A couple of days ago I bought myself four Canadian Literary Journals. I've been thinking that while my first contemporary loves among poets included a great many Canadians - Leonard Cohen, Phyllis Webb, Margaret Atwood, Barry Callaghan, Irving Layton, Al Purdy, John Newlove, etc - well, the web has turned my eye to all the Americans I never knew, & so now there's a grand crop of new Canadians that I want to get to know - hense one of my reasons for buying the journals. It is hard to get Canadian Journals except by mail, I suppose American Journals are likewise scarce in the Barnes & Nobles of the USA? But anyway, there is one fabulous all Canadian bookstore in Montreal called The Doublehook, which stalks a lot of journals, not to mention a poetry section, all Canadian, to die for. The journals I bought included Arc Poetry Magazine, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, & Prism Magazine. I've started out by reading the poems in each, then rereading certain sections of poems, as well as some poetry book reviews. I am trying to get a handle on the differences between the journals, with the idea of (finally) sending out work, as opposed to procrastinating about it.
The poets in these books, I do have to say, in the main "write well" - that is, language, linebreaks, form, soundscapes & structure are bravely attacked, realized. I am not so sure if I find the semantics always to my liking, though I can say that numerous poems in the crop reward rereading. Experimentation is not something to be found in abundance, but quality in the main prevails. I get this feeling - don't most of us think this way - that the editors would not find what I do much to their liking, particularly in the case of two of the journals. Is that me projecting, or am I right? It's hard to tell, as when I sit thinking on which poems I might send to this or that mag, I am overwhelmed by considerations re form & style in a way that greatly displeases me. Thing is, while I like, say, the domestic narratives I read in the journals, I think that those are not really the kind of poems I want to write - also that most of these people write them waaaaaaaaaaaay better than me (egads!)
Well: here is a prose poem from The Malahat Review, by Adam Dickinson, that I very much like:
Kingdom, Phylum, Class
The trees are starting to change here as I'm sure they are in Toronto.
Yesterday on my walk I found a white ash that was so golden
people had to squint as they walked under. Closer to school I
couldn't ignore the deep purple on that bush just outside your old
office. I often think of you. Recently, I read of a bower bird so con-
vinced of the perfection of its own colour that everything it builds
is similarly shaded. It finds blue wrappers and blue straws and its
own blue feathers to build its bower. But this fake nest is only for
show -- built on the ground to attract a mate. After they agree to be
together, the female bird builds a sensible nest camouflaged high
in the trees.
It's raining here today and the yellow ash leaves lie in the street
waiting for someone to put a peach or a pineapple together. This
is, I guess, the job of the peach bird. Maybe commitment is love
that has discovered taxidermy, or taxonomy, I could never keep
them straight. Maybe it's both -- thinking that is stuffed and sorted.
What do they use anyway? To stuff I mean. How could you re-
place the insides? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The rain has soaked the red
shirt you gave me. Where are the red-breasted birds?
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Yes - a poem that dreams inside a frame of reference refreshingly suggestive, a poem that suggests its emotional strata via image, leaving the reader charmed & thoughtful - or this reader at any rate. Malahat actually has a number of poems that impact on first reading, then impact on rereads. Arc, on the other hand, has poems which mostly take rereads before they impact, not because they are 'difficult', but rather more because they lack the element of surprise which delights with the first read - a little too expected or something - & only reveal themselves when one starts taking in the smoothness of form, the flawless linebreaks & pacing & such. Here is the poem from Arc which took the thousand dollar first prize that the magazine awards yearly - an accomplished poem, one that grew on me, but not one which, for my tastes, would have got a first prize:
The Crazy Maps
Mother dies in a hospital bed in Peterborough,
thirty miles north of where she was born.
The leaves turn and fall into snow, slippery roads tonight,
a storm of memory in the headlights and this new one bullies
its way to centre stage. The truth: she's gone.
It's snowing. We can't find Father.
When he hears the news, he drives in circles,
lost in the cul-de-sacs south of the city, amazed
how streets he'd driven all his life narrow and disappear.
In his red car, window cracked an inch, smoke fumes
a thin line toward starlight. Cigarette after cigarette
dropped in the suburbs on the crazy maps of grief.
A stranger, arriving after midnight, can't say
where he's been, coat open, tie askew,
everybody thinking he was the one who would go first.
Silence replaces her and snow spins a requiem
outside the window with city lights fading
under full cloud, the first hours without her.
This early fall morning. October, no one speaks
of the future or of the past. We are stuck
in private thoughts, the swirl and pull of winter,
sounds we hear when we sleep, furnace, fridge, fact.
Surely, we had a hand in it. Surely, had we known
some other way to love, she would have made it home.
Susan Stenson
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Oh dear - it's a stunning poem! - accomplishes so much with so little, one of those "yes that's it" poems, as opposed to an "aha" poem. I guess it's a taste thing, but then typing out the piece really did make it impact more fully on me. Sooooooooooo - can't I just love what I love (including the second poem in this post) & never mind about assessing in a best, better, better way? When I read I do that - hierarchies are completely beside the point, a good poem is a good poem is a good poem...(blah blah).
