“Culverts Beneath the Narrow Road”
Written by Brenda Schmidt
Published by Thistledown Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$20.00
ISBN 978-1-77187-154-9
How interesting to watch a poet's
repertoire grow and change over the years, and learn what's freshly inspiring
him or her. For some it's nature, a new relationship, travel, or a loved one's
passing. Trust Creighton, SK poet, visual artist, and naturalist Brenda Schmidt
to eschew the usual … this former SK
Poet Laureate has turned to the lowly culvert
for inspiration in her latest title, Culverts
Beneath the Narrow Road, and it's a romp.
This handsome collection begins with a
short essay that introduces us to the kind of writer Schmidt's become. While
she and her husband are driving down the Saskatchewan map, the poet blurts out
questions some may consider inane. But, she writes: "Nothing I say
surprises him anymore. He knows better than anyone how difficult writers can be
to travel with, due in part, perhaps, to sensory overload, all these places
flying by, all these junctions, private roads and keep-out signs, the mind
filtering the 100 km/hr stream of information for connections …".
Indeed, connections are key in this book. Always fascinated with culverts,
Schmidt's mined her own memory and
discussed culverts with a variety of folks, incorporating their experiences
into poems (written in various forms) that illuminate, surprise, and entertain.
We learn that culverts are used for more than controlling water flow; they're
also places to make love, drink wine, and play guitar (a culvert's "got great acoustics"). Cliff
swallows nest in culverts, and thieves store stolen goods in them. Children, of
course, race makeshift boats toward them in spring. Who doesn't remember "the official footwear" … rubber
boots with "the top two inches/folded down"? Italicized quotes
throughout the poems give the collection a story-telling flow.
All the good stuff of poetry is here.
There's sound, ie: "The hazard
lights click like heels," and a culvert "glugged like anything".
The similes include "your hair falls/like a prayer plant". I admire
the liberal use of personification, ie: "The Big Dipper handles
breath/gently, turns and washes it," and "The stiff-lipped/culvert is
the only one/whistling here". One of the many stand-out images: "your
fists wet/commas at the end of your sleeves".
Schmidt's highly attuned to nature.
These poems are alive with birds and bears, and they lead us across fields and
ditches. Being Saskatchewan, there's also wind. And I love the clever play on
former premier Lorne Calvert's name ("There's a little Lorne Culvert in
all of us!").
There's much more going on in most of
these poems than the casual reader might notice. Internal rhymes, multi-purpose
line breaks, and, in the longish four-sectioned poem "A Culvert Blown into
Four Pieces," one story's told via the italicized first line of each
tercet, and another - with more detail - when one reads each line
chronologically.
In the superb piece "Elegy,"
Schmidt writes: "I'm not good at this./I'm not good at anything/that
involves looking back/at the meltwater slowly/filling in my boot prints".
Bull. This is a skilled poet having good fun, and inviting us all to join the
party.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
"I Tumble Through the Diamond
Dust"
Written by Edward Willett, Illustrated
by Wendi Nordell
Published by YNWP
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$19.95
ISBN 9-781988-783178
Prolific Regina writer Edward Willett
took a great idea and ran with it, and the result is his first collection of
poems, I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust,
a collection of twenty-one fantastical poems with illustrations by his niece,
Albertan Wendi Nordell. That initial great idea? It began with former SK Poet
Laureate Gerald Hill's 2016 "first lines" project, in which he
e-mailed the first two lines from poems by two SK writers each week day in
April and invited all Saskatchewan Writers' Guild members to use them as
springboards for new poems. Willett embraced the challenge, and the result is
this creative, entertaining, and occasionally spine-tingling collection of
poems that no one but Willett – well-known for authoring sixty books, including
twenty science fiction and fantasy novels – could pull off.
Willett claims a life-long love affair
with poetry, but admits he's not known as a poet. The man is a story-teller,
through and through, thus it's not surprising that each of these poems tells a
miniature story, many with an apocalyptic or space-based bent. The black and
white illustrations contain figures or creatures that accentuate the often
haunting work, which includes titles like "This is the Way the World
Ends" and "The Labyrinth of Regret".
