Sunday Poem

ELPENOR FOR YUSEF 

When he broke, he broke
like an oak box
full of castanets tossed
into the frozen river.
He broke like a stuntman
through the plate glass
of Odysseus’ conscience.
Broke like a breakdancer
shattering his right knee
while doing a backflip
under the Liberty Bell.
Broke like the promise
he swore he’d never break.
Like the teen who leapt
out of Another Gravity.
Broke like the brakes
on an underground train
hurtling at breakneck speed
into Rubén Darío station.
Broke like bits of glass
strewn over the steps
on a Sunday morning.
Broke as all hell. Keen
for the cool night
air broken. Roused
by soldiers marching,
when Elpenor broke,
he broke the spirits
of all mortal men.

By Nick Thran, from Mayor Snow (Nightwood Editions, 2015)

Sunday Poem

756 

for Barry Bonds 

We had to fill him up with the feats of mythical giants—Zeus and Goliath,
"Hammerin' Hank" and "The Babe." We had to fill him up with the where-
were-you-whens? The fictitious baseball works by masters like Roth  

or DeLillo. We had to fill up his trophy case, his endorsement deals.
Had to fill up the Jumbotron with his image, the ballpark with our bodies,
the newspaper columns with box-scores, OPSs and Slugging Percentages—  

fill them with the details of his daily performance considered by rights
to be in the public domain. Used him to fill awkward silences
over dinners with our partners' fathers, our granddads, clients— 

inhuman feats to bring up as we ironed out our own human details.
We had to fill him up with fake wars, fake breasts, fake reports.
Fill him up with the false sense of affirmation that men of a certain stature existed  

well beyond the pale. We had to fill him up with our own hard luck,
our nine-to-five jobs, our paltry salaries. Then we had to fill up his bank
account as we paid for the soaring prices of tickets, jerseys and hot dogs, 

lining his pockets by filling the stands for each and every game. We had
to fill him up with scientific advances, bad advice, tough choices, then
fill him up again with what we would have done, the decisions our senses  

of decency, of respect for the game's history would have compelled us
to make. When he didn't return the wild rounds of applause, we had to
fill him up with our loathing. We had to fill him up with test results 

and government-sanctioned inquiries, just to make sure we were able
to set the record straight. And after we filled him up almost to bursting
we finally had to let him go, as a child, indifferent, lets go of a balloon  

in a parking lot, and watches the asterisk
beside his own name floating away.

From Earworm (2011) by Nick Thran. 

My Top Ten of 2011

I didn't read everything, but here, in no special order, is what I liked from the dozens of Canadian titles that crossed my path this year. Not included—but highly recommended— are the books I published (The Id Kid by Linda Besner, Skullduggery by Asa Boxer, Gift Horse by Mark Callanan and Spinning Side Kick by Anita Lahey) and the books I edited (Carapace by Laura Lush).

Earworm by Nick Thran (Nightwood)
As promised by its excellent title, Thran’s second book offers arrestingly memorable poems. His phrase-making is idiosyncratic, often unpredictable, enticing us with a left-handed mind adept at fresh, newly angled speculations about contemporary life.




Lil’ Bastard by David McGimpsey (Coach House)
A great deal of the myth that McGimpsey’s poems live in a hostile environment can be traced to an early review collected in my critical book, A Lover’s Quarrel. I’m happy to serve as the villain in this morality play, if only because it helps make my moments of praise more noteworthy. McGimpsey’s new book of “chubby sonnets” underscores the fact that when his high risk, high-caloric poetry works—as it did in Sitcom, and does again here—the results are marvellous, provocative and original.

A Doctor Pedalled Her Bicycle Over the River Arno by Matt Rader (Anansi)
One of the most formally exciting books of the year. Sometimes, alas, the craft is most of what we get (like his editor, Ken Babstock, Rader is a poet who is good at being good). But when craft yields to feeling, Rader can train tremendous, nearly Lowellian rhetorical power onto his subjects.



