Matthew Gwathmey, Family Band

 

FAMILY BAND

What was there to do but to play music?
Me on guitar and my sister on fiddle.
Father came out after tuning to blow
The porch top off with his harmonica.
Then a second cousin, on seeing shingles
falling sure on embouchure, would bring
his five-string banjo, mumbling about picket
fences, Double Dutch and potluck suppers.

Singers, we always had lots of singers.
Back in the house, next door, up in the hollow.
Singers we couldn’t hear. Singers we didn’t want to.
Our songs turned out grief lessons:
“The Little Lost Child,” “O Molly My Dear,”
“How Can We Stand Such Sorrow,” “Bury Me
Under The Willow Weeping.”

Nothing in return but quick toe taps
and off-beat claps, next tune chosen
by the fastest caller. That is,
until a few of our aunts came,
right hands flicking with rulers,
and made us all sing gospel hymns,
about life after life after.

The third full-length collection by Fredericton poet Matthew Gwathmey, following Our Latest in Folktales (London ON: Brick Books, 2019) [see my review of such here] and Tumbling for Amateurs (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2023) [see my review of such here], is Family Band (Guelph ON: The Porcupines’ Quill, 2024). There’s long been a playfully-askance approach Gwathmey has taken blending formal elements of lyric and narrative, and this collection is no different, offering sharp lines across a folksy, familial and detailed backdrop. “2022 is the year of the lilac,” he writes, to open the poem “LILACS,” according to the almanac. // So tonight let’s walk the trail behind our house. // To the bushes growing in very great plenty and already divided. // Find an offshoot. Plant it in our side yard where it scent can flourish / in the full sun. // Water and wait. We’ll alternate scions with random grafts, // until its flowers appear at eye level, appearing just before summer / comes into season, // blooms lasting only a couple weeks.” Through short, sharp lyrics, Gwathmey swirls together a mixtape’s-worth of earworms and experience, documenting road trips, birdwatching, visual art, nature walks and playing music, a broadband of all that circles the domestic of family life, rippling quietly outwards. “Savannah sparrows gather ten times / their weight in detail to orchestrate / the ratio of land to water,” he writes, as part of the lyric “BIRD CARTOGRAPHERS,” “call a light tsu. Caroline / chickadees, cleaner edge of cheek patch, / mark dots of cities and dashes / of contours using a broad palette.” I particularly enjoyed the triptych prose-poem sequence “PHOTOGRAPHS OF BUILDINGS / BY DIANE ARBUS,” the first of which begins: “Chimneys can’t push out but so much steam, even the outline’s unfocused in blurry vapour. A quiet loosening of rigid matter. And how far they jut into the postsecular project of this guy, the sky. Just imagine such alternatives.”