Kaveh Akbar, Calling a Wolf a Wolf

A BOY STEPS INTO THE WATER

and of course he’s beautiful

goosebumps over his ribs

like tiny fists under a thin sheet      the sheet

all mudwet and taste of walnut

and of course I’m afraid of him

of the way keeping him a secret will make him

inevitable      I will do anything to avoid

getting carried away      sleep nightly with coins

over my eyes      set fire to an entire

zodiac      mecca is a moth

chewing holes in a shirt I left

at a lover’s house      a body loudly

consumes days and awaits the slow

fibrillation of its heart      a lightning rod

sits in silence until finally      the storm

now the boy is scooping up minnows

and swallowing them like a heron

I’m done trying to make sense

of any of this      no one will believe anything

that comes out of a mouth like mine

Tehran-born Florida poet and editor Kaveh Akbar’s first full-length poetry collection is Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Farmington ME: Alice James Books, 2017), a book of lush lyrics and critical meditations concurrently composed as urgent narratives, personal exclamations and heartfelt prayers. There is something sensual and even slippery to Akbar’s lyrics, managing to couple a wonderful music with deceptively straightforward narratives, looping and swirling through a text of incredibly precise lines. As he writes to close the two-page “RIMROCK”: “As long as the earth continues / its stony breathing, I will breathe. // When it stops, I will shatter back / into gravity. Into quartz.”

There is something reminiscent in Akbar’s lyrics and subtle gymnastics, as well as echoes of content, of Toronto poet Marcus McCann. Setting aside McCann’s more overt language-play, there is a bounce and lyric spin that echoes between the two poets, and Akbar’s lyricism also manages to balance very well between a musical and linguistic swirling and a steady precision, as well as multiple intimacies and hard-won wisdoms, all of which accumulate toward a series of profound discoveries. Listen to the first half of Akbar’s poem “PORTRAIT OF THE ALCOHOLIC WITH HOME / INVADER AND HOUSEFLY,” a poem that plays with a light and dark akin to McCann’s own sensibilities:

It felt larger than it was, the knife

that pushed through my cheek.

Immediately I began leaking:

blood and saliva, soft as smoke. I had been asleep,

safe from sad news, dreaming

of my irradiated hairless mother

pulling a thorn from the eye of a dog.

I woke from that into a blade. Everything

seemed cast in lapis and spinning light,

like an ancient frieze in Damascus.

Marcus McCann, Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe

To Whomever Checks the Office’s General Email Account

Phalanx of the literally ascending

but proverbially stuck. Vladivostok elevator

to the less successful floors of Business in America.

Among us one who tracks info at, office at, questions at

like a teen collects and doles out bowling shoes. Support

at. Dear madam, dear operator, if it concerns you,

a mix of thanks and unease follows me

like a hunter who doesn’t know his rifle’s empty.

Please administrator to us who are angry, bratty, bored,

whiny, irregular, mentally ill, unusually attentive,

truly abusive or angling for a refund.

That is, all of us, virtually. On what wavelength

do you wait for petitions? Oh reactor,

ghosts appear to believers,

not to us who could

use a break. In your sign-off

pop the collar of the nameless: the team,

customer service, x or y branch, on behalf of, or

thank you plus two carriage returns

like a thin signet of white smoke.

Toronto poet Marcus McCann’s third trade poetry collection, Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe (Picton ON: Invisible Publishing, 2017), continues his trajectory of composing an incredibly dense and gymnastic lyric, one that is remarkably linear and precise, even in its use of language as seeming-collage [and you saw my recent interview with him on the book over at Ploughshares, yes? or my piece on him two years ago at Jacket2?]. The poems that make up Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe are, one might say, an incredible mouthful: smart and sassy, thoughtful and wise, thick with swagger, impulse and a great deal more experience than his prior two collections. There are also a number of intriguing call-backs in this collection, from his “Sex at Thirty-One” [for context, see my essay on the “Sex at 31” series here], a selection of “chubby sonnets” composed in homage to Montreal poet David McGimpsey (“Labradoodle: An Essay on David McGimpsey,” which appeared previously as a chapbook through above/ground press), and three poems—“Never Straighten Is My Advice,” “In All Your Days May Three Days Be Your Works,” and “There Are No Tense Problems at the Great Imaginary”—that he calls “psycho-projective New Year’s letters,” writing in the notes at the end of the collection that he utilized a similar form in his first collection: “The game is to imagine what friends might be doing on New Year’s Eve. These three ‘letters’ were written for K. Louise Vincent, Steven Ruszkzycky, and Brandon Perlberg, respectively.” The extension of the epistolary form is curious, and the first of these poems, subtitled “Psychoprojective New Year’s Letter to Galiano Island,” includes: “Ideally your feet aren’t anvils / but updraft, your brain and heart aren’t storms / but transformer and transformer joined by sizzling / wire. Shift work, bawdy work, a firework / is emotional labour. Exegesis.”

