Toronto/Ottawa ON: Oh, it is good to see a new chapbook by Ottawa poet Margo LaPierre, In Violet (Toronto ON: Anstruther Press, 2024), following a small handful of publications, including chapbooks, both solo and collaborative, and a full-length poetry collection (the author biography on her website does mention both a collection of short stories and a novel in-progress). An assemblage of ten poems, In Violet gives the impression of a catch-all, as the author explores elements of structure and visual form, attempting to stretch out the possibilities of what poems might do, seek or look like. Working through trauma and its aftermath, writing memory, recollection, placement, rage and symphony, her lyric narratives extend out as a series of points that accumulate, moment to moment, that allow for a visual field of space across the page. “Hysteresis is the name / for a system of stress,” she writes, to open the poem “Hysteresis,” “in an organism or an object / when effects of / the stressor / lag [.]”
Surf Lessons
It was a sprouted need,
this plant with teeth,
true Venus. Fuck the rage
that eats us.
This is a healing spell:
bream green,
and foam dries in lipped
petals
delicate as the
conversations
with the ones we’ve hurt.
Great Barrington MA: Another chapbook by legendary poet, artist, curator and former publisher (The Figures) Geoffrey Young [see my interview with him here] is always a delight, so I’m pleased to see a copy of his LOOK WHO’S TALKING (Great Barrington MA: ALL SALES FINAL, 2024), a title that features art by Mel Bochner. Young has long favoured variations on the sonnet as his preferred lyric structure, offering a straightforwardness comparable to Canadian poet Ken Norris [see my latest review of his work here], if I may, for that straight line capable of bending or twisting when required. The straightforward manner provides, as well, a deceptiveness, almost a sheen, hiding deeper elements underneath in twists and twangs, a New England parlance of lyric with Berkeley underlay. “Is a pleasure to be indulged in,” he writes, to close the poem “LONG’S DRUGSTORE,” “When the nothingness of normality grabs you.” He writes of memory, offering reference layered upon reference, playing expectation against itself and you, the reader. “The pope when he blesses the poor. / I’d rather be a sea-bird anyway,” he writes, to close “WHAT GOES INTO THE SHREDDER IS YOUR BUSINESS,” “Squawking meaningless gibberish / Because we both know // That everything depends upon landing / On the beach for a nice long walk.”
DO THE THING
These days
the momentous minutiae
of life and events
distract me from all
the stuff I must get
done.
so if I don’t do the
thing
I think needs doing
at the exact moment
I think of it
or very shortly thereafter,
within ten seconds, say,
I might as well
forget it
because I already have.
Vancouver BC/Cobourg ON: I’m amused and intrigued by this reprint that Stuart Ross produced earlier this year through his Proper Tales Press, Vancouver poet Clint Burnham’s TED BERRIGAN AND STUART ROSS (2024), a title originally “printed in a manuscript edition of 10 / August 9, 1993.” I would be curious to have seen a new write-up by the author as to what the story was surrounding this small manuscript that opens with glowing letters from Ontario Arts Council/Conseil des arts de l’Ontario and Thomas Fisher Rare Books Collection, Robarts Library, University of Toronto, offering glowing critiques on the project, on the merits of “the works of the eminent Canadian writer Stuart Ross.”
As the letter purportedly from the Ontario Arts Council writes: “In accordance with your wishes, we have also evaluated the important role that Mr. Ross has played as a small press publisher and self-publisher. It is now our conclusion that the major arts funding groups of the world have been wrong to focus almost exclusively on mainstream and for-profit publishers: henceforth, the Ontario Arts Council will focus exclusively on small press publishing and self-publishing; the five trillion dollar grant annually allocated to Mc[C]lelland and Stewart will also forthwith be turned over to Mr. Ross.” If only that had been so.
HOW TED BERRIGAN WOULD’VE
WRITTEN THIS POEM
First all, you’d have to
include whether
he wrote it
in Chicago
or NYC
Maybe he just got some
grand and
went to a cheque-cashing
agency
so he’d have the money
to carry around
Sartre liked to do that, too
carry money around, I mean
and then there’d be the
obligatory reference
to a friend
he likes, in the
poem, a writer, perhaps
and, Hey! it’s that simple
This is a delightfully odd little collection (I say little because the collection includes five short poems and these two letters), as the best collections are, I must say. What was the original prompt for these pieces? Were these pieces in homage, attempting to echo the work of Ted Berrigan (1934-1983) and Stuart Ross by a then thirty-one year old Toronto-based Burnham? Writing a reference to the “Canadian / Forces / Base / Cold / Lake” in his poem “THE RED WAGGON,” as Burnham writes: “and at least / one famous / Canadian writer / used to teach / junior high / there at / Athabasca / j.h., / where I went / and outside it / I heard some / one / say goldbricking / bake in [.]”
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