Mammoth, Larissa Andrusyshyn

The Mammoth Sequences the Ivan Andrusyshyn Genome

Claustrophobia was his first obstacle,

then the heat. The mammoth’s coat became

somewhat matted (the lab had very poor ventilation),

but still he managed to map the Andrusyshyn genome

in eighteen months.

The trunk is surprisingly nubile so he was able to handle

data, microscopes and test tubes like any other geneticist.

The traceable graphs are ordered like dental records,

base pairs identified, a collection of letters and mutations:

ATCGAT

TAGCTA

The mammoth is optimistic, sends a letter

to Ivan’s daughter, says

we are very close.

Ivan Andrusyshyn was the only known specimen.

When the mammoth presents his findings

he brings a small cluster of lab technicians to its feet.

Between the loss of a father and ancient species, Larissa Andrusyshyn’s first trade poetry collection, Mammoth (Montreal QC: DC Books, 2010) is a book, basically, about extinct, can never be returned. A graduate of Concordia’s creative writing program, Andrusyshyn writes out a genealogy between lost species from the Pleistocene era and her late father, Ivan, writing out her ancient history, one so long ago it belongs in another era: “My father’s death is eighteen now and wakes, / stretching its long arms, mouth agape in yawn / with the thought of coffee and Lucky Charms.” (“In Which My Father’s Death Is Registered to Vote”). How far back is away?

Mammoth

Mammoth walks the halls of the museum after hours,

and here the quiet only breaks

with footsteps, the squeak of overgrown claws

on freshly waxed floors.

He comes to the display

where a model mammoth stands, a perfected species

in fake fur and longer tusks.

It’s good to know yourself, he thinks,

in the real of the real,

your uncertain place in this world.

Her small volume, Mammoth, includes writing filled with hesitation, a discomfort in so many lines; where does it come from? Is it simply a matter of her subject matter? This is a book of recrimination and regret, and coming to terms with the distance of this important loss.

It is only in some of the narrative pieces, such as “Oranges,” working out a distance of not just her father’s absence but his presence, do her pieces really bring out a fine resonance, and make me question her use of line-breaks. She seems far more comfortable in the prose-poem, and it makes me wonder what she might be able to do if she explored prose further, whether as fiction or the prose-poem. She seems more comfortable and confident there, than in many of the pieces broken up into poems. Why not simply explore this further?

Oranges

1946

This was the first year Phillip and Natalka could buy presents for the children and each of the four received a fresh orange. The children had never had one before. Maria ate hers first, right after dinner and it disappeared like a tiny drop of water in a long flowing river. Sasha had his for breakfast the next day and it was sweeter than syrup. Phillip waited until his birthday on the twenty-eighth and he remembers how it tasted even now. Ivan found that no day was good enough to be the day he ate his orange and so he carried it in his pocket, not trusting his siblings around it, waiting for the right time until his orange shriveled like a lump of dry and crumbling bone.

Extended, Sequential, Serial, Lengthy, Longish or Otherwise Self-Limiting Poems

Sad stories should be short,
but I don’t know how to cut corners.

When I cut a corner
it makes two
more (Krista A. Murchison, “Shorthand”)

Is the long / extended poem a dead form? It’s an argument I’ve been having lately, and Stephanie Bolster’s class project at least claims that the conversation is ongoing, but where is it all going? I recently got a copy of the publication Extended, Sequential, Serial, Lengthy, Longish or Otherwise Self-Limiting Poems, a limited edition bound anthology from two Concordia University Creative Writing Department classes conducted by Stephanie Bolster, cited as “The Poems of ENGL 429E / ENGL 672B” (April 2009).

1. Definition

A mustache is hair on a labium. A mustache is a broken nose waiting to be set, a mustache beneath it. A mustache is a must and an ache. A mustache covers a smirk at the corners of a lip. A mustache is shocked beside an ocelot and cane. A mustache is a fascism and a defiance of it. A mustache is a philologist in bifocals. A mustache and a unibrow are equal. A mustache is wax, brushes, scissors and snoods. A mustache is a flippered mammal. A mustache is an indication of villainy. A mustache is what you make it, and you make it a mustache. You don’t see a mustache but you see a mustache, and a mustache, and a mustache, a mustache. A mustache is a father, a rug, a patch of hair on a face.

For the Swedish heavy metal band, see Mustasch. (Hillary Rexe, “Parts of a Mustache”)

There are some interesting moments here and there in the explorations of the long poem; too often, journals and class projects, for the sake of limited space and/or interest, focus on the lyric “finely wrought,” and miss out any explorations of other forms, including the longer ones, with notable exceptions, including The Malahat Review running a long poem contest, fragments of The Capilano Review and Prairie Fire, and an issue of Verse, for example. Of the sixteen pieces inside this publication, many exist as lyric narratives stretched, extended; where does the poem go? Will any of these authors further themselves, their explorations of the form, or is this it? I’m reminded of the amount of first books as extended / long poems that come out of Winnipeg’s Turnstone Press, from projects either directly or indirectly influenced by, say, Dennis Cooley, David Arnason and Robert Kroetsch, et al, out of the University of Winnipeg. For the poems in this collection, where are they coming from?

