April 28, 2010
One Crow Sorrow by Lisa Martin-DeMoor
Lisa Martin-DeMoor’s One Crow Sorrow, poetry winner of the 2009 Alberta Literary Awards, is an intensely personal collection. Each piece seems rooted in experience, focused on immediate details rather than zooming out to capture their wider, more universal implications. There is no place carved out for the reader here, in the intimate address between the poet and who she refers to as just “Mom”, and so the reader is interloper, a position by turns privileged and disquieting.
“I am almost never home, now,/ no matter where I am” writes Martin-DeMoor in “One last time, in our old kitchen.” The collection deals with her mother’s illness and death from cancer, also touching upon her father’s early death many years before, and the cycle and rituals of grief. And other stories, family reference points: “Colleen, I can still hear the stranger at the door…” The tales that bind us.
These poems are prime territory for birdwatching– we get magnificent glimpses of magpies, crows, sparrows, herons, “songbirds are secrets/ substantiated at dawn and knowing”. The wide living world turns around this small story of death and dying– gardens tended and untended, boreal forests and prairie fields: “Admitting the season is over is one way/ of facing up to grief.” The natural references stitch the poems to the earth, but with stitches so loose that some words fly like spirit, and the rest is contained in the space in between.
The poems resonated for me in particular on second reading– first was a bit like wandering in a dimly lit room, but then the shapes became familiar and I could make out the details around me enough to know what I was seeing. To find my away through the spaces in between the poems as well, to consider the white space and line breaks and the weight of these things. To consider the quiet. Because these are delicate poems, I think, to be looked at before they touched, and then their solidity becomes unmistakable.
April 27, 2010
Be sure to die near water
We went to the ROM today, which was an amazing experience, because Harriet is now 11 months old and therefore big enough to get something out of the Kids’ Gallery, and the museum was quiet enough on a Tuesday afternoon for an 11 month-old to play there with abandon. Her favourite part of the under-six area was a toy with a variety of cranks she could turn, and mine was the exhibit of children’s and minature tea sets. Elsewhere, I learned that fossils are seven times heavier than bones (and therefore the dinosaur exhbit’s floors are specially enforced) and that if you wish to be fossilized, be sure to die near water.
April 26, 2010
In which a poem is dispensed from a vending machine
Because we live in a wonderful city, the highlight of this afternoon was visiting the poetry vending machine at This Ain’t the Rosedale Public Library, as installed by the Toronto Poetry Vendors. 
Like all the best vending machines, this one jammed a little bit once I’d put in my twoonie and turned the crank, so I had to stick my hand up the chute to get my poem out, and (imagine if I’d gotten stuck? And they’d had to call the fire department? Because I’d gotten my hand stuck in a poetry vending machine? Now, there‘s a story, if only it weren’t fiction, because) my purchase slipped out easily. My luck of the draw was a poem called “Rhyme Scheme (for Condo Country)” by Jacob McArthur Mooney, and now it’s hanging on my fridge.
And, because I was in a bookstore, I picked up Joy Is So Exhausting by Susan Holbrook, as pitched by Julie Wilson today for Keeping Toronto Reading. (Hear Susan read her collection at Seen Reading; I recommend the poem “Nursery” [second from the end] in particular, mainly because the world needs more breastfeeding lit. and the poem is joyous).
April 25, 2010
More on "Domestic fiction", which, turns out, doesn't exist.
First, I want to point out that Twitter has become a lot more worthwhile since I started following Washington Post book critic Ron Charles. And it was his review of Sue Miller’s The Lake Shore Limited that made me realize that I’d become derailed with my “domestic fiction” epiphany (which was that it was not just the stuff of women’s fiction, that it’s universal. That the realm may not be as divided as I’d supposed). Ron Charles writes that Miller:
“might be the best poster child for the poison condescension bestowed by the term “women’s literature.” She didn’t publish her first novel, “The Good Mother” (1986), until she was in her 40s, but since then she’s been prolific and popular (another mark against her), writing about families and marriages, infidelity and divorce — what we call “literary fiction” when men write about those things. Last year, a grudging review of “The Senator’s Wife” in That Other East Coast Newspaper claimed that Miller’s novels “feature soap-opera plots,” a mischaracterization broad enough to apply to any story that doesn’t involve space travel or machine guns.”
