{"id":106,"date":"2011-03-29T17:16:17","date_gmt":"2011-03-29T17:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/test\/?page_id=106"},"modified":"2012-01-31T22:43:26","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T22:43:26","slug":"george-elliot-clarke","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/writings\/reviews\/george-elliot-clarke","title":{"rendered":"George Elliot Clarke"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poetry and Sundry Reviews<\/strong><\/h4>\n
George Elliott Clarke<\/h6>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yusuf and the Lotus Flower<\/h1>\n

by Doyali Farah Islam
\nBuschek, 2011
\n$18<\/h6>\n

The Secret Signature of Things<\/h1>\n

by Eve Joseph
\nLondon, ON: Brick, 2010
\n96 pp. $19<\/h6>\n

Yusuf and the Lotus Flower<\/em> enacts a fine debut for Doyali Farah Islam, beginning with the nice cover illustration and ending in verses that skirt despair to encounter rapture. Her poems are religious, but her expressions of reverence never sound rhetorical.<\/p>\n

Islam\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Islam is open to Judeo-Christian thought as well as Hindu, Jain, Sikh, Buddhist, and yogic orientations. Her orthodoxy is, well, heterodoxy.<\/p>\n

Her poetry fuses Emily Dickinson (1830-86) and Allen Ginsberg (1926-97). There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ecstasy in finding the divine, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153shit\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (her term) on earth \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in the messiness of relationships as well as in the squalor of socio-economic inequality.<\/p>\n

Born to Bangladeshi parents, Islam has been educated in London, UK, and in Toronto, where she grew up, and where she was, I confess, a student of mine in 2010-2011.\u00c2\u00a0 (Lest I be accused of favouritism, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll point out that Islam won Contemporary Verse 2<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 35th Anniversary Contest).<\/p>\n

The poems are meditations, and may be classed as part-Beat and part-Metaphysical. But there is also undeniable romanticism: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I have fallen through something, \/ gouged a hole in a stable dam, \/ punctured murals of pastel skies and \/ watercolour\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d sea.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d If the latter images are a tad florid, the poem opens with powerful simplicity: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153thrust, \/ a tiny key \/ into rusted heart-lock. \/\/ dig and twist.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

These lyrics are about seeking the peace (even a piece) of the Divine: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153once more, you too may return \/ with clarity to perfume the very core \/ of the seed within your soul, \/ the essence of which \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 \/ makes your face an open blossom\u00e2\u20ac\u201dawesome, \/ unfolded lotus gleaming the sombre night, \/ come through the mud, come through the shit, \/ ever intoxicating and haunting in beauty.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

The challenge in drafting ethereal lyrics is, of course, to make them seem more real than ether. Islam succeeds most when she connects her spirituality to what is tactile, visible, sensuous: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I stand in earthiness recollecting \/ autumn in a Canadian wood: \/ burning, burning\u00e2\u20ac\u201dalive in the burning; \/ churning, my heart particles saw \/ destruction and creation unfold; \/ garnet, fire, opal, amber, gold, \/ steel to copper to silver to gold.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Yes, to see heaven most clearly, it helps to be looking up from dirt: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153weight of mud on flesh and blood: \/ I was a pig hampered by sludge, never lifting \/ my head or eyes; gleaning trough-feed and scraps; for years, fattening myself up \/ for another cowardly death.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Indeed, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153no jewel shines with mud caked on; \/ no spirit lamp guides with mud caked on.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 One hears here an echo of the post-World-War-II imprisoned, chastened, Yank bard Ezra Pound (1885-1972).\u00c2\u00a0 His Pisan Cantos<\/em> (1948) also acknowledge that one must pass through hell-on-earth to achieve any kind of heavenly peace. Islam is a poet of capacious heart and sagacious mind. She has started well. To go further, as she will, she must hone her verse, so that each line, each image, each stanza, contributes inexorably to the spiritual revelation that she wishes to announce.<\/p>\n

Eve Joseph\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Secret Signature of Things<\/em> is her sophomore collection. Raised in North Vancouver, she has travelled widely, but now lives in Victoria, B.C. Though their joint appearance here is coincidental, Joseph pairs well with Islam, for she is also interested in the notion of epiphany \u00e2\u20ac\u201c of sudden, startling revelation. Joseph\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poem for the martyred Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) is a case in point: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In one translation of Akhmatova \/ a few early snowflakes blow in the wind \/ \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcbarely, barely\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \/\/ In another\u00e2\u20ac\u201d \/ same wind, same early flakes\u00e2\u20ac\u201donly \/ \u00e2\u20ac\u02dclightly, lightly.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Joseph concludes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It matters that \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 \/ lips that barely brushed hers \/ were not the ones she lightly kissed.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Joseph\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eye sees the numinous in all: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the seats of the train station \/\/ are worn and polished like pews \/ and the streets occupied \/ with the commerce of old acquaintance.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

In a prose poem, she declares, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I want to ask poetry where it was for all those years \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 when I traded my Penguin classics for True Crime stories?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Finally, she wants to know \u00e2\u20ac\u0153where the birds went when they disappeared and how it was they reappeared in cursive loops like a new language above the daffodil fields one afternoon in late March.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Well, amen.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Bridges Over the Saint John River<\/h1>\n
by Nela Rio & M. Travis Lane (eds.)
\nFredericton, NB: Broken Jaw, 2011
\n143 pp. $21<\/h6>\n