Pathology I

At 5 a.m., I let you in,
drunk, but it’s
all of you touching
all of me and then (oh
yes) the silence
of your weight
on mine.

I think please could it
be (that you love)
just like this:
all of you touching
all of me. (Linda Doan)

It’s interesting that Bolster is teaching a long poem class; whatever else her poems have worked with and from, it seems to be a form that has brought about her strongest works, from the chapbook of fairy tale poems, Three Bloody Words (above/ground press, 1996) and her third trade collection, Pavilion (McClelland & Stewart, 2002). Still, in a title borrowed from Sharon Thesen, editor of two of the long poem anthologies, is the long / extended poem any more “self-limiting” than any other form? One of the highlights in this collection was the sequence of poems by Linda Doan, small narrative bursts that move from sequences of “Anatomy,” “History,” “Pathology” and “Histology” and a few others, wrapping around each other into something that has the potential to be quite interesting. I like the structures already of her imagined whole.

History I

46 y.o. female
presents with
shortness of breath

married with 3 sons
husband?
Dennis is never around

here to test new treatment
for pulmonary hypertension.
a complication
of underlying disease:

scleroderma (skleros: hard,
derma: skin)

pitted scars on hands
tight around bone

auto-immune
body attacks its own

self-betrayal

At what point does a surplus of poems become serial, sequence, extended, long? Some of these pieces aren’t really clear about telling the reader if they even know the difference. Another highlight had to be Krista A. Murchison’s sequence “Homefront,” especially the first poem, “Shorthand” (quoted at the beginning of this post), a grouping of pieces perhaps along the lines of Stephanie Bolster’s White Stone: The Alice Poems (1998), say, than Robert Kroetsch’s Completed Field Notes (1989; 2002) or Cooley’s Bloody Jack (1984; 2000). She seems capable of the most magnificent small moments, and graceful turns, and I would like to see where she ends up going with these. But why are so many long poems/sequences on family histories?

My grandmother was a stenographer
during the second world war; she always knows
which corners can be cut,

which plosives are superfluous,
how to make a dress with only nine buttons
and no cuffs. (Krista A. Murchison, “Shorthand”)

There is N.S. Worsley, who writes a relatively straightforward travel poem with some interesting moments and lines, there and here, but with one of my favourite titles in some time: “A book bought to soak in a country / through a bus window / to fly down the road with me.” And Wanda O’Connor, of course. Hers is one of the few pieces in this collection that feels like a single poem more than any of the rest, her “sub rosa” (I wonder if she knows that Toronto writer Stan Rogal has a collection of the same name), extending further out some of the explorations of physical space on the page that she’s been working on for the past five or seven years. Larissa Andrusyshyn, a Montreal poet who has been around for over a decade, does some interesting things in a series of poems on mammoths, but only really start to shine when she breaks out of storytelling into really writing.

The Mammoth Sequences the Ivan Andrusyshyn Genome

Claustrophobia was his first obstacle,
then the heat. The mammoth’s coat became
somewhat matted (the lab had very poor ventilation),
but he mapped the Andrusyshyn genome in eighteen months.

The trunk is surprisingly nubile so he was able to handle
data, microscopes and test tubes like any other geneticist.
The traceable graphs are ordered like dental records,
base pairs identified, a collection of letters and mutations:

ATCGAT
TAGCTA

The mammoth is optimistic, sends a letter
to Ivan’s daughter, says
we are very close.

Ivan Andrusyshyn was the only known specimen.
When the mammoth presents his findings
he brings a small crowd of lab techs to its feet.

Are these even publicly available? I am hoping so, there are certainly some pieces here worth reading, and an enviable publication, for those of us over the years who have taken creative writing classes and not seen a publication after. If they are, I’d recommend either getting a hold of the English Department directly, or floating over to The Word bookstore, just at McGill. Of course they’d have copies.

Concordia University’s Headlight anthology, #10-11

The Tallgrass Prairie

False Aster, Arrowhead Rattlebox,
Oldfield Balsam, Missouri Ironweed,
Swampwood Betony, Sagamon Clef Phlox,
Savanna Blazing Star, Prairie Lily,
Bog White Violet, Wild White Indigo,
Round Headed Bush Clover, Plains Buttercup,
Canada Lousewort, Kankakee Mallow,
Three-Toothed Cinquefoil, Plains Prickly Pear Cactus,
Clasping-Leaf Doll’s Daily, Wild Petunia
Gray-Headed Cone Flower, Daily Fleabane,
Dwarf Dandelion, Wild Poinsettia,
Dawnflower, Pasture Rose,
Showy Goldenrod, Balsam, Pussy Toes. (Makeba Cooper, headlight #11)

