CJ Evans, LIVES

 

CJ Evans’s beautiful book, Lives, explores and circles around, into, and out of what it means to be free and alive in a world where humans insist on war and environmental destruction. Evans’s speaker is constantly trying to remain present in the world through deep perception and seeing, unable to free himself from his past (having served time in literal prison and the metaphorical prison of addiction). In the process, he gifts the reader with his keen perception and awakens the reader. Evans writes in “Now That the Time for Lives Getting Better is Done”: “And what else could my heart be for it not to try?” The collection renders through language a gorgeous natural and domestic landscape within a landscape that is dying—one war, one shooting, one plastic bottle at a time. Lives maps the apocalypse while simultaneously trying to resist it through language and life. (Victoria Chang, “INTRODUCTION”)

It is hard to know what to say about California poet and Two Lines Press’ Editorial Director [see my interview with him on such here] CJ Evans’ second full-length collection, LIVES (Louisville KY: Sarabande Books, 2022), given the lengthy introduction by Victoria Chang, judge of the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry that provided this book’s publication. Following his full-length debut, A Penance (Kalamazoo MI: New Issues Press, 2012), LIVES crafts lyric narratives of connection and disconnection; of being alone, as every other part of America might be: singular, and untethered. He writes a cadence of descriptive meditation and thoughtfulness akin to that of Ottawa poet Stephen Brockwell [see my review of Brockwell’s latest here], although one that manages a particular flow closer to that of water, flowing and connecting well beyond the boundaries of each standalone poem. Evans writes of seeking connection, even redemption, writing extensively of standing alone in the dark, only to discover that someone, there, has possibly been there the whole time, reaching out. “This shamed, this used,” he writes, as part of “IN THIS POEM WITHOUT YOU / I’M ALONE AS URANIUM ORE,” “this american body of mine / is near-done. Or I’m done with all it has become, / being american.”

Writing from underneath a shadow of environmental disaster and wildfires, school shootings and suicides, American political and cultural failures large and small, Evans writes of swirling storms and trying to find and even reach the calm centre. The poems, as Michael Ondaatje once paraphrased Jack Spicer, can live on their own no better than can we, and this book as a whole feels less a collection than a kind of metaphysical lyric suite, held together through a common tone, and a variety of intricately-woven threads across a great distance. “Panoramic,” the cover copy uses to describe the work, and his poems maintain a wide scope and deep attention, often returning back to particular tethers, to hold himself in place. He writes unapologetically of life, and a faith in living, almost as though believing in such because he has to; he needs to. “Just for today,” as the poem “INQUIRY INTO STORM” begins, “let’s erupt / the reverie with a plosive, // play in the halation, / the emblazoned, the significant // spiral of our specific / tornado.”

AN ORCHARD IS A FOREST WE BROKE

Walk with me the rows and whir: poor trees poor trees
poor wilderness clipped, fruit plucked, ugly branches robbed
of the weight of little animals. Pears rot around the roots,
blind black eyes in yellow skin infolding, eaten from inside

by neglect and wet. Along down the row and earth bends
away from them toward naked dirt between, and here,
in the cold cradle of winter, we wear high vulcanized boots,
and I work hard each day to remain in the world with you.

The poems in LIVES are grouped into four sections, three of which are built out of assemblages of shorter poems, but the second section holds but a single, extended poem that seems to anchor the collection as a whole, the poem “TRYING TO HEAR A HYMN TO LIFE.” Subtitled “after Donnelly & Schuyler,” the poem, as Evans offers in his acknowledgments, “is after poems called ‘Hymn to Life’ by Timothy Donnelly and James Schuyler, and also nods to poems of the same title by Lou Andreas-Salomé and Nazim Hikmet.” It is almost as though the entire collection swirls around this poem as a central core, akin to how Manitoba poet Di Brandt’s collection Now You Care (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2003) was structured around the central core of a longer sequence as well (my review of such seems to have fallen offline, formerly up via The Antigonish Review).

