Nathan Dueck, Nathan Russel Dueck (1979— ): Mortifications

 

NATHAN RUSSEL DUECK 
(1979-2003)

Before the ink had even dried on the contract, Nathan announced the news from atop a chair in the computer lab so everyone within earshot would know he’d soon to be an honest-to-goodness published author. A friend from a graduate seminar rushed over to slap him five. “I can’t wait to get my hands on the book,” he said. Then he stage-whispered, “You know what this means, right? We’re both going to be neck-deep in tang!” Nathan stepped down and led his friend by the arm into the hall, stalling to mull over what he said. Sure, he’d enjoyed himself many a refreshing glass of orange-flavoured crystals dissolved in tap water in his day—who hasn’t? By why did he have to share with this guy? Nathan sputtered, “I could sure go for some Tang right now! If it’s good enough for astronauts, it’s good enough for me.” The friend sighed. “Poets, man. You never make a lick of sense.”

The latest from Cranbrook, British Columbia-based poet Nathan Dueck is the “debut memoir” Nathan Russell Dueck (1979— ): Mortifications (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 2026), a curious assemblage of prose-echoes and repetitions blending memoir, lyric and a possible bending of fact (I would like to see the numbers on his claim of being “a worst-selling Mennonite author,” for example). Each individual piece, none more than a page in length, are set beneath similar headstone-esque titles, including “NATHAN RUSSEL DUECK (1979-1992),” “NATHAN RUSSEL DUECK (1979-2006)” and “NATHAN RUSSEL DUECK (1979-1994).” As the back cover description provides, this collection “[…] is a lifetime collection of cringe-worthy moments that are always true (… ish).” “Nathan cosplayed as a scholar all throughout his youth,” Dueck writes, to open the piece “NATHAN RUSSEL DUECK (1979- ),” “donning pleated trousers. Oxford shirts buttoned up all the way, and cardigans with elbow patches. The part in his hair was always severe. When he finally became a professor, his students couldn’t tell if his preppy getup was ironic or sincere. In truth, he couldn’t tell either.”

This is Dueck’s fourth full-length title, following the poetry collections king’s(mère) (Turnstone Press, 2004), he’ll (St. John’s NL: Pedlar Press, 2014) [see my review of such here] and A Very Special Episode (Hamilton ON: Wolsak and Wynn, 2019) [see my review of such here], with a further forthcoming within the next year or so with University of Calgary Press (although it is good to see Dueck returning to his original publisher, here). His debut, a fragmented book-length long poem on and around Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King, is a collection that perhaps remains my favourite of his works overall, at least so far; in part for the cheek of it, writing so playfully (via accumulated fragment) on such a serious yet colourful historical figure, let alone one of Canada’s best-known (and most unusual) of Prime Ministers. There’s long been a playful element to Dueck’s book-length explorations, one that attends form and memory, play and sly jokes, nostalgia and self-doubt, offering a sense of structural play and self-depreciation, bending lines of fact into something else, leaning hard into perspective. As the short piece “NATHAN RUSSEL DUECK (1979-1994)” writes, in full: “Although Nathan faithfully awaited true love throughout high school—admittedly, this wasn’t too difficult since he wasn’t exactly easy on the eyes—he didn’t think it really counted without the officially licensed True Love Waits wristband, so he paid another beta male at the church youth group twenty dollars for his. It was silicone and gave Nathan an itchy rash.” His books-to-date—including his prior collection, riffing on and through the nostalgia of Saturday morning cartoons and after-school specials—exist as book-length studies through a particular subject, each title wildly different than the others. Curiously, a selected poems at some point would be fascinating to see, in part for what kind of framing a potential editor might decide.

The memoir element of a book-length accumulation of self-contained prose pieces could be seen as an echo of Vancouver writer George Bowering’s classic Autiobiology (Vancouver BC: Georgia Straight Writing Supplement, Vancouver Series #7, 1972), offering prose bursts on individual moments, memories and experiences across childhood and youth. As well, Dueck adds the caveat of not only clustering these purposefully awkward and self-depreciating pieces into sections with flamboyant titles—“Rejectio in Perpetuum,” “Ridiculam in Persona,” “Retentus in Pecunia,” “Regior in Propagatio” and “Reprobi in Publicum”—but adds a layer of narrative through subtitles across the table of contents itself. As each piece within the book offers but name and date, the table of contents offers addendums such as “That time Nathan mulled over potential complications of moral philosophy …,” “That time Nathan exhibited a textbook case of white savior complex…” and, referencing the poem fully quoted above, “That time Nathan became a worst-selling Mennonite author….” Throughout, Dueck references what might be his touchstones, including nostalgia, introspection, self-doubt and faith, attempting to reconcile exactly how he might see himself, as to where he has been, and where he might currently stand.

