{"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":"2012-02-05T23:06:26","modified_gmt":"2012-02-05T23:06:26","slug":"george-elliot-clarke","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/writings\/reviews\/george-elliot-clarke\/","title":{"rendered":"George Elliot Clarke"},"content":{"rendered":"

Poetry, Fiction, Memoir, Philosophy and Comic Reviews <\/strong><\/h3>\n
Incitements<\/em><\/strong>
\nby Sean Howard
\nHallifax, NS: Gaspereau Press, 2010
\n$17: 95<\/h6>\n

As Ecclesiastes sagely notes, everything has its time and place, and so I am finally able to review Cape Breton poet Sean Howard\u2019s work, though he was kind enough to write to me in January 2010 and send me a copy of his first book, Local Calls <\/em>(Cape Breton University Press, $17.95), which I have only just read.<\/p>\n

Happily too, Gaspereau Press has just issued Howard\u2019s second verse collection, Incitements<\/em>, and so I am able to talk about both books together. Note that Gaspereau Press also publishes my poetry.<\/p>\n

Originally from England, Howard now makes his home in Main-a-Dieu, NS, and teaches at Cape Breton University. He holds a doctorate in Peace Studies, and so is quite grounded in matters of nuclear disarmament, international security, and politics globally.<\/p>\n

The title of his first collection arose from an exchange between himself, an immigrant, and a provincial wit, who told him that, if he ever \u201cneeded to call Paradise,\u201d he\u2019d \u201ccome to the right place.\u201d Why?\u00a0 \u201cLocal calls are free.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though impressed by his interlocutor\u2019s jest, Howard seeks, in his first book, to move beyond outhouse pastoralism, and he does, largely by stripping the poem to its essence: no words but those needed.\u00a0 Period.<\/p>\n

January 9, 2007, is remarkable to Howard for the \u201ccomb- \/ ed \/ lines, \/ foam \/ and \/ sky, \/ harp \/ strung\/ on \/ the \/ tide.\u201d He makes associations that, invisible at first, are later vivid. Here the lines of shore foam and intervening reflections of sky compose a harp. January 12, 2008, sees Howard jot, \u201coar- \/ weed, \/ blade \/ spill- \/ ing, \/ light \/ a- \/ gainst \/ the \/ stone,\u201d and you can see that light flashing against rock. On April 28, 2008, Howard glimpses \u201csoft \/ pen- \/ cil, \/ her- \/ on \/ rub- \/ bed, \/ clean \/ a- \/ gainst \/ the \/ mist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, there\u2019s a haiku-like sentience and subtlety, as the fine poet-critic Peter Sanger notes in his introduction. Yes, we can imagine a heron standing, pencil-lean, as mist closes in. But what if we read the middle lines as \u201cher \/ on \/ rub \/ bed\u201d? Well, then, vistas of unintended meaning open \u2013 as well as, perhaps, unintended consequences.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s okay: That\u2019s the purpose of these poems. We\u2019re supposed to think about the tendency of words to refer to more than they seem, at first sight, to say.<\/p>\n

On November 18, 2008, the poet glimpses, \u201cpose \/ held \/ mock- \/ ing \/ bird, \/ gull \/ a- \/ bove \/ the \/ cr- \/ oss.\u201d Birds do roost, willynilly, on statues and crucifixes, and sully these roosts with their insulting guano. But Howard reminds us, with that \u201coss\u201d that the crucifix often is stationed over bones (to which the Latin word \u201cos\u201d applies.)<\/p>\n

Though his poems are as brief as crocus, they are meant to be meditated upon. December 3, 2007: \u201cscript \/ flow- \/ ing, \/ ink \/ on \/ stone, \/ geese a- \/ cross \/ the \/ moon.\u201d What is silence? \u201cGod\u2019s \/ bell, clear a- \/ cross \/ the \/ bay.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new book, Incitements<\/em>, extends Howard\u2019s classical brevity to the post-modern notion that poetry can be found in even in the writings of critics. Here Howard responds to three prose works: Sanger\u2019s White Salt Mountain<\/em>, Merritt Gibson\u2019s Summer Nature Notes<\/em>, and Hans Fallada\u2019s novel, Every Man Dies Alone<\/em>.<\/p>\n

These poems are tricky; they demand concentration and learning that may be beyond the commitment or schooling of the casual reader. \u00a0See \u201cXXVI\u201d: \u201cMi\u2019kmaq slain; \/ the conquered \/\/ stars? Polestar \/ moon. Chopp- \/\/ ing the page \/ from the \/ wood.\u201d<\/p>\n

What to make of the almost casual reference to murdered Mi\u2019kmaq? Are they \u201cthe conquered \/\/ Stars?\u201d\u00a0 It depends on how one takes the puns. \u00a0\u201cChopp- \/ ing the page\u00a0 \/ from the \/\/ wood,\u201d is a great image for writing, but can it do other work?<\/p>\n

One can quibble over individual lines, but Howard is impressive \u2013 startlingly \u2013 at times. When he calls \u201cTime \u2026 life on \/ Borrowed light,\u201d you are in the hands of a master.<\/p>\n

The compression that one finds in Howard is akin to that required for crossword clues (that are also often puns). \u201cXIII\u201d tells of \u201cWaters liv- \/ ing off \/ the moon,\u201d while 9\/11 took place in a \u201csand-\/\/ castle sky.\u201d Howard makes us see afresh just how language defines reality, but also how language remains peculiarly mysterious. We can\u2019t enclose it: It is breath. It is poetry.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Alien, Correspondent<\/em>
\nby Anthony Di Nardo
\nLondon, ON: Brick Books, 2010
\n96 pp. $19.00<\/h6>\n

Anthony Di Nardo was born in Montreal in 1949 and has lived in northwestern Ontario, Toronto, Germany, and Beirut (Lebanon). A writer, journalist, and small-newspaper editor, his Lebanese experience is the subject of his book of poems, Alien, Correspondent<\/em>.<\/p>\n

