NATHAN RUSSEL DUECK
(1979-2003)
Before the ink had even
dried on the contract, Nathan announced the news from atop a chair in the
computer lab so everyone within earshot would know he’d soon to be an
honest-to-goodness published author. A friend from a graduate seminar rushed
over to slap him five. “I can’t wait to get my hands on the book,” he said. Then
he stage-whispered, “You know what this means, right? We’re both going to be neck-deep
in tang!” Nathan stepped down and led his friend by the arm into the hall, stalling
to mull over what he said. Sure, he’d enjoyed himself many a refreshing glass
of orange-flavoured crystals dissolved in tap water in his day—who hasn’t? By
why did he have to share with this guy? Nathan sputtered, “I could sure go for
some Tang right now! If it’s good enough for astronauts, it’s good enough for
me.” The friend sighed. “Poets, man. You never make a lick of sense.”
This is Dueck’s fourth full-length title, following the poetry collections king’s(mère) (Turnstone Press, 2004), he’ll (St. John’s NL: Pedlar Press, 2014) [see my review of such here] and A Very Special Episode (Hamilton ON: Wolsak and Wynn, 2019) [see my review of such here], with a further forthcoming within the next year or so with University of Calgary Press (although it is good to see Dueck returning to his original publisher, here). His debut, a fragmented book-length long poem on and around Prime Minister William Lyon MacKenzie King, is a collection that perhaps remains my favourite of his works overall, at least so far; in part for the cheek of it, writing so playfully (via accumulated fragment) on such a serious yet colourful historical figure, let alone one of Canada’s best-known (and most unusual) of Prime Ministers. There’s long been a playful element to Dueck’s book-length explorations, one that attends form and memory, play and sly jokes, nostalgia and self-doubt, offering a sense of structural play and self-depreciation, bending lines of fact into something else, leaning hard into perspective. As the short piece “NATHAN RUSSEL DUECK (1979-1994)” writes, in full: “Although Nathan faithfully awaited true love throughout high school—admittedly, this wasn’t too difficult since he wasn’t exactly easy on the eyes—he didn’t think it really counted without the officially licensed True Love Waits wristband, so he paid another beta male at the church youth group twenty dollars for his. It was silicone and gave Nathan an itchy rash.” His books-to-date—including his prior collection, riffing on and through the nostalgia of Saturday morning cartoons and after-school specials—exist as book-length studies through a particular subject, each title wildly different than the others. Curiously, a selected poems at some point would be fascinating to see, in part for what kind of framing a potential editor might decide.
The memoir element of a book-length accumulation of self-contained prose pieces could be seen as an echo of Vancouver writer George Bowering’s classic Autiobiology (Vancouver BC: Georgia Straight Writing Supplement, Vancouver Series #7, 1972), offering prose bursts on individual moments, memories and experiences across childhood and youth. As well, Dueck adds the caveat of not only clustering these purposefully awkward and self-depreciating pieces into sections with flamboyant titles—“Rejectio in Perpetuum,” “Ridiculam in Persona,” “Retentus in Pecunia,” “Regior in Propagatio” and “Reprobi in Publicum”—but adds a layer of narrative through subtitles across the table of contents itself. As each piece within the book offers but name and date, the table of contents offers addendums such as “That time Nathan mulled over potential complications of moral philosophy …,” “That time Nathan exhibited a textbook case of white savior complex…” and, referencing the poem fully quoted above, “That time Nathan became a worst-selling Mennonite author….” Throughout, Dueck references what might be his touchstones, including nostalgia, introspection, self-doubt and faith, attempting to reconcile exactly how he might see himself, as to where he has been, and where he might currently stand.
NATHAN RUSSEL
DUECK
(1979-1996)
Nathan was one of a dozen or so teens seated around a circular table in an Evangelical church basement as their twentysomething youth leader held forth. “Then this pilot hears from a stewardess that some passengers had disappeared—they were all raptured!” Nathan surreptitiously sat on quaking hands, but everybody else was rapt. “Get this,” smirked the youth leader. “The pilot’s wife and son were taken without him!” Seeing Nathan’s head shaking, the youth leader snarled, “Something wrong, bruh?” Starting at the ceiling panels, Nathan said, “Without my family there, I’m not sure heaven would feel much like paradise.” The table fell silent. The youth leader cracked wise, “It’s gonna be such a par-tay, you’d never even notice!” Glaring at the floor tiles, Nathan added, “But how is that an eternal reward?” “Jesus’s going to separate sheep from goats at the Second Coming,” said another teen in a condescending tone. “Believe you me, you don’t want to be caught up in the wrong crowd.” Nathan pushed away from the table, saying, “I should probably go.” The youth leader waved, rattling his puka shell bracelet. “But will it be paradise without you?”
I’m also intrigued by Dueck’s use of repetition and echo through this prose-poem memoir, a structure utilized by numerous poets over the years, whether utilizing repeated title or not, still beneath a repeated prompt to further the possibilities, including MC Hyland’s The End (Sidebrow Books, 2019) [see my review of such here], Peter Burghardt’s (no subject) (Oakland CA: Omnidawn, 2022) [see my review of such here], Johannes Göransson’s SUMMER (Grafton VT: Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2022) [see my review of such here], Samuel Ace’s I want to start by saying (Cleveland ON: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2024) [see my review of such here], Sawako Nakayasu’s remarkable The Ants (Los Angeles CA: Les Figues Press, 2014; Punctum Books, 2025) [see my review of such here], and multiple titles by the late Noah Eli Gordon, specifically Is That the Sound of a Piano Coming from Several Houses Down? (New York NY: Solid Objects, 2018) [see my review of such here] and The Source (New York NY: Futurepoem Books, 2011) [see my review of such here]. Throughout, he returns to that same central prompt of himself and his own memory, a headstone-title set as a firm ground from which to leap, or stand. If a writer really wishes to push into unknown, unexpected territory, it isn’t enough to write five or ten pieces around a particular subject, but twenty or thirty or forty pieces, working through the expected material fairly quickly, leaving only the unexpected to follow, and Dueck’s approach is thorough, and wide-ranging. How far might one push the idea, after all, and Dueck’s clustering of pieces suggest the compositional process provided a sequence of pieces far different than their final order within this collection. Do I know more about the life of Nathan Dueck after reading through this “debut memoir,” one might ask? Possibly, but moreso, I know far more about what he thinks about various events throughout his life. Or, as the piece “NATHAN RUSSEL DUECK (1979-2004)” reads:
The best advice Nathan ever received came from his master’s degree advisor. She made only one comment at the end of the first draft of his thesis: UNCLENCH. From that moment on, he laboured 24.7 to do just that.*
*Sure, this practice puts him in an early grave, but still, pretty good advice, huh?
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