Glorious Light: The Stained Glass of Fredericton<\/h1>\n

by John Leroux
\nKentville, NS: Gaspereau, 2011
\n160 pp. $35<\/h6>\n

Fredericton is vital to two new works. Bridges Over the Saint John River<\/em> gathers English and Spanish poets. John Leroux\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Glorious Light<\/em> is a rapturous and lovely depiction of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Stained Glass of Fredericton.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Fredericton is New Brunswick\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s capital, and it houses an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153extraordinary\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Chapter of the Academia Iberoamericana de Poesia. So editors Nela Rio and M. Travis Lane, Hispanic and Anglo, unite poets from these two languages (plus Jo-Anne Elder, an Acadienne), offering translations of one tongue into the other. Thus, they build cultural \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Bridges over the Saint John River,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d i.e., \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Los puentes del Rio San Juan.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Those who doubt \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or hate \u00e2\u20ac\u201c multiculturalism need to read books like this one. Every anthology of a Canadian sub-culture or minority language reminds us of how similar we are \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not only as Canucks, but, simply, as humans. Even so, the merit of Los puentes\/Bridges depends on the poems. Good.<\/p>\n

Editor Lane (ex USA), translated by Gabriela Etcheverry, racks up fine images: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Frost chimneys like inukshuks \/ judder together, a buried horde \/ streaked like moss agate or mutton jade, \/ their melt-milk scumming the silty bay\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d One sees her affinity to Liz Bishop (1911-79) and Peggy Avison (1918-2007). Julio Torres-Recinos (ex El Salvador), translated by Alicia Zavala Galvan, views winter as an imprisoning season: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Winter arrives \/ and the soul \/ begins to close in on itself \/ like a cabbage, \/ layer by layer \/ our heart \/ begins to shrink \/ and not even the tiny feathers \/ that float in the sky \/ manage to make it \/ wake up.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Englished by Edith Jonsson-Devillers, Lady Rojas Benavente (ex Peru), is flamboyant in her verse, deliberately careless of what others might think of what she should say and how she should say it: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ice cold Friday between bluish and grey. \/ Storm you are leaving \/ taking with you what happened and hurt us \/ what broke us and darkened us.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She is a discovery. Translated by Natalia Crespo, Broken Jaw publisher Joe Blades delivers a Beat anthem: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153because maple syrup fiddleheads and lobster are such good food.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Jo-Anne Elder, hispanicized by Sophie M. Lavoie, has a mystical turn: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Poetry is self: \/ the heart\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s raw and bloody noisiness\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Nela Rio (ex Argentina), anglicized by Elizabeth Gamble Miller, writes of another \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Saint John,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d i.e. San Juan, Puerto Rico. Like Elder, she is mystical: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Only the light transgresses \/ the secluded murmur of the landscape. \/ Now, in the image, \/ she has revealed it with unknown brilliance.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

From poetry, we turn to glass, i.e. Glorious Light: The Stained Glass of Fredericton<\/em>. To state what is visible, the book is beautiful to the point of magnificent. (Kudos to Gaspereau Press for printing so many full-colour photographs so affordably).<\/p>\n

The author, Leroux, is a righteous enthusiast, reminding us, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153light is tangible and magical\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c at once \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and these properties are dynamically present in stained glass. He also believes that Fredericton is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153undeniably\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the home of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcsome of the finest stained glass in Canada.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d One trusts Leroux\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recherch\u00c3\u00a9 insights, and his clear prose is that of an amateur (one who knows and loves his subject); his photos are the gems of an artist. Allen Bentley\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s introduction, despite its academic pitch, sounds as poetic as the illustrations. Bentley accents the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153remarkably heterogeneous nature\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of Fredericton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stained glass highlights, and Leroux \u00e2\u20ac\u201c an architect and art historian \u00e2\u20ac\u201c documents this fact.<\/p>\n

He begins with the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153hand-painted windows\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of Holy Trinity Anglican Church \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the oldest stained-glass\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the province, then takes on the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153symphony of stained glass\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that is St. Anne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, an Anglican Parish Church that also represents \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the finest Gothic Revival church of its size and kind in North America.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153boyhood home of Canadian poet Bliss Carman (1861-1929),\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is noted for the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pink and yellow quarry tile transom and sidelights surrounding the front door.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It is pretty, and likely inspirational for young Bliss. But he was not \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the father of English Canadian literature.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Nova Scotia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Thomas Chandler Haliburton [1796-1865] has a more substantial claim to that title, as do several others). One should buy this book for its superb pix and glazier commentary. There, Leroux is always right.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Forge<\/h1>\n
by Jan Zwicky
\nKentville, NS: Gaspereau Press, 2011
\n80 pp. $20<\/h6>\n

Prison Songs and Storefront Poetry<\/h1>\n

by Joe Blades
\nVictoria, BC: Ekstasis Editions, 2010
\n77 pp. $22<\/h6>\n

Jan Zwicky is a philosopher, musician, and an award-winning poet who lives on B.C.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Quadra Island. Forge, <\/em>her new book, does take the mystical turn that Tim Lilburn notes in his blurb. Treating sex and loss \u00e2\u20ac\u201c of love and of life, it deals with adult preoccupations (the pleasures and perils of family, career, and trying to plot the future).<\/p>\n