NATHAN RUSSEL DUECK
(1979-1996)

Nathan was one of a dozen or so teens seated around a circular table in an Evangelical church basement as their twentysomething youth leader held forth. “Then this pilot hears from a stewardess that some passengers had disappeared—they were all raptured!” Nathan surreptitiously sat on quaking hands, but everybody else was rapt. “Get this,” smirked the youth leader. “The pilot’s wife and son were taken without him!” Seeing Nathan’s head shaking, the youth leader snarled, “Something wrong, bruh?” Starting at the ceiling panels, Nathan said, “Without my family there, I’m not sure heaven would feel much like paradise.” The table fell silent. The youth leader cracked wise, “It’s gonna be such a par-tay, you’d never even notice!” Glaring at the floor tiles, Nathan added, “But how is that an eternal reward?” “Jesus’s going to separate sheep from goats at the Second Coming,” said another teen in a condescending tone. “Believe you me, you don’t want to be caught up in the wrong crowd.” Nathan pushed away from the table, saying, “I should probably go.” The youth leader waved, rattling his puka shell bracelet. “But will it be paradise without you?”

I’m also intrigued by Dueck’s use of repetition and echo through this prose-poem memoir, a structure utilized by numerous poets over the years, whether utilizing repeated title or not, still beneath a repeated prompt to further the possibilities, including MC Hyland’s The End (Sidebrow Books, 2019) [see my review of such here], Peter Burghardt’s (no subject) (Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2022) [see my review of such here], Johannes Göransson’s SUMMER (Grafton VT: Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2022) [see my review of such here], Samuel Ace’s I want to start by saying (Cleveland ON: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2024) [see my review of such here], Sawako Nakayasu’s remarkable The Ants (Los Angeles CA: Les Figues Press, 2014; Punctum Books, 2025) [see my review of such here], and multiple titles by the late Noah Eli Gordon, specifically Is That the Sound of a Piano Coming from Several Houses Down? (New York NY: Solid Objects, 2018) [see my review of such here] and The Source (New York NY: Futurepoem Books, 2011) [see my review of such here]. Throughout, he returns to that same central prompt of himself and his own memory, a headstone-title set as a firm ground from which to leap, or stand. If a writer really wishes to push into unknown, unexpected territory, it isn’t enough to write five or ten pieces around a particular subject, but twenty or thirty or forty pieces, working through the expected material fairly quickly, leaving only the unexpected to follow, and Dueck’s approach is thorough, and wide-ranging. How far might one push the idea, after all, and Dueck’s clustering of pieces suggest the compositional process provided a sequence of pieces far different than their final order within this collection. Do I know more about the life of Nathan Dueck after reading through this “debut memoir,” one might ask? Possibly, but moreso, I know far more about what he thinks about various events throughout his life. Or, as the piece “NATHAN RUSSEL DUECK (1979-2004)” reads:

The best advice Nathan ever received came from his master’s degree advisor. She made only one comment at the end of the first draft of his thesis: UNCLENCH. From that moment on, he laboured 24.7 to do just that.*

 

 

*Sure, this practice puts him in an early grave, but still, pretty good advice, huh?

 

Spotlight series #61 : nathan dueck

The sixty-first in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring British Columbia poet nathan dueck.