You know, I really meant “women’s fiction” all along, which (the surprise is) is also often written by men. Except, yes, it’s “literary fiction” then. This all reminds me of Julianna Baggot’s piece from last winter (via SWB) that posited: “Women… are supposed to be experts on emotion. I’ve never heard anyone remark that they were surprised that a book of psychological depth was written by a woman. So men get points for simply showing up on the page with a literary effort.” I don’t know if the last point is completely true, but I do think that “psychological fiction” is something of a woman’s domain these days. That psychological fiction and what we call women’s fiction are often one and the same.
I am still bothered by Alex Good’s review of Lisa Moore’s novel February, which suggested that the novel’s most “gendered” elements were “so transparently the stuff of commercial fiction”. I continue to not understand what this means, exactly, but it seems similar to the “soap-opera plot” accusation thrown at Sue Miller (and in fact, Good bemoans the lack of a “fast-paced, and forward-moving plot” [space travel and machine guns?]). I continue also to still think that February was a stunning novel. Could a man have written it? Does it matter? Would it have been judged any differently if a man had written it?
It seems that for many critics, “women’s fiction” is a polite way of saying “bad fiction” (and that “bad fiction” is an impolite way of saying “women’s fiction”), but I’m not sure that judgment is entirely fair. In fact, yes, to bring this around to what I was talking about in the preceding paragraph, I know the judgment isn’t fair when women are writing some of the best fiction out there. And that when the men are writing it, then it’s “literary fiction”, as noted by Ron Charles.
So I don’t know what to think now: my revelation continues to be that fiction is not as gendered as I’d previously suspected, but that there might still be such a thing as “women’s writing”. Though it might just be a construct, a gap manufactured by critics who find it easier to catagorize things simply. It might also be a misunderstanding, women’s writing being judged by its lowest common denominator (Maeve Binchy, as opposed to Virginia Woolf, for example). Because there is truly some seriously shitty “women’s writing” out there, but we could say the same about the men. Or are women writing books which are restrictive in their readership? Might the fault be with the readers though, who are prejudiced about what “Great Works” are constituted of? And then here’s the really complicating factor– what about discerning readers who thought that February was crap, full stop (and I’ ve met them. I think they’re crazy, but I’ve met them). Truly, me responding with, “You wouldn’t get it. You’re a man” is a pretty unfair response. And doesn’t say much for February, because shouldn’t great literature speak to everyone? (Though I really don’t understand why this great book wouldn’t.)
April 25, 2010
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
So what is it about these stories, about outsiders coming up the drive toward the stately home that’s past its prime? Daphne Du Maurier, and the Brontes, and even more recently in The Private Patient by PD James. It’s the romance, yes, and the world’s colliding that is so fascinating to watch, the pervasiveness of the British class system too, and the way in which these homes are universes onto themselves, complete with their own rules, what happens when the rules start to change. And yes, there is no better backdrop for a mystery– so many places to hide, stuff to steal, secrets to reveal, skeletons in the closet.
The same elements are at work in literary mysteries (whether they be detective stories or ghost stories) as in any literary novel. The driving force of plot, the withholding, the twists, the reveal, the unreliable narrator, the atmosphere– these are the reasons we’re taken by any kind of story, but in mysteries there’s nothing subtle about the way we’re being handled. So mysteries are remarkable in being novels pared down to their bones, but even more remarkable is their power to leave their readers paralyzed with fear. Mysteries make clear what a powerful object a simple stack of printed page can be.
Sarah Waters’ latest novel The Little Stranger is the least historical of her acclaimed historical fiction, taking place post-WW2 in Warwickshire. Her narrator is Dr. Faraday, called out to the isolated Hundreds Hall to attend to one of the maids. “One of the maids! I like that,” says the young master of the house, Roderick Ayres, when he receives the doctor. “There’s only the one– our girl Betty.”
