This sensuous quality of Benning's verse is echoed in the attractive appearance of her book, which engages the eyes and fingers of its readers Thin Moon Psalm features the painting, Between Earth and Sky—a title that compliments Benning's own—by the Saskatoon artist Grant McConnell on its cover. The warm, red-orange hues of the central orb in the painting, which may be light from either moon or sun, are complimented by the greenish-yellow strokes of paint below and the blueish-purple sky above. The painting's yellow accents are exaggerated by the appealing typeset in a similar colour. The endpapers are dark black, and the pages of the book are, in themselves, a tactile experience: thick and substantial with a matte finish, they are faintly ridged and suit the earthiness of Benning's poems. It is a delightful and proper presentation of this new, significant work by Benning.
London, ON: Brick Books, 2007
71 pp. $21.00
That Newfoundland should be so central to the Walsh's collection is not much of a surprise. Born and raised in Placentia, and now dividing her time between her hometown and Patrick's Cove, Walsh was named St. John's inaugural poet laureate in 2006. Her first collection of poems In the Old Country of My Heart (1996) was a huge success in the province. In fact, the first run of the collection sold out, and it was reprinted in 1998. While her appeal as poet extends beyond her province – her poems have been translated into French and Portuguese, and she has toured Canada, the Eastern U.S., and parts of Europe reading her poetry – Walsh clearly has a large fan base on the Rock. And this fan base has placed much faith in her to follow up her last collection of poems with one that similarly encapsulates, with dignity and pride, the culture and character of her homeland. Walsh generally succeeds in this capacity. True, Going Around with Bachelors offers readers more than vistas from the windy shores of the Atlantic province, as the poet writes of her travels through Ireland and Portugal; but the latter serve, primarily, as foils to her homeland, as characters to be compared and contrasted with what one might call the protagonist of this poetry collection – Newfoundland.
Walsh's sensuous lyricism and careful precision of imagery convince me that she has captured in here a kind of essence of the land, its inhabitants, and its culture that avoids generalization. Her poem "The Tilts, Point Lance," for example, offers an authentic sensory inventory of place: "Inside, the smell of tobacco, dirty hair, / rubbed-in cod guts, and diesel grease, / margarine, and burnt wool, stale rum sometimes, / grunts and nods enough, curses to punctuate" (46). The smells and sounds of Point Lance and its inhabitants are thoroughly conveyed in these lines, and there is a sense of presence in every detail Walsh outlines. Meanwhile, the preceding poem, "Patrick's Cove" could be likened to an impressionist painting of the Newfoundland town: it describes the way September light falls on the "lonely cove" and captures the particularity of both time and place: "This September light that falls / piercing with its cooler edge, falls / through the loose clapboard of root cellars / and strikes upon a corner abandoned for a hundred years / but never by the light" (45). Walsh's light shines both on the beautiful, pastoral scene she paints and on devastating loneliness of the land. The light is simultaneously a symbol for the absence of human life, and a beacon of hope that counters the alienation and distance of the underground root cellar and fills it with a sense of life and movement in spite of its "abandoned" state.
Unlike the root cellar, Walsh's Newfoundland is anything but abandoned. In fact, one of the most charming aspects of her collection is its sincere humanism and understanding of the people and culture of the province. However, while Newfoundland may be central to her text, this is not to say that land is central to her verse. In the poem "Longevity and Guts," for example, the poet focuses on the family tree and the ties that bind generations of Newfoundlanders—even those who no longer live in the province. We learn of the betrothal of "The Grandparents," Patricia and Thomas, whose union was preceded by "Patsy's" pregnancy (23). We also hear about the proudly vivacious "Aunt Peg" whose reputation was unjustly tarnished by a lascivious parish priest, and she now lives in exile in Brooklyn, New York. The poem's many characters and their stories reveal both the difficult social pressures of Newfoundland culture and the brave tenacity of its people. Other poems, like "Fireweed," present the speaker's conversations with friends: "No, Bridget Pegeen, fireweed isn't the colour of fire / and it isn't purple either. / It's purplish-pink, and yes, it's delicate looking" (44). Here, the reader becomes privy to the friendly discussion between the poem's persona and a friend, Bridget Pegeen, about local flora. The connection between people and land is made explicit through the topic of conversation: but it is the conversation that dominates, and the relationship between the persona and Bridget Pegeen revealed through the persona's explanatory tone. Indeed, Friends, family, and community are foremost in Going Around With Bachelors.
At times, this focus on folk and folklore pulls the poems into a narrative direction or rhythmical simplicity that misrepresents the poet's mastery of metre and rhyme. Of course, this somewhat naîve poetic style is part of the poet's craft. Walsh, who studied folklore in Georgia, U.S.A., focuses her energy on storytelling in poems like "Contacts" and "His match" and on recreating the oral culture of her homeland throughout the book. Underscoring the importance of orality to Walsh's verse, Going Around With Bachelors includes a charming CD with recordings of Walsh reading selections from the book and delivering a few comical anecdotes, as well as songs performed by Simone Savard-Walsh, the poet's daughter. With these audio accompaniments, it seems entirely appropriate for Walsh to include the silly, tongue-twister "Me and Ye" among her poems: "I called your dog a she / before I knew she was one, // but sure she had to be a she, / didn't she? // One day will you take she to the seashore? // Sure, you will, I'm sure. . . " (55). (the CD includes a hilarious attempt by Walsh to recite these difficult lines at increasing speeds).
December 15, 2008
Goose Lane Editions Launches New Online Media Resources
December 15, 2008
New From Gaspereau Press