The first eleven in the series were attached to the Drunken Boat blog, and the series has so far featured poets including Seattle, Washington poet Sarah Mangold, Colborne, Ontario poet Gil McElroy, Vancouver poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Ottawa poet Jason Christie, Montreal poet and performer Kaie Kellough, Ottawa poet Amanda Earl, American poet Elizabeth Robinson, American poet Jennifer Kronovet, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis, Vancouver poet Sonnet L’Abbé, Montreal writer Sarah Burgoyne, Fredericton poet Joe Blades, American poet Genève Chao, Northampton MA poet Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1 territory) poet, critic and editor Joshua Whitehead, American expat/Barcelona poet, editor and publisher Edward Smallfield, Kentucky poet Amelia Martens, Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie, Burlington, Ontario poet Sacha Archer, Washington DC poet Buck Downs, Toronto poet Shannon Bramer, Vancouver poet and editor Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Vancouver poet Geoffrey Nilson, Oakland, California poets and editors Rusty Morrison and Jamie Townsend, Ottawa poet and editor Manahil Bandukwala, Toronto poet and editor Dani Spinosa, Kingston writer and editor Trish Salah, Calgary poet, editor and publisher Kyle Flemmer, Vancouver poet Adrienne Gruber, California poet and editor Susanne Dyckman, Brooklyn poet-filmmaker Stephanie Gray, Vernon, BC poet Kerry Gilbert, South Carolina poet and translator Lindsay Turner, Vancouver poet and editor Adèle Barclay, Thorold, Ontario poet Franco Cortese, Ottawa poet Conyer Clayton, Lawrence, Kansas poet Megan Kaminski, Ottawa poet and fiction writer Frances Boyle, Ithica, NY poet, editor and publisher Marty Cain, New York City poet Amanda Deutch, Iranian-born and Toronto-based writer/translator Khashayar Mohammadi, Mendocino County writer, librarian, and a visual artist Melissa Eleftherion, Ottawa poet and editor Sarah MacDonell, Montreal poet Simina Banu, Canadian-born UK-based artist, writer, and practice-led researcher J. R. Carpenter, Toronto poet MLA Chernoff, Boise, Idaho poet and critic Martin Corless-Smith, Canadian poet and fiction writer Erin Emily Ann Vance, Toronto poet, editor and publisher Kate Siklosi, Fredericton poet Matthew Gwathmey, Canadian poet Peter Jaeger, Birmingham, Alabama poet and editor Alina Stefanescu, Waterloo, Ontario poet Chris Banks, Chicago poet and editor Carrie Olivia Adams, Vancouver poet and editor Danielle Lafrance, Toronto-based poet and literary critic Dale Martin Smith, American poet, scholar and book-maker Genevieve Kaplan, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic ryan fitzpatrick and American poet and editor Carleen Tibbetts.
 
The whole series can be found online here.

nathan dueck, A Very Special Episode

THROUGH GOLDEN AGES GIRLS LODGE TOGETHER

Through golden ages girls lodge together;

  Through generations girls encourage laughs.

Naughty young Georgian urges gals gather,

  Mingle, gossip, manage long paragraphs;

Gentle Norwegian daughter neglects thought,

  Gleefully living during teasing rough;

Rigid governess begrudges getting caught

  Gambling, feigns dignity acting tough;

Fragile ragazza migrant indulges strange

  Magic, reigns vigorously being strong,

Geriatric group ignores bogus change,

  Sings unforgettably nostalgic song:

Thoroughly grateful partygoers forgo

Giving big gifts, betraying largest ego.

Cranbrook, British Columbia poet nathan dueck’s third full-length poetry collection, after the collections king's(mère) (Turnstone Press, 2004) and he’ll (Pedlar Press, 2014) [see my review of such here], is the wonderfully playful A Very Special Episode (Hamilton ON: Wolsak and Wynn, 2019), furthering a shift in content that has been developing for some time into nostalgia and popular culture (see also: his 2013 chapbook @BillMurrayinPurgatorio from above/ground press). As part of his 2014 Touch the Donkey interview, he spoke of the project, then still a work-in-progress with a very different title:

My work-in-progress is tentatively titled “CRTC.” (I'm not sure that I’ll get away with that title.) I’m writing a series of poetic forms and modes about pop culture, but culture that isn’t really “popular” anymore. These are old-timey poems about cartoons, comic books, magazines, video games that have become the white noise of my mind. As I age out of the 18-35 demo, I’m becoming nostalgic for the late ‘80s / early ‘90s static – I can no longer ignore the culture that informed the lifestyle of this slovenly “indoorsman.”

You’re right to point out that I tend toward writing book-length projects. Previously, I’ve written with one eye on the book as a unit of composition, but I’m trying to stop. I’d like to think of “CRTC” as more of a “greatest hits” package, which means I’m focusing on each poem as part of a collection. Who knows, it may turn out to be a book that readers tirelessly flip through like channels during commercial breaks. 

There is something quite refreshing in how this work joyfully acknowledges how deeply immersed in television and pop culture some of us are and have been, a tension I’ve also been aware of over the years as a literary writer (my own immersion in comic book culture is some 10,000 titles deep); as though somehow those of us who are literary aren’t allowed to be engaged in what is so often deemed “low culture” (pop culture, comic books, wrestling, etcetera). The collection is both confusing and wonderfully produced, designed to mimic the classic TV Guide, and dueck engages with numerous, familiar tropes, from the title itself to references that might not be so obvious, unless you are of a certain age, such as the poem “HEARING THE WEEKLY SECRET LETS ME SCREAM,” for example, that refers to a regular feature of the Saturday morning show Pee-Wee’s Playhouse (1986-1991). The blend of pop culture and tight lyrics composed in formal structures are reminiscent of the sonnets of Montreal poet David McGimpsey, but there is something far more absurd in what dueck is doing, allowing, in a certain way, for the ridiculousness of composing poems on the sitcom Golden Girls, or Knight Rider, You Can’t Do That on Television and Droids. This book refuses to take itself too seriously, yet manage lines so taut and vibrant one could bounce a quarter off of any of them, such as the poem “A HOOT,” that begins:

  It is day in the neighbourhood is a beautiful day for a neighbor is a neighbourly day in this beauty wood. But Mr. Rogers felt alone. He felt tight as a buckled belt and tied tie.

