“The Trouble with Beauty”
by Bruce Rice
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$16.95
ISBN 978-1-55050-572-6
After completing poet Bruce Rice’s exquisite collection The Trouble with Beauty, the following
question resounds: how can anyone not just appreciate
poetry, but also help from falling deeply down the well in love with it? I consumed the bulk of the work in a coffee shop with
an espresso machine, the conversation of strangers, and speakered-jazz trying
their best to divert my attention, but Rice held me fast with his deeply-affective
poems that explore landscape, the passing of time, the Self, and-as the title
suggests-the beauty of it all.
Disclaimer: I know Rice, a seasoned Regina poet and editor, but when I
read his work I completely disassociate the poems from the person. Great poetry
enables this. Some poets manage a few good lines in a book. Some a few good
poems. Rice hits the emotional jackpot line after line, transporting readers
into a higher-planed world of light, passing clouds, and “the shallow brown
river\that seems not to move, all the while cutting away the time we have
left.”
The Contents page itself reads like a poem as you scroll down the list
of titles:
Glossary of Hills
along some rivers
Deer Dream
Rodeo Rain
On the road watched by horses
Coincidental poetry, or intentional? I expect that all is intended by
this poet who looks (“remains of the roses the wind took apart”) and listens
(“branches click as if they were talking to horses”) so closely one might
consider super-powers are involved.
Rice credits photographers (and other poets) in his Acknowledgements. I
argue that many of his images deliver almost photographic clarity themselves. In
“Rodeo Rain” he shows “horse trailers\scattered like pieces of jigsaw
puzzle\that just won’t fit.” In “Bicycle Notes” he describes a stone barn’s
roof as “a well of timbers,\shingles draped like chain mail over a body\that
has somehow forgotten to fall.” In this thick-for-poetry book that succeeds
page upon page, one of my favourite images is “Last year’s round bales fall apart,
become the shoulders\of an animal of hay.”
Rice speaks of the truths no one addresses: “graveyards have things to
say, and say them gently.” Reading “Community
Cemetery”-the poem this quote is lifted from-makes me want to dash to the
nearest graveyard with paper and pen. That’s the power of inspired writing. It
moves us, even physically.
In a piece that honours his province, “Saskatchewan,” Rice imagines God
walking on the prairie, coming to a three-stranded barbed-wire fence, and
pushing the wires together “so He could get over-\the first time anyone had
done that, getting the knack,\the beginning of something one does that everyone
does.”
The careful, accomplished poet eloquently addresses aging as “backing
into a sunset.” Gorgeous.
The Trouble with Beauty
satisfied a place in my being that needed filling. Praise to the publisher,
Coteau Books. I will keep this sublime volume within reach.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
“In the Tiger Park”
by Alison Calder
Published by Coteau Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$16.95
ISBN 9-781550-505764
Sometimes one reads a book and, upon
completion, thinks: Hmm, I bet I could be
friends with this writer. This was my sentiment after completing In the Tiger Park by Winnipeg writer and
university professor Alison Calder. What I most appreciated was Calder’s
original and clear-eyed view on a variety
of interesting subjects, including a dead poet’s clothes; impressions of
Scottsdale AZ; witnessing a bride and groom having their wedding photos taken
in a cold September lake; elephants; China; the moon; the experience of blind
children; and football (Calder hales from a Saskatchewan Roughrider-loving clan).
We sense the poet’s perceptiveness in
her very first (and second longest) poem, “Blind children at the Natural
History Museum, 1913,” in which she credibly describes how the various animals
and objects might feel beneath the fingers of these children.
The poem “On finding P.K. Page’s old
clothes” is just three stanzas long-but they contain so much! We are treated to
the wonderful world “selvedges” and to the ear-pleasing “They turn to
metaphor\and mites.” We see “Their pearls glimmer\in cardboard darkness,” and
when the dresses tear, we hear the sound as “a match striking.” It’s apparent
that Calder understands the virtue of appealing to multiple senses.
In another short and gentle poem, “The
Tea Bowl,” the first line reads like Haiku: “At the temple gate, a tea bowl
sits in the grass like a stone from a wall.” (For those counting, the sentence
contains eighteen syllables, rather than the traditional seventeen, and that’s
just fine.)
Calder also demonstrates a good dose of
humour in this collection, as when she dons the persona of a football referee:
“I rule the coin toss. Sometimes I want to lie down\in the end zone and count:
too many clouds\in the sky.” She also takes a stab at her own poetry,
complaining about the preponderance of the moon and elephants in her work:
“It’s getting so I can’t hit a key\without tripping over a moon or an
elephant.”