His focus is the tragic intransigence of Middle East parties in refusing to recognize Israel and accommodate Palestinians. The result? Mutual wretchedness and actual war. Di Nardo\u2019s frustration and pathos is intensified by his love for all sides. Moreover, he is a survivor of the Israel-Hezbollah battle that played out in Beirut in the summer of 2006, and then of a May 2008 Hezbollah militia struggle for control of the streets of West Beirut. His poems intend to sing \u201cthis torn, conflicted, anarchic, ancient, and beautiful city\u201d \u2013 to redeem its image. Di Nardo\u2019s titles are printed to resemble old manual typewriter \u2018type.\u2019 He follows British poet James Fenton in emphasizing journalist travel and reportage as the source for his \u2018objective\u2019 lyrics.<\/p>\n

The point is made in \u201cTurbulence\u201d: As an Airbus suffers \u201can unrelenting loss \/ of altitude upending after-dinner trays\u201d and plastic cutlery and paper cups float and \u201cfall on TV monitors,\u201d the poet reflects \u201cthat it\u2019s possible to watch the world \/ as it falls apart, and not be taken in.\u201d The poet that Di Nardo takes as his first influence is, however, the Palestinian bard Mahmoud Darwish. \u201cDear Mahmoud\u201d is a capital elegy: \u201cthe poem which I wanted to work \/ into some kind of broken-line kilim (rug), bold as your people \/ once wove, was left on the floor at their feet \/ where no matter the barter my price would not be met.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another fine poem is \u201cWord for Word,\u201d a three-page-long plaint about the bloody and culturally destructive anarchy that the Willful Coalition\u2019s Invasion of Iraq in 2003 unleashed on that country: \u201cWord for word \u2026 \/ books are burning\u2026. \/ Even the bricks are burning \/ and the spines lined up along the shelves \/ and the asphalt on Mutannabi Street (in Baghdad) where the legs \/ of men and women caught on the run \/ are burning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Di Nardo is not all crisis and no pleasure. \u201cA Muslim Woman I Met\u201d is an inventive love poem: \u201cI loved her proportions from the start \/because I could dream of her as pillows \/ crushed and pushed against the bed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cArabian Nights\u201d is a well crafted statement of domestic passion: \u201cI\u2019ve lost the exact count but I\u2019d say tonight \/ is about the ten thousandth time \/ I go to bed with the same woman\u2026. \/ Love is clear about numbers \u2013 \u00a0\/ it only takes two people once, then the rest \/ is up to them\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, there\u2019s a bit of the Beat in Di Nardo. He references Bob Dylan in two poems, Jimi Hendrix and Miles Davis in others, then bases a memory of a party with the P.L.O. on a poem by Allen Ginsberg. In his sixties, he carries on the 60\u2019s wish for \u2018making love, not war,\u2019 and what is wrong with that?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To Love a Palestinian <\/em>
\nby Ehab Lotayef
\nToronto, Ontario: Tsar Publications, 2010
\n80 pp. $17.98<\/h6>\n

Ehab Lotayef was born in Cairo, Egypt, and moved to our Montreal in 1989. He knows Arabic and English well enough that he writes in both languages, and a section of his first collection, To Love a Palestinian Woman<\/em>, is printed in Arabic script.<\/p>\n

Also a playwright and a photographer, Lotayef also expresses himself as a songwriter and social activist. Indeed, his poetry shows the powerful influence of the latter pursuits. Lotayef\u2019s lyrics are as simple as notes and proverbs: \u201cI want to write but \/ in this bottomless pit \/ can\u2019t find the right words to say.\u201d There\u2019s a lot to be said for such explicit statement, but it can\u2019t be said to be art.<\/p>\n

Better lines appear in a poem inspired by Pablo Neruda: \u201cToday I shall write the happiest lines: \/ imprisoned in your love \/ I\u2019m free\u2026. \/\/ Today I shall write the finest lines\u2026 \/ the sea is jealous of the river in which you bathe \/\/ Today \/ I love you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lotayef\u2019s 9\/11 elegy, \u201cThe Abyss,\u201d works well as a Dylanesque or Audenesque ballad: \u201cNo one ever loved me \/ I have never loved \/ With no trace behind me \/ there\u2019s no proof I\u2019ve lived.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Arabic lyrics are resolute: \u201cPeace is justice \/ paying the debt \/ surrendering the land.\u201d Lotayef is a so-so poet (so far), but an excellent songwriter. His photos of Cairo, Baghdad, and Gaza are also exquisite.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

The Pierre Bonga Loops<\/em>
\nby <\/em>Troy Burle Bailey
\nVancouver: Commodore Books, 2010
\n192 pp. $ 22:00<\/h6>\n

Troy Burle Bailey\u2019s first book of poetry, The Pierre Bonga Loops<\/em> is so ambitious that it is magnificent in its faltering. Doudou Boicel has simpler aims.\u00a0 His self-published, \u201cfictionalized (auto)biography,\u201d The Polygamist\u2019s Tale<\/em> is touted as \u201ca highly effective remedy for stress.\u201d\u00a0 Why? \u201cAfter reading it, you\u2019ll feel that all your frustrations have been released.\u201d Boicel preaches the virtues of fleshy amour.<\/p>\n

Bailey has written what is likely the first contemporary book of poetry by an Afro-Manitoban. It does for the Northwest what Bailey\u2019s poet-publisher Wayde Compton does for British Columbia in his own work, i.e., provide a literary myth for the local \u2013 historical \u2013 black community. A Winnipegger, Bailey seeks to provide Western African-Canadians \u2013 and all his readers \u2013 an appreciation for the culture of the Black Prairies and its origins, not in slavery, but in fur trading.<\/p>\n

If his seemingly autobiographical, opening poem is correct, as a schoolboy, Bailey saw \u201ca dark voyageur\u201d in a painting. Years of research later, Bailey knows all there is to know about black fur traders in ye olde Rupert\u2019s Land. There were several, but his \u201cdocumentary poem\u201d focuses on one, namely Pierre Bonga. This book-length poem is just what its title suggests \u2013 a series of narratives and verses that loop about documents treating the legendary Bonga and other black voyageurs.<\/p>\n

