ON/Fredericton NB: From Jim Johnstone’s
Anstruther Press comes the chapbook debut culminate / knot (2019) by Brooklyn Park MN poet and musician (currently studying at
UNB) CL Johnson. The chapbook culminate /
knot is made up of two poems—the three-sectioned “physical media /
gravities,” and the fifteen-sectioned “multum in parvo for my fitness pal.” I am
very taken with the cadence of these poems, how they roll and flow and patter
across an impressive density of form and language. As the first section of the
first poem reads:
1. Pool
Single file up the stairs and through a narrow
doorway, everybody came together, loitered on cement. They listened for the
whistle, plotting wild-eyed critieuqes of patience, birdcall, depth, and
tongue. They cannonball’d, and bottomed out, beluga whale’d through carbonated
teal. Their lexical Atlantic with cape and bluff enmeshed, the tile coast
unititing see with sea, with seethe, with scene, with seamless. And through a duct, they swallowed
seethe because perception to their
vessel bound a suffocating tide, and seamless,
for that tide also crawled on deck. Scene
and sea included, each, a movement
sure to nauseate resemblance. When stairs
confirmed exhaustion was a shadow on the atmosphere, their diving board and
strand of flesh, that vision skewed —
Toronto ON/Vancouver
BC:
It was the summer of 1966, you probably weren’t
born yet, and I was travelling in a new Volkswagen beetle with the sweetly evil
poet David McFadden, eastward in southern Europe. It was the first time either
of us had been in the old world, so we were taking advantage of the opportunity
to transform our young Canadian lives into legend. He was carrying a book of
poems by Charles Baudelaire, and I was carrying an anthology of notable works
by English poets. He kept looking up things in my book because, as much as he
adored Baudelaire, he could not read French.
And
so begins Vancouver writer George Bowering’s DAVID IN BYZANTIUM (Proper Tales Press, 2019), a short travelogue
through Europe from his travels with the since-departed David W. McFadden. In
quick prose, this is a charming series of recollections that blends the lyric
with the historic with a variety of comedy routines, with each of them taking
their comic turns, whether as call-or-response, or as one relegated to straight
man. Bowering (see his piece celebrating Proper Tales Press here) is long known for his journal writing, some of which has been
reworked into a variety of poetry, fiction and non-fiction works, but I am
curious to know how much of this is lifted from those same journals, or lifted
from his own recollections from the period, some fifty-plus years ago (the text
does mention a journal he is writing in, but Bowering is known for his
fictional shifts). Part of the pleasure of this short travelogue is the sharp
wit and humour on display, something he and McFadden shared, as well as the
homage to McFadden through the semi-fictional travelogue as well, a form
McFadden explored extensively, from this trilogy of novels around the Great
Lakes (A Trip Around Lake Ontario, A Trip Around Lake Erie and A Trip Around Lake Huron, a series he
rewrote for Talonbooks’ eventual reissue Great Lakes Suite), as well as his more straightforward (comparatively) travel
books: An Innocent in Ireland, An Innocent in Scotland, An Innocent in Newfoundland and An Innocent in Cuba (after his first
volume, I had suggested he shift the title for the second volume, “A Scoundrel
in Scotland,” but he wasn’t going for it; I mean, how long can one remain innocent, even ironically so?).
This
is the sort of chapbook you will absolutely love or absolutely hate, depending
on what you might think of Bowering’s sly reportage, involving puns, bad jokes
and the occasional groan-inducing moment. I, myself, would be curious to see
Bowering write further in this direction, reporting on his travels and
adventures with other writers over the years. Just what else might those
infamous journals of his actually hold?
We
had left the dusty heckhole that is Thessalonika farther and farther behind. We
had been welcomed into the dark cool air of Lake Koronia. Now for the first
time in Greece I felt a little pleasant, so I was determined to entertain
David, and to instruct him simultaneously. As we were still within stories
Hellas, I told him the legend of the Three Fates of Greek lore: Athos, Mythos,
Portugal and D’Artagnon
“I
sense the approach, however, of the mysterious East,” said David, sticking his
head out the Volkswagen’s window.
“Your
senses do not waver in their loyalty to you,” I said.
“The
scent of cinnamon and rose petals!”
“The
fragrance of running sewers and rotting meat!”
“The
thin, faint sound of little golden bells on a thousand dancing feet!”
“The
equally faint but distinguishable report of oxen shit hitting the sunlit
pavement!”
We
were in our twenties, remember. It takes some time for subtlety to develop.