Astutely, Lilburn identifies Zwicky\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lyrics with Spanish mystics. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not wrong; there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s introspection, a hesitant meditation, born from the fact that our mortal love doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t transcend the grave and may not even survive unto its threshold. You \u00e2\u20ac\u201c we \u00e2\u20ac\u201c hold desperately onto offspring, lover, sibling, parent, but time cheats us of them all, sooner or later: Death claims us first \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or them<\/em>; or they stop loving us or we stop loving them. Zwicky says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Even knowing what you love \/ is no salvation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In The Cantos<\/em>, after all his politics, prejudices, and pain, Ezra Pound (1885-1972) concludes that pity and charity matter most. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a like lustration in Zwicky, who writes, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen \/ some women do it. Love.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tenderness we cannot teach perhaps \/ until we die\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat leaving from which \/ there is no return.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Zwicky refers to philosophers and composers, liberally, in her titles and in her epigraphs. Like poets, they are attentive to silence and echo, the silence of thought and the echo of one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s breath and one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heart in tune with another\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or others. But the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153forge\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of empathy, of union, is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153love.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

These poems are prayers cast in the shadow of splittings. One poem treats \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Your own death, lifting from your past \/ to meet you\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Another \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the beautiful \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Song of Farewell\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (so reminiscent of Leonard Cohen) \u00e2\u20ac\u201c tells us, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Love, beloved, hollowed out my heart. \/ It took my eyes, my hands, my voice \/ and left me glad. Sorrow \/ buried them beneath the gateway where you stood.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Zwicky knows Greek thought and German song, but Forge<\/em> doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forget Canadian poets \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Leonard Cohen, John Thompson, Don McKay, and Robert Bringhurst (the latter pair are directly named).<\/p>\n

Forge<\/em> evokes another poet for me. Read it in tandem with the latter volumes of the late Ralph Gustafson. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an uncanny similarity of tone, style, and form that, if intended, is a splendid homage, and if unintended, seems the echo of a previous maestro finding fresh expression in the work of the newer.<\/p>\n

Joe Blade\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s is a singular voice, an extension of Jack Kerouac to poetry. Indeed, in Prison Songs and Storefront Poetry<\/em>, he is a prosaic Beat, much more in sympathy with the Kerouac of Mexico City Blues<\/em> (1959) than with the Allen Ginsberg of Howl <\/em>(1956). So, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fitting that Blades is published by Ekstasis Editions, of Victoria, B.C., the closest thing to a Beat publisher like City Light Books (of San Francisco) that English Canada has.\u00c2\u00a0 (Blades even mentions City Lights in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153prison song 07.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d)<\/p>\n

In Mexico City Blues<\/em>, Kerouac drafts \u00e2\u20ac\u0153242 choruses\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c some spontaneous, jazzy, typewriter riffs. In turn, Blades give us 30 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153prison songs\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and 24 works of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153storefront poetry,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d all spur-of-the-moment, helter-skelter pages (not poems, per se<\/em>, but pages) scrolled onto and then yanked from a vintage typewriter.\u00c2\u00a0 These pieces have been pounded out \u00e2\u20ac\u201c on the sort of keyboard that makes your fingers hurt \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as quick as the writer can think a thought to type.<\/p>\n

The poems look like skinny columns, but their content is random. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s magic and immediacy in such alchemy, but the result is more cast-offs than gold pieces.\u00c2\u00a0 Few poems are worth their page-length or word-count. One stand-out is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153prison song 18,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d where thoughtful diction allows for a poignant genealogy to emerge:\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153not me \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 the offspring of dirt \/ farmers and fishers far from gulag.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The proverb is earned: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153each and everyone \/ of us change the world \/\/ by being born and living \/ however wherever not why.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153prison song 28\u00e2\u20ac\u009d actually works like song: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153for this life I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve thrown away \/ there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing acceptable to say.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153storefront poetry 24\u00e2\u20ac\u009d also escapes mere cataloguing of incident to get at personal emotion: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I have wasted my mind for countless \/ days and nights in the kitchens of \/ others for their profit and leisure \/ in the bottles and tins of oblivion.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The moral?\u00c2\u00a0 Even Beat-ific poems need a lil discipline.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

At First, Lonely<\/h1>\n
By Tanya Davis
\nCharlottetown, PEI: Acorn Press, 2011
\n64 pp. $18<\/h6>\n

A Life of Water<\/h1>\n

By Carey Bray<\/h6>\n

Tanya Davis is a singer\/songwriter who is also Halifax\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Poet Laureate for 2011-2012.\u00c2\u00a0 She has won the CBC National Poetry Face-Off twice, and so her real debut in poetry has been as a performer, not so much as an author. Her first collection, At First, Lonely<\/em>, transfers her finally \u00e2\u20ac\u201c finely \u00e2\u20ac\u201c from the stage to the page.<\/p>\n

The pieces are lyrics, word-songs, usually pages long (but the pages utilize a lot of white space, so poems are actually a bit shorter than they seem), with the meanderings and insights of heart-felt, thoughtful conversation. Reading Davis is a bit like sitting in Tim\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, overhearing someone tell of heartbreak or halitosis or hitchhiking, with a down-to-earth vocabulary, intimacy, and, here and there, a striking image or idea. Or it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more like listening to coffeehouse Leonard Cohen or fancy-free Joni Mitchell: There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a folksy, Beat persona at play, charitable and disingenuous, charming and disarming.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fragility Understandable\u00e2\u20ac\u009d flirts with clich\u00c3\u00a9 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Because your bones crack \/ and break \/ because your heart beats within a cage \/ and cages are to be escaped\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but ends nicely: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When other houses become lanky skeletons \/ dust settling \/ remember your own \/ heart in a collection of bones.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The poem moves like a song, and is moving, especially if read aloud just so. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s unfair to quibble with the conceit \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the heart is in a cage, eh? But that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cage\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is actually protection for an essential and vulnerable organ. How does \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or should \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one escape it?<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153How to be alone\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is another lyric, as chatty as a newspaper column (blush) or as catty as an editorial, that advises, among other things, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re happy in your head then solitude is blessed and \/ alone is okay.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a long bumper sticker. Better lines are these: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But alone is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless \/ and lonely is healing if you make it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fridge magnet.<\/p>\n