Ayres himself had come through the war with considerable damage, and the same can be said of Hundreds Hall– most of the house is shut up, the land is being sold off, the house’s contents being sold as well to raise capital. Throughout England, the age-old aristocracy is faring badly by the mid-twentieth century, particularly under the heavy hand of a tax-grabbing Labour government. For Faraday, such decline is an awkward paradox– his mother had been a servant at Hundreds years ago, and he remains conscious of the immutability of his class, though circumstances have changed so considerably.
Circumstances have changed so much that he has quite a bit to offer the Ayres’– Roderick, his widowed mother, and his sister Caroline. Faraday begins to perform a medical treatment on Roderick’s damaged leg, visiting the house regularly in the process. He becomes so close to the family that he is invited to a small party at the hall– the party itself an anachronism– though his conspicuous presence does not go unremarked upon by the guests (“No one’s unwell, I hope?”). His presence is a blessing, however, when tragedy strikes and he is able to save the life of a young guest. And as a series of bizarre events begin to unfold, Faraday finds himself more and more non-expendable until his relationship to the family begins to consume his personal and professional life.
Is Hundreds Hall haunted by a poltergeist, or have its inhabitants been driven to mental illness by their surroundings? Is it the ghost of the Ayres’ first daughter Susan, who’d died as a child of diphtheria or is the house possessed by an even more malevolent spirit? Is Faraday’s ability to find rational explanations for what occurs at the house a sign of his own sound mind, or is he simply unwilling to acknowledge forces against which he is powerless? In fact, might his continued insistence upon those rational explanations be a sign that he might not be of such sound mind after all?
Faraday is a fascinating narrator, seemingly unconscious of his own role in shaping the narrative (both literally and circumstantially). The real story takes place beneath the one that Faraday tells, this made clear by Waters’ clever ending, underlining his complicitness in the story. Though the real story throws up far more questions than it answers, of course, Waters never entirely alleviating her book’s decidedly creepy and sinister atmosphere. There is no comfort there, no assurance, and the mystery never goes away, because nothing is fully explained. And it takes a masterful writer to create a narrative that so convincingly hangs like that.
April 24, 2010
Major Quake Rocks Notts
After eight years, I finally went to get this framed. The woman at the framing store informed me that it was a bit beat up, and that framing wouldn’t fix it. I could have told her that the poster had spent two years taped to the back of a door in England, a few years packed in a box, and a few more years stuck inside the pages of a book, and so every crease and tear has been well-earned. I stole this from a newsagents during the autumn of 2002, and loved the boldness and simplicity of its overstatement. I remember the major quake too, and how it sounded like an overweight man was tumbling down the stairs. I was living in a backpackers’ hostel at the time, and we were sitting up late down in the kitchen, and after we heard the overweight man fall, we decided to go to bed. I probably found out about the earthquake on the radio the next morning, and remember seeing this poster and feeling excited to have been a part of something monumental. Living in England in general had that effect on me– something was always sweeping the nation in a way that isn’t possible in a country as large as Canada, and I loved being swept along with it. Even along with shifted tectonic plates. It was a very strange time, anyway, and I cherish it, and this stolen scrap from way back then makes an exciting addition to the wall in our hallway.
April 24, 2010
On literary cakes
Cake is one of my many weaknesses, actual cake and bookish ones. I’ve really never, ever met a cake I didn’t like (except carrot cake, which I hold passionate feelings about. The cake that should not be called cake. An insult to cakes. If you tell me you’re bringing cake and then you show up with carrot cake, you’ve not only let me down, but you’ve told a lie). I like to bake cakes, I like to eat cakes. I think my favourite is chocolate banana cake, or chocolate-anything cake, or vanilla in a pinch. Fillings can be cream, or fruity, but should probably be icing. Oh, icing. When I was little, I used to eat the icing and leave the cake. Since then I’ve learned (but not entirely).