I’ve been a fan of the annual Headlight Anthology for years now, ever since picking up issue #5 at Montreal’s The Word Bookstore, scouring the streets for subsequent issues ever since. Student-run through the Concordia University English Department and Creative Writing Program, the journal is open to any current and former students of the University, known for having one of the most interesting creative writing departments in Canada. When I was in Montreal a few days ago, Stephanie Bolster was able to slip me copies of the last two issues, #10 (2007) and #11 (2008), both edited by poet and writing student Larissa Andrusyshyn and her editorial board. Focusing on poetry, fiction and artwork, most of the contributors to these two volumes I haven’t even heard of, including Gillian Sze, Katye Seip, Makeba Cooper, Melissa Bull, Scott Inniss (who also has work in the current issue of The Capilano Review), Alessandra Naccarato, Mike Spry (currently the managing editor of Matrix magazine), Devon Code and Megan Findlay.

Shanty

When our children haul fish with broken lines,
and the lines at the slave docks grow crooked
with crooked baskets and Panama hats;
like hats of fish merchants heavy with alms,
like alms owed to the fishers of the sea,
the grave sea will grow cold in its mercy.

Know no mercy for us O my father.

Our father, whose children trawl the sheer waves,
waves that promise but birth only corpses,
corpses with shipwreck and kelp in their hair.

When the hair of our sons garlands the crabs,
will the crabs troll the songs of the sirens?
will the sirens sing lays or unsing them?

O forgive them not, mother, for their sins.

For their sins are not burdens but cargo,
a cargo that, like flotsam, never sinks
the way Jonah sinks. Sinners never drown,
yet our children drown. Reciting whale psalms,
psalms for the mending of net and tackle,
they tackle seas with a litany of hooks. (Scott Inniss, headlight #11)

One thing I do wonder, after hearing Larissa Andrusyshyn read again the other night at the Pilot Reading Series in Montreal, and knowing her and her work for over a decade, why have I seen so little of it published in journals? The former editor/publisher of the monthly streeteaters zine in the late 90s and early 00s, just what has Andrusyshyn been up to with her writing over the past few years? I’m still frustrated that I’m missing the first four volumes of the series, and have been looking for copies for years, but going back through older issues, now that I have these new ones, I’m finding it interesting just how many names I’ve heard of since, including recent GG-nominee Sachiko Murakami (from issue #9), and Jon Paul Fiorentino, who I discovered in the sixth volume of the series. How many of these new names will I be seeing more of in the future?

Mrs. Avocado

I found teeth and hair in the pit of an avocado. I had paid a quarter to the moustache grocer for it and when I returned with complaint of the tumor-like fruit, he expressed great joy. “My lost brother!” He exclaimed. “Yes, but he is in my avocado,” I stated. As an apology, the grocer insisted on having me over for dinner with his mother. She appeared very quiet at first, and I was disappointed that this opportunity to interact with the mother of an avocado was slipping through my fingers. He asked why I looked so thrown, offered me a glass of water, and assisted me to a tender couch. When I sat it moaned. I carefully stared across the room at the unmoving mother. In a moment of clarity I understood, the avocado’s mother, the mother of the moustache grocer, was in fact no more than a gnarled yam adorned in a patterned shawl. (JP King, headlight #10)

If you want to know some of what kinds of writers and writing Concordia University’s Creative Writing Program has produced over the years, apart from these annual morsels of new writing and writers, a good place to start would be the anthology 32 Degrees: An Anthology of Prose, Poetry and Drama (Montreal QC: DC Books, 1993), edited by Raymond Beauchemin, publishing the work of various former students, including Mark Cochrane, Ray Smith, Elisabeth Harvor, Su Croll, Robert Mazjels, Nino Ricci and David McGimpsey, or even the more recent Language Acts: Anglo-Québec Poetry, 1976 to the 21st Century, edited by Jason Camlot and Todd Swift (Montreal QC: Vehicule Press, 2007), which not only collect new and previously published essays on the works of English-language writers in Quebec, but also a bibliography of poetry magazines throughout the period, English-language (or, "Anglo") poetry publishers, poetry prize winners and Concordia University M.A. Poetry Theses. Other writers that have come out of the program can even be found in the anthology of poetry, fiction and artwork that Conundrum Press editor/publisher Andy Brown and I did for Vehicule Press, YOU & YOUR BRIGHT IDEAS: NEW MONTREAL WRITING (Montreal QC: Vehicule Press, 2001). Brown even contributes an introduction to the tenth edition of these little volumes, as he begins:

Headlight. The name seems appropriate for an anthology of new work done by writers filled with youthful optimism. The headlight shows them the way, illuminates their personal darkness. But it does more than just illuminate, a headlight focuses light so that our eyes adjust to one point, the endless yellow ribbon of road, while the environment around us disappears. This has always been my experience with writing. When I sit down to write the rest of the world becomes invisible to me and it is the road and where it will take me that becomes my focus. One of my very first publications was in Headlight and coincidentally it was about parking.