Scott
Bryson was good enough to provide the first review of rob mclennan’s Poems for Lunch Poems at SFU (2020) over at Broken Pencil (although he
seems not to have actually enjoyed the experience). Thanks so much!
A recent TVO documentary, Tripping the Rideau
Canal, is a four-hour, real-time voyage down 27 kilometres of the titular
waterway, with historical factoids sprinkled throughout. The vicarious ride is
not dissimilar to enjoying a batch of rob mclennan’s poetry – but not because
reading his chapbooks feel like four hours.
The
poems in this book were produced for various outlets over the years, compiled
here, presumably, for the Lunch Poems reading series at SFU in Vancouver. But they
don’t drift too far apart from each other, all tethered to landscape. Location
is the paramount concern and there are few people present. “This human activity”
is mentioned only distantly, as if it were a foreign concept.
The
phrases in the poems are typically brief and enigmatic. In the collection’s
opening poem, mclennan lays out an apt warning (and perhaps a challenge) prefacing
the surprising work of inspecting one’s environment: “To break this open, / is
to understand the weather.”
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