Sunday Poem

COLD JULY 

for Elise Partridge (1958–2015) 

1.
I have seen it a beaver-dammed
lukewarm dribble, but this summer the brook’s a river,
deep and cold, running steeped tea
and a skim of froth around lichened rocks,
roaring like an air conditioner.
Its white noise is enforced by oversized pines:
their branches albatross
from broom-closet dry to green ends shagged
with cones the colour of peanut skins
and flecked with crystals of sap.
A cindery sentry guards the top:
his ash beak clacking as he hunches
for takeoff, his wings branching
from a light crate core, eyelashing at the tips.
Timber creak in his phlegm-fat caw.

2.
Down on the strand, big surf bangs,
lifting gulls from where they sit
like electric clothes irons. They leave
lead-white splotches
and webbed wavery wigwams.
A piece of driftwood perfectly catches
the boomerang of a swimmer’s arm.
Six-foot kelp bullwhips
have the trapped viscosity of poured motor oil
before they flare to lasagna at the tips.
Out where the ocean betrays
its breathing—closer in than the endless flat,
but farther out than the surf—a whiskery face
rides a swell and watches: time on the Nautilus
would bulk those milk bottle shoulders.
Drawn-tight hoodies small our faces
to beach stone ovals
on which our features perish.
Your message to us was simple:
look closely, and cherish. 

By Patrick Warner, from Octopus (Biblioasis, 2016)

(Painting by Mats Gustafson). 

A Canadian Poet To Watch

Shoshanna Wingate is hotly tipped for great things by Patrick Warner:

Ultimately, it is the lived-in quality of Wingate’s poems, the authenticity that comes from tough negotiation with experience and with poetic form that makes her work a valuable recent contribution to Canadian poetry, a poetry which, in 2015, is overly-indebted to affected language, to literary theory and to the incomprehensible. Among the wash of contemporary poems, many of which read as non sequitur followed by non sequitur, Wingate’s poems stand out for their realism, for their narrative candor, for their emotional heft, and (contradictory as it may sound) for their restraint.

Hooking

Patrick Warner raises his concerns about Mary Dalton's collection of centos, Hooking, in the form of a "cento" review—that is, an essay spliced together from bits and pieces of other essays.

(Photo by Paul Daly)

Sunday Poem

ANOREXIA  

The less there is of you the more of me.
The doctors refer to me as he.
He is not you, they say to her.
She takes a shaky breath. She runs around
and I run with her underground.

I play my hostess like a violin,
my minimalist concerto for torso and limbs.
That’s you in the loo, your woodwind guts,
the cymbal splash of watery vomit,
the kettledrum of bowels in the bowl.

I am the heart of these stick figures,
don’t bother asking where I come from.
Look to the weak strain in your code.
Look to notions of perfection,
to where you fall short in execution.

My hostess dreams of becoming an actress,
dreams of the lead in Les Mis.
She gives me such a deep and hungry kiss;
she’ll end up in the hospital next to the hospice,
where I may have to tighten my belt.

She imagines a memorial mass in Maine:
the mourners arrive by private plane
and are ferried to the church in limousines.
I play the mourners like a violin,
my catgut bow weeping and wailing.

I spend most of my time not dying.
They spend most of their time trying.
Those last two I plucked from Fred Seidel.
I could go on, in fact, I think I will,
my passion for girl flesh is inexhaustible.

Tuesdays we meet with her group—
the Boa-restrictors, my own little cult.
One has a ribcage like a catcher’s mitt
One takes pills to make her shit.
One shaves lanugo off her limbs.

Clouds cluster and turn the sky purple.
Little children splash about in puddles.
A Pomeranian takes on a Bichon Frise.
My little pets are down on their knees.
The less there is of you the more of me.

I spend most of my time not dying.
They spend most of their time trying.
I am the Caesar of their seizures. They are the kill.
I’m at the heart of these stick figures’ hearts.
I could go on. I could stop. I will.