  But could you be what you seem, could you be a bellow could you be howl could you be horn or could you be a stage whisper could you be a steam whistle could it be beak, beak from the sky oh my you are a hoot, a hoot when a neighbor. But you escaped from an eggshell in a nest but you were only make-believe to Mr. Rogers but you were as lonely as one could be for you were once in an eggshell for no one knows loneliness as an owl alone in an eggshell but you were only make-believe for you made feathers blue not grey you made eyes white not grey so Mr. Rogers eased through sleeves of his cardigan.

  So he started to croon.

National Poetry Month 2017 : Chaudiere Books blog

In case you haven't seen, I'm curating my fourth annual National Poetry Month series over at the Chaudiere Books blog, with new poems posting every day or two. Already I've posted new pieces by Julia Polyck-O'Neill, Joe Blades, nathan dueck, Lauren Turner, Carl Watts, Stan Rogal, Jamie Sharpe and Elee Kraljii Gardiner and Andrew McEwan, with pieces forthcoming by Sharon Harris, Sean Braune and N.W. Lea, among others. What else might come?

nathan dueck, he’ll

            I WAS RAISED INDOORS BY PARENTS ATTEMPTING TO SPARE ME from developing allergies or asthma. Mother indulged my bookish inclinations, borrowing a shelf’s worth of hymnals in noble German alongside sheaves of humble English novels. Father assigned me a related duty: I was to translate sheets of Hüag’dietsch and Enjelsch lines into Plaut’dietsch, our mother tongue, a plain-spoken parlance with the cadence, intonation, and tempo of the Canadian prairies. Such a learned chore was common in Mennonite – ooda Mennoniet – households like mine, for we were formally illiterate, in spite of our fluency with a particular Germanic vernacular, yet in the first half of the twentieth century a daughter normally assumed that responsibility. (“A NOTE ON THE TEXT”)

And so begins Calgary poet nathan dueck’s second trade poetry collection, he’ll (St. John’s NL: Pedlar Press, 2014), a wonderfully playful book of anxieties surrounding translation, culture, punctuation (such as this poem, included recently as part of the dusie “Tuesday poem” series) and language. Constructed in the collage structure of the Canadian long poem, he’ll explores the anxieties, histories and contradictions of his Mennonite self. As he writes: “By the time you read my admission it will / be posthumous. So long I have suffered sin- [.]” In many ways, dueck’s he’ll seems influenced in form by Dennis Cooley’s Bloody Jack (Turnstone Press, 1984), among others, for his playful use of language (including the pun), wild collage of lyric and characters, and array of disparate sections. In many ways, dueck is applying many of Cooley’s poetic and storytelling structures and exploratory techniques to his Mennonite past, much in the way (via far different forms) Myrna Kostash and Andrew Suknaski did in the 1970s and 80s for first generation Ukrainian Canadians. At some points in the book, dueck utilizes the visual/concrete, sometimes the staggered lyric fragment, and other times, the book reads as straight documentary. “I cannot create / a tradition.” he writes, in the poem “EULOGIUM”: “I can only invent a new testament.” There is a lot happening in he’ll, and dueck’s is a rich, wide and varied canvas. As part of the poem “PROEM” reads:

He will quietly homily, you know. Eli will.

                                                                   Peck

keys of a manual typewriter

                                            over an ad from page

656 of the 1979 Sears catalogue. Or a recipe on

page 13 of the Mennonite Treasury. Full stop –

Mechanical harmonics scale:

                                                Tabs set →

                                                                    Unclr.

No space bar.

                        Locked shift.

Appearing a full decade after the publication of his king’s(mère) (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 2004), which explored aspects of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King’s life, beliefs and death, dueck appears to favour the book-length exploration subjects through the essay-collage of experimental and avant-garde lyric, and manages to create something entirely thrilling and unique, pushing in directions rarely taken in poetry. How many other poetry collections might include a clearing or two of the throat?

He will post quires. Testaments or testimonies.

Ice age glaciers carved Pembina Escarpment from prairies to shield, from tree to medicine line.

Lost my place staring at headstone posture of a church minus its steeple. Rows made from felled birchbark with plastic kneelers of summerfallow fertilized by formaldehyde. When Rat River runs off, pews embalm churchgoers in Sunday clothes.

Tangled keystrokes. Loosened carriages. Dirtied segments.