THE
UNTROUBLED MIND
before I came here I lived in the ground
therein I read the story of the artist on the
mesa
her suffering formed a bloom she slid her
tongue into
so faint her pencil work we could not see it in
260p resolution
I saw a vast white plane in her
the window bisected the snow from below
the frost flash-frozen flassine distributed
evenly clear
last night of my lease can you see me
backlit by the Keurig its laser show begging us
for water
if yes how whole is the form
Ottawa poet Ben Ladouceur’s second full-length poetry title is Mad Long Emotion (Toronto ON Coach House Books, 2019), a book that
follows his award-nominated Otter
(Coach House Books, 2015). In contrast to what his title suggests, Ladouceur’s
is a poetry of emotional exactness, composed via a meditative grace of humour,
odd turns and observation. His lines can be meaty, thick with sound and created
with a lightness that allows for a gymnastic ability to bounce, such as the ending
of “ASSINOBOINE PARK ZOO,” where he writes: “All monsters on earth were once
like me, / adept at love, composed // of meat, silent with ongoingness,
hydraulics well-greased / with blood that stays blue, so long as you / don’t let
it out.”
As
American poet CAConrad suggests, as part of the back cover blurb, Ladouceur’s
work includes descriptors such as “precarious,” but his poems are also
incredibly quick and smart, even clever, deftly making a series of playfully quick
turns and re-turns, such as the opening of “THE GREEN CARNATION,” that writes: “Fashion
is currently pineapples / and sending people // home with home- / made party
favours. Fashion fades, // but also, fades are in. / My barber’s students want
// to give each man on earth a killer / fade, to sort the men, to make men sort
// of fade away.” Really, what I appreciate in Ladouceur’s poems, especially in
poems longer than half a page or so, is the pacing; how he is able to pause and
stretch out before moving forward, such as this fragment of the longer sequence
“Lime Kiln Quay Road,” a piece originally produced as his bpNichol Chapbook Award-shortlisted chapbook:
If everyone around you
talks funny
then no they don’t.
It’s you.
You talk funny.
So,
I talk funny.
I take a call from home
outside.
Maybe reception is better.
The wind falls into the rapeseed
in stitches.
Reception is no better.
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