Indebted to narrative lyric suites by Compton, Michael Ondaatje, and Robert Kroetsch, The Pierre Bonga Loops<\/em> is experimental, elliptical, fragmentary, allusive, playful, but also, too long and often as opaque as the inside of a fur coat. One is reminded of the manic surrealism, too, of Ishmael Reed, but without Reed\u2019s concision.<\/p>\n

Bailey can be lyrical: \u201c[it feels like we must be] \/ made up only of damp sound from the waves pounding our hull, punishing our boat, the canoes made of \/ endless scrolls of birch paper with ebony flecks of code, each speck \/ A missing Voyageur, \/ A lost wife, \/ A hard series of Portages, \/ Of strokes, \/ Of broken paddles\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his prose poems, meant to sound weighty, are fat and ponderous:\u00a0 \u201cOriginally ornament and fetish both, the cowry, shattered shells of Apocrypha, dripping malaise furious as venom, clutched by apprehended Africans like a mourner\u2019s prayer shawl to ward off Malfeasance, and seized anon by trade merchants to purchase perchance a ticket Home, these, an old man and his kin cross-reference for generations.\u201d Bailey is at his best when he allows the verse to move toward song, avoiding the drag effect of trying to say too much in too many words. The Pierre Bonga Loops<\/em> is a sharp debut in African-Canadian and Canadian letters. The poet will be even sharper once he is leaner.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

The Polygamist\u2019s Tale<\/em> <\/strong>
\nby Doudou Boicel
\nMontreal, QC: 2010
\n$20:00<\/h6>\n

If one trusts Boicel\u2019s The Polygamist\u2019s Tale<\/em>, he has been the lover of dozens \u2013 or scores \u2013 of women, resulting in his fathering of 19 children (that he knows of) to show for his \u2018natural\u2019 love life, wherein mutual desire leads to either a quick rendezvous or a shared household that doubles as a harem.<\/p>\n

A native of French Guiana, Boicel has lived in Montreal since 1970. Before and after his arrival here, the now-African-Canadian Francophone survived the social coldness of Europe and Quebec by relying on the sympathy and interest of women who were willing to love him even if other women \u2013 practical rivals \u2013 also loved him.<\/p>\n

A chef, artist, writer, and impresario, Boicel is so talented a storyteller that he can get away with saying almost anything. He scruples to rewrite Genesis, so God first creates \u201cthree women: one white, one yellow, and one red.\u201d Then, after noticing that the women\u2019s pleasures were \u201cincomplete,\u201d the \u201cOld Man\u201d created \u201ca new being\u201d \u2013 a male \u2013 whose \u201cskin was black.\u201d Now, all could get on with the pleasant task of multiplying.<\/p>\n

Scoff at Boicel all you want. He swears that polygamy is a fine arrangement, even if his \u2018wives\u2019 get jealous to the point of violence. His wit is his triumph: \u201c(Men,) for all our na\u00efve swaggering, we\u2019re actually just characters in (women\u2019s) fantasies.\u201d At a party, he is \u201clike a chocolate floating in a bowl of assorted ice creams.\u201d For anyone who doubts that monogamy is the summit of happiness, Boicel is the boudoir philosopher to read\u2026<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Curious Masonry: Three Translations from the Anglo-Saxon<\/em>
\nby Christopher Patton <\/strong>
\nHallifax, NS: Gaspereau Press, 2011
\n$15.95<\/strong><\/h6>\n

A caveat:\u00a0 Gaspereau Press has been known to publish my work. However, my interest in Christopher Patton\u2019s Curious Masonry: Three Translations from the Anglo-Saxon<\/em> stems from my brief enrollment in a Queen\u2019s University course (taught by the intriguingly named George Clark), on antique, not-yet-English literature.<\/p>\n

When I realized that the course was a study of a now-foreign language, I had to withdraw: Such is beyond my ken. But the old Anglo-Saxon verses appeal to me, anyway, because they influence much of East Coast poetry: check out poets like Cape Breton\u2019s Don Domanski or Newfoundland\u2019s Boyd Warren Chubbs.<\/p>\n

Part of the power of this primeval poetry is its emphasis on elements, on storm and sea, and its visceral preaching that we are mortals who ought to enjoy mead and ale and love while we can, for, tomorrow we are drowned, speared, or spit by swords. The Old English poetry is Ecclesiastes salted with Revelation.<\/p>\n

Living on Saltspring Island, BC, and in Salt Lake City, UT (where he is drafting a doctorate), Patton is already a noted poet and children\u2019s book author. In Curious Masonry<\/em>, he offers translations from the Exeter Book\u2014\u201ca volume of Old English poetry used, over centuries, to store gold foil for illumination of texts thought more meaningful.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a sense, then, the three poems \u2013 \u201cThe Ruin,\u201d \u201cThe Seafarer,\u201d and \u201cThe Earthwalker\u201d \u2013 are just overlooked pieces from a book that was valued more for storage of gilt than it was for its songs. (A fourth poem, \u201cHearth,\u201d is Patton\u2019s experimental rewriting of \u201cThe Earthwalker.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Introducing the work, Patton stresses that the Exeter Book has been treated as an object, not as art: Its face shows \u201cknife scores\u201d dating from its use as a \u201ccutting board\u201d; \u201cA pot of glue or a beer mug has left a ring mark; a burning brand was laid across the book, leaving a slantwise gash through the last fourteen pages.\u201d<\/p>\n

The damage endured by the Exter Book befits the poems it contains, which address decay and disappearance.\u00a0 \u201cThe Earthwalker\u201d begins, \u201cI have bound heart and mind in chains, since years ago I covered a goldfriend in the dark of earth and wandered off, bearing a winter sadness over the weft of waves\u2026.\u201d Like Job, the speaker declares, \u201cJoy is a ruin.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the end, he (presumably) notes, \u201cO gleaming cup. O mailed warrior. They and their time have gone under the dark helm of night, as if they had never been.\u201d Gaspereau Press provides the Old English verses for the knowledgeable reader to compare the original poetry to Patton\u2019s \u201cpalimpsests.\u201d But if you like scotch, especially that redolent of peat moss and that awakens the spirit due to its somber \u2013 and sobering \u2013 notes, you ought to enjoy these poems.<\/p>\n