Pleasant it is to wade through platitudes and discover sudden, searing incandescence: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I have daydreamed about the days our skin was first waking \/ and of the love we made then \/ like we were scorched earth and it was raining.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Davis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s showstopper poem is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153To Mary Magdalene who wept.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a feminist, womanist revision of the Gospels, and it rocks \u00e2\u20ac\u201c if with casual blasphemy: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The man wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t clean until you made him.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Davis imagines that Mary M. offers J.C. this \u00e2\u20ac\u0153defiant rebuttal\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Seriously Jesus, \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 feel this \/ a human heart beating \/ within the chest of a woman with whom you are sleeping\u00c2\u00a0 \/ you are leaving and so, of course, \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 I am weeping.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d One could wonder about what other heart that Mary could have, if not human.<\/p>\n

But, never mind. These are poems to enjoy \u00e2\u20ac\u201c their simplicity, sympathy, and wistful nonsense.\u00c2\u00a0 Whatever is not to like is just cuddly.\u00c2\u00a0 In a sense, Davis transforms the opening of the old CBC T.V. show, The Friendly Giant<\/em> (1958-85) \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which talked about chairs to curl up in \u00e2\u20ac\u201c into comfy, adult-oriented radio lyrics.<\/p>\n

Carey Bray\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s A Life of Water<\/em> is a self-published debut volume, though his bio says that sections of the book \u00e2\u20ac\u0153have been published and awarded.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The Wolfville, N.S., author has filled his volume with photos, supporting his interest in meditating on family, history, and geography. According to one poem and photo, Bray is related to Maritimes-born Prime Minister R.B. Bennett (1870-1947): \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Second cousin. Tired eyes meet. \/ No betrayal of recognition. \/ No hint of our blood.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Bray\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lyrics are imagist epigrams. He packs a lot into relatively narrow confines.\u00c2\u00a0 See \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Escape\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Without consent we eloped. \/ Creating a new Moncton. \/\/ The two of us in a car. \/ The car\u00e2\u20ac\u201dOh, that car\u00e2\u20ac\u201d \/\/ That navy \u00e2\u20ac\u212274 Torino. \/ The one that crashed. \/\/ A vehicle for change. \/ Ended in a canal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Bray\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s style \u00e2\u20ac\u201c picturesque, pithy, and pointed \u00e2\u20ac\u201c reminds one of the U.S. poet Carl Sandburg, who also had an eye for succinct illustration and an ear for talk. Check this Battle of the Atlantic lyric: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Forget this Crusade on the waves \/ the tired, busted night, \/ painted in cracked, North Atlantic blacks. \/\/ Forget subtle crushes \/ of dreams over-washed by swaths, \/ deep cerulean blue. \/\/ Forget foam fingers \/ slamming HMCS sides, \/ cradling young skulls, dipped softly in brine.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Bray is \u00e2\u20ac\u201c like Davis \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a young(er) poet deserving of admiration and attention. One also applauds his effort to explore all the resources of the art of poetry \u00e2\u20ac\u201c without apology, and also, in reality, quite oblivious to applause.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

wild horses<\/h1>\n
by rob mclennan
\nEdmonton, AB: University of Alberta Press, 2010
\n86 pp. $20<\/h6>\n

Disturbing Comforter<\/h1>\n

by Janet M. Manuel
\nErser & Pond, 2011
\n100 pp. $10<\/strong><\/h6>\n

Ottawa bard Rob McLennan practices a poetics indebted to Vancouver poet George Bowering\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s TISH-borne experiments with space, breath, vernacular, and a casual style that is, yet, taut with ideas. wild horses<\/em> reflects the year, 2007-08, that mclennan (he prefers miniscule letters) spent as a writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Alberta\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s capital spurs on his musing.<\/p>\n

One stupid criticism of Canadian poets is that, because we hail from Ecum Secum or Moose Jaw, Come-By-Chance or Kamloops, we gotta be rankly provincial \u00e2\u20ac\u201c i.e. parochial. This critique overlooks the fact that our provinces are cosmopolitan, so that Canadian poets, regardless of locality, speak to polyphonic and multicultural reality, or, the world. A.M. Klein\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poetry proves this point, but so does mclennan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.<\/p>\n

In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153poem for west edmonton mall,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d amid \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mirror lights \/ & whistle flash \/\/ a colour coded establishment; bodies drop \/ amusements pace,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and there is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the replicated soul; santa maria\/\/ raising top from plastic; wooden birth \/\/ or fa\u00c3\u00a7ade down the boulevard \/\/ bombay sapphire gin, the taste \/, colonial \/\/ what you cant together reach \/\/ a slip of bill.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Here is poetry of sinuous discontinuity, of phrases and puns and hit-and-miss punctuation, and the reader must fill in the deliberate gaps in sense. But the lyric yet points to a world of commerce, exploitation, and titillation, apparent in the Edmonton mall, but also extending well beyond.<\/p>\n

