{"id":59,"date":"2011-03-26T00:03:32","date_gmt":"2011-03-26T00:03:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/test\/?page_id=59"},"modified":"2012-02-03T19:26:14","modified_gmt":"2012-02-03T19:26:14","slug":"spencer-gordon","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/writings\/essay\/spencer-gordon","title":{"rendered":"Spencer Gordon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poetry Review<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Patternicity<\/strong><\/h1>\n
by Jim Johnstone<\/em>
\nGibson, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2010
\n80 pp., $17.95<\/h6>\n

A quick glance at the last page of Jim Johnstone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Patternicity<\/em> reveals the author to be one of the most widely-published and awarded of Canada\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s younger poets, having scored the E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize twice<\/em>, the 2008 CBC Literary Award for Poetry, the Arc Poetry Magazine<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s2009 Readers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Choice Award, and this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Matrix LitPop Poetry Award. His poems\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfrom his first collection, The Velocity of Escape <\/em>(Guernica Editions 2008), from Patternicity<\/em>, and from his third book, Sunday, the locusts <\/em>(Tightrope Books 2011)\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhave been published in almost every major literary journal across Canada. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been funded by both Ontario and Toronto Arts Councils, cranked out the hotly-anticipated Misunderstandings Magazine <\/em>from 2005 to 2011, and kept up production of the small chapbook outfit Cactus Press. All this to say that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s somewhat of a success story\u00e2\u20ac\u201da model, so to speak, of making a public mark in Canadian poetry by the relatively young age of thirty-three. However, what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most impressive about all this is the outward separation between his professional and writing lives: Johnstone is a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto, having obtained an M.Sc. In Reproductive Physiology from the same school.<\/p>\n

Speaking from my rather un<\/em>scientific sensibility, this seems like strange divorce of the brain\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always admired (and secretly resented) those people who are able to excel at diverse intellectual disciplines. And poetry and physics\u00e2\u20ac\u201dat least at first blush\u00e2\u20ac\u201dseem as divided as two fields can get. Yet this reaction is regrettably contemporary, a product of our massively splintered culture of hyper-specialized zones of knowledge and expertise: a culture that admits no \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcrenaissance\u00e2\u20ac\u2122-like mastery of multiple fields. Of course, science and literature were not always divided by such a seeming gulf; poets have attempted to explain the fundamental composition of the universe to their readers for centuries (think Dante, Milton, Pope, Dickinson, and so forth). They weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t always the most rigorous adherents to the scientific method, but their explorations of the physical and metaphysical universe have had an unimaginable impact on our material and spiritual understandings, and their words have given a fitting and lasting metaphorical character to a universe of boundless, savage beauty.<\/p>\n

As a postmodern poet and scientist, Johnstone is not expected to explain or even celebrate how the spheres revolve or life begins. But having a background in physiology allows Johnstone to infuse his work with an exacting terminology: a shake-up of numeric equations, Latin taxonomy, and allusions to physicians, biologists, and laws of planetary motion. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s given him an eye for detail and a respect for the micro in the macro swarm. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s electrified his diction; the language of Patternicity<\/em> is hyper-nuanced, verbose, and dense, sending me (somewhat red-faced) to dictionaries and encyclopedias in order to keep up. In the logical and mathematical spirit of not mincing words, Johnstone often drops his definite and indefinite articles, loses verbs like \u00e2\u20ac\u0153is\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and other helpers (e.g., \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Each arm\/ \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 a hemisphere\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Fate a nine-armed frenzy,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Sound tears, a kickstand\u00e2\u20ac\u009d), and casts off conjunctions (e.g., \u00e2\u20ac\u0153His eye limps, shambles\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Minnows flash …\/ pool in tides\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fond of piling on the possessives to cast off filler (e.g., \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a lonely vandal\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s undoing\/ a saxophonist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clutch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fairly consistent voice from start to close, though it wisely assumes a diverse range of structural forms\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcouplets, tercets, quatrains, prose poems, short and long lines, and so forth\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthroughout. Johnstone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s style, at least from a linguistic point of view, shares many traits with other Canadian lyricists, such as Margaret Avison and Ken Babstock. And for a great deal of readers, these elements (the twisting style, the scientific understanding) will no doubt be a welcome relief from the typical metaphorical and symbolic terrain of the lyric poem, shaped by centuries of longing and repetition.<\/p>\n