<\/h6>\n

My Nature<\/em>
\nBy Christine Lowther<\/em>
\nLantzville, BC: Leaf Press, 2010
\n112 pp. $17.95<\/p>\n

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Christine Lowther bears a famous surname \u2013 partly due to the infamous murder of her mother, Pat Lowther, a BC poet of increasing reputation at the time of her 1975 death. But, assuredly, the daughter is adding to the lustre of the name, thanks to her own shining poetry.<\/p>\n

If her mother was concerned with feminist and post-colonial, democratic themes, the younger Lowther is passionate about the environment, a point underlined by the title of her new collection, My Nature<\/em>. That word, \u201cMy,\u201d also signals Lowther\u2019s personal considerations.\u00a0 So, a love poem states, \u201cyou will not see \/ the flower shape of me \/ curved, curving, \/ bending to your will \/ you peel me away like ivy, \/ the vine that clings, a parasite, \/ but I merely yield, seek beauty \/ in flexibility \/ there is beauty \/ (I declare it) \/ in the torn shape of me.\u201d \u201cLighten Up\u201d works similarly, and draws on an epigraph from Lowther mater<\/em>: \u201cyou know solitude only as you know the sea in a handful of water.\u201d<\/p>\n

The speaker notes, \u201cAfter rolling me in your soft bed \/ you said \u2018I want to be alone in my life.\u2019\u201d Immediately, she looks to nature for understanding of this moment: \u201cthe comforting splash of he kingfisher \/ brings death to the minnow \/ and there is after all so much to thank you for: \/ the balm of betrayal\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

This collection is a fine fusion of nature and human nature:\u00a0 \u201cYou had assumed you were alone. A raven croaks far away; \/something splashes close by. \/ All around you, companionable: soundless spiders easy in their webs.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Athena Becomes a Swallow<\/em> <\/strong>
\nby Brent MacLaine
\nFredericton, NB: Gooselane, 2009
\n90 pp. $18<\/h6>\n

Goose Lane Editions of Fredericton, NB, has published my work, but I hope that fact does not disqualify me from commenting on Brent MacLaine\u2019s 2009 poetry collection, Athena Becomes a Swallow<\/em>, for it is a fine homage to Homer\u2019s Odyssey, while giving it a fresh hearing.<\/p>\n

The University of Prince Edward Island professor assembles 27 monologues spoken, not by the principal personalities of the tale \u2013 Odysseus, Penelope, et al<\/em>. \u2013 but by minor players, thus recapitulating the epic poem as a version of Edgar Lee Master\u2019s Spoon River Anthology<\/em> (1915).<\/p>\n

Master\u2019s characters are dead; they speak from the grave. MacLaine\u2019s cast is living (save for the Underworld haunts), but previously entombed in the muting effect of being accorded few lines or provided only slight description. MacLaine assures us that he is \u201cno classicist nor a speaker of Greek\u201d; so, his project of \u201cimaginatively reconstructing Homeric voices\u201d is indebted, in part, to his consultation of \u201cseveral translations and editions of The Odyssey.\u201d<\/p>\n

But his composition also stems from his supposition that \u201cThe Mycenaean characters in Homer\u2019s work were primarily \u2026 farmers and fishermen\u201d and thus, in lifestyle and thought, not unlike traditional, Canuck Maritimers. MacLaine senses that East Coasters \u201cshow that the rugged coastline of the Atlantic Ocean determines their people\u2019s character just as the Aegean did for Homer\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

For this reason, perhaps, the strongest verses are not so much Grecian as they are agricultural. \u201cI was sick to death of pigs \u2013 tired of looking \/ at their bristly skin, their rooting and rutting, \/ their dredging up the muddy sty\u2026.\u201d And so, Elpenor goes to drink: \u201cSuch wine! I swear it sparkled twice \u2013 once \/ when I poured it under a waning moon, \/ and once when it flowed freely down my throat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eyeing glamorous, adulterous Helen, Prince Peisistratos comments, \u201cDisarmed and dumb, how could I criticize \/ this source of woe \u2013 even had I closed my eyes?\u201d The femme fatale\u2019s seductiveness even infuses wine: \u201cafter my first sip, \/ I felt a warm knot in my body\u2019s core. \/ It spread to each of my extremities like sweetened cream\u2026. \/ All sadness drifted harmlessly away, like smoke \/ curling skyward from a shepherd\u2019s hut.\u201d<\/p>\n

MacLaine employs vers libre<\/em> deftly, but he also pens a few sonnets that seem flat. His loosened blank verse \u2013 vers lib\u00e9r\u00e9<\/em> \u2013 is nicely rambunctious in its iambic lope. Hear Laertes: \u201cI languish on an unfamiliar sea \/ between the shoals of hope and grief. I should \/ be bitter as a witch\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

MacLaine\u2019s fidelity to the Homeric style is impressive, but images and ideas that were born startlingly new in The Odyssey<\/em> may now strike us as clich\u00e9. The fine line, \u201cRegrets are darts of punishment,\u201d is followed by the clumsy, time-worn aphorism, \u201cthough, in the end, we all are casualties of fate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Quibbles aside, Athena Becomes a Swallow<\/em> is a strong book, which includes apt and attractive art by Maclaine\u2019s own hand. The clear lines are wondrous: \u201cI stayed to marvel at the bruised and briny \/ skin pocked with sores \u2013 it was hard to say \/ which side of life he was destined for.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Little Seamstress<\/em>
\nby<\/em> Phil Hall
\nToronto: ON: Pedlar Press, 2010
\n160 pp. $20:00<\/h6>\n

Phil Hall\u2019s collection, The Little Seamstress<\/em> is classical in a postmodern sense. Rather than sift through canonical books for hitherto unearthed nuggets, Hall looks for poetic beauty and surprise amid the detritus of everyday speech and language.<\/p>\n

