Montreal QC: I was curious to see a new chapbook of poems, a coffee break (Montreal QC: Turret House, 2025), by the late Montreal poet Peter Van Toorn (1944-2021), especially given that his last published work was the collection Mountain Tea: & Other Poems (Montreal QC: Vehicule Press, 2004) [see my notes on such here], a collection originally published by McClelland & Stewart in 1984 as Mountain Tea & Other Poems. Just prior to the publication of that 1984 title, Van Toorn had a stroke, and, as I’m aware, didn’t publish any further new work through the remainder of his life. Moving through an author’s archive for the sake of publishable work is an interesting endeavour—I’ve done my own excavations through the work of Andrew Suknaski, for example, and keep hoping that someone might wade through the archives of Artie Gold to see what might be buried there—working a fine line between original authorial intent, especially for an author as reticent as Van Toorn, and continued public interest (especially if the work is publishable). One can point to a recent posthumous title by the late Joan Didion (1934-2021), her Notes to John (2025), a work that one can’t entirely know (at least from this distance) if such would have even been considered publishable (although if it sits in one’s literary archive, one can argue it is all fair game).
Not that the line in question lacks refinement in the sense of finesse—they are skillful enough—but they lack seriousness. And worst of all, these lines try to borrow power from their context, by their close association with the tradition of the sacred. So, they come to be a beggar dressing up and putting on airs—in clothes borrowed without permission from a rich cousin.
Van Toorn’s work has long been known for a particular precision, as well as a deceptive ease, of a lyric fine-tuned across years, so this short eight-poem prose sequence is intriguing. There is an ease here, and a further openness to the lines assembled here, in comparison to the poems of Mountain Tea—one could bounce a quarter off of those lines, certainly. This is a lovely, sleek thing, and it does make me curious as to whether or not there might be something further in that archive of his. What else might such boxes and file-folders hold?
Eden Prairie MN: From American poet david hadbawnik’s polis press comes his chapbook as it happens (2025), published as a sleek chapbook dedicated “for Tina and Elliott,” but made up of a single, extended poem “for alice notley,” published as an elegy and homage for the legendary American poet who died earlier this year (1945-2025). “she learned to speak with the dead,” the sequence opens, “whose voices go in a continuous / dark loop a current / between this and that / white noise / perhaps heard through / a measure of trees / or birdsong in spring / all she or you or anyone had to do / was stop breathing and the voices / come through no language [.]” There is an immediacy, even a rawness, to hadbawnik’s ongoingness through this sequence, one that suggests a fresh project potentially far larger than the current selection. Might there be more?
Ride into big sky. The light
going on
and on. Above trees above
buildings is
that the sea is that trace
of shipwreck or
morning sun? When we step
down from the car
into splendor of green receding
when
we mouth the words that
jangle open doors
will our breath describe
a line that seems like
darkness falling? My arm
thrust around you
your slim shoulder
laughter of beard trails and
in California is it always?
This way
and that sand wiggling
wet in between
like a dog’s nose or the
smell of found money
or a glimpse of skin as a
skirt shifts and
legs uncross or a new
beginning
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