In a review published in Quill & Quire<\/em>, Mark Callaghan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s short snippet of criticism for Patternicity<\/em> was that Johnstone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153surreal scientific perspective [can seem] self-involved.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d One might argue that to some degree all good poetry must be somewhat self-involved\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwe cannot be entirely inclusive or public poets, and some level of reader-bafflement is expected of any contemporary collection. However, I can sympathize with Callaghan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s point of view. First, you take a dense lyric voice that leaves much for its readers to decipher. Secondly, you spike the transcript with a host of scientific definitions and equations that literally push the layperson toward the dictionary (or web). What you wind up with is a double-shot of textual resistance<\/em>, a double-layering of obfuscation. Now, I was almost uniformly dazzled by Johnstone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s musical ear and ability to see a new and exciting fusion of images. But I was often slightly aggravated with Patternicity<\/em>, hoping Johnstone would delve toward more affecting emotional material or simply loosen up his lexical austerity to reach a more accessible voice. My grappling with some of the collection\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s scientific conceits, though, helped to rattle me from this sense of disappointment and move me toward a deeper, albeit more theoretical, appreciation.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First, a slight pause to really commend Johnstone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sonic adeptness, his masterful playing of assonance, rhyme, and alliteration. For the sake of example, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll take a look at the second poem in the collection, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Lazarus Among the Hounds.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The poem begins by grounding the reader in song: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Nothing I can tell you will free\/ your hands from their progression \u00e2\u20ac\u201c\/ Em7, Am7, B7,\/\/ a-qui se que-da la cla-ra<\/em>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll quote the poem now at some length to properly convey its tonal variation:<\/p>\n

the inflection of my a<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s slurred
\nfrom the cave of a microphone.
\nAt the leftover chords, dogs
\nthink of nothing but food,
\ntheir amygdalae\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blazing
\nwith crude spurs, neighbouring
\ncells demanding more. More
\nof what <\/em>is what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like
\nto know, the mutts gathered
\nwith sunset at four-paned
\ndining hall windows.<\/p>\n

It might be labourious to track all the slant rhymes and rhythms at work here, so let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just look at a few. The slurred \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u009din the first line syncs up with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cave\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (and perhaps the following \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a\u00e2\u20ac\u009d as well). \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Leftover\u00e2\u20ac\u009d carries the sound of the o<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122sfrom \u00e2\u20ac\u0153microphone,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d morphing slightly to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153chords.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The ae<\/em> of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153amygdalae\u00e2\u20ac\u009d repeats in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153blazing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153neighbouring,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d while the oo<\/em> of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153food\u00e2\u20ac\u009d recurs in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153crude\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153What\u00e2\u20ac\u009d matches up with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mutts,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153more\u00e2\u20ac\u009d rhymes with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153four,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d\u00e2\u20ac\u009d echoes faintly in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153dining,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153know\u00e2\u20ac\u009d returns to haunt \u00e2\u20ac\u0153windows.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Watch the build-up of words containing w<\/em>: what <\/em>and what<\/em> and know<\/em> and windows<\/em>. Nothing here seems forced or over-wrought. Johnstone simply does not miss opportunities to drive home his music, to exploit each vowel\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s potential to ring and electrify its neighbours. Now, the relentless science-infused language can have its tiring snags, and some lines read as somewhat overblown (Citizen Kane\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sled is his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Blessed conduit of salvation,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d for example). But the music of Patternicity<\/em> is one of its most striking, commendable aspects; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a book brimming with poems as much for the ear as any other sense.<\/p>\n

