“Burden”
By Douglas Burnet Smith
Published by University of Regina Press
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$19.95 (softcover) ISBN 9-780889-777729
In award-winning Canadian poet Douglas Burnet Smith’s seventeenth collection, Burden – a sparely-written account of a distant cousin’s World War I experience – I often found myself wincing. This visceral reaction’s a testament to the efficacy of the Governor General-nominated poet’s precisely-chosen words; to the bone and spirit-shattering power of war; and to this harrowing, personal story that wields the force of a novel in just fifty-nine taut pages.
The title, Burden, eludes to the seventeen-year-old British soldier, Private Herbert Burden, whom the poet’s relative, Lance Corporal Reginald Smith, befriended and fought alongside with; to the permanent weight of war on one’s psyche; and to Reg Smith’s personal burden of being one of the ten soldiers who killed Burden - a deserter suffering from PTSD - upon firing squad order.
The first four poems, written in couplets and each several pages long, are delivered from Reg Smith’s point of view from the war field or from a hospital in England or Scotland, while the final poem, “Herbert Burden,” is a one-pager told from the deserter’s perspective - almost one hundred years after his death - at the unveiling of a statue of himself in Staffordshire, England, in 2000.
What struck me from the initial poem was the poet’s spectacular ability to juxtapose the tragic and the beautiful. Section I reveals the narrator in the thick of battle in Pas-de-Calais, France (1915). Soldiers are poetically “showered in moonlight;” there are “Moths, white moths, thousands/flitting;” and dawn is “the colour of trampled grapes”. Existing within this same poem: “a clump/of mangled men;” rats in “brown waves, like the trench-/water they skirred over;” and “guts worming out of that man/cursing us from a stretcher”. These images, plus the scene of a German soldier “[pissing]/into an open mouth, a man I didn’t want to know,” underscore Burnet Smith’s literary perspicacity, and also highlight war’s inhumane nature. It’s no wonder so many of our ancestors refused to speak about their wartime experiences.
Yet it would be remiss not to acknowledge the degradation and grief so many experienced. A century away from the “Great” War, readers may be unaware of the 666 “wiped out” by chlorine smoke in Wieltje, a town the narrator and his cohorts found “cindered with men”. The dead were members of the Second Battalion of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. And regarding the child beside the “waterless fountain” … “Pigeons made special use/of the eyes”.
Of the book’s namesake, Burnet Smith writes “We aimed our guns at him, this waif,/a schoolboy who should have been/bored to death in some dismal classroom”. Burden refused a blindfold, and after the death squad incident, Smith never stopped seeing the boy. The writer cleverly reinforces this haunting - and the injustice Burden suffered - in various ways, ie: viewing “how a single cloud/will desert the others, and float off./How the other clouds/don’t seem to care”.
I’ve reviewed several books in the “Oksana Poetry & Poetics” series, and Burnet Smith’s Burden upholds the series’ tradition of greatness. Exceptional cover, too.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
“Fully Half Committed: Conversation Starters for Romantic Relationships”
By Barbara Morrison and Ed Risling
Published by Wood Dragon Books
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$19.99
ISBN 9-781989-078167
If you’ve been single and searching for a healthy new connection over the last decade or so, you’ll know that the dating and relationship landscape has changed significantly, in large part due to the popularity of online dating. With a few key strokes, finding “another fish” at the first sign of conflict or boredom is a mighty temptation for some, and short-term relationships are the new norm. Tragically, our throw-away society’s come to include people. But what about actually working on a relationship and allowing it to evolve? And why are people less likely to commit, fully and completely, today?
Professional couples’ therapists Barbara Morrison and Ed Risling address these topics and examine relationship issues like communication, curiosity, awareness, and libido differences in their book Fully Half Committed: Conversation Starters for Romantic Relationships. With sixty years of combined counselling experience, the pair – who met as students – have collaborated on “writing a book about the reoccurring themes” they see in their practices, and each short chapter addresses an issue. There are also numerous examples of how couples’ experience challenges, then progress. The oxymoronic titles refers to being “all-in – but only up to a certain point”.
The Saskatoon co-authors cite a major shift in romantic partnerships: “personal happiness now trumps relational longevity,” they write. They practice “an anxiety-tolerance approach,” rather than an “anxiety-reduction approach,” to therapy, as “tolerating anxiety is necessary for personal and relational growth”.
So why has this paradigm shift occurred? The 1960s had much to do with it, with “the wave of legal reforms” that ushered in no-fault divorces, and more financial autonomy for women. Morrison and Risling also reference the burgeoning self-help industry; the rise of syndicated TV talk shows (ie: Phil Donahue and Oprah), which shifted the focus “away from glamourous musicians and movie stars to ordinary people with everyday issues;” and our contemporary "happiness culture,” that’s reinforced by statements and beliefs like “‘I only live once’”.
Low times occur in every relationship, and this book offers readers strategies to overcome these periods. It aims to “encourage readers to decide what they want from a relationship and to consider the work they need to do, and the sacrifices they need to make, in order to achieve their goal”. Each chapter includes a tip or question readers might ask of themselves or their partners, ie: “Do I have a habit of reacting instead of reflecting?”
The writers are proponents of building fun into a relationship, and I love the idea of creating “treasure hunts, playful questionnaires, and day trips” for a partner. Another great idea was rewriting traditional – and “fundamentally impractical” - marriage vows for today’s realities, ie: “I will commit to nurturing my imagination so our life together can be interesting, alive, and have a strong heartbeat”.