The Perth, Ontario, poet, like Robert Duncan, conjoins the unusual: \u201cWe chart our course by such aromatic flawed victuals: Down the Dark Streets Alone<\/em> by Lilian Victoria Norden \/\/ A memoir of girlhood in the 1920s \u2013 her affair with Frederick Horsman Varley (self-pubished \u2013 unedited \u2013 Vancouver 1982). \/\/ The grease of the creature becomes graph-pikes & replicas \u2013 \/ design.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hall has a predilection for indirection, but there are also lyrics of absolute clarity: \u201cif you have a choice \u2013 read to kids \/ without a schoolboard close at hand \/ to tick off which words have been outlawed \/\/ lean in to kids \/ read a monstrosity like a fire in the hand \/ a classic that was once outlawed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nominated for the Governor-General\u2019s Award and the Griffin Poetry Prize, Hall is a poet who, pleasingly, does what he pleases: \u201cAirports began as heaven\u2019s basements \u2013 they have evolved into prison-malls.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Heller, Holt, & Howe<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Anyone who deems self-published poetry egotistical trash needs to pick up anything by Romantic poet William Blake: Some ego! Some trash! To survive our time of fiscal and intellectual deficits, Nova Scotian poets Liane Heller and Jason Holt, have founded Dartmouth-based H & H Ionic Press: They mean to self-publish \u2013 and not perish.<\/p>\n

Their press is named for the initial letter of their surnames, but also, perhaps, the classic, Ionic column shape of the majuscule \u201cH.\u201d They also savour the sound relationship between \u201cIonic\u201d and ideas they love: \u201cironic\u201d and \u201ciconic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Born in Paris, France, and raised in New York and Montreal, Heller adores \u2018les beaux arts\u2019 and bohemian life. Now a Herald journalist, she has published three previous poetry collections, including the fine Exposures<\/em> (2003).<\/p>\n

Her new book, Code of Silence<\/em>, is very fine, despite being about the break-up of a decade-long romance, a subject that disgraces most attempts at dignity.\u00a0 Indeed, divorce could be defined as the abortion of love.<\/p>\n

The collection works as occasional and often daily journal entries, chronicling the efforts of the speaker \u2013 really, Heller \u2013 hover the course of three months, and then a year \u2013 to understand why her love has been spurned, to detest (or win back) her ex, to dislike his new love, and to rediscover positives \u2013 friends, the potential attentions of other men, the revivifying effects of music and nature, et cetera<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But one riveting and disturbing truth of this painfully revealing poetry is that there is no therapy, but the slow movement onward of time itself. The break-up harms Heller: Dr. Phil and Oprah be damned.<\/p>\n

Dexterously, Heller conjoins plain observation and imagist revery. Her lover tells her their affaire de coeur \u201cis over,\u201d and she imagines his new lover \u201cthe praying-mantis \/ curatorielle enmeshing your strong thighs,\u201d and evokes hearing \u201cthe thrust of your mechanism.\u201d Her voice sounds like Sylvia Plath partnered with Virginia Woolf.<\/p>\n

A Gertrude Stein-like phrase, \u201cthe ins and outs of you and I,\u201d is matched later by another, \u201cLife without you is like life for worse \/ or better. And right now \/ I like better better.\u201d You can almost hear Mae West speaking it.<\/p>\n

Heller writes convincingly of feelings that change even as they become convictions. Here is \u201cThe Difference\u201d: \u201cWhen you\u2019re in love \/ a little rain makes no difference; \/ when you\u2019re bereft \/ the sun accuses you \/ of your unhappiness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heller is able to do everything she attempts here, from rhyme (\u201cThere is an empty tumbler by my chair\u2026 \/ there is nobody touching me nowhere\u201d) to proverb (\u201call relationships are different \/ in their travel habits\u201d) to description of Halifax (\u201cthis awful foggy beautiful town\u201d) to confession (\u201cyou don\u2019t blame her \/ but you don\u2019t like her anymore\u201d). Brave, belle, are these poems. Bravo!<\/p>\n

Halifax, Nova Scotia, native Jason Holt holds a doctorate in philosophy and teaches disparate, humanities courses at Acadia University. His fifth poetry collection is Longstem Poems<\/em>, and it is as excellent as his previous works (including one for which I was privileged to write the foreword).<\/p>\n

If Heller is plain about pain, Holt is more experimental and less explicit. Indeed, his book also seems to tell of lost love, but is much more elliptical, stripping language to its core (or heart): \u201cto scribe the el \/ the oh \/ the vee \/ a ventual e \/ \u2026 my tendencies \/ to north of fortynine \/ incline \/ and due south \/ you blame \/ in phonebroken lilt \/ the spring (for the failure of a tour) \/ while I the lashed eyes \/ native \/ (blame) my now refined \/ and ne\u2019er elsesated \/ taste.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holt, also, has read his Stein, but James Joyce too, and delights in neologisms (\u201cempleasured\u201d) and learned puns (\u201cthe whole atlantic \/ nietzschean before me\u201d). Note these lines: \u201cin velvet \/ diatribal state \/ I think of you \/ at great remove \/ and long \/ for your \/ invulgence.\u201d The changes rung on \u201cdiatribe\u201d and \u201ctribal,\u201d \u201cindulgence\u201d and \u201cvulva,\u201d speak volumes about Holt\u2019s playful intellect. H & H Ionic Press is off to a startlingly good start.<\/p>\n

Judy Ann Howe\u2019s Meaningful Verses<\/em> is also self-published. The hometown Halifax poet writes simple rhymes about her interests. Contact her via www.ArtBookbindery.com<\/p>\n

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American Adulterer <\/em>
\nby Jed Mercurio
\nUK: Vintage, 2010
\nPP 352. $22<\/h6>\n

When John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th US President, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November 22nd, 1963, it was 3 p.m. in Halifax, NS, when the news reached there. I was 3\u00bd, and I remember how gold the late afternoon light seemed in the trees, and also how out-of-joint suddenly the adult world had become. Maybe it was memory of that epoch-shaking event that bade me pick up English author Jed Mercurio\u2019s third novel, American Adulterer<\/em>. But I\u2019m glad I did, for it\u2019s nearly relentlessly excellent.<\/p>\n