In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a short walk into exile,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d mclennan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s persona wonders, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I am not long, my self-imposed; if I am twinned, \/ or restless gone \/\/ if this my paris, my new new york \/\/ what more you, skin?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d When one wanders to a new place, if only from Ottawa to Edmonton, is there also a new state of being, of inhabiting a new skin? Like questioning occurs in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153map of edmonton (prelude)\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the green river snakes \/\/ does any traveller risk \/ becoming foreign to those \/\/ in his own lands? \/ his own?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Whether one moves to one place or through another, or stakes a claim, one is still privy to (potential) alienation.<\/p>\n

In mclennan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s verses, superficially simple statements disjointed by omissions and disrupted by space, yield endless, nuanced complexity. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s great beauty in this approach, but also peril: Many poems are so condensed that they become dense opaque \u00e2\u20ac\u201c due to all their porous gaps.<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153After Jack Spicer\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is full of moments where one thinks, I-guess-I-had-to-have-been-there: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a seriality, then \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 remark \/ upon both houses \/\/ trading in \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 a mud lark \/ spinning wheels a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dctransmit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 \/\/ sense a swallow whispers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In this Ph.D.-poetry, any grounded sense of Edmonton evaporates. Even so, wild horses shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t keep you away from wild horses<\/em>. Catch-as-catch-can.<\/p>\n

Janet M. Manuel lives in Summerville, Nova Scotia, on the Hants Shore. Her debut collection, Disturbing Comforter<\/em>, is her \u00e2\u20ac\u0153life\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (to date, one should add), and offers meditations on the Other, a.k.a. God, and the workings, as she views them, of Providence in her life. These lyrics are religious, or, rather, faithful to the idea of an ineffable Being that the poet craves to reach, to touch, to love. Yes, these are unabashedly metaphysical poems resembling those of a sister Canadian poet, Margaret Avison (1918-2007), whose prize-winning, gently Christian lyrics were published originally by Nova Scotia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Lancelot Press.<\/p>\n

Manuel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fusion of the everyday and the miraculous is ecstatic: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In the night \/ he comes to me, ravishing, \/ chaste but longing\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 \/\/ why does he come to me? It is a torment a sweet torment and he has told me too much, \/ shown me too much for a frail frame quaking with the weight of knowing. \/\/ I want to run into the desert to sing not go to bed and sleep in flannel sheets and worry \/ of daily bread.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Manuel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poems run wild with real feeling: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I am always stuck between, between, between \/ other images \/ of best being \/\/ I will wait, I guess \/ for the grown image to \/ catch up to the one running behind.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a delight to read. However, in future volumes, she should strive to prune her verbiage, hone her lines, while keeping the eye-opening, pulse-racing, heart-stopping honesty: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153our differences crumble into dust.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Bishop: Nova Scotia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Home-Made\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Poet<\/h1>\n
by Sandra Barry <\/strong>
\nHalifax, NS: Nimbus, 2011
\n122 pp. $16<\/h6>\n

In Elizabeth Bishop: Nova Scotia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Home-Made\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Poet<\/em>, Halifax poet and scholar Sandra Barry reclaims Pulitzer Prize-winning, U.S.-born poet Elizabeth Bishop (1911-79) as Nova Scotia\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153unofficial\u00e2\u20ac\u009d poet-laureate. Indeed, Bishop\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s formative seasons were spent there, in Great Village, and are recalled evocatively, lovingly, in several of Bishop\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nostalgic, mature poems and memoir-based stories. In her last decade, after a failed romance in Brazil, but while teaching at Harvard University, Bishop returned frequently to Nova Scotia, and, in May 1979, half a year before she died, she received an honorary doctorate from Dalhousie University.<\/p>\n

In her chatty, breezy, picture-packed rendition of Bishop\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life, Barry (who has devoted two decades to researching Bishop\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Nova Scotian roots), sets out the facts of Bishop\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bio \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the premature death of her father, her mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s self-committal to the Nova Scotia mental asylum, Bishop\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s New England and Nova Scotian education, her travels, her small but exquisite canon, the poet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s profound but closeted Lesbianism, and the seeming suicide of her Brazilian lover \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as proper touchstones.<\/p>\n

Yet, given that Bishop\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life was defined by the deaths of parents, grandparents, other beloved relatives, mentors, and her Brazilian partner, the touchstones are practically tombstones. Barry seeks here to resurrect the prime inspirations for Bishop\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s art, and argues that the few years of her upbringing in Great Village, and the lore, arts, and acts of her maternal relatives there, especially, defined the poet that Bishop became.<\/p>\n

The bio begins with Barry conjuring up Bishop at her typewriter in 1952: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Smoke from her cigarette wreaths her head. The ice in the gin and tonic she sips has long since melted. The words tumble out, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcA scream, the echo of a scream, hangs over that Nova Scotian village\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It is a Gothic \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or film-noir \u00e2\u20ac\u201c moment: The revelation of a female ghost \u00e2\u20ac\u201c like Daphne Du Maurier\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Rebecca or Margaret Atwood\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Susanna Moodie. Surely Bishop haunts Barry as much her own locked-away mother haunted Bishop. But the American poet is also only a spectral presence in Canadian letters, a fact that Barry wishes to amend.<\/p>\n