But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sense that requires a more dexterous form of tackling. Part of my understanding of Patternicity <\/em>began with a read of Michael Sherman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s article of the same name, published in 2008 in Scientific American<\/em>. To paraphrase grossly, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153patternicity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is our tendency to see patterns in chaotic phenomena. We see a burnt piece of toast and see the face of Christ; we see a shadow on the wall and assume it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a ghost. Identifying causal associations has always been essential to our survival (e.g., I put my toe in the fire, I get burnt; fire is dangerous!), but apparently our ability to see patterns is so <\/em>essential to the continuation of our species that jumping to conclusions is hard-wired into our makeup. Patternicity boils down to an equation provided by Johnstone in the first poem of the book, also called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Patternicity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pb > c,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or the probability that one will benefit from recognizing a causal association will outweigh the cost required of its belief. Our tendency to be superstitious and habitual is written into the code of natural selection; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a genetic strategy for survival, even if our imagined miracles and apparitions bear no resemblance to reality.<\/p>\n

What is this process of making connections\u00e2\u20ac\u201dfusing like and unlike, seeing order in chaos\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut a basic form of metaphor-making? \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Patternicity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d proves that the metaphorical urge is more than a means of expression or a flight of fancy, but an evolutionary need. Perhaps poetry endures because it maintains a sense of mystery in a world of banished superstition. Perhaps poetry is a genetic expression, a survival mechanism, where other forms of evolutionary selection have been made irrelevant. Perhaps poetry endures simply for its primal connection with our ancestral brain, stored deep in the roots of our grey matter. Who knows? By simply imposing order where chaos reigns, poetry remains (at least) as our \u00e2\u20ac\u0153momentary stay against confusion,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and a potential bridge between the arts and her long-estranged sister, science.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The poem \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Patternicity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d now yields to analysis more easily. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a face,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d it begins, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153yours when patterns emerge\/ from a snow of machinery.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Note that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u009dface\u00e2\u20ac\u201dany arrangement of features will suffice. The mind seizes upon a pattern to make it recognizable\u00e2\u20ac\u201dgiven a remote similarity, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now \u00e2\u20ac\u0153your<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u009dface, coalescing from a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153snow\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of inorganic matter. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On your back,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Johnstone continues, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153you watch a hawk soar\/ across skylights and disappear.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Here we have experience\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhat looks like a hawk, anyways\u00e2\u20ac\u201dstreaking across a delimited frame of reference. In a literal description, a skylight; taken more abstractly, our very categories of perception. The hawk enters our field of vision and leaves. We believe\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddevoutly, superstitiously, passionately\u00e2\u20ac\u201din \u00e2\u20ac\u0153careless beauty,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or beauty that takes shape from chaos without intrusive manipulation: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the Virgin Mary\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in stained glass, her reflection in the side of a skyscraper. The last image in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Patternicity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153axe searching for order in bands\/ of pine, the certainty of even land.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d An axe is a tool to clear and separate, defining and dividing matter. The axe searches for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153order\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in the natural environment, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bands of pine\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that perhaps wrinkle and knot into the visage of someone recognizable. Throughout the poem, we push for a sense of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153even land\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of rational understanding: an end to a chaotic world that insists on random events.<\/p>\n