Trained as a physician, Mercurio (who also writes as John MacUre) applies well his medical knowledge in this work of faction. His portrait of Kennedy, usually named as the \u201csubject,\u201d or \u201cPresident,\u201d and, more rarely, \u201cJack,\u201d shows us a man who projected vigor and youthfulness, but who was, really, a physical wreck, in vivid pain, and already dying prematurely before he was slain, in a sense, mercifully \u2013 before a sex scandal could hinder his ready, secular beatification.<\/p>\n

If the President\u2019s medical challenges define his courage (amid the Cuban Missile Crisis, he takes \u201cmuscle relaxants for his back, \u2026 painkillers for his sacroiliacs, and \u2026 a combination of pills and emulsions to combat his nausea, dyspepsia, and diarrhea\u201d), his steady philandering underscores his defiance of the limitations of his body and his office, and his flouting of the views of \u201cmoral monogamists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercurio\u2019s thesis echoes that of the \u201csubject,\u201d that \u201cmonogamy has seldom been the engine of great men\u2019s lives.\u201d Yet, the author\u2019s diagnosis of the President (and recounting of what the latter terms his \u201cexcellent sexual victories\u201d) scruples to note his mistresses\u2019 feeling of exploitation and the concomitant \u201ccold, possessive outrage,\u201d due to his \u201cstrategy of insidious humiliation,\u201d that his wife suffers. Yet, when F.B.I. director \u201cHoover\u201d says, \u201cMr. President, you, sir, are an immoral man, and you must resign,\u201d the subject reflects, \u201cIn the past, it has been said that only a good man can make a good king, yet there would have been precious few good kings if fornication were villainous.\u201d Mercurio agrees. In his notes, after acknowledging Kennedy\u2019s \u201cwomanizing,\u201d he asserts that \u201cthe extraordinary vision of his presidency,\u201d plus his \u201celoquence, erudition and wit,\u201d permit J.F.K. to rank, \u201cafter Franklin D. Roosevelt, as the most highly regarded President \u2026 in modern times, a reputation that grows as successors continue to fall short.\u201d Nevertheless, Mercurio\u2019s re-telling of the oft-told tale of \u2018Camelot\u2019 insists that Jack\u2019s White House assembled a harem of unskilled secretaries and tipsy socialites, all of whose assignations got covered up as \u201cnational security considerations.\u201d The \u201csubject\u201d also made room for \u201cMarilyn,\u201d time for an East German spy, and space for a Mafia moll.<\/p>\n

The prose is crisp, poetic, aphoristic, and cinematic. \u201cWhen the generals speak longingly of the next battlefield, the President sees those jungles [of Vietnam] only as future slaughterhouses of American youth.\u201d When his \u201cbeautiful, beautiful son,\u201d Patrick, dies, \u201c[t]ears run down the President\u2019s cheeks and onto his son\u2019s\u2026, and then he doesn\u2019t want people seeing their President crying any more, so he pulls himself together and goes back up to the fourth floor and shuts the door.\u201d Temporarily circumspect after Marilyn\u2019s suicide, the subject sees \u201cthe fins of the presidential motorcade become bats\u2019 wings arched in the color of death.\u201d When the President dies in Dallas, \u201cThe final sound he hears is not the crack of the gunfire, or the cheers of the crowd turning to screams, but his wife\u2019s voice, crying his name.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mercurio balances properly his hero\u2019s cold-hearted adulteries \u2013 hand his cool-headed judgment, searing eloquence, and hot, fierce love for his wife and children. The novelist counts laurels and warts, just as good historians should, but too often don\u2019t. Mercurio goes wrong, I think, when he tries to stretch Jack Kennedy into Bill Clinton or when he tries to contrast Kennedy\u2019s promise not-to-invade Cuba with George Bush\u2019s actual invasion of Iraq. The comparisons are just, but their didactic quality distract from the subject: J.F.K. as man, family man, man\u2019s man, and lady\u2019s man\u2026.<\/p>\n

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Sister to Courage: Stories from the World of Viola Desmond, Canada\u2019s Rosa Parks<\/em> <\/strong>
\nby Wanda Robson
\nNova Scotia: Breton Books, 2010<\/h6>\n

When the late and mighty tribune of liberty and equality, Dr. Carrie Best, of New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, published her autobiography, That Lonesome Road<\/em>, in 1977, she served to inaugurate a tradition of such works by African-Nova Scotian (or Africadian) women, with the late Verna Thomas\u2019s Invisible Shadows<\/em> (2001) adding another example.<\/p>\n

These memoirs tell of struggles and victories, but more significant is their use of Africadian English. It appears, only surreptitiously, in Best and Thomas, but is a crucial beauty in Wanda Robson\u2019s Sister to Courage: Stories from the World of Viola Desmond, Canada\u2019s Rosa Parks<\/em>, and Dorothy Proctor\u2019s Chameleon: The Lives of Dorothy Proctor<\/em><\/p>\n

Both Robson and Proctor author \u2018as-told-to\u2019 books, and Proctor\u2019s amanuensis, Fred Rosen, is credited as a co-author of Chameleon<\/em>. Bottom line:\u00a0 Both books possess a direct, vivid, oral quality, though their content is starkly different. Robson tells of her own life while recalling that of her heroic sister, Viola Desmond, who was jailed in 1946 for violating a subtle apartheid<\/em> law in a New Glasgow, NS, theatre. In contrast, Proctor, who was born into her mother\u2019s Cape Breton brothel, rose from being a child-abuse victim to a sly criminal to becoming a smart, tough, undercover, police operative.<\/p>\n

In her memoir, Robson relates, primarily, her own life story, though she also focuses on her sister Viola Desmond\u2019s effort to build an African-Canadian beauty-products line and business, and then her subsequent \u2013 accidental \u2013 stand for human rights.<\/p>\n