The bottomline is that relationships require “constant effort” from both partners, but being intentional and doing the work “can pay huge dividends in happiness and emotional security”. Fully Half Committed covers several bases, and it’s bound to make you think.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM THE SASKATCHEWAN PUBLISHERS GROUP WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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"Sleeping Brilliant"
Written and illustrated by Jessica
Williams
Published by All Write Here Publishing
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$16.99
ISBN 978-1-9995397-7-1
Here’s what I know about Saskatchewan writer Jessica Williams: she’s originally from British Columbia; her first book, Mama’s Cloud, thoroughly impressed me with its gentle handling of depression; and she continues to prove herself as a prolific and talented writer of childrens’ books. Her latest offering, Sleeping Brilliant, delivers a delightful spin on a fairytale we all know – but may not all love, with its prince-as-saviour theme – and this time Williams has even illustrated her own clever story.
We learn from page one that Williams is going to have great fun turning this traditional tale on its crown. The “beloved” King and Queen longed for a child, and thus “adopted a charming baby girl from a nearby village”. The baby’s named Niamh – pronounced “Neev” or “Nee-iv,” which is Gaelic for “brilliant” – and the child lives up to her moniker. Upon Niamh’s arrival her parents throw a “great feast” and invite “the entire kingdom,” as one does, but of the thirteen forest fairies, only twelve receive their invitations, thanks to a “fierce wind” that magically lifts one invitation from the purple-caped messenger’s bag. Whoops.
Flying fairies dance above the smiling child’s cradle and gift the girl with unique qualities, ie: “No riddle will be too challenging for your clever thoughts” and “You shall build wonderful inventions”. (This ain’t your grandmother’s fairytale.) But what about that fairy who missed her invitation? Ah, she arrives at the feast “like a thunderstorm,” and curses the royal baby: “‘On your fifteenth birthday,’” she hissed, “‘you shall prick your finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die!’”
Fortunately, the twelfth fairy is able
to temper that curse: at fifteen the princess will not die, she’ll just “‘fall
into a deep sleep for one hundred years’”.
Without giving too much of this charming, contemporarized story away, I will say that when the prince arrives he’s greeted with a perfectly content young woman sipping hot cocoa with miniature marshmallows. She’s cosy on a window-side chair in her purple bunny slippers, and matter-of-factly asks the feather-bereted prince: “What are you doing here?” As for marriage, well the brilliant princess’s response is utterly uncharacteristic of any princess I’ve ever read about.
Will there be a happily ever after? That’s for you to learn. The surprises in this book are what make it such a joy to read, and the author-illustrator combination works so well. The playful, full-bleed illustrations of cast and castle scenes perfectly complement the upbeat tone of this story.
I hope Williams continues to create these welcome stories on a wide range of subjects. Perhaps she’ll delve into even more classic fairytales and spin them upside down to make them “fit for a generation of princesses and princes who don’t need to be rescued”. This story teaches – in a completely fun way – that one is responsible for his or her own happiness, that fate can indeed be altered, and that you never know what you’ll find at a yard sale. I’ll enjoy sharing this well-produced book.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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"Serenity Unhinged (a memoir)"
By Jim Duggleby
Published by YNWP
Review by Shelley A. Leedahl
$14.95
ISBN 9-781988-783574
As a writer myself, I’m always curious about other writers’ inspiration for their books. In his memoir Serenity Unhinged, Regina writer, editor and journalist Jim Duggleby mines the landscape of his own history – family, childhood, career – and his bright imagination for material, but the essays and articles in this fun read really owe their existence to a Regina writers’ workshop that took place between 2017 and 2019. The workshop, which included “fewer than a dozen people” at Regina’s Lifelong Learning Centre, was facilitated by Bob Juby and Ivan Millard, and was “loosely themed ‘As I Remember’”.
Duggleby has a long history with and passion for the written word. The former Saskatoon Star-Phoenix reporter professes that he “can’t recall a time when [he] didn’t love writing” in various genres, from history to futurism, and his joy and wit translate into 21 entertaining stories in this recently-released softcover with YNWP.
The author earns five stars for his captivating opening lines, ie: “Perhaps the most surprising thing about my mother’s death is that some people were saddened,” and “My father died twice.” (Interestingly, Duggleby’s pop was “the last doctor in Saskatoon to make house calls.”) Duggleby has a way of turning potentially dark recollections – and realities - into gleaming anecdotes, and this book is saturated with black humour. Of his own experience with both Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s, he writes: “The only blessing I can find is that Alzheimer’s will likely do a full system wipe on my memory before PD leaves me bedridden, incontinent, and unable to communicate with the people I can’t remember.”
Duggleby grew up with five brothers and the bustling household “took six quarts of milk daily, and five loaves of bread.” There were a few “serene moments as a family, though we didn’t trust them,” he writes. “We just don’t do serenity.”
In the story “The Mating of Chickens … or How I Became a Journalist,” the writer begins: “It’s not everyone who can land a summer job as a sex worker for a flock of a hundred or so chickens.” Humour’s also relayed in well-carved images, ie: of a fast-typing veteran reporter, who “attacked the typewriter like it was a mortal enemy” and filled the air “with the middles of the O’s, P’s and D’s, confetti cut by the smoking typewriter.”
But it’s not all frivolity here: there are some more philosophical observations I found myself nodding in agreement with, ie: “It’s odd the way life picks a direction for you. You get settled into a version of yourself and then, for the hell of it, without so much as a pause for permission, a new version of yourself takes over.” Yes, indeed.
Mostly, however, this book is a romp, and I found myself chuckling at the occasionally grim but sometimes-you’ve-just-got-to-laugh situations, ie: this realistic portrayal of a nursing home: “Old people in motorized wheelchairs raced back and forth on missions known only to them.”
Duggleby’s literary self-portrait is colourful. Serenity Unhinged is candid, satirical, and entertaining.
THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM
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