Does trivia interest you? You’ll find
some in this collection. In “pigs” we learn that “science says pigs don’t need
to turn around,” and in “Don’t think of an elephant” we read that “the first
bomb dropped on Berlin in World War II\killed the only elephant in the Berlin
Zoo.”
It is entirely easy to praise this book,
with its sensitive insights and superb images. Consider this scene, observed
while passing through Quill Lake: “the town was burning its elevator\bonfire
huge and pagan,\small figures illuminated briefly as we passed.” In another
poem, “The space between,” Calder writes that a bird’s nest is “made of air
organized by twigs.” This is brilliance.
In my book variety is indeed the spice
of life. In this book the poet
cleverly delivers, offering sheer delight on every page.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
“Emily via the Greyhound Bus”
by Allison Kydd
Published by Thistledown Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$9.95
ISBN 978-1-927068-09-0
Saskatoon publisher Thistledown Press has long been a friend to
first-time poets and prose writers via its New Leaf Edition Series, giving many
writers (including yours truly) the generous break that launches a writing
career.
Thistledown’s eleventh release of New Leaf titles puts writer Allison
Kydd in the spotlight, and if you have a road trip or flight forthcoming,
Kydd’s Emily via the Greyhound Bus
could be your ideal companion. The 64-page story takes readers on a winter bus trip from Toronto to Saskatchewan and
delves inside the private thoughts of its title character, a woman who-like
many-“always rushed in before she knew where she was going.”
On page one we learn that Emily, a First Nations’ woman, has left her longterm
relationship and is now at an emotional crossroads. What should she do with her
life? How might she begin again? Would a return to her reserve be a wise idea?
Her crisis is heightened by the fact that her nausea on the bus may signal more
than travel sickness: could she be pregnant again?
Emily has much to contemplate. Her first two children have grown up with
other families, and her personal history has been coloured by abuse, poverty,
and bad choices, like leaving the convent school at seventeen “just to keep up
with her reputation.” The confused protagonist considers her experiences with
men-including college-boy Marty, who “was fascinated by some idea of going
Native;” a first-cousin who raped her when she was thirteen; and her present
partner, Jeremy.
As the bus travels west she also has hours to think about the service
industry work she’s done-cocktail waitress, short-order cook, desk clerk at a
small hotel, and a gas jockey-and her relationships with family members. At one
point she considers her mother’s appearance to be that of “a dumpy Fortrel
pigeon,” and she muses that the sisters at the convent were not cruel, “rather,
they seemed afraid to touch.”
The story presents a kind of retrospective as the bus rolls through the
night-“only the dim glow of a few reading lights held back the dark,”-and we
discover that stereotypes continue to affect Emily, even as she sits in her seat
minding her own business. This grim reality is believably portrayed, as both a
fellow passenger and a bus driver believe they can easily possess her.
In Moosomin the driver stops for a “ten-minute smoke break.” Emily,
still feeling nauseous, steps off and is inadvertently left behind. “Alone,
broke, and empty, she wished she were dead.” It is a triumph how Kydd moves
Emily forward from this low point to a place of redemption at the end of the
story.
This insightful book would easily fit into your travel bag and shorten
the journey.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
“man from elsewhere”
by Lorna Crozier
Published by JackPine Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$30.00
ISBN 978-1-927035-09-2
Swift Current-born Lorna Crozier is one of the brightest lights in
Canadian poetry. If you read poetry-and no, it is definitely not a genre to be afraid of-you’ll know
that her name is a household word among poetry readers. She’s published
numerous critically-acclaimed books, has won the Governor General’s Award for
poetry, presents internationally, and is one of Canada’s most read and
appreciated poets.
It’s difficult to know for certain why some poets succeed and others
burn quietly or flash out immediately. Certainly for “staying power” one must
possess talent and its sisters: originality, skilled craftsmanship, and
intelligence. One must have interesting things to say, and express these things
in masterful and memorable ways. It also helps to be entertaining. Crozier
possesses all of these attributes. She’s made her readers laugh and cry, and one might argue she’s even
shocked us over the years.