If Patternicity <\/em>explores ways in which we make order out of an unpredictable, material universe, it also posits that universe as a place of violence, strife, and suffering. Various kinds of flies hover over these poems, appearing in verse after verse. Whether they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re mayflies, blowflies, drosophilia<\/em>, calliphoridae<\/em>, or blackflies, these creatures reinforce a sense of decay and failing flesh. Patternicity <\/em>is no paean to Nature\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sublimity or aesthetic virtue; rather, it is so full of blood and rot that the collection could have easily been titled The Slaughterhouse Poems<\/em> (indeed, one longer poem included is called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Abattoir Ghazals\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gravitropism\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (the natural process that compels roots to bend toward the earth and stems to bend toward the sky), we \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bend against\/ the primordial mesh\/or ordinary limits,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d trapped in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153gravity\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cruel grin.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Matter is a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153vacant whim,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d without tenderness or design. In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Canadian Gothic,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d crows merely \u00e2\u20ac\u0153endure our stillness,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d waiting to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153thrust\/ their mouths toward our eyes.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Biologist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Hands,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d science and the slaughterhouse are again aligned; here, a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153butcher\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\/ cut[s] animals for taste\u00e2\u20ac\u009d instead of knowledge, streamlining a sense of cruelty in both professions. Throughout \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Abattoir Ghazals,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the natural environment is personified into oppression and agony\u00e2\u20ac\u201da river is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153paralyzed,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a lake \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ruined,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a shoreline \u00e2\u20ac\u0153wounded;\u00e2\u20ac\u009d cold weather \u00e2\u20ac\u0153carries illness,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and black oaks \u00e2\u20ac\u0153spike\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a camp. Such oppressive language recalls Heideggerian forms of environmental dismay; a dam stands over <\/em>the river, rather than working with it; a forest of oaks becomes a standing reserve<\/em>, a resource, rather than a part of the poetry of becoming.<\/p>\n

Among this material indifference, humans bounce about like pinballs, woefully ignorant and prone to bodily destruction, a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153blurr[ing] to violence.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re reduced to a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153solar system of wounds,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153fierce jumble of blood and teeth,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d while we shake, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153tears rivering\/ through [our] fingers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d As for knowledge\u00e2\u20ac\u201dreal understanding of the shapes and patterns that destroy us\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwe merely know what our failing eyes can tell us. In \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Wash of Flares,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Johnstone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s speaker sums up our struggle: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We are helpless in this country, know\/ movement, but not life.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d If our predicament is naturally dire (as beings with limited categories), then Johnstone seems to stress our contemporary nadir. A hyper-specialized, post-modern society seems especially removed from a place where natural patternicity makes sense. Technology, philosophy have brought us little: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153five hundred years of peace\/brought us the cuckoo clock,\/\/ desperation oscillating on a pivot.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d What can progression provide if \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We strike matchsticks until\/ we forget how to prepare fire\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? If I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m allowed to take this line of thinking an inch further and extrapolate from Johnstone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s suggestions, then perhaps he is suggesting that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re headed toward a dark age of ignorance, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153no place to stop\/ for the night,\/ not anywhere we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever been.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d No wonder many of the poems in Patternicity <\/em>carry an elegiac weight; the poem \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tithonus\u00e2\u20ac\u009d seems chiefly poignant if we imagine the eponymous character of Greek myth\u00e2\u20ac\u201dforced into immortality but bereft of eternal youth\u00e2\u20ac\u201das a symbol of our culture, aging without renewal in grand, Fisher King or Waste Land<\/em>-like sterility.<\/p>\n

Johnstone is not alone in his efforts to enliven the lyric with the alienating precision of scientific terminology. However, his work with Patternicity <\/em>should certainly put him at the forefront of such a movement (if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s really a movement at all). I sense a longing in this collection to bridge the disciplinary gulf between poetry and physiology, a seeking for an intellectual and emotional land-bridge. It will require much patience of its readers, and will certainly skirt the kind of emotional devastation we sometimes come to expect from lyric poetry, but Patternicity<\/em>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grim logic and captivating music make life seem all the more diverse, gorgeous, and so very terrible. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what poetry should do: hiding nothing, holding us up to the sky\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s empty truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poetry Review Patternicity by Jim Johnstone Gibson, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2010 80 pp., $17.95 A quick glance at the last page of Jim Johnstone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Patternicity reveals the author to be one of the most widely-published and awarded of Canada\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s younger poets, having scored the E.J. Pratt Medal and Prize twice, the 2008 CBC Literary Award […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":46,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"authorpage.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-59","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/59","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=59"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/59\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":900,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/59\/revisions\/900"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue11\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}