Ploughshares : an interview with Marcus McCann

I'm a monthly blogger over at the Ploughshares blog! And my twelfth post is now up: an interview with Toronto poet Marcus McCann [photo credit: N. Maxwell Lander], who recently released his third collection, Shut Up Slow Down Let Go Breathe (Invisible Publishing, 2017).

You can see links to all of my Ploughshares posts here, including interviews with founder/editor Robin Richardson on Minola Review: a journal of women's writing, Toronto poet Emily Izsak, Ottawa poet Faizal Deen, Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Elliott Clarke, editor/critic Erin Wunker, Arc Poetry Magazine Poetry Editor Rhonda Douglas, editor/publisher Leigh Nash on Invisible Publishing, Cobourg, Ontario poet, editor, fiction writer and small press publisher Stuart Ross, Toronto novelist Ken Sparling, Kingston writer Diane Schoemperlen and Toronto poet Soraya Peerbaye.

Michael Robins, In Memory of Brilliance & Value

Most Likely to Secede

I am a room full of people. I am a room

facing people forward. What I’ve done

keeps me filled & I build myself taking

their heads. I wasn’t hoping for a whorl,

rended for the era was one of undoing.

My people burned. My hospital burned

& burned. Birds went thump in the rays

like a stillborn crown, mainly baggage

where more burned inside the window.

Heat of so much clapping sang blisters

on my skin. I am a room full of people

who confess every millionth minor bird

& burn each one. Other, smaller birds

were birds left burning with their cribs.

I’m intrigued by the musicality of the couplets in Chicago poet Michael Robins’ latest collection, the elegy-esque In Memory of Brilliance & Value (Ardmore PA: Saturnalia Books, 2015). In Memory of Brilliance & Value is Robins’ third full-length poetry collection after The Next Settlement (University of North Texas Press, 2007) and Ladies & Gentlemen (Saturnalia Books, 2011). Set in five numbered sections, each of which include a dozen or so poems, each poem is constructed in short, curt couplets reminiscent slightly of the work of Toronto poet Marcus McCann for its condensed, sharp turns. Robins’ language-play is far less overt than in McCann’s poetry, but the cadence retains a lovely bounce and patter, patterning across a ridgeway of delightful sound. As he writes in “Poem for Degrees & Resistance”: “Some bother, some relax & lying back / welcome the bell of the buckled deck // as though no stony warning can scorch / our hips. Over love the iceberg turns, // mistakes standing if the fellow stands / to leap as the poet before him.”

Robins’ precise and meditative poems are tightly-packed, and occasionally tightly-wound. Through a series of anecdotes, observations and queries dressed in lyric couplets, his poems display a fine tension of articulating a low-level anxiety via a deceptive calm.

Outside the Pay-Per-View Museum

Water was pleading for it, fluttered

sheets wrestled in the foam & roar.

Not a herd, it’s the string of buffalo

who once grazed coolly. Who wasn’t

bewildered by wagons bravely rolled,

fanning the wilds toward a baldness.

No bray of a biplane either, neither

smoke, nor a family who isn’t yours.

Hearsay dwindles by cannon & pinch

to precipitation. Cloudsped, equally

fast the horses producing the plains.

They were wheeling, then a caravan

poured forth these children. They’re

inching over the hills with grubbing,

boasting wet in a landscape portrait.

It was shot-for-shot. It was sensation.

"Marcus McCann: two new poems," at Jacket2

My 16th 'commentary,' "Marcus McCann: two new poems," is now online at Jacket2.

National Poetry Month: Chaudiere Books,

In case you might not have noticed, April was (supposedly) Poetry Month, and to celebrate such, Chaudiere Books posted new poems by Chaudiere authors and friends of the press alike all month on the blog, with a new piece posted roughly every second day. There are now new poems on the site by Amanda Earl, Roland Prevost, Gil McElroy, Rhonda Douglas, Anita Dolman, Marcus McCann, Eleni Zisimatos, Pearl Pirie, derek beaulieu, Karen Massey, myself, Helen Hajnoczky and plenty of others.

Watch for our spring Indiegogo campaign! You can join our facebook group to keep track, or even join us on twitter @ChaudiereBooks.

Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Artist Award;

Much to my shock, on Tuesday night I won the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Artist Award [see the link to the shortlist announcement here]. Enormous thanks to Michele Provost for nominating me for such an award, the judges, my fellow nominees, everyone at CAO and to Monty Reid, Amanda Earl, Sean Wilson and Marcus McCann for graciously and generously writing letters of support. Who knew? Fortunately, I listened to recent advice from RM Vaughan that I should dress like I was going to win (although "prepare a speech" might also have been good advice, fyi).

I sat beside the Mayor, handed out multiple "poem" leaflets and a few chapbooks, and even sold a copy of my new collection of short stories to a banker.

See the Ottawa Citizen blog post on the awards gala and other winners here. Photos by Pete Laporte.

new from above/ground press: twentieth anniverary titles by mclennan, Barwin, Reid, McCann, Reed + The Peter F Yacht Club

The creeks,
rob mclennan
$4
See link here for more information

Seedpod, Microfiche
Gary Barwin
$4
See link here for more information

Moan Coach
Monty Reid
$4
See link here for more information

Labradoodle, An Essay on David McGimpsey
Marcus McCann
$4
See link here for more information

After Swann
Marthe Reed
$4
See link here for more information

The Peter F Yacht Club #19
above/ground press 20th anniversary special,
$6
See link here for more information

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July/August 2013
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal (above). Scroll down here to see various backlist titles (many, many things are still in print). Coming soon: 2014 annual subscriptions!