Methodist Hatchet by Ken Babstock (Anansi)
Complaints that his poems traffic in “nothing” have provoked a response from this immensely gifted poet. If you share those complaints, this book won’t do much to correct that impression—his subjects still sometimes disappear inside wordplay at once fast, flittering and opulent. But there’s an emotional streak in Babstock’s new poems I don’t recall seeing before: the vision is broader, bolder, more generous. The best pieces feel lived in, peopled, emotion-rich, packed with narratives-within-narratives.

A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth by Stephanie Bolster (Brick)
This book, which represents a further key-change for Bolster, beguiled me with its exquisite, pinpoint play with syntax. I didn’t like everything. More than a third of the poems were too brittle, too cut-short and barely did the job. Yet her minimalist accounts of animals and (and in) zoos have a sly way of disclosing in extremis psychological states.



A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People by Gabe Forman (Coach House)
I was utterly defeated by parts of this book. But in my bafflement, there was always something—a funny bit, a crisp image, an apt metaphor—I could pocket. Forman’s absurdist, anti-prose-sense "personality profiles" are events in themselves, and I found myself gladly tacking to all the linguistic shifts in his shaggy-dog-storytelling.



Open Air Bindery by David Hickey (Biblioasis)
Hickey’s second book is a model of transparency, lightness and simplicity. What I admire most, even envy, is his tonal clarity: a spectrum of experiences come alive in crystalline speech that shuns inflation.





Hypotheticals by Leigh Kotsilidis (Coach House)
A promising debut. Unquenchably attracted to the sound of scientific sense, Kotsilidis is wickedly good at using line-breaks and stanza shapes—often short, tense couplets—to locate unexpected pressure-points in her well-timed sentences. The collection is studded with terrific turns of phrase.



No End in Strangeness by Bruce Taylor (Cormorant)
This collection, which brings together highlights from Taylor’s previous two titles with magnificent new work, is the best book—in any genre—I read this year. In Taylor’s hands, domestic details become the crucible for elegant, textured, virtuosic observations on fate (“Kafka with kids” is how someone once described Taylor to me). He is a master at combining heart-breaking self-portraiture with ironic self-counselling (like a witty therapist giving himself a talking cure while staring in the mirror) and has a superb ear for description: his visual close-work is full of sonic surprises. I don’t think there’s a stronger English poet in Canada.

All This Could Be Yours by Joshua Trotter (Biblioasis)
Only his first book, but Trotter has already forged an unmistakable style: dream-like without being esoteric, ludic and lucid, deadpan and insinuating. Under formal pressure, ordinary experiences become delivery-systems for very odd, and oddly moving, ideas. And as verbal objects, the poems are ravishing.



Honourable mentions: Groundwork by Amanda Jernigan, Folk by Jacob McArthur Mooney, Guesswork by Jeffery Donaldson, Lines of Flight by Catherine Chandler,

Nick Thran

Dubbed "Genuinely, impossibly cool" in a recent review, Nick Thran attempts to define the term in a new interview:

'Cool' is one of those words that one can throw over a lot of more specific, helpful ones; a burlap sack kind of word. I guess maybe a more positive way for me to see the word cool would be as a kind of neon sticky-note on a page; a Whoa, this is something interesting and appealing in a way that I can’t quite articulate on first pass, but I’m going to come back to it soon with some more questions. Cool should be a precursor to a more rigorous engagement. It’s not, to my mind, a sustainable quality in and of itself.

A Nice Piece of Pie

Looking ahead to Dennis Lee's 71st birthday later this summer, Jacob McArthur Mooney offers a spirited assessment -- and, when necessary, sharp defense -- of Mr. Alligator Pie's career.

It's a well-written piece, fluent and lovingly handled, and exactly the kind of engaged, misconception-clearing criticism I wish more younger poets of Mooney's generation would trouble themselves to write (though I'm grateful for those who do: Michael Lista, Alessandro Porco, Mark Callanan, Nick Thran).