From Perfection (2012) by Patrick Warner.

Saturday Poem

MORMON

How will a Mormon boy get a wife, I wondered,
if he declines his mission to wander the world,
spreading the Mormon word as he goes:
no wife for a Mormon boy who refuses.

So I was kind to two young Mormon men
who came to my door last Saturday morning—
the point man in short sleeved shirt and blue tie,
his back-up in short sleeved shirt and blue tie—

the former displaying a pulp magazine
which featured a story on the fashion industry
and its dangers, especially to young women:
anorexia, bulimia, and low self esteem.

I listened until—as if at some prearranged signal—
the second flipped open a leather-bound book
he had held until then with a sloth-like grip:
It was my cue to say: I am not a Christian.

This has been true of my life for so long
that to say it out loud gives only a moderate high,
which in turn brings only a moderate low.
And so I did not take it too badly on coming back in

to hear my eight year old daughter say,
in her deepest voice: I am not a Christian;
though to hear her say it brought it home in a new way,
and I thought for a moment that this is serious

and that she should take it more seriously,
so I considered putting the fear into her, telling her
that if her grandfather heard her say such a thing
he would think us condemned to eternal damnation.

Instead I sat back down on the couch beside her
where it so happened there was scheduled
an end-of-season Fashion File—the year's best show,
the year's best designer, the year's best newcomer.

And watching, I reserved my loudest cheers
for headdresses of ostrich and emu feathers,
for models with bleached invisible eyebrows,
for models with slack, stew-bone thighs.

While she preferred the more womanly models--
though she did not care for naked breasts--
and reserved her loudest cheers for young Mark Jacobs
and for the ready to wear from Donna Karan.

What a world this is for a Mormon boy, I thought,
who declines his mission to wander the world,
spreading the Mormon word as he goes:
what a world for a Mormon boy who refuses.

From There, There (2005) by Patrick Warner

Once a Pratt, Always a Pratt

Patrick Warner wins the E..J. Pratt Poetry Award -- for the second time.

UPDATE: Here is the jury's citation:

“Patrick Warner’s Mole noses its way into the domestic and the unobserved, needles each “numb spot,” and coaxes the strange from the mundane. Warner transforms routine into formal ingenuity and our mass obsessions and accumulations into his metaphoric bonfire. While he eschews the grand and romantic, Warner remains the authentic artisan. His language is avid and alight, his ironies wicked and pitch perfect. If it was difficult to imagine a suburban poetry that could matter, then Warner imagines it for us. Crafty, civic, human – amidst the community walls, by-laws, and sprawl – Mole sniffs out signs of life and brings back news of ourselves.”

E.J. Pratt Poetry Award

Three of my favourite poets (Patrick Warner, Tom Dawe and George Murray) are up for the same prize. CBC interviewed them a couple of weeks ago. Winners are announced May 18, 2011.

Moonlighting Poets

Over the last year, four Signal poets have published books with other presses. Taken together, the genres represented -- fiction, literary criticism, translation and biography -- are impressive. I think it's a big part of what makes them such superb poets: their poetry is nourished by other sources.

Clockwise from bottom left: Double Talk (Breakwater) by Patrick Warner, Curious Masonry: Three Translations from the Anglo-Saxon (Gaspereau) by Christopher Patton, Fine Incisions: Essays on Poetry and Place (Porcupine's Quill) by Eric Ormsby and Edith Sitwell: Avant-Garde Poet, English Genius (Little, Brown) by Richard Greene.

Show and Tell

Patrick Warner and I both launched our books of poetry in St. John's on Tuesday at The Ship Inn (Me: This Way Out, He: Mole). It was an awesome night, with many of the city's literary mainstays in attendance and much debauchery. How much? Too much, apparently. I woke the next morning to the discovery that Lisa Moore autographed my arm. I have no memory of this. But I have a photo! Man, I love St John's.