Still, the main theme is survival. When Robson (n\u00e9e<\/em> Davis) is born in 1926, she is the unwitting observer of the death of an elder sister, only eight days later: On Christmas Eve, \u201cthe living room in front had a bare, undecorated Christmas tree and little children playing, waiting for Santa; and in the parlour on the other side of these doors, my parents were preparing the body of their daughter Dorothy, who had just died.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robson\u2019s Baptist mother would not openly allow \u201ctrashy, pulpy magazines\u201d or \u201cplaying cards\u201d in her home, but still developed a notable crush on screen idol Clark Gable: \u201cWomen were wild about him\u2026. Was it his muscular chest, was it his broad shoulders, was it his patent leather hair, was it that crooked smile he had \u2013 that deadly crooked smile \u2013 was it that neat moustache, or was it his ears? Because some women found those large ears cute.\u201d Recalling her sister\u2019s defiance of New Glasgow\u2019s Roseland Theatre and its racist ticket-pricing, Robson stresses the spontaneity of Viola\u2019s protest and its roots in her sister\u2019s need to sit in a place where she could see the screen comfortably.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, a manager and a constable dragged the 96-pound Viola from the cinema: \u201cAnd she said, \u2018I just sort of went limp, because I wasn\u2019t going to make it easy for them.\u2019 And then, she said, one shoe dragged off, and she dropped her purse. And one woman \u2026 ran up behind her and gave her her purse, and put her shoe up on top of the purse.\u201d Convicted of defrauding the province of 1\u00a2 in tax (the difference between a whites-only ticket and a blacks-only ticket), Desmond spent a night in jail and paid a $20 fine. She later lost a Supreme Court of Nova Scotia appeal. Dispirited by this outcome, Desmond soon abandoned her hitherto successful business. When she died in 1966, not one obituary mentioned her civil rights activism.<\/p>\n

When Her Honour Mayann Francis, the Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, granted Desmond a posthumous pardon last year, Robson was elated, but also writes, \u201cI think of Viola almost every day, perhaps more now than ever. And I see her on the (New York City) apartment floor, dying alone, fifty years of age, still full of plans. A terrible and undeserved end.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Chameleon: The Lives of Dorothy Proctor, from Street Criminal to International Special Agent <\/em>
\nby Dorothy Proctor & Fred Rosen
\nUSA, NJ: New Horizon Press, 1994
\n200pp. $22.95<\/h6>\n

Published in 1994, Chameleon<\/em> remains a must-read. Proctor utters a prose that is colourful and brutally frank. Her mother was a midwife and self-taught abortionist and madam; her father was \u201cpond scum.\u201d Proctor was \u201ca pretty little child, but I had dead eyes.\u201d Her story is harrowing, but gripping \u2013 thanks to her unfettered use of Africadian vernacular, and her unflinching honesty. It shows the irresistible force of undiluted realism.<\/p>\n

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Collected Works of George Grant: Volume 4, 1970-1988<\/em>
\nby Arthur Davis et al. (eds.)
\nToronto, ON: U of T Press
\n1110 pp. $215<\/h6>\n

Famed for his incendiary booklet, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism<\/em> (1965), that ignited English-Canadian nationalism and fuelled Vietnam War protests, the late, great Canadian philosopher George Grant (1918-88) seems to fuse Bob Dylan\u2019s mystic verses with Malcolm X\u2019s fiery truths. He is a thinker as inescapable for us as is Marshall McLuhan.<\/p>\n

Starting in the \u2018Thousands,\u2019 the University of Toronto Press has now issued, in excellent cloth, all of Grant\u2019s writings, spanning his earliest jottings from the 1930s up to his last books, interviews, book reviews, articles, and lectures, which are compiled in Collected Works of George Grant: Volume 4, 1970-1988<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Edited and introduced finely by Arthur Davis of York University and Henry Roper, once of the University of King\u2019s College, this 1110-page, final volume in the series is a magnificent tribute to Grant\u2019s protean thought. It illuminates the consistency of the philosopher, who retired in 1984 from Dalhousie University, where he taught religion and analyzed politics, always with a classicist, Christian, and conservative bias.<\/p>\n

The essence of Grant\u2019s argument is, once Western philosophy turned from religion to reason, from a belief in eternity (God) to a belief in history (progress), and from seeing humans as souls to seeing us as an evolutionary accident, we freed ourselves to pursue our pleasure and scientific innovation \u2013 all without limits. Our faith in \u2018can-do\u2019 and \u2018know-how\u2019 and \u2018willpower\u2019 enables us to perform engineering wonders, but also to liquidate nations, abort fetuses, and abuse human rights.<\/p>\n

Grant is a superb writer, at times, too. He brands one university \u201ca knowledge whorehouse,\u201d and he pens this proverb: \u201cLove and hate are necessary to each other except among the saints.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some views are wrong. Grant says that technology disables populism. What about the Internet? And if President Kennedy started the Vietnam War, didn\u2019t President Nixon expand it? Grant can be curmudgeonly, but his core thought seems correct. As he said we must do with French author C\u00e9line, \u201cTolle, lege<\/em>\u201d: Take up and read!<\/p>\n

Afrodisiac
\nby Brian Maruca & Jim Rugg
\nRichmond, VA: Adhouse Books
\n96 pp. $15:00<\/h6>\n

Afrodisiac has got to be the zaniest, most over the-top and in-yo-face ‘black’ graphic text\/comic book in existence. Authored and artfully drawn by the tag-team of Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca, it is unclear whether either or both are ‘black.’ And it doesn’t matter, except that Afrodisiac is a savvy satire on American comic books and so-called blaxploitation flicks of the 1970s.<\/p>\n

So, our hero, Alan Diesler, who is a janitor when he is not a super pimp, was, alleges one story, a white kid who, thanks to a freak lab accident, turned black and superhuman. (If you ain’t got no funny bone, leave this book alone.) Afrodisiac is itself a series of short, madcap adventures, each given its own cover and a different comic-book style. In each tale, though, Afrodisiac prevails, and wins\u2014no sweat\u2014the love and lust of white girls who throw themselves at his feet.<\/p>\n

