Montreal QC: I was very excited to see Montreal-based poet Carlos A. Pittella’s second poetry chapbook in English, PROPERSITIONS (Montreal
QC: Cactus Press, 2025), following his English-language above/ground press debut last summer. I’m appreciating Pittella’s play and sense of line break and
rhythm, such as the poem “BETWEEN / IN CASE THEY RUN / YOUR LICENCE
PLATE” that begins: “Once I broke my front tooth / out of a poem & still
have the chip / to show—not a great poem but it tasted / like bone it was real I
remember / the pain & the scar-tissue
/ of writing it that became my face.” There’s such a lovely propulsion to Pittella’s
lyrics, one with a stagger and staccato very nicely employed through those line
breaks and spaces. Held as a kind of call-and-response, or Greek chorus, there
are five “properstitions” poems, numbered via Roman numerals, each with a kind
of aside or counterpoint follow-up poem. As the poem “PROPER / SITIONS 1” reads:
“I wanted to carve my home mine / with a physical word on the wall & beyond
/ hope of getting a deposit back / but I wanted my own alphabet since / neither
landlord nor family / would understand it anyway. Would you?,” the second poem,
“FROM / LATIN, / BIBER,” begins: “beer this verb to be an
aftertaste / bitterness my father said / you gotta learn how to love / same as
coffee no one likes / at first he thus expounded [.]”
Edmonton AB: It is interesting to see titles by a new Canadian chapbook publisher, Edmonton’s Agatha Press, run by Matthew Stepanic, a press with exquisitely-designed titles in limited edition. The eighth title through the press is Edmonton poet Su Croll’s Fairy-tale logic (2025), an assemblage of poems produced in a numbered edition of one hundred copies. The poems in Fairy-tale logic are composed across familiar fairy tale narratives, but across very different perspectives. “Imagine you are a bad mother.” she offers, to open the poem “Imagine the poison,” “You are an evil step-mother. // Imagine the face in your magic / mirror announces you can grow // younger if you eat your beautiful / step-daughter’s heart // boiled and sprinkled with salt.”
Boast
It was a boast that began
this
whole bouleversé world.
The boastful father’s
false
claim of his daughter’s
skill,
the lie that she could
spin
gold from grass or leaves
or straw. The yellow of
it
transformed. Transformed.
Yet it was the father
who disappears so completely.
In the end, he was not
even
at church to give this
golden
package of a bride away
to her new master.
They
say old stories take on the purpose and character of the times they are told,
the speaker of those stories, and Croll offers her unique take on a history of
variations that might never be exhausted. There are multiple examples one can
cite over the years through contemporary poetry—from British Columbia poet Ruth Daniell’s The
Brightest Thing (Caitlin Press, 2019), to Louisiana poet Lara Glenum’s SNOW (Notre
Dame IN: Action Books, 2024) [see my review of such here], Jessica Q. Stark’s Buffalo Girl (Rochester
NY: BOA Editions, 2023) [see my review of such here], Katie Fowley’s The
Supposed Huntsman (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021) [see my review of such here]
or even Montreal poet Stephanie Bolster’s Three Bloody Words (above/ground press, 1996;
2006)—most of which engage with elements of female agency or lack thereof,
throughout so many of at least those European-originated tales (such as popularized
by the Brothers Grimm). There’s a curious way that Croll’s narratives bob and
weave in and around and through well-familiar narratives, her own perspective
providing either highlight unexplored moments or simply question the narratives
we’ve all taken for granted. “Why does the king need straw / spun into gold?”
the poem “Questions for Rumpelstiltskin” begins, “He’s the king. / Doesn’t the
king have all the gold / in the kingdom? Doesn’t the king / have more gold than
he knows / what to do with?”
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