Despair and loneliness are major
players here. Take the poem "Virtuality," partly inspired by Barbara
Langhorst's line: "It wasn't the flu/the sad stones in my heart simply ran
out of room". Willett takes this and gives us a melancholy character who
"exchange[s]/the real life for the virtual" - hopefully his
"second life" will be happier. In the piece "Facing the
Silence," "Hope crumbles to dust" as a "tsunami of
night" blackens out the world, and a couple, waiting for certain
extinction, sit in a cabin "where normal still reigns:/the steam from our
tea mugs,/the crackle of fire". This well-wrought poem and the
accompanying illustration make a highly effective pairing.
But it's not all darkness and
foreboding: the book ends with a rollicking poem inspired in part by the lines
- and cowboy poetry rhythm - of Ken Mitchell. In Willett's poem people live in
"colonies out 'mongst the stars," and the protagonist, Old Bill,
"was born in a starship" and rides a robotic horse. Willett's turned
to lines from Stephen Scriver and Joanne Weber to inspire "Saint
Billy," about a man whom God wants to saint so "he can talk to all
them sinners" about things like "their drivin' after/drinkin' and
their gamblin' and their/droppin' of the final g's on words".
The poet's written several of his own
quotable lines, ie: "Now, please don't think we're prejudiced/against
vampires," and I loved the small stanza he's made using the first two
lines from a Sheri Benning Poem: "In the near dark,/when she's almost
asleep/there are stories".
I've read about 90% of the books the
quotes were drawn from – Willett's also used one of my lines in this collection
– and it's fascinating to see how he's spun these lines into something fresh …
and most unexpected.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
"Possessions: Their Role in Anger,
Greed, Envy, Jealousy, and Death"
by Boris W. Kishchuk
Published by DriverWorks Ink
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$19.95
ISBN 978-1-927570-42-5
I love games: card, word, trivia, etc.,
and I've usually been fortunate to have someone in my circle who also enjoys a
friendly but spirited competition. Why share that in a review of Saskatoon
writer Boris W. Kishchuk's latest nonfiction title, Possessions: Their Role in Anger, Greed, Envy, Jealousy, and Death?
Read on.
In the preface to this exquisitely-researched
book Kishchuk writes that he's wondered "why people kill each other,"
and he wins my attention. This text examines "the psychology of possession".
The author investigates our desire to possess
from myriad angles, including religious and economic reasons, and presents
numerous diverse examples of how the human penchant for possessing has led to
crime, brutality, murder and war. At the end of this page-turner Kishchuk
reveals that his original title idea was The
Curse of Possessions. He could have
called it Read This and Never Lose at "Jeopardy"
Again!
Kishchuk's previous titles demonstrate
his eclectic range of interests: Long
Term Care in Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan Crown Corporations, and Connecting with Ukraine. Possessions is "more reflective in
nature," and I greatly appreciate the way this author reflects and how
he's organized his fascinating stories/examples. The breadth of information presented
is humbling, from religious beliefs regarding possession to biographies of
those who used what they possessed – ie: wealth, knowledge, generosity, or
power - for good, ie: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates, and Alexander Fleming.
Chapter 2 considers "Greed and
Possessions," with examples of both personal and corporate greed.
Regarding the former, the author includes stories about Bernard Madoff and
Imelda Marcos – see what I mean about range? – and corporate avarice is
represented by the likes of Bre-X and Nortel.
You know those news-makers and
historical Canadian or international events that you feel you should know more
about, but never take the time to research? I have several on my list, and reading
Possessions has filled many of those
gaps. In succinct, interesting, and easy-to-read stories – rather like
sound-bytes - I learned (or-relearned) about everything from the Columbine High
School shootings to ethnic cleansing and genocide in Cambodia.
Chapters 5 and 6 are phenomenal: the
Crusades … The Troubles … the Islamic State … the Roman Empire … the Vikings … the
Mongol Invasion of Europe … the British Empire … World Wars … The Aga Khan …
Jim Crow … Putin … Ghandi … Mandela … Louis Pasteur … Robbie Burns, etc. Who
knew that the Viking era only lasted for 300 years (780-1080), or that at one
time the British Empire occupied or controlled "over 90 of the world's 203
countries," or that during the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the
southern US, "it was understood that white motorists always had the right
of way at street intersections"? Boris W. Kishchuk. That's who.
Possessions
is a concise, fast-paced education. I feel enlightened. Now if I could commit
all this information to memory, Wally - my partner in life and opponent in TV
"Jeopardy" - would never beat me in a game again.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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