In the first story, “Shock-A-Con” (a shout-out to 1970s Soul star Chaka Khan), Afrodisiac is drawn in the manner of the superheroes of Jack Kirby. Tied up in a chair, and about to be tortured by two blonde Lesbians, Afrodisiac is freed when his once-captors attempt his seduction. As he chases the master criminal who had tried to murder him, Afrodisiac resembles Richard Roundtree’s 1971 detective hero, John Shaft.<\/p>\n

In “Night of the Monster Cockroach,” Afrodisiac has to save his “stable” of women\u2014who look like Archie strip versions of Betty and Veronica\u2014from the gigantic marauder. (The insect is “giant \u2026 [even by ghetto standards]).” This story ‘mashes up’ Kirby’s shadowy style with the Archie-like heroines, and the critter is killed when fearless Afrodisiac smashes his Cadillac again and again into his prey’s head. (Though our hero falls from his car and onto his own head, his big-ass afro causes him to bounce up and land on his feet.) Afrodisiac is so slick, so cool, so out-of-this-world wild that, when he meets Death, and she proves a nubile redhead, he impregnates her before returning to life to slay the racist, would-be assassin who has tried to rub him out.<\/p>\n

If Shaft and the Bond films are, themselves, really, adult cartoons, so is Afrodisiac a supposed, black male fantasy: “By day he cleans up your office, by night he cleans up the streets: Alan Diesler, a.k.a. Afrodisiac! A mysterious man from a far-away land \u2013 the original unbeatable, irresistible, smooth dark chocolate brother, bitch!” Afrodisiac is outrageous \u2013 and fun. The art and the narratives are raw, comedic, exhilaratingly intelligent, and knowledgeably appreciative of popular culture.<\/p>\n

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Dames, Dolls & Gun Molls: The Art of Robert A. Maguire
\nby Jim Silke
\nDark Horse, 2010
\n96 pp. $25:00<\/h6>\n

Dames, Dolls & Gun Molls: The Art of Robert A. Maguire reproduces and comments on the classic paperback novel covers drawn and painted by Maguire, from the late 1940s to the 1980s. Maguire ended his career by painting Romance-novel images of he-men and half-dressed women posed before gloomy castles, but he is famed for his 1950s-1960s depictions of bad belles and femmes fatales, often with a gun in hand or in easy reach.<\/p>\n

Silke opines that Maguire, “With pencil, brush and a lot of talent, \u2026 (made) deities out of simple dames: fallen angels, cunning chippies, hash slingers in greasy spoons, immoral spectacles in high heels and vermillion, and the girl next door.” He also finds that Maguire was born to paint the “particular girl in a dramatic situation.” As a “genius” within popular culture, he drew fetchingly the distressed damsel. Before Maguire, says Silke, “there had never been an artist who made the commonplace female so beautiful, nor the beautiful female so human.”<\/p>\n

Yet Maguire “idealized” his female figures. He worked with live models, but altered them in his art: The finished head would be smaller, the legs longer and slimmer, and the bust more pronounced. While Maguire illustrated clich\u00e9 stories by no-name writers, he also turned in covers for novels by Gustave Flaubert, D.H. Lawrence, and the pioneering U.S. lesbian writer Gale Wilhelm.<\/p>\n

Silke’s a Maguire fan, and his critique is welcome, but this book is about those novel covers, and the reproductions are so lavish and telling, that it is a pity that they mainly grace garage-sale books as opposed to household walls.<\/p>\n

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The Horror! The Horror!: Comic Books the Government Didn’t Want You to Read
\nby Jim Trombetta
\nUS: Abrams Comic Art
\n300pp. $36<\/h6>\n

The Horror! The Horror! is a compendium of 1950s horror comic-book covers, art, and stories that upset politicians, psychiatrists, and parents\u2014so much so, that comic-book publishers soon censored themselves, instituting a “code” that remains in force. Compiler Jim Trombetta adores these stories, and is thus an apt analyst. He makes two points about the ’50s horror stories: They brought the Cold War ‘Red Scare’ to kiddy-level, replacing ‘Commies’ with Zombies; “in April 1954, comics became the first pop-art medium to be regulated nearly out of existence by the (U.S.) government.”<\/p>\n

The stories \u2013 spooky, freaky \u2013 are tame by today’s standards (or lack thereof). But Trombetta stresses their “uncanny quality,” and their vivid ironies and brilliantly plotted malice allow them a priceless timeliness. So, in “Cycle of Horror” (Chamber of Chills, March 1953), a murderer keeps encountering his victim’s corpse, no matter where he runs. In “Tag\u2026 You’re It” (Tomb of Terror, July 1954), protective parents discover, too late, that their tyke is a vampire.<\/p>\n

Says Trombetta, the horror comics mirror 50s frights: Nuclear war, brainwashing, juvenile delinquency, homosexuality, libertinage, and even hunger, and so on. Artists illustrated these fears by animating corpses and skeletons, loosing cannibals and monsters upon cities, and by painting lots of giant-sized, Freudian symbols. Although Trombetta fixates upon the look of the horror comics (that resemble “stained-glass windows” in their colourful art), he is nicely literate \u2013 he has been a Shakespeare scholar \u2013 and refers severally to Canada’s late, great literary critic, Northrop Frye (whose centenary is next year).<\/p>\n

The Horror! The Horror! is not only a loving testimonial to a past era of pop, juvenile culture. The reproduced comics are fun to leaf through, and Trombetta’s commentary is witty and thoughtful: a fantastic read. The 300-page, oversize volume also includes a 30-minute DVD of an actual 1955 TV program attacking comic books for their dangerous immorality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poetry, Fiction, Memoir, Philosophy and Comic Reviews Incitements by Sean Howard Hallifax, NS: Gaspereau Press, 2010 $17: 95 As Ecclesiastes sagely notes, everything has its time and place, and so I am finally able to review Cape Breton poet Sean Howard\u2019s work, though he was kind enough to write to me in January 2010 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\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":910,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/106\/revisions\/910"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}