“Sauntering, Thoreau-style"
Written by Victor Carl Friesen
Published by Your Nickel's Worth
Publishing
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$25.00
ISBN 9-781988-783468
I embraced daily outdoor explorations decades
ago, so was delighted when Rosthern, SK writer-photographer Victor Carl Friesen’s
book, Sauntering, Thoreau-style, arrived in my mailbox. Friesen, a
multi-genre writer, has several books behind him - including nonfiction, short
stories, poetry and children’s literature - and in this latest title he revisits
a favourite subject: the writer, naturalist, and legendary Massachusetts walker,
Henry David Thoreau. Many will be familiar with Thoreau’s Walden - his literary
response to a two-year sojourn at Walden Pond. Friesen’s book – a compilation
of essays; mostly Saskatchewan photographs; poetry; and Thoreau’s own quoted, poetic
observations - is an homage to Thoreau, and the images “were chosen to reflect
Thoreau’s world”.
Friesen explains that Thoreau was a
highly sensorial writer who practiced activities like looking at objects with “the
under part of his eye,” and “[smelling] plants before and after a rain in
various stages of growth,” to get different perspectives. Thoreau’s writing itself
emulated “the course of a saunter,” and Friesen writes that his subject
considered the act of consciously walking in nature as an art. I understand!
The colour photographs (there’s a
single black and white), interspersed between Friesen’s engaging, Thoreau-centred
text, are presented like a pleasant album. Each index-card-sized photograph is centered
on the page within a thin black border. Ample white space on each page gives the
nature scenes a “gallery wall” effect. Lily pads, shadowed reflections, and a
moose in water are among the images in the first set, titled “Waters”.
In the chapter “The Art of Sauntering,”
we learn that Thoreau tried to find a balance between observing nature and attempting
to “‘walk with sufficient carelessness’”. The American writer kept “a notebook
in his pocket … for much of his writing was a joint product of head and legs”.
Interestingly, regarding sustenance on Thoreau’s longer walks, “If he had to
buy bread or milk, he would readily find some odd job to earn the necessary
coin”. It’s certainly easy to comprehend why Friesen found Thoreau such a compelling
character. In the photos that follow in this chapter, Friesen provides a moody photographic
study of clouds, ie: pg. 39 … a proper, dark-navy sky, and a cloud dropping
torrential rain on the bare, golden prairie.
Solitude was sacred to Thoreau in his
walks – “[his] communion with nature was lessened if others were present” – and
he was extremely fond of the Concord township area. The “‘peripatetic philosopher’”
was so tuned into the natural world, the connection elicited “a feeling that he
was part of the woodland world and a feeling that that world was part of him”. Friesen
says aside from woodlands, seas and rivers were also integral to Thoreau: he
tried to “get the sea into him” while he “[perceived] it with all his senses”.
I admire the way Friesen sees the world
through his discriminating lens. Leaves, sunsets, rivers, snow, flowers … these
are the stuff of Thoreau’s world, and of Friesen’s well-written and well-photographed
tribute to Thoreau’s “sensuous approach to the world of nature”.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
“The Vivian Poems: Street Photographer
Vivian Maier”
by Bruce Rice
Published by Radiant Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$20.00
ISBN 9-781989-274293
Choosing a subject most readers will be
unfamiliar with is a risky undertaking for a poet. Will readers care about a
subject they don’t know? Has enough research been done? Will the poet
sufficiently engage his or her audience with this new literary territory? Regarding
Bruce Rice’s The Vivian Poems: Street Photographer Vivian Maier, I say Yes,
Yes, and Yes.
Rice is Saskatchewan’s Poet Laureate,
and this poetic portrait of Chicago photographer Vivian Maier (d. 2009) – whom Rice
first learned of via CBC Radio – is the Regina writer’s sixth poetry collection.
Maier, his “obsessively private” subject, was employed as a nanny, shot diverse
subjects, and died poor, leaving a “legacy of 140,000 black and white
negatives, prints, undeveloped rolls of colour film, Super 8 films, and audio
recordings” that would later inspire several books, documentaries and “over 60
international exhibits”. Clearly, Rice – who’s frequently inspired by art – found
an intriguing subject. He credits many – including the Saskatchewan Arts Board,
re: funding his research trip to Chicago – for assistance in bringing this
title to fruition.
