map
ink before it dries
dyes are a solution and
are small than actual
colour on the molecular
level. perception is held in suspension
and is considered a
heterogeneous mixture.
poets and ideas are
derived from
identical organic
compounds. this similarity results
in ink classified as
status.
functional polar groups
are used
to working with dye
molecules. this ingredient gives
power the
disintegrating quality that is necessary to
dissolve the vehicle of
class. that is what makes
that type of thought
smaller.
with these functional
polar groups, violence
is insoluble, the
vehicles do not change from particle form.
to prevent the pigments
from clustering, cooperating,
law makers must add a
dispersing agent to the mixture.
the dispersing agent
acts
as a detergent called
order.
Prince George, British Columbia poet, editor and writer Rob Budde’s new poetry
collection, Dreamland Theatre
(Halfmoon Bay, BC: Caitlin Press, 2014) seems to exist as a series of sketches,
a loose sequence of lyric notes on poetry, poetics and the histories and locals
of his adopted city. This book is an extension, the press release tells us, of
the Prince George explorations that make up Finding Ft. George (Madeira Park BC: Caitlin Press, 2007). Now that he’s explored
the surface and a bit below of his new north (especially since he’s actually
been living there for a bit more than a decade now), the work in Dreamland Theatre manage to take his
explorations of poetic geography and space far deeper. The press release is far
more specific:
The Dreamland Theatre
exists in a photograph of a white building on sledges being pulled through the
mud from one location to another by a team of horses in Prince George (then
Fort George) circa 1912. These poems are about imagining place and, continuing
the work of Finding Ft. George, Rob
Budde’s process of trying – and failing – to find out where he is. Poetry is
part of a place, and this book deals in the powerful homemaking that is
language itself.
The
author of the poetry collections Catch as Catch (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 1994), traffick (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 1999), Finding Ft. George (Madeira Park BC: Caitlin Press, 2007) and Declining America (Toronto ON: Bookthug,
2009), there is much in the way of Dennis Cooley and Robert Kroetsch influence
in some of those earlier works, and it is interesting to see how his work in
the long, fragmented poem has evolved into what emerges as Dreamland Theatre. Within the new collection there are still the
homages to earlier mentors, such as the poem “after creeley’s ‘for w.c.w.,’” a
poem dedicated to and from Robert Creeley (but which seems to owe far more to
the work of Barry McKinnon) that begins: “the fragment / more there than / say you [.]” Another example is the poem
“how I joined the seal herd too,” composed in memoriam to Robert Kroetsch, but
Budde manages to bring something fresh to his play of Kroetsch’s line, claiming
it for his own somehow, writing both the idea of the place, and perhaps a dream
of the same:
and it was not
difficult this
landlessness at the pivot
of our dance what matters
what touches in what language
The
finest parts of Budde’s poems are entirely small, subtle and nearly faint, held
together by the appearance of straight narrative lines. With Dreamland Theatre, Budde’s poetic seems
to have morphed into an intriguing blend of influences that easily appear to
include the extended, loping sentences and insights of Barry McKinnon, and the
lyric parse and eco-poetic of Ken Belford, both of whom have also written
extensively of and through the same northern locales. Given Budde’s city
narratives and language ethics questions, one might even catch a trace or two
of influence from British Columbia poets such as George Stanley and SharonThesen, perhaps. Budde not only writes of his space, but composes it, as in the
poem “khasdzoon yusk’ut” that ends with: “— if we were on a lake / it would be
in a strong, well-made / canoe unlike the one / I leave in the yard unwritten
[.]”
Given
this, it would appear that the dream (or dreams) that Budde writes of are
tangible, deliberately mixing an abstract space with a current and even
historical one. Can history simply feel, at times, as nothing more than
something once dreamed? It makes one curious to consider that his engagement
with this blend of poetics and locale might now be an ongoing one, watching
Budde’s work sink deeper inside Prince George with each succeeding title. In Dreamland Theatre, his poetry has
evolved away from the major movements of long poems and language theory, and
even the eco-poetry concerns, of some of his previous works, to somehow manage
these as a far more subtle blend within the shorter lyric. The poems might not
have the overt language play of earlier works, but Budde plinks and plucks at
the lyric, composing a narrative line far looser, and yet, far more subtle than
before. There is a looseness that exists in these poems that could certainly be
tightened and strengthened, but one that allows in an alternate kind of spacing
and breath. One almost forgives the occasional weaker poem within the
collection for the sake of the larger tapestry, as Budde collects an
accumulation of imperfect poems on an imperfect locale, and therefore, manages
to capture the essence of such entirely. As he writes in the poem “unnamed
places”: “like the body, poetry leads or follows [.]” It is as though that previous
work, Finding Ft. George, worked hard
to write of the city and areas surrounding Prince George, but Dreamland Theatre instead manages to
write from the inside of those same spaces. Without the requirements of so much
descriptive or historical elements, the poem can simply be of that space (and
even the dream of that same space).
double
me down 10th ave.
quick one two push
off and hey move
eyes back on the road
and
stop giggling
okay not
too fast
the words turning
as we go
downtown when it’s
sunny and down-
hill and not too
car-filled
is it you steering or
me wishing
you would
turn and kiss
my cheek
because of something
we’ve discovered
about ethics
caring about language
emissions and how
we, careening
got there
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