To domesticate Bishop, to claim her as a homespun Nova Scotian, Bishop is, for Barry, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Elizabeth,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which is how the poet is addressed here, as if she were a close friend, confidante, or relative. The intent is to personalize the poet, but the tone seems like treacle: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Our sense of ourselves emerges from everyday experiences\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6, and, as Elizabeth says \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6, our own dreams, memories, imaginations \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and from art.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d A split with a girlfriend is justified this way: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Severing from Suzanne was necessary\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This Dr. Phil-ism rings false.\u00c2\u00a0 The same is true of this clich\u00c3\u00a9: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Elizabeth was \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 desperate to keep her emotional train from derailing and putting her own life in jeopardy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Too, on occasion, Barry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s judgment is exaggerated or wrong: A voyage to Newfoundland is cast as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Elizabeth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first real trip off the continent,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a notion that violates geography. Barry is an excellent scholar, and this book is chock-full of findings (such as the note that Bishop misheard \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Muir\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Manure\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). But the folksy approach renders the text a kind of rustic, tourist guide produced by an enthusiast.<\/p>\n

But Barry is a poet, and frequently turns in sentences of pith and power: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153By the early eighteenth century, the Bulmers ploughed the fields they once had ruled.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Later, we read that Bishop\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153temperament made what is often a passing phase of youthful experimenting into a permanent condition: alcoholism.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Bishop\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s South American love is nicely described: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a vibrant, restless, beautiful woman with an underlying, progressive, medical condition.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

A crucial insight is that, while the United States has every right to claim Bishop as a native daughter, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Canada and Brazil can also lay strong claims to Elizabeth Bishop, who was one of the few truly Pan-American poets of the twentieth century.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

However, the Canadian and Brazilian \u00e2\u20ac\u0153claims have been slower to realize.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 True:\u00c2\u00a0 nations tend to resist claiming non-citizens \u00e2\u20ac\u201c unless they take out citizenship. Barry may want to document now Bishop\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s engagements with (Atlantic) Canadian writers.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Swedish Sensationsfilms:\u00c2\u00a0 A Clandestine History of Sex, Thrillers, and Kicker Cinema<\/h1>\n
by Daniel Ekeroth
\nBrooklyn, NY: Bazillion Points, 2011
\n240 pp. $23<\/h6>\n

And See What Happens: The Journey Poems<\/h1>\n

by Ursula Vaira
\nHalfmoon Bay, BC: Caitlin Press, 2011
\n112 pp. $17<\/h6>\n

Swedish Sensationsfilms:\u00c2\u00a0 A Clandestine History of Sex, Thrillers, and Kicker Cinema<\/em>, by Daniel Ekeroth (translated by Magnus Henriksson), is, superficially, an irrelevant book. Most of us will never see most of these films, and Ekeroth makes clear, in his reviews, that many deserve the oblivion that is reserved for trash, even if they are sometimes peculiarly alluring or enthrallingly appalling.<\/p>\n

What makes Swedish Sensationsfilms<\/em> a valuable read is the catchy prose of Ekeroth, who is an expert on Swedish rock bands as well as films, and who writes with the gusto and clarity of a fan trying to explain why one film is worthy, even if it exploits nudity and torture, and another is too sleazy to touch or too crazy to puzzle through. His commentaries may be more entertaining than are some of the films, and, reader beware, his prose is as frank as the flicks that he either acclaims or defames.<\/p>\n

Ekeroth canvasses almost 300 Swedish features, made between 1951 and 1993, that revel in shock and schlock, most of which were highly criticized and censored, at home, and only a few of which attained international prestige. The sensationsfilms delighted in exploring taboo subjects and twisted characters via explosive plots. Subjects included \u00e2\u20ac\u0153street punks, sadistic mobsters, space aliens, unruly housewives, ruthless drug pushers, bloodthirsty ninjas, teen temptresses, lingonberry cowboys (the Swedish version of so-called spaghetti Westerns),\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and a host of bearded, Scandinavian creeps, Don Juan-wanna be rockers, and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153drunken Vikings.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Given such vivid material, it is excellent that Ekeroth and publisher include images from or about the movies that he discusses.\u00c2\u00a0 There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s practically one photo or more per film, so the book is as lavish visually as it is highly coloured in prose style.<\/p>\n

Ekeroth makes the point that the most acclaimed Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman, also made a distinguished sensationsfilm, namely, The Virgin Spring<\/em> (1960), a rape-revenge story that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153earned Oscar, Golden Globe, and Cannes awards.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Ekeroth describes a less worthy flick, Joseph Sarno\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s The Farmhouse Girl<\/em> (1978), as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153probably the most notorious film in this book within the confines of Sweden,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for its wide release ensured that most Swedes absorbed its depiction of naughty, naked rubes \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a soundtrack built around very heavy accordions.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d However, there are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153flaws in the dialect department, as the supple country Dalarna girls all speak with thick city-slicker Stockholm accents. Also flawed is the acting, utterly horrendous in an indescribable way. There is a total lack of feeling in the delivery of the lines, and sometimes actors stumble, or simply just restart, saying the sentence over again with little improvement. Very comical!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ekeroth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s critiques seem dead-on and are always humorous. They are sensations in themselves.<\/p>\n

Ursula Vaira\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s debut poetry collection, And See What Happens: The Journey Poems<\/em>, chronicles three personally transformative journeys \u00e2\u20ac\u201c odysseys \u00e2\u20ac\u201c she has undertaken in the British Columbia wilds. The first of these \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the subject of the titular poem \u00e2\u20ac\u201c finds Vaira as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a Caucasian civilian, the only woman in the canoe,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d joining eight men on a joint Mounties-First Nations healing journey with respect to once-lawful police mistreatment of indigenous Canadians and the need to address addiction issues.<\/p>\n

