Catherine Marcotte reviews Micah Ballard's Busy Secret (2024)

Kingston, Ontario-based reader, editor and writer Catherine Marcotte was good enough to provide the first review for Micah Ballard's Busy Secret (2024) at The Miramichi Reader. Thanks so much! You can read the original post here. As Marcotte writes

Micah Ballard’s latest chapbook Busy Secret is a quippy, somewhat resigned meditation on the liminal spaces between life and death, and wealth and work. For Ballard’s narrators, these themes are central, presenting the questions that both create and disrupt the everyday textures of our lives. Through its repeated allusions to failed occupations, a distrust of wealth, and a meandering sense of self, the collection considers the relationship between our inner and outer lives and ultimately demonstrates the fragility of the relationship between the two.

In “Moscow on the Hudson,” the speaker treats poems like “diamonds cut for consignment,” gesturing to the modern devaluation of poetics. “Anything misleading count me in,” the speaker adds, as if to confirm that the life of the poet is not often what it appears to be. Indeed, the inner life of the dedicated poet does not always (or even often) translate to the successful outer life of an established one. “Whatever I had to become I became,” the speaker muses, gesturing to the necessity of adaptability in the arts. For Ballard’s narrator, and perhaps Ballard himself, a poet must be ready for a chameleon career, must be willing, as the speaker has been, to not only be a poet, but to be an aspiring poet, an artist cloaked under labels such as student, academic, or even, as in “Moscow on the Hudson,” unlicensed fortune teller.

In “Name Value,” the speaker similarly contemplates life in academia, commenting on the policing of poetry and subtly integrating a metanarrative into the text — a secondary narrative that breaks the so-called fourth wall between the reader and the poem. “Name Value” both acknowledges the supposedly dwindling state of the poetic genre and the fact that the text itself is a poem, beckoning readers to consider the seemingly endless possibilities of the poetic form. Here, Ballard is honest and reflective, imbuing his work with a compelling vulnerability and nuance. Although melancholic about the state and status of modern poetics, Ballard’s narrator is, in a way, also deeply hopeful. Despite his fears for the genre, he continues to write, affirming the writing form’s value in the face of its hardships. In a way, Busy Secret rejects binary organizations, presenting failure and success, as well as delight and disgust, not as opposing states but as conjoined ones. While a “rotting mansion” and a well-populated “Museum of Death” are central scenes, delightful images of mouth-watering “gumbo,” “jambalaya” and “crawfish etouffee” regularly compete for the reader’s (and the speaker’s) attention. The text’s dealings in both extremes are as compelling as they are off-putting, creating a unique blend of short, punchy narratives that spur reflection (and re-reading). A short, impactful read, Micah Ballard’s Busy Secret is a strange, almost enigmatic chapbook that considers the boundaries between our lives and our selves. It is just as sure to resonate as it is to disconcert.

Catherine Marcotte reviews Cary Fagan's Fifty-Two Lines About Henry (2024) at The Miramichi Reader

Kingston, Ontario-based reader, editor and writer Catherine Marcotte was good enough to provide the first review for Cary Fagan's Fifty-Two Lines About Henry (2024) over at The Miramichi Reader. Thanks so much! You can read the original post here.

Mourning favourite colours, cooking for dachshunds, and feeding birds gummi-worms: these are the kind of adventures that animate Cary Fagan’s charming new chapbook, Fifty-Two Lines About Henry.

Faithful to its title, this fifty-two-line collection is a fragmented look into the strange and whimsical life of a man named Henry. His is a tale of misplaced energies, unlikely luck, and lasting anxieties about anything from flag-raising and hat-wearing to door-slamming.

And as these small, out of context stories multiply and expand, clarifying our sense of our protagonist, the book ultimately reminds that no one line can aptly convey the absurdity of human life.

Although Henry contemplates dancing to calm an enraged bear, orders enough sardines to fill two bedrooms – I hope they’re canned – and writes an 861-page chapter to a novel, his unlikely battles remain rooted in a world well-recognized where neighbours are suspicious, dinner parties are taxing, and things learned at school are revealed to be alternately fateful (the sousaphone, surprisingly) and superfluous (trigonometry).

Punctuated by unexpected guests like a thorn-ridden lion and existential questions about littering, Fagan’s work engages the surreal and the hyperreal to lay bare the unknowability of life’s many moments. And as these small, out of context stories multiply and expand, clarifying our sense of our protagonist, the book ultimately reminds that no one line can aptly convey the absurdity of human life: “My life, he said into the dark, can’t be reduced to a single line.” A funny, heartfelt ride, Fifty-Two Lines About Henry is a fast-paced, witty, and undeniably charming meditation on the many thoughts and feelings that populate our strange, unknowable days.