I like cakes in books too, though they’re often markers of tragedy. The cake Rilla Blythe had to carry in Rilla of 
Ingleside, and how there was nothing more mortifying. Oh, god– the birthday cake in Raymond Carver’s story “A Small Good Thing”. Could it be the most unbearable cake in fiction? Marian McAlpin’s cannibal cake in The Edible Woman. Does Carol Shields have a cake?? There must be one, though I can’t think of it. So literary cakes, and there must be a couple more.
Cakeish books have had a way of getting my attention lately. I adored Heather Mallick’s essay collection Cake or Death when it came out a few years ago. I’ve been wanting to read Sloane Crosley’s collection I Was told There’d Be Cake for ages now. I can’t wait to read Sarah Selecky’s story collection This Cake is For the Party when it comes out next month. And just now, when I was searching for books on cake, I discovered that Aimee Bender has a novel coming out in June called The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (which could never approach the particular sadness of carrot cake, but I digress). I’ve never read Bender before but a proper cakeish book seems like a particularly good place to start.
And note that you’ve still got about a week to enter Sarah Selecky’s Win a Cake contest. I’ve already entered, and I won’t be sharing if I win.
April 22, 2010
"Poetry is mad scientism": A Poetry Primer by Jennica Harper
Jennica Harper’s books are What It Feels Like For A Girl and The Octopus and Other Poems. She works as a screenwriter and story editor in the Canadian film industry, and is also an occasional stand-up comic. Jennica holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and a BA in English from the University of Toronto. She lives in Vancouver and she’s my all-time favourite poet.
Dear Kerry,
When you asked me to contribute to your Poetry Month celebrations by writing a poetry primer – defined however I liked – I thought, no problem. But here I am. The month ticks away. And all I can think of is Robin Williams tearing those graph-covered pages out of a textbook to prove that you don’t Analyze poetry, you Feel it. And yet, I don’t quite believe that, either. Sometimes Analyzing is exactly the path to Feeling a poem more deeply.
I’ve come to realize that, at this moment in time, I have no idea how to prime anyone on either the reading or the writing of poetry. Instead, I’d like to humbly offer you some thoughts on what I love about the form.
***
How I Think About Poetry, A Top Ten
1. Poetry is stand-up comedy. When comedy really works, and you laugh, and you’re elated, it’s because the comic has said something undeniably true, impossibly familiar –plus nailed the timing of the silences, and used the exact right words, in the exact right order.
2. Poetry is jamming in a garage. Also known as riffing, noodling, and disappointing one’s parents.
3. Poetry is revisionist history. It hypothesizes, it offends. It sets the records straight.
4. Poetry is clown school. It’s learning to take chances, to pratfall, to make it look effortless. Sometimes it’s putting on a false face so you can see others clearly.
5. Poetry is pioneering.* It’s a fear of the unknown and a determination – a need – to push forward anyway. Because who knows what’s over the next hill? Maybe land you can put a stake in. *Dowdy styles no longer a requirement in poetry.
6. Poetry is Helen Keller saying “water”.
7. Poetry is hot yoga. It’s meditative, it flexes and relaxes your mind, it keeps your midi-chlorians flowing.
8. Poetry is a surprise party. When I read something I connect with, I can’t help feeling “Wow! You all came here for me?”
9. Poetry is dinner at the Magic Castle. Not sure I can make the metaphor work, I just really want to go to the Magic Castle! Have you heard about this place?
10. Poetry is mad scientism. Unrelated items fused together. Mutations. Or the pieces of dead things sewn together and come back
to life.
***
I would love to hear your Top Ten, or the Top Tens of others in the comments below… together we might be able to assemble the least useful (but most fun) poetry primer ever.
Yours in faithful silliness,
Jennica
April 22, 2010
My story is online
My story “Anna Lambert Lived and Died” is now online as part of The New Quarterly 114, The “Lists” Issue. Hope you enjoy it!
