. Somerset Maugham, Robert Penn Warren, William Styron, Erskine Caldwell, and the first\u2014and only\u2014cover art for the first edition of J. D. Salinger\u2019s The Catcher in the Rye<\/em>.<\/p>\n Authors Piet Schreuders (a Dutch graphic designer) and Kenneth Fulton, along with Avati friend, art historian, and fellow painter, Stanley Meltzoff, chronicle Avanti\u2019s bio, examine his evolving aesthetic, interview surviving colleagues and family members, all to creating, in the end, an intimate portrait of the painter which is as captivating as any of his illustrations.<\/p>\n The coffee-table-sized, soft-cover book, published in 2005, is also lavishly illustrated with a hundred and more, full-colour reproductions of the paintings, many of them enlarged, so that details stand out dramatically. There are also black-and-white photos of the modelling sessions as well as snaps of Avati at home and at work.<\/p>\n The authors wish us to appreciate why novelist Jonathan Lethem sums up Avati as \u201cthe chiaroscuro master of paperback realism\u2014part (Francisco) Goya, part (John) Cassavetes\u201d or why others see him as complementary to Norman Rockwell, though less pleasing and playful in subject matter.<\/p>\n Indeed, Avati\u2019s material is realistic, adult-oriented fact, suggestively sleazy, grimy, and down-to-earth. He is Charles Bukowski with a paintbrush, or Walt Disney on skid row.<\/p>\n Then again, his illustrations reflect the content of the novels that Americans wanted to read, with plenty of grit, dirt, sweat, and salt, or red-light-district blues and film-noir bloodshed.<\/p>\n Born the only son of a portrait photographer who had emigrated from Naples, Italy, to New York City, in 1905, and married a Scottish American woman who died shortly after giving birth, Avati grew up in suburban New Jersey, raised by a stepmother and supported by a rich uncle.<\/p>\n A ceramic designer and magazine illustrator before World War II, Avati took further training in art at a special G.I. school set up in Biarritz, France, in 1945. After returning to the New York\/New Jersey area, he fell into painting covers for paperbacks, just as this form of publishing was skyrocketing in sales.<\/p>\n His career took off when he became the go-to artist for New American Library when that publisher broke away from Penguin. His hallmark was realism because it\u2019s \u201clegible: nobody has trouble recognizing what you are talking about.\u201d<\/p>\n Soon Avati developed a recognizable style: \u201cAlmost invariably, his paintings, usually composed in dark color tones, show men and women in intense, emotional situations.\u201d<\/p>\n Usually, there\u2019s a bed or a porch or a road, a glance or a clinch, a man and a woman, solo or coupled, with one or both in a state of undress, distress, or dishevelment. Or there is candlelight, streetlight, shadows, or smoke. The palette is vivid streaks of colour\u2014a red sash, a pink negligee, a blue dress, blonde hair\u2014amid some drab or sombre background, Dante-dim \u2018scapes\u2019 where all light is mute (or moot).<\/p>\n Avati is particularly gifted at suggesting vice within purported paradise, or the grim side of what may seem (superficially) idyllic. His admiring biographers find that \u201ceach Avati cover manages to convey substance and sensitivity\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n Avati racked up at least 630 cover paintings over his four-decade-long career, and if there is psychological complexity in his commercial depictions of authors\u2019 characters, it might have something to do with his de facto<\/em> harem of wives and models, his brood of children, the suicide of one daughter, the premature death of his generations-younger love, and the at-first-grudging critical interest in his work.<\/p>\n Avati felt his paintings did not \u201ccompete with great art,\u201d though he could see \u201chow good they were.\u201d Or they\u2019re \u201cgreat\u201d in their own right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Poetry, Biography, Film and Illustration Reviews Apologetic for Joy By Hiemstra-van der Horst Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane, 2011 118 pp. $18 Occupations By Chris Jennings Gibsons, BC: Nightwood, 2012 96 pp. $19 Apologetic for Joy is the work of a writer-painter, Jessica Hiemstra- van der Horst, who is as much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":798,"parent":93,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-135","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":673,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/135\/revisions\/673"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/93"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>By Hiemstra-van der Horst
\nFredericton, NB: Goose Lane, 2011
\n118 pp. $18
\nOccupations
\n<\/strong>By Chris Jennings
\nGibsons, BC: Nightwood, 2012
\n96 pp. $19
\nApologetic for Joy<\/em> is the work of a writer-painter, Jessica Hiemstra- van der Horst, who is as much indebted to U.S. artist Georgia O\u2019Keeffe for her sense of imagery as she is to sister Canadian poets, Margaret Atwood and Dionne Brand, for her sense of cadence, or form.<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>By Monica Kidd
\nKentville, NS: Gaspereau, 2012
\n80 pp. $20
\nMental Illness Poems
\n<\/strong>By Anna Quon
\n12 pp.
\nHandfuls of Bone<\/em>, by Albertan-turned-Newfoundlander Monica Kidd, is her second book of poetry. But she has also penned two novels and a non-fiction work. Also a filmmaker and journalist, she specializes in experimental shorts and radio documentaries.<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>By Peter Sanger
\nKentville, NS: Gaspereau, 2012
\n128 pp. $22
\ncrawlspace
\n<\/strong>By John Pass
\nMadeira Park, BC: Harbour, 2011
\n80 pp. $19
\nPeter Sanger\u2019s eighth verse collection, John Stoke\u2019s Horse<\/em> is a series of painstakingly sculpted meditations on memory, mortality, and myth; the life of letters (which begins, not with writing, but with spelling, speaking, and reading); and the decline of civil discourse into pious shilling for plutocracy.<\/p>\n
\nBy David Groulx
\nHamilton, ON: Wolsak and Wynn, 2011
\n100 pp. $17
\nWhat\u2019s the Score: 99 Poems <\/strong>
\nBy David McFadden
\nToronto, ON: Mansfield Press, 2012
\n146 pp. \u00a0$20
\nPoetry can be complicated and intricate, but also plain. David Groulx and David W. McFadden, in their different collections, remind us of the power of everyday words and succinct expression.<\/p>\n
\nBy Sean Wilentz
\nDoubleday, 2010
\n400 pp. $33
\nBob Dylan in America<\/em>, by American historian Sean Wilentz, is a 2010 biography of the great Jewish American troubadour, ingenious songwriter, influential pop icon, and Nobel Prize for Literature nominee.<\/p>\n
\nBy David King
\nNew York, NY: Crown, 2011
\n432 pp. $30
\nDeath in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris<\/em> is a biographical study of Dr. Marcel Petiot and a history of his serial murder of dozens of people, including Jews trying to escape Third Reich oppression. It is also a record of Petiot\u2019s detection, trial, and execution.<\/p>\n
\nBy Ali Kazimi
\nToronto, ON: Douglas & McIntyre, 2012
\n176 pp. $40
\nUndesirables: White Canada and the Komagata Maru<\/em>, a beautifully illustrated hardcover text, reminds one that good history is radicalizing. By documenting past injustice, we can be more alert to our current failures to uphold fair treatment.<\/p>\n
\nBy Piet Schreuders<\/a> and\u00a0Kenneth Fulton<\/a>
\nHampton Falls, NH: Grant Books, 2005
\n200 pp. $40
\nIt is both a truism and a godsend that good art is everywhere, though one must have eyes to see as well as catholicity in taste. Too, the artist must have a predilection for excellence, if not a pretention to greatness.<\/p>\n