See longer list of all previous 2013 (so far) titles here;

Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request.

above/ground press TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY reading and launch: Reid, Barwin, Reed, O’Connor + McCann

above/ground press twentieth anniversary reading and launch

readings and new titles by Monty Reid, Gary Barwin, Marthe Reed, Wanda O’Connor + Marcus McCann

Friday, August 23, 2013

The Mercury Lounge, Lounge Level (second floor)

doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm

$8 cover / includes the new issue of The Peter F Yacht Club

Monty Reid (Ottawa ON) ~ Moan Coach

Gary Barwin (Hamilton ON) ~ Seedpod, Microfiche

Marthe Reed (Syracuse NY) ~ After Swann

Wanda O’Connor (Montreal QC) ~ damascene road passaggio, selections

Marcus McCann (Toronto ON) ~ Labradoodle: An Essay on David McGimpsey

The event will also be the launch for the limited-edition chapbook I simply began: above/ground press at 20 [an interview with rob mclennan]. Conducted by Cameron Anstee, the interview chapbook will beproduced by his Apt. 9 Press.

Author bios:

Monty Reid is an Ottawa writer. His most recent full-length collections are Disappointment Island (Chaudiere) and The Luskville Reductions (Brick). Recently he has published chapbooks with various small presses, including above/ground, Apt. 9, Gaspereau, corrupt, red ceilings, and many others. His new mistranslation of Nicolas Guillen’s El Gran Zoo is forthcoming from BuschekBooks. He currently works as Managing Editor of Arc Poetry Magazine and plays guitar and mandolin in the band Call Me Katie. 

He will be launching the chapbook Moan Coach (2013), his fourth above/ground press chapbook after Six Songs for the Mammoth Steppe (2000), cuba A book (2005) and In the Garden (sept series) (2011).

Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, multimedia artist, and the author of 15 books of poetry and fiction. His books include Franzlations (with Craig Conley and Hugh Thomas; New Star), The Obvious Flap (with Gregory Betts; BookThug), The Porcupinity of the Stars (Coach House). He is winner of the 2013 City of Hamilton Arts Award (Writing), the Hamilton Poetry Book of the Year 2011, and co-winner of 2011 Harbourfront Poetry NOW competition, the 2010 bpNichol chapbook award, and the KM Hunter Artist Award. Barwin’s work has been published and performed in Canada and internationally. He received a PhD in music composition from SUNY at Buffalo. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario. garybarwin.com

He will be launching the chapbook Seedpod, Microfiche (2013), his second above/ground press item after “SYNONYMS FOR FISH,” STANZAS #26 (March, 2001).

Marthe Reed is the author of three books: (em)bodied bliss (Moria Books 2013), Gaze (Black Radish Books 2010) and Tender Box, A Wunderkammer (Lavender Ink 2007). A fourth book, Pleth, a collaboration with j/j hastain, will appear in September 2013 from Unlikely Books; a fifth will be published by Lavender Ink (2014). She has also published four chapbooks as part of the Dusie Kollektiv. Her poetry has appeared in New American Writing, Golden Handcuffs Review, New Orleans Review, HOW2, MiPOesias, Fairy Tale Review, Exquisite Corpse, BlazeVOX, and The Offending Adam, among others. Her manuscript, an earth of sweetness dances in the vein, was a finalist in Ahsahta Press’ 2006 Sawtooth Poetry Contest; her manuscript Nights Reading was a finalist for the Elizabeth P. Braddock Prize (Coconut Books). An essay on Claudia Rankine’s The Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue appears in American Letters and Commentary.

She will be launching the chapbook After Swann (2013).

Wanda O’Connor is a graduate of Concordia’s Creative Writing and Classics programs, and most recently completed an MA in Literature with a considerable focus on Robin Blaser’s stunning carmen perpetuum. damascene road passaggio, selections is an excursus through transitions of semi-tones and silence, possessing no address nor addressee nor gaze nor superior flattery. Wanda is currently at work on a long poem manuscript and is an editor at Lemon Hound.

She will be launching the chapbook damascene road passaggio, selections (2013).

Marcus McCann is the author of two previous above/ground titles: Heteroskeptical (2007) and Town in a Long Day of Leaving (2010). Labradoodle is his ninth chapbook. He is a winner of the John Newlove Award and the EJ Pratt Medal for poetry. His two trade collections Soft Where (2009, Chaudiere Books) and The Hard Return (2012, Insomniac) can be found at Glad Day, a bookshop he co-owns with some 20 queer radicals in Toronto. marcusmccann.com

He will be launching the chapbook Labradoodle (2013), his third above/ground press chapbook after Heteroskeptical (2007) and Town in a long day of leaving (2010).