The narrative Evans writes across the seventy stanzas, each five lines in length, of “TRYING TO HEAR A HYMN TO LIFE” loop and swirl around a variety of images of wetlands and Lake Merritt, resting in the centre of Oakland, California, the Simon and Garfunkle song “America,” the memory of Sandy Hook, his daughter’s imaginary sabertooth, “Toothy,” and other family moments, connections, memories, dislocations and trauma, all wrapped up and around not only a belief in life itself, but the very act of that particular brand of faith. “I can’t see the lake from here,” he writes, early on in the poem, “but I believe / it still is. Just as I believe in the shellmounds / I’ll never see, the sabertooth, that the flat moon / is actually a sphere. I believe as I do / in this tabletop you can’t touch: wood pulp crushed // in a hydraulic press with glue.” Or later on in the same poem, offering: “I believe in this as much as god / or biology, which is to say, a bit less // than to make a bet with it against a bullet, / but enough. I call it belief, but it’s purposefully, / wondrously unexamined.” There is such a stunning beauty to this collection, one that shows itself as open-hearted while playing rather close to what might suggest a deeply-wounded chest. This is what one might call a darkly optimistic book; one filled with as much beauty as one can muster, and everything one can see after having been in the dark.

 

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Darren Groth

Described as a “masterful writer” and “brilliant storyteller”, Darren Groth is the internationally published author of works including Kindling, Are You Seeing Me?, Munro vs. the Coyote, and his latest novel, Boy in the Blue Hammock. He is an Adelaide Festival Award for Literature winner and has been nominated for numerous other prestigious prizes, among them the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the BC & Yukon Book Prizes, the OLA White Pine Award, the CBCA Book of the Year (Australia), and the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards (Australia).

Darren is a passionate advocate for the intellectual disability community, and is the proud father of a son with life-long cognitive and communication challenges. When he’s not watching American Ninja Warrior with his beautiful wife, he’s eating Fatburger with his wondrous twins.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first book changed my life before it was a book. As a manuscript, I submitted it to the biggest literary agents in my native Australia and one responded saying that, although she wasn't going to rep this work, I should keep writing because I had talent and I was someone to watch out for. That was a huge moment; it confirmed I wasn't deluding myself that I could write a good story.

I feel Boy in the Blue Hammock is my best work to date. Readers will have their own opinions, but I think it's the best writing I've done in terms of quality and craft. It's also traversing some territory that's largely uncharted -- the representation of intellectual disability is rare in literature, particularly when it involves a paucity of functional spoken language. I'm delighted a character like Kasper is on the shelves, not the least because he was inspired and shaped by my own son's lived experience.   

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I probably came to fiction courtesy of my grandfather; he was a big novel reader and I used to take books home to read from his collection. His taste was more commercial than literary, but Agatha Christie and Robert Ludlum wasn't a bad start for a word-hungry kid. That burgeoning love of fiction was really cemented by my grade 7 teacher, Mr Wade. He was big on creative writing. He can take a lot of credit for the author I've become.
 
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Over the years, I've tended to start a novel with a bit of a skeleton plan, but my most recent manuscript (currently being shopped) was much more directed -- I used Michael Hauge's 'Six Stage Plot Structure' and found it very useful -- prior to commencing the first draft. I might do so again in my next project. Regardless of the amount of planning, my first drafts are slow, deliberate and measured, often reducing the amount of editing required later. Boy in the Blue Hammock came out almost fully formed; the edit with Nightwood Editions was quite light.

4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
I am working on a "book" from the beginning. Invariably, I have a clear sense of the piece as a stand-alone short or a novel.  

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like readings -- as a former teacher, I have a strong performative streak. Reading aloud helps too; it brings the work back to life for me after the long triage of drafting and editing.  
 
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
More a statement than a question — ‘We cannot live in a world of one’ is a thread that runs through my work. It’s a quote from my novel Are You Seeing Me? and it speaks to the fact that, as human beings, we need each other and rely on each other. It’s true too that, throughout the bulk of my writing career, I've been forcing my fictional characters to deal with things I'm too cowardly to face. They've had to cope with a lot. If they ever find out where I live, I'm in trouble.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
For me, the quote from Kafka always looms large: "a book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us." I would add that, in these troubled times, a writer must also be the axe for the frozen sea around us.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Both for sure, though much more essential than difficult. I pride myself on being a good collaborator and that means finding the delicate balance between defending your work and being open to feedback that benefits the story.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Best writing advice was the Logan Pearsall Smith quote: 'What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.' (I've warped it into 'Show AND tell, but don't yell!' for my own workshops).