I was unfamiliar with Maier and thus
turned to Rice’s Afterward to learn more before I read the poems. Maier’s early
life was “spent in a kind of serial statelessness,” affected by poverty and being
raised solely by her mother, a French immigrant. Rice writes: “There are things
we know about her choices, her gaze, and what attracted her whether it was
beautiful or not, because we recognize it in ourselves and because we are human”.
This shared humanity is as good a reason – perhaps the best reason – to
explore a specific life via poetry.
Rice plays with light and shadows in
these poems, much like a photographer does. Words like “mirror” and “fixes” are
double-entendres, and when Maier narrates, we see the details of her images,
ie: a “royal blue stag/knitted crudely into [a boy’s] siwash” and also a fictionalized
philosophy, ie: “there are a few kinds of punishment/a hundred kinds of shame”.
It’s this pairing – everyday details and elevated thoughts – that make these
poems work so well. The way the subjects quickly shift between couplets is reminiscent
of ghazals. In “Human River,” personification takes the lead, ie: “the snowy
breath of Manhattan” and “this weather teaches/an avenue of empty benches”. Rice
gives several of Maier’s subjects the narrator’s voice, ie: in “furniture
mover,” the narrator says “you’re stuck in my mirror/don’t worry lady/I’ll get
you out”.
Window washers, gutters, “white-walled
Lincolns,” “gravestones and the poses/of agreeable old men” … these are the photographic
and poetic terrain. Rice has fun with colour throughout the book, ie: “white
babushka,” “ruby flesh,” and “clowns /in red pantaloons”.
I’ll now find Maier’s work online, and
see what’s so inspired Rice to imagine sublime lines like this: “a face is a
face and it’s hard to say/who has
lived well and who simply waits/for the final punctuation”. My favourite line,
however, is “Some days a light touch is all you need/to know you’ve been
touched”. These poems touched me.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
“Wheel the World: Travelling with
Walkers and Wheelchairs”
Written by Jeanette Dean
Published by Your Nickel’s Worth
Publishing
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$19.95
ISBN 9-781988-783505
I’ve just spent a pleasant afternoon
with Jeanette Dean’s book Wheel the World: Travelling with Walkers and Wheelchairs.
As the entire world’s currently anchored with the Coronavirus pandemic, we need
travel books like Dean’s: over a few hours and 202 pages, she took me on well-described
journeys around the globe, across Canada, and through my home province of
Saskatchewan while I practiced social isolation on my comfortable couch. The
title infers that this might be a “How To” book, but I’m suggesting it’s a
wonderful armchair- adventure title for people with mobility issues or fully
able bodies.
Dean and her husband, Christopher Dean,
are British-born educators – now retired – who share passions for travel and photography.
Saskatoon’s been home since 1966, and there Jeanette spent twenty-two years
teaching at the R.J.D. Williams School for the Deaf. In her latter years, Dean’s
arthritis has seen her transition from walker to wheelchair, but these
challenges have not metaphorically slowed her one iota. She states: “Above all,
this book is intended as an expression of the joy of travelling itself,
regardless of the challenges.” Yes, there are many tips for travelers with mobility
issues, ie: cruise ship passengers can take accessible taxis at ports-of-call,
and design their own tours; England’s cobblestone streets don’t lend themselves
well to mobility aids; and one can take a handicap parking permit anywhere in
the world, and it’ll be valid. Dean rightly states that maneuvering around the
Cavendish, PEI beaches or across the rocks at Peggy’s Cove would be hard-going
for those with mobility issues. She advises mobility-challenged travelers not
to slow group travel or put extra stress on tour guides. Planning, she advises,
is the key to successful travel for those with limited mobility, and one should
“recognize what [one] cannot do easily and enjoy the rest without whining”.