The cause is just, but the writing is more pedestrian than transcendent. So, the good phrase, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153whose anger reaches to the marrow,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is preceded by the clich\u00c3\u00a9, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Whose hearts are hardened.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We learn that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mounties (were) made to do the government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dirty work,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to try to eliminate First Nations heritage, but will now \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sit still \/ have their sins named by grandmothers,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d et al., and will later apologize for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153those acts which, although sanctioned \/ by law at the time, were morally wrong.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d After this corrective ceremony, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153there will be feasting.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It is good news, but it lacks the concentrated power of vigorously arranged words, i.e., poetry. There are better moments, such as when Vaira describes canoeists \u00e2\u20ac\u0153(jabbing) at the water.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Her verb, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153jab,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d sets the whole stanza swinging. Verbs, not sentiments alone, give us poetry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Big Town: A Novel of Africville<\/h1>\n
by Stephens Gerard Malone
\nHalifax, NS: Nimbus Publishing, 2011
\n224 pp. $19<\/h6>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Breathless Homicidal Slime Mutants\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: The Art of the Paperback<\/h1>\n

by Steven Brower
\nUniverse, 2010
\n304 pp. $30<\/h6>\n

In 1994, under the pseudonym of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Laura Fairburn,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Stephens Gerard Malone authored a novel, Endless Bay<\/em>, that was, as I recall, a Gothic tale involving a Native youth and a white lady.\u00c2\u00a0 It was also an appalling mess of stereotypes.<\/p>\n

Malone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fourth novel, Big Town: A Novel of Africville<\/em>, is another Gothic tale of folks that happen to be of different races \u00e2\u20ac\u201c black and white (and are sometimes black-and-white in characterization), but it is definitely superior to Endless Bay<\/em>. Here, Malone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hero is a white youth, Early Okander, who, brain-damaged as a fetus, is kind to others, whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s his disgustingly abusive father, or a rapist sailor, or a rapacious slut, or whether it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s his friends, an Africville kid, Toby Daye, and a white neighbour girl, Chub. One feels sorry for Okander who, as an idiot, is as inoffensive as a saint, but, like a saint, is often offensively martyred.<\/p>\n

The setting is the early 1960s, and the sun is setting \u00e2\u20ac\u201c so to speak \u00e2\u20ac\u201c on Africville, the Africadian village in North End Halifax, situated on the south shore of Bedford Basin, at the Narrows.\u00c2\u00a0 Although the subtitle says Big Town<\/em> is about Africville, it ain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. \u00c2\u00a0Instead, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about three misfits \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a black, a brunette, and a boob. Toby hates being black; Chub dislikes being a girl; Early is brutalized by his pops and bedded by adults who exploit his doltish mentality.\u00c2\u00a0 The pals are placed in Africville, but they belong to Anywhere, U.S.A.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Africville is simply a place lawless enough for random gamblin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, bootleggin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, and killin,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 but \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Coloured\u00e2\u20ac\u009d enough to offer a church with mighty fine singing. Even after the bulldozing of homes begins, Africville isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a village, but just a clutch of shacks housing amiable Negroes alongside white trailer trash. Indeed, Big Town<\/em> is not so much Africville as it is Catfish Row (Porgy & Bess<\/em>) or Oz, though, here, Early is the brainless Scarecrow, Toby is the cowardly Lion, and Chub is the loveless Tin Man.<\/p>\n

Malone captures well Haligonian lingo (part-Brit, part-Yank, part-Africadian), and his details of place and era ring true.\u00c2\u00a0 However, the novel isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t about Africville Relocation; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about socio-economic dislocation. One plot element involves an elderly black fan of the real-life Portia White. The gent believes that, if he and other Africvillers can entice the great contralto to give a concert in Africville, the community will be saved. He writes to her, but her only reply is an autographed photo.<\/p>\n

Yes, Malone is granted liberties. But this balderdash is dastardly. How could that classy lady, also my great aunt, who was living in Toronto and dying from cancer, prevent Halifax from demolishing Africville? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s awful fiction to pretend otherwise\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.<\/p>\n

Steven Brower\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Breathless Homicidal Slime Mutants\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: The Art of the Paperback<\/em> could be dismissed as a triumph of marketing. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another collection of U.S. paperback book covers, assembled mainly from the 1930s-1960s, reproduced in full-colour, that delivers instant gaudy, lurid, visual pleasure. However, Brower\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s well-illustrated and short introduction, made even shorter by the teensy-weensy print, is the best, brief history of printing and publishing that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever read.\u00c2\u00a0 By itself, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth the price of the book.<\/p>\n

Brower reminds us that, in it first magical appearance in late medieval, illiterate, witch-burning Europe, the printed Bible seemed the work of the devil. Gradually, though, thanks to war and theft, publishing technology spread, literacy increased, and the Bible was no longer the property of kings and clerics. In essence, printing and publishing \u00e2\u20ac\u201c literature en masse creates societies ripe for mass mobilization \u00e2\u20ac\u201c either for democracy or for despots.<\/p>\n