Why then, would a big name poet publish a hand-bound, limited edition
chapbook with Saskatchewan publisher JackPine Press? Perhaps because some work,
like the fervent love poems found in man
from elsewhere (co-created with Saskatonians Lisa Johnson and Stephen
Rutherford), require a more personal and beautiful format than one normally
finds in trade publishing. Maybe the chapbook is also an homage to Crozier’s
birth-province. It could be that she recognizes and celebrates that JackPine
Press is publishing not just poetry, but also physical works of art (one of the collective’s titles was printed
on tear-out drink coasters, another was packaged in a powder-puff box).
The eleven thematic poems in man
from elsewhere are printed on lightly-patterned paper (Japanese Kozo and
textured Strathmore), and there are only 75 copies of the saddle-stitched text
in existence. Each poem is dedicated to a “man” from a different place, ie”
“Man From Hades,” “Man From the Rainforest,” and “Main From Eden.” A consummate
poet, Crozier knows how to work line-breaks to create layers, as we see in
these lines about “three hounds the colour of snow” from her poem “Man From
Hades 2”:
Their noses led them through the dark
And I didn’t allow myself to wonder
What they fed on.
Crozier demonstrates an affinity for including animals in her work. Here
examples include “the throat of a bird,” “the secrets of the hare, the spider’s
rasp,” “hawk on the updraft,” and a “spider spinning\Her hunger across my
belly”. In “Man From The Cariboo,” the narrator professes “I wanted\A horse
more than a man”.
My favourite in this lovely collection is “Man From Nunavut,” which
brilliantly begins: “He came out of the snow,\Bones over his eyes\So he
wouldn’t go blind.” The poet juxtaposes the frozen landscape against
“flames\From the frozen fire.”
The reasons why Crozier and
JackPine Press have collaborated really don’t matter. What does matter is that they have,
and we should rejoice and be glad in it.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
“Rove”
by Laurie D Graham
Published by Hagios Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$17.95
ISBN 978-192671023-5
I usually open a poetry collection expecting that the first few pages
will provide a reasonably good sense of the author’s style and subject matter. In
the opening pages of Rove, by London ON
poet Laurie D Graham, I correctly gleaned that this writer would address a
veritable smorgasbord of issues: political, environmental, First Peoples’,
agricultural, poverty, health, and urban vs. rural. I also learned that this
rapid-fire poet writes mostly in couplets, she often begins her lines with
imperatives (“Say fluorescent lightbulbs will save\the earth, say there’s a
heart” and “See the branches of the suburbs blossom wild with bungalows”), and
that hers is indeed a distinct new voice on the CanLit scene.
Further into the book I realized that she also weaves in personal family
history, and that I was often surprised and delighted by the myriad twists and
turns this daring writer takes.
Rove is
a long poem that reads partly like a rant,
“say the numbers, tell the Wheat Board where to go,
say it fast like an auction and
move to the city,
say minimum wage and grunt
while you work,”
partly like a prayer, and partly like memoir.
(The poet’s ancestors are Ukrainian, and the Notes in the back decipher
Ukrainian, Cree, Michif, and French words.) Graham, however, does not sacrifice
the lyricism poetry is known for in her compelling poetic narrative. Just try
saying this line aloud: “Now, in citied sleep, the sweepers sluicing the
avenue\after the music’s turned off,” and you’ll understand.
This engaging social commentary realistically surveys the prairie-Graham
grew up in Sherwood Park AB and has paternal ties to SK-and its people. The
poet writes of working dogs “Punch” and “Bullet” and how “one was shot,
mistaken by the neighbour for a coyote”. There is also hockey here, a curling
rink, “yarn and roses, crab apples, zucchini\old grass clippings in a garbage
bag.” These are sweet remembrances, but by contrast there is also nostalgia for
a way of life that’s been lost:
“and the Pontiac dealership that sits there now, streetlit so bright
the whole hamlet can’t see the stars it used to.”
Occasionally the poet’s memory fragments even begin with the word
“Remembering.” She remembers “geese moving, lake to park,\swaying the air
between eavestroughs”. She recalls the hummingbird that accompanied her mother
“as she walked back to the house with her hands full\of every colour of sweet
pea imaginable.” I found numerous memorable “mother” images, including: “Your
mother’s lips red like a brake light.”
Rove
reads like a river, sweeping the sediment of cultural and personal history
together as it sweeps readers up with it, “Dizzy from the journeys we’ve made.”
It’s both forceful and dreamy, critical and congratulatory. It is a book of
place: a story of oil and Edmonton; of immigrants managing in the new world; of
how disconnected our cities make us, and the reasons why we flock to them. It
is a lament for “Home calling like a horn through fog.” It is a life.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