I made copious notes while reading this
well-written, interesting, and often light-hearted book. I reminisced as Dean
described places I’d been, ie: Melbourne and Moose Jaw, and made notes about
the destinations I’d like to visit. Dean’s anecdotes about a “safari-like park”
in small-town Glen Rose, the River Walk district in San Antonio, and Moody
Gardens in Galveston compel me to visit Texas. Similarly, the couples’ tour of
National Trust properties in England appeals. The “leafy lanes of Kent” led to the
one-time private home of Winston Churchill (“As we walked through the Grecian
colonnade at the back of the house, we could easily imagine him pacing back and
forth as he practiced his inspiring speeches”).
In Maui they enjoyed a visit to a
lavender farm, and I was right there when she described Maui’s “twisting
road to Hana,” and watching the sun set from the Haleakala Crater, where she
arrived via a bus with a wheelchair lift. “Our driver was very helpful at all
the stops,” she writes, “even pushing the wheelchair and singing when the path
got very steep”.
With our aging population and
contemporary society’s penchant for travel, the subject of mobility-challenged
travelling will become increasingly topical.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL
BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
__________
“Until We Are Free: Reflections on
Black Lives Matter in Canada”
Edited by Rodney Diverlus, Sandy
Hudson, and Syrus Marcus Ware
Published by University of Regina Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$27.95 ISBN 9-780889-776944
This multi-voiced tour-de-force
details the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement from compelling Canadian
perspectives. It’s comprehensive, diverse, and explains the “origin story” and
trajectory of BLM – praise-worthy, all - but I also commend the anthology’s structure.
Editors Sandy Hudson (founder of the BLM’s Canadian presence and BLM—Toronto) and
Rodney Diverlus (a Haitian-born artist, activist, educator and member of BLM—Toronto)
have written a creative introduction set in “An Imagined Future” (2055 C.E.), after
the world’s been decimated by “droughts, fires … class wars” and “race wars”. The
narrator melts beneath the blistering sun under one of the few remaining trees
on a “weekly water-sourcing trek,” and reflects upon this very book. “We wrote
about our future,” he/she says, “and it was beautiful”. It’s a literary entry into
a text that’s alternately academic, political, and also written for those just
learning about the movement, which was spawned after the 2013 acquittal of
George Zimmerman re: the shooting murder of the unarmed Black teen Trayvon
Martin. “This case captured the public’s attention and triggered a global discourse
on anti-Black violence not seen in a generation,” the editors write. (Californian
Alicia Garza was first to pen #BlackLivesMatter, and the movement quickly
spread “from a viral hashtag to an online platform”.)
The book’s invaluable
for the myriad experiences it archives, and it’s hefty in both size and content:
320 pages of strong statements by those who’ve lived beneath the shadow of
racism. “Police violence and anti-Black attitudes are realities that define the
Black Experience in Canada,” the editors state. They’ve collected essays and conversations
between organizers, activists, artists, academics - and the imprisoned-for-murder
writer Randolph Riley - and document ideas, protests (ie: Tent City at the
Toronto Police Service Headquarters), and victories, including The Black Lives
Matter—Toronto Freedom School (“providing an avenue for children to be involved
in the movement”) and the Canadian Freedom Intensive.
Riley’s story came painfully
alive for me with the startling image of the young Nova Scotia student’s visit –
“in cuffs and shackles” - to his mother’s funeral at Cherrybrook Baptist Church.
“‘I’m sorry to come before you like this,” he says to his community. “There is
no stopping the love” as people in the historically Black community “line up to
hug him, to touch him, to cry with him”.
For some
contributors, like poet Queentite Opaleke, being called “nigger”- by her Grade
Four teacher! - started her activism. I learned that the Black community of
Africville – formerly on the Halifax shoreline – was “bulldozed” in 1964 and its
400 residents forced into housing projects sans compensation for their
properties and possessions; that scholar Tiffany King uses “fungible” to
explain how “Black people were treated as interchangeably as seeds … to terraform
the land in order to change it for the process of colonization;” and that the
KKK received permission from Edmonton’s mayor to hold a rally at the Exhibition
Grounds in 1932 (copies of the actual letters are in the book).
The stories are eye-opening,
hopeful, and important.
THIS BOOK IS
AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