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I work a full-time day job, so writing routine tends to be in the evening and whenever I can. If I get 500 words done, that's a very productive day.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I’m one of those authors who just keeps turning the problem over and over and over until a solution is willed into existence or the problem just gives up. Getting out of my head space often lets a solution wander in. A session at the gym can be helpful.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Not many folks would call it a ‘fragrance’, but the smell of Vegemite invariably transports me back to Brisbane.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
It's very true for me that books come from books, but these days podcasts are something of a go-to, particularly narrative-based ones. They really help fill the reservoir of thoughts and ideas and questions that I need to write a novel.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
My favourite author all-time is Marquez -- the magic realism in my work is courtesy of his influence. A host of great Aussie novelists were key in my formative years: Peter Carey, Tim Winton, Venero Armanno, Nick Earls, John Birmingham. When we moved to Canada in 2007, I read a bunch of CanLit that first year, and I was particularly taken with Wayne Johnston's The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. These days, anything I read that's really good is important in my ongoing journey.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Retire from my day job!

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Sports play-by-play commentator. Or maybe professional karaoke singer -- is that an occupation?

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Words and stories and books were definitely in the blood from a young age, and writing was the thing I gravitated to when I had time and space. Writing was also a pragmatic choice -- I'm crap at many things, particularly math.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Last great book was Quicksand by Steve Toltz. Last great film was The Father. I think it's the first movie I've seen where the narrator is reliable and everything and everyone surrounding is unreliable. Remarkable.

19 - What are you currently working on?
I have a few new novel ideas, and one of those is beginning to stick. Stay tuned!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Nicole Brossard, Distantly: translated by Sylvain Gallais and Cynthia Hogue

 

            Brossard does not write in autobiographical or narrative detail, although it is clear that the speaker of her poems in Distantly is writing out of the specificity of lived experience, from the sensual impressions and responsive articulations of a particular embodied life. The poems are linked through the theme of life in cities (every poem title begins with “cities” or “city”). The poems are gorgeously lyrical in style, and the series as a whole is based loosely on the observations, emotions, perceptions, and dreams of a female speaking subject. The cities of the individual poems are not described realistically, although they are full of reality-based distillations rather than “thick” descriptions of postmodern urban life, with a sharp awareness, hovering at the edges, of social, cultural and gendered histories of violence and beauty, personal and political struggles for survival and intimacy. (“Translators’ Foreword”)

I was gratified to see Quebecoise writer Nicole Brossard’s latest English-language poetry title, the bilingual edition Distantly (Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2022), translated from French by Sylvain Gallais and Cynthia Hogue. This is, I think, Brossard’s first solo poetry title since the appearance of the expansive and essential Avant Desire: A Nicole Brossard Reader, eds. Sina Queyras, Geneviève Robichaud and Erin Wunker (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2020) [see my review of such here]. This is also the first Brossard title to be translated by this particular pair of translators, and it is curious to go through my own archives and realize that Cynthia Hogue was also the judge of the “Poets Out Loud Prize” for the year it was awarded to Washington State poet Sarah Mangold, which resulted in the publication of Mangold’s Her Wilderness Will Be Her Manners (New York NY: Fordham University Press, 2021) [see my review of such here].

Given Brossard is a poet, novelist and essayist so extensively published in English, a language beyond her original language of composition, it would be rather interesting, I would think, to hear from a potential round-table of her numerous translators-to-date on their processes of each working on a different element of the same author’s work. Are there some translators that prefer to work on Brossard’s poetry over her prose, or prose over her poetry? Are there translators preferring to translate her earlier work over her later? Are there two translators that might disagree on a particular word choice by another? I know Lydia Davis has discussed this, how different translators can often highlight different elements of structure, tone or even content of the same source text: what might these particular grouping of translators, all having worked on the same living author, have as a discussion?

“always I take up my cities again,” Brossard writes, to open her poem-shaped “Author’s Note,” “the same one, or another and its plural / with a taste of seafood, a painting by / Caravaggio, a suspension bridge, taste of / a foreign tongue that forces me to breathe / in the slowness and speed of my other / body of vertigo [.]” Distantly is a book of cities, as Brossard writes her lyric as slant points along an extensive and expansive grid, of thinking, feeling and allowing the world to exist within the body. “little by little we’ll say,” she writes, as part of “Cities with a face,” “the count of eternity’s / crossing our faces [.]” Distantly writes of cities and silence, location and dislocation, and the distances one travels between, amid and through. Her poems extend across sequential, stand-alone stanzas, stretching her line across the page and multiple pages, something Ottawa poet Monty Reid is known for as well: allowing the sentence a particular kind of opening—not open-ended per se, such as Robert Kroetsch or bpNichol—but extended. Her poems, long and short, sequence and sit together as a kind of suite or collage accumulation; less in sequence per se than around the central core of an image, an idea, as she writes between and amid cities, of cities, and a dream of cities, and their inherent elements of beauty and violence. As the second fragment of the five part “Cities really” reads:

