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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

The best volumes of verse in 2008 in verse

By: Maurice Mierau

Posted: 12/28/2008 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Every year more than 150 books of poetry by Canadians are sent to this newspaper for review.

The average one of these books will sell about 300 copies. The average reader, considering these facts, might ask why there are so many books, so many publishers, and so few readers?

The answer lies in modern poetry's own self-destructive tendencies. Anyone who has been to a poetry reading in Canada in the last few decades knows that most writers are emphatically not writing for performance. Poets imitate Margaret Atwood's nasal monotone, but substitute banal self-exploration for her acid wit.

Not only is there an aversion to vocal modulation, but poetry's deep roots in oral pop culture are ignored. Everybody knows that sophisticated poetry can't rhyme or have a rhythmic pattern.

Everybody except anyone who published before the 20th century, which means 80 per cent of poetry in English. Everybody except Bob Dylan, Robert Frost and any half-decent rap artist.

As James Fenton puts it in his wonderful little book, An Introduction to English Poetry (2002), poems are "written to look well, not to sound well." This is fatal to connecting with audiences, who will never stop yearning for poems that sound good.

Of the books covered in this column, there were some that reached well beyond the salon and which readers should try.

Toronto writer Jacob Scheier's More to Keep Us Warm (ECW, 82 pages, $17), a surprise winner of the Governor-General's Literary Award this fall, manages to do self-exploration but also be funny and direct.

David O'Meara's Noble Gas, Penny Black (Brick, 70 pages, $18) works precisely and impressively with formal elements, and stays in your ear. So does Dennis Lee's YesNo (Anansi, 72 pages, $19), which almost invents its own language while addressing contemporary concerns about environmental collapse.

Elise Partridge's Chameleon Hours (Anansi, 70 pages, $19), Matt Rader's Living Things (Nightwood, 80 pages, $17), Sue Sinclair's Breaker (Brick, 96 pages, $18), Adam Getty's Repose (Nightwood, 88 pages, $17) and Sheri Benning's Thin Moon Psalm (Brick, 88 pages, $18) all deal with poetic tradition in unique and engaging ways.

Zach Wells' anthology Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets (Biblioasis, 160 pages, $20) was the year's best Canadian anthology. It reminds us how much variety is possible in this venerable Renaissance form, since everyone had the same 14-line structure to work with.

Two remarkable books not covered here were A.F. Moritz's The Sentinel (Anansi, 88 pages, $19) and Adam Sol's Jeremiah, Ohio (Anansi, 112 pages, $19).

Moritz, a Torontonian, writes lyrics that take on multiple voices, events, and ideas. The Sentinel is his 16th book, and he's published extensively in the U.S. and been a Guggenheim fellow. He was a finalist for this year's Governor-General's Award, too.

Sol's book bills itself as a novel in verse, and it alternates between the voice of a contemporary version of the biblical prophet Jeremiah, and his ordinary American companion, Bruce.

These voices are compelling in their sound because they plug into the great torrent of prophetic language that comes to us from the King James Bible. The voices are also compelling because Sol hears the profane commercial voice of America from where he writes in Sudbury, Ont.

And speaking of Americans (too often ignored by complacent Canadian poets), this column reviewed two books by U.S authors with poetic voices that are both loud and subtle. Robert Pinsky's Gulf Music (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 86 pages, $16) is a marvel, connecting the personal and political without ever having to say so. Billy Collins' latest, Ballistics (Random House, 116 pages, $28), speaks in a voice of deceptive, often hilarious simplicity.

Maurice Mierau is a Winnipeg poet and editor. His new book is Fear Not (Turnstone Press).

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 28, 2008 D0

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