So Sorry!

Sue Goyette apologizes:

We’re sorry we’re so sorry but we are sorry. It’s a Canadian thing like tourtière or Irving. Picture a moose trudging through tundra towards another moose, antlers grazing maple trees that haven’t been cut down yet, the snort of exertion, the clomp of intent. That’s us trying to find each other in this wilderness so we can apologize for something: standing too close, standing too far. Being hard to find in the appointment thicket of our days. We’re sorry one of us invented frozen fish fillets because single-portion frozen dinners invented a new loneliness and the lonely bone, they say, is connected to the drinking bone. The rest, well, the rest is history. Our apologies are welcome mats and engagement rings. The tiebreaker in overtime. Pierre Berton’s bow ties. Meaningful. We take an eternity to back into a parking spot and then feel sorry for all the unparked cars still circling; we’re even sorry for feeling a little lucky. And though having a pocketful of loonies is a good thing here, it sounds like something we should apologize for.  

From outskirts (Brick, 2011).
(Illustration by Julien Decaudin)

The Surreal Solidarity of Metaphor

In a long reply to Chad Campbell's review of Sue Goyette's Ocean, Phil Hall rebuts Campbell's assertion that bad metaphors cause her book to sink like a stone:

Piled up, protean, Goyette's metaphors of ocean and society just make no sense, says Campbell. Clearly.


Which is not the point.


Campbell misses, in his procedure, by his template, the surreal solidarity of metaphor, how it smears logic to expose deeper & wider unity.


This is the alternative tradition of Neruda & Lorca. This is Calvino's Invisible Cities.


Ocean is not coming out of the tradition of Milton's Lycidas & Tennyson's Maud with their track-able system of similes & symbols.


This poem does not come out of the tradition that is being used here to judge it.

Sunday Poem

DEPICTION OF A MAN AND A WOMAN ON THE PIONEER 10 SPACE PROBE PLAQUE 

If a representation of a man with a penis
and a woman without a vagina
is hurtling at 20 clicks a second
away from earth and makes contact
with an alien who thinks
just as we do
so admires the woman’s hairdo but gets
the method of procreation wrong, well,
it won’t be by accident, will it.
The man, I must say, is anatomically lovely and I like
how his raised hand illustrates the opposable thumb
while doubling as a sign of good will.
But would it have killed us
to add a short line for her cleft?
To make her an artifact, not space junk,
mound of Venus with a Brazilian wax job instead of Barbie Mattel?
They say Greek statuary omits it, but come on,
we talk about being safe then spend our days splitting the atom.
In the time it takes me to write snatch, cunt, beaver, quim, poontang,
pussy, muff,
the impression’s a further 300 miles away.
The chances of correction are, I’ll face it, nil.
When the earth’s shriveled up like a douche bag in a campfire
the plaque will carry on; ambassador
of the easily offended, the quickly aroused.
It hopes you will understand.

From The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2013 (ed. Sue Goyette) by Donna Kane.

Sea Sick

Chad Pelley is impressed with the metaphor-making in Sue Goyette's new collection of poems:

In Ocean, Sue wades in metaphoric reaction to a life lived by the sea. The ocean is an image-and subtext-rich thing on the margins of her everyday life, and she plays off this, fishing fantastic parallels between the ebb and flow of the Atlantic and life itself. But this is not run-of-the-mill poetry in which the poet uses the ocean to reflect on one’s life, or the world, or our place in it—Goyette plunges much deeper than that, both stylistically and conceptually. She’s making up her own metaphorical ocean mythology in these poems, and it makes for vibrant, innovative poetry.

Chad Campbell doesn't think she pulls it off:

“Everything is connected!”, Goyette’s speaker proclaims, and yes, it is: because a world has been created in which there are no boundaries between anything—not dreams, matter, smells, senses, concepts, or memories—and their connections aren’t revealed because they are presented as fact. Goyette doesn’t have to ground or hone her metaphors, to fashion cohesive conceits, because she has created this world with a structure that implicitly excuses their failings and obscurities.

Sample poem: "The ocean is the original mood ring"

Sunday Poem

"THE OCEAN IS THE ORIGINAL MOOD RING..." 

The ocean is the original mood ring.
Often, and for days, it convinced us 

we felt an industrial grey malaise with a deep heart
of blue. The occasional whip of whitecap idea 

would bloom in our plans. We'd sit by its side
while it slept, our pens poised like fishing rods. 

When it granted an interview, it refused to talk
about its film credits or its accolades of full moons. 

It was more interested in talking about what we thought
it tasted like: fish or tears, it wanted to know. 

And it loved stalking us. Some of us would wake
with that rear-view feeling of being watched. We'd skid out 

of our dreams only to sink over our heads. When we could,
we'd spear a good conversation and carry it, wriggling, 

to its mouth. We'd find the bones of what we were trying
to say later, washed up on shore. We'd boil them to drink 

their broth then wake hungover from the truth. Some days,
the ocean would convince us we were green 

with many small ambitions, and other days we were used
aluminum foil, an offshore of seagulls dipping 

and stealing morsels of our memories. In this way, we knew
we were aging. Some days, if we were to believe it, we felt 

nothing but a progress of sky, a fleet of spaceships shaped
like clouds sailing out of our harbour in search of somewhere new.

By Sue Goyette from Ocean (Gaspereau, 2013).

Verbatim

"While good writers are taking their turn winning a prize, there’s a herd of good writers out there writing. Prizes narrow the big picture and it’s helpful to remember that."

Sue Goyette weighs in on our prize culture.