[Lady Aoife enjoying a
crumbly muffin yesterday at my former daily corner at Second Cup, Bank and
Somerset]
You
should totally be mailing me chapbooks.
Ottawa ON/Victoria BC: Ottawa poet and Arc Poetry Magazine coordinating editor Chris Johnson’s newest title is Listen, Partisan!
And Other Stumbling Haibun (Frog Hollow Press, 2016), a chapbook “published
in a limited edition of 125” numbered copies. I’m curious at his exploration of
the haibun, a form famously explored by poets such as Fred Wah and bpNichol,
but less so over the past decade or two (the English-language haibun, of
course, being a bastardized form of an ancient Japanese form; the contemporary
form exists as a section of prose that ends with a short lyric). While there
are times I’m quite taken with what Johnson is doing, I often wish for the
prose of his casual observations to be tighter than they are. Some of his
haibun, effectively a blend between Frank O’Hara’s “I did this, I did that”
poems and poem-essays, are quite striking, such as “Cheap Road to the Liquor
Store” and “Poem.” For some time now, I’ve had the sense that if Johnson keeps
pushing the form, he could end up doing something quite memorable with it; certainly,
there are flashes within this short chapbook of what might come. I await what
comes next.
On the
Walk Home from Seeing Coyote
No one was incarcerated, and the jailed felt
nostalgic, so instead of going to some mansion with ten-dollar pitchers I opted
to hoof it back along the water ‘cause it’s the closest I can get to
understanding why everyone leaves this town for the coasts. Laurel texted, I’m one time zone closer to you!, which
made me miss her and reply, Might as well pop over then, because what’s the difference
between the guy in a sleeping bag under Pretoria Bridge and the distance between
you and me, when at this time I think I understand my line-breaks better than
anything, and a break is the only thing between me and the closest brown-haired
woman with a ukulele, or the short-haired dapper lad who recommends Bill Cosby
for some tips on story-telling because there’re only so many things in the
realm of words to recommend. All we’ve got are a few words and the ways we
misspell them.
Upended, wind swells under overpasses
I
was amused, also, to see myself referenced in the title poem (a title that I would
suspect is Stuart Ross influenced), where he quotes and responds to Rae
Armantrout on poetry, the personal and the political, before writing “On my way
to Alta Vista, I wonder if rob and I will sip beer and say out loud we’re
poets. Quickly I realize he’ll say it and I’ll listen.” And we did.
Ottawa ON: We aren’t entirely
sure where she appeared from (her bio speaks of her as “A Montreal-born,
Canadian-American baker-poet hyphen-lover currently residing in Ottawa, she has
enjoyed homes in Cape Breton, Toronto, California, and Connecticut.”), but
wherever she was before, reports of Sarah MacDonell’s first appearances in
open sets in Ottawa last summer ran through the community like electricity. And
now, her first chapbook is in print—the
lithium body (In/Words, 2017)—a long, fragmented, polyvocal poem that
speaks of illness, medication and the physical and spiritual body.
(like him)
I refuse to be sick
kicking at the metal air-conditioning unit
kicking from the car seat kicking the foam off the front seat
kicking the couch
kicking, kicking, kicking
please don’t let me be sick I want to kick you sick
please don’t be sick
Part
of what originally struck me about MacDonell’s work is the expansive canvas she
attempts, writing a series of fragments and abstracts reminiscent of the work
of Canadian expat Nathanaël. Throughout the text, MacDonell explores and
confronts illness and medication, floating in and out of concrete images into a
kind of dream-state. What is curious is the uncertainty in which this project
might still be unfinished, whether she is continuing to expand the poem into
something larger, or has moved on into further work. Either way, hers is an
incredibly exciting discovery.
I have tried to tell you that I am writing you:
each morning, over sink-chapped toothpaste
and chalked coffee mug rings,
I peer into the bleached mirror
and try to extend my body back
through genealogies
to locate you:
with wire glasses and twig-legs sprouting from
mesh shorts
you
were my age once
your creaseless face, young
as in the photographs,
though ashamed
as you front your own lithium body