in the distance with their yellow circles
or the closer tap tap of daily boredom
lap of fountain fairy-neons of night
cities with their tall vertical cabinets
Martinis 4 olives and murmurs
in the distance cities wooed by the haze of civilizations
our hands between supple joys
walls of mirrors and melancholy
electricity which falls through our hair

FENCE #39 (Vol. 21 #2): 39 WIN-SPR 2022

 

Isabelle Huppert

Vengeance is as dignified

an option as any, less lightning
than thunder, less timbre

than quake. Collared encore,
blank applause, trains stalled

for towns at a time. what good can
come of bad handsomes? What god

would hum through a hurricane? (Eileen G’sell)

As you most likely know by now, one of my favourite literary journals (a list that includes The Capilano Review, Canthius, Tripwire and filling Station, among a handful of others) is FENCE magazine [see my reviews of issues #20 here, #21 here, #26 here, #27 here, #28 here, #29 here, #30 here, #32 here, #34 here]. This latest issue is also the first to include Emily Wallis Hughes and Jason Zuzga in the shared position of Editorial Directors. As Hughes writes as part of an introduction to the issue:

When, in the early fall of 2021 Rebecca [Wolff] offered us this shared position, the history of my way to Fence flooded my mind, and I imagined a 21-year-old who might stumble upon this issue in a bookstore, like I did in 2006, when I urgently needed to find all of the differing language-people one reliably finds in Fence, which I don’t need to describe – you can see for yourself. If you have come across this online, or if you found this in a Barnes & Noble in a town very far from New York City, welcome, I’m glad you’re here with us. I know and remember what it is like to pick up a literary magazine and say: where was this before? Why didn’t my teachers give us this to read?

This new issues offers, as is standard for this particular venture, a wealth of material, and I’ve a list of names a kilometre long (0.621 miles, for American readers) of contributors to this volume with stellar work (most of whom I hadn’t heard of prior), including Eileen G’sell, Trey Moody, Ben Jahn (whom I contacted since to solicit work for periodicities), Hazel White, Kirstin Allio, Jen Frantz, Jasmine Dreame Wagner, Cate Marvin, Peter Myers, Jesi Bender, Jennifer Kronovet, Alyssa Perry and Samuel Amadon, among many, multiple others. As Nick Flynn’s poem “sacred trash” opens: “I cut a picture of a stranger // out of a newspaper, my daughter / took a pen to the man’s face // & scribbled it out—it is // a black cloud now. I saved it, / I have it here—whatever // a hand touches could be // the word of God.” Or the infectious rhythms of Annelyse Gelman’s “The Story,” that begins: “He has killed, the man, a doe. / To be sure, it was an accident, but there was / one private moment, just before / he slammed on the brakes, when / he hit the gas. Just to see. / It is dusk. It will be years before he makes his confession. / The eyes of things that shine in the dark / have started to shine.” The strength of FENCE emerges from the range of styles and the sheer among of work included, but most of all, just how damned strong the material included is.

The issue also includes a hefty folio towards the end, some fifty pages of “A portfolio of writing by nurses,” produced in large part to acknowledge the period of time we’ve been in, as well as their ongoing work and experiences throughout. The section floats through an assemblage of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and memoir, working through the multiple facets of a period of health crisis, from what can easily be seen as the front lines. In Shirley Stephenson’s “COVID & Locusts & Protests & Love—A Community Nursing Perspective,” she writes: “In the first weeks of COVID, I often wondered, Is this the way I will get the virus, and will it kill me? It wasn’t an ambush of panic, but a slow recurring thought, like fireflies drifting and flickering around the exam room.” For all the talk of crisis and anxiety around those initial months, it was easy to feel overwhelmed, for those of us who remained home, as well as those unable to make that choice, even beyond the fraction of the population who insisted on minimizing the entire situation. How does one maintain composure, maintain living, even while attempting to attend to the uncertainty of health? As Sarah Cluff’s short poem “Santa Monica” ends:

The sign at your dentist’s office says
“We cannot undo what you will not do.”