12°c Overcast
17°c Cloudy with showers
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
POETRY: Playful poems make for seriously stellar collection
SUSAN Holbrook is so hilarious! In Joy Is So Exhausting (Coach House, 85 pages, $17), Holbrook is so dedicated to playfulness we can almost believe these poems don't take themselves too seriously. Which is to say this is a seriously stellar collection.
Holbrook's writing is powered by a joy for language, life, laughter. This Windsor poet is wired to the poetic texts embedded in her everyday encounters: home inspection reports, guides to writing English essays, and petsmart.com are translated into poem-guides, joyful, comedic, moody messages to lighten the wary.
In Nursery, Holbrook transcends the left-right breastfeeding experience from monotony: "Left: Trace pictograph of an elk in the fine veins on your temple. ... Right: Your smells make us embarrassed and sorry for the people around us until we hear the group ahead is visiting Ontario to hunt."
And from Good Egg Bad Seed, Holbrook's personality poem-test: "You are a binary thinker or you are and you aren't."
***
Release your thinking habits to Galician poet Chus Pato's m-Talá (Buschek/Shearsman, 105 pages, $17) and by page 96 you just might sense your synapses firing new connections.
Montreal poet Erin Moure translates to English Pato's mad assault of image, voice, lyric and logic into a celestial pirouette of unencumbered thought. Here is Pato's "modern lyric revolution": "not an experience of self or discovery of nature or sensibility, but A NEW POLITICAL EXPERIENCE OF THE SENSORY or A SENSORY EXPERIENCE OF THE POLITICAL."
Pato makes apparitions of boundaries. Times, cultures, myths, genders, voices, both human and non-human, are arranged dimensionless, discordant and screaming. Verbosity reaches a speed that becomes speechlessness as author dissolves in "self-cryogenation", a "non-place."
Most interesting is how Pato so imaginatively abandons the singular. Where else have mermaid skeletons, Eurydice and Marilyn Monroe all shared the same breath?
***
Harmonics (Freehand Books, 96 pages, $17,, the debut collection by New Brunswick poet-musician Jesse Patrick Ferguson, offers the romantic perspective of a young man in love with life.
Ferguson is an energized, clear-eared poet with ground to cover. Swooning the messy, ironic, dark and hopeful details of life, Ferguson composes the ballads of fathers, lovers, poets, sons, students and environmentalists.
With strumming momentum the poems reach brevity, often in strength, but sometimes in exasperation, as if there's too much to say, and so ending too soon.
Regardless, Ferguson writes with intimacy and insight. His energetic soundplays harmonize with an abundance of often humorous wisdom: "If you take in too much neighbour, / yield otherness a foothold, / then your memories might not recognize you in the dark."
***
Edmonton poet-essayist Shawna Lemay's fifth book of poems, Red Velvet Forest (The Muses' Company, $127 pages, $17), is a deeply personal quest into the secretive, mysterious, magical, key-locked inner silences of a woman making sense of her art and life.
Tracking the dead ends of suburbia through to the dream forests of childhood, Lemay's "ink trails" are "an enticing undergrowth."
These are poems that read with an intense privacy, as diary entries, raw and loose, written as if never to be seen.
Interestingly, the book ends with a personal essay discussing the poetic-thinking behind the work. Here Lemay begins to make the connections that seem to be lost in the poems themselves: "I can't help thinking of that magic of being seen and not heard.... There is some connection to the quietness I now feel entering me, and the quiet that children know as a terrain."
Jennifer Still is a poet living in Winnipeg.
Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition September 27, 2009 B7
More Books
- Back to Top
- Return to Books
More Books
(1 of 13 articles for today)
Grant helps Bergen write new novel
1:00 AM 0Need, poverty, greed, love and grace come together in a new novel-in-progress by Winnipeg's David Bergen.
Bergen has received a major ...
Poll
Most Popular Books
- Manila officials angry over Brown's portrayal
- Anne Murray memoir blows the lid off image of fresh-faced singer
- Nigerian novel critiques U.S. attitudes toward race
- Winnipeg Bestsellers
- Political stories entertaining, thought provoking
- 'Inferno' by Dan Brown tops Maclean's fiction list
- Tommy Douglas biography tells 'kind half' of his story
- Hookup culture killing romance with sex
- CBC's Lang writes about innovation
- Life of Pi author Martel hears from Obama
- Families seek apology, ways to prevent other deaths
- Nigerian novel critiques U.S. attitudes toward race
- Anne Murray memoir blows the lid off image of fresh-faced singer
- First edition 'Harry Potter' book, with JK Rowling's notes and drawings, sold for $228,000
- PAPER CHASE: Give grad the gift of penny-pinching
- Manila officials angry over Brown's portrayal
- Political stories entertaining, thought provoking
- CHILDREN'S BOOKS: First novel tribute to power of books
- Review: 'And the Mountains Echoed,' Khaled Hosseini's new book, is another tear-jerker
- Penguin Canada promotes Khaled Hosseini's new book with the Echo Project
- Anne Murray memoir blows the lid off image of fresh-faced singer
- Drunk Mom covers booze, but not the baby
- A long, dangerous road: Refugees share their journeys from Africa to Manitoba
- Cosmologist fights to bring real time back into physics
- Families seek apology, ways to prevent other deaths
- Life of Pi author Martel hears from Obama
- In the end, they knew what they were fighting against
- Nigerian novel critiques U.S. attitudes toward race
- Hookup culture killing romance with sex
- Mommy drinks because you cry!
- Ultimate fighter learns from fear
- Families seek apology, ways to prevent other deaths
- A killer of a day really may be one
- Nigerian novel critiques U.S. attitudes toward race
- First edition 'Harry Potter' book, with JK Rowling's notes and drawings, sold for $228,000
- Ultimate fighter learns from fear
- Families seek apology, ways to prevent other deaths
- Life of Pi author Martel hears from Obama
- Corporate control main problem with GMOs
- A killer of a day really may be one
- Less is more: Danish chef Trine Hahnemann promotes sustainable, seasonal eating
- Mommy drinks because you cry!
- SUSPENSE: Original European sleuth deserves wider audience
- Pat Conroy memoir about his father, 'The Death of Santini,' coming out in October
- Fascinating story of Canadian-U.S. differences
Ads by Google
You can comment on most stories on winnipegfreepress.com. You can also agree or disagree with other comments. All you need to do is register and/or login and you can join the conversation and give your feedback.
Have Your Say
New to commenting? Check out our Frequently Asked Questions.
The Winnipeg Free Press does not necessarily endorse any of the views posted. By submitting your comment, you agree to our Terms and Conditions. These terms were revised effective April 16, 2010.