When the paperback bestseller appears in the 1930s, the success of this pulp fiction confirmed the existence of a large market, of millions of readers, hungry for literature of all sorts, from classics and scripture to thrillers and romances. Even though hardcover book readership rises and falls, the paperback remains popular because it remains relatively cheap and portable \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and the cover art is stunning. Yep:\u00c2\u00a0 Everything from Sci-Fi to Shakespeare just looks better when prefaced by vivid, eye-catching graphics.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Good Girls, Good Sex<\/h1>\n
By Dr. Sonya Sharma
\nWinnipeg, MB: Fernwood, 2011
\n122 pp. $18<\/h6>\n

Histories Haunt Us<\/h1>\n

By Trina Finlay<\/strong>
\nGibsons, BC: Nightwood, 2010
\n80 pp. $18<\/h6>\n

In Good Girls, Good Sex<\/em>, Dr. Sonya Sharma, Ph.D., questions 36 Protestant Christian women, both the churchgoing and the disenchanted, about how they combine faith and coupling, especially if they are unmarried. A researcher in theology and religion at Durham University, U.K., Sharma, herself a Christian, wonders how others \u00e2\u20ac\u201c including Canadians \u00e2\u20ac\u201c uphold teachings of chastity, celibacy, and fidelity, despite potential desires for lovers, before \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and after<\/em> \u00e2\u20ac\u201c marriage.<\/p>\n

Sharma does not describe these desires as lust. Rather, her subjects either yield to natural feelings (and feel shame) or agonize in trying to live up to difficult ideals. The true problem is, Sharma thinks, churches are too \u00e2\u20ac\u0153either\/or\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: A woman is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153good\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (chaste and faithful); or she is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bad\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153loose\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and wanton). She is either a virgin or a loyal wife; or she is Jezebel. For Sharma, these divisions support \u00e2\u20ac\u0153patriarchy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the rule of males (who are permitted greater license to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153sin\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), and oppress women by denying that they can still be good Believers even if they couple with others before \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or outside of \u00e2\u20ac\u201c marriage.<\/p>\n

Sharma is clear: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153good sex\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is that in which \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Christian women\u00e2\u20ac\u009d experience guilt-free satisfaction, married or not. Just as the author avoids the word \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lust,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d so does she fail to quote a single Bible verse. Yet, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the Apostle Paul who declares death on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fornication\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u201c not just a mad church or a crazed minister. Sharma seems to believe that religious arguments for chastity and marriage are just about men trying to make women feel bad.<\/p>\n

Thus, she describes church-approved coitus as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153marital-confined sexuality.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That word, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153confined,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d speaks volumes about her attitudes. She could have written \u00e2\u20ac\u0153marriage-blessed sexuality,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but that phrase would have been too supportive of holy matrimony.<\/p>\n

By not engaging The Bible itself (which is, like it or not, the root and pillar of Christianity), or talking about the reality of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lust\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and its vast, commercial promotion in our society, Sharma weakens her argument. She seeks the emancipation of \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or, rather, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153good sex\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Christian women. But she never discusses how this liberation would either contradict or confirm \u00e2\u20ac\u0153revelation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

One other weakness is the relative lack of direct quotation from the women subjects. One is curious about exactly how they do negotiate the churchly divides between procreation and recreation, but too seldom do they speak in their own, dynamic terms. Instead, one has to wade through a lot of repetitious \u00e2\u20ac\u201c if learned \u00e2\u20ac\u201c drivel, only to learn that faith often conflicts with desires, and often, sadly, painfully. But what is to be done? Change the church? Quit the faith? Or invent a more likeable theology?<\/p>\n

Oh \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one last weakness in the book is the editing. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Your\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (p. 33) and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153altar\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153alter\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (p. 40). The errors make sense, really. The book is fair sociology even if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s foul theology.<\/p>\n

Trina Finlay\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sophomore collection of poetry is Histories Haunt Us<\/em>. Born in Melbourne, Australia, the poet grew up in Toronto, and now teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton.<\/p>\n

Perhaps it is not coincidental that Finlay has studied at Mount Allison U., in Sackville, NB, for she is steeped in the work of its most famous poet-son, namely, John Thompson (1938-76). Certainly, her method is reminiscent of his ghazals, and the very first stanza of the very first one refers to the prematurely dead (due to alcoholism) poet: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Two hours from John Thompson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cross \/ in Jolicure, two hours from a second storey.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Finlay holds a doctorate in English, yes, but popular culture intrigues her too: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s to Tony Soprano\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m catching up on the violence.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d A prose poem seems to capture Sackville exactly: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153In that town on the marsh with the school on the hill, poets who haunt first editions, stairwells. Whispered apocrypha. First the man with the red fleece sweatshirt who followed you on errands; the post office.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Yet, as much as Finlay borrows from Thompson, so does she make common cause with Margaret Atwood. Finlay also trusts irony and odd catalogues of things.\u00c2\u00a0 She eavesdrops on existence itself. She is playful, but the play is dangerous:\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153desire for, desire for, desire for the story.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Do not resist.\u00c2\u00a0 Try.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*These reviews first appeared in the Halifax Herald Chronicle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poetry and Sundry Reviews George Elliott Clarke   Yusuf and the Lotus Flower by Doyali Farah Islam Buschek, 2011 $18 The Secret Signature of Things by Eve Joseph London, ON: Brick, 2010 96 pp. $19 Yusuf and the Lotus Flower enacts a fine debut for Doyali Farah Islam, beginning with the nice cover illustration and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":77,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"authorpage.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-106","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":939,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106\/revisions\/939"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}