Jeff Low reviews Nicole Markotić's Ins & Outs (2015) in Broken Pencil

Jeff Low was good enough to provide the first review of Nicole Markotić's Ins & Outs (2015) in Broken Pencil. Thanks much! You can see the review here. As he writes:

Flip the page (literally); search for an alternate point of entry; without a handle, a door is just a wall: frustrated and feeling somewhat inadequate, I stumbled through Ins & Outs without a clue. I must be missing something. Or maybe it’s good at hiding. Regardless, you really have to investigate (or “stigate”) to coax meaning out of Markotić’s vertical poetics.

But frustration and feelings of incompletion run rampant throughout this zine. And, true to the nature of such things, there’s no self-affirming claim to meaning. Murmured clauses pool at the centre, arranged somewhat arbitrarily like the pull of gravity itself: “Who at this quisition deems non-stop sults as sufferable? / yes please”; “sung to the meld of orable banking / uh-huh, the candleabra’s plicable blue tremis / wait, don’t wander (save for haustible times)”. Too many speakers, or too many thoughts left unspoken, unclarified and subsequently meandering without ownership. The poems are arranged with respect to the reader’s experience during intake: negative space and stark alignment frustrates the potentiality of the pure white page, much like poetry’s insatiable promise of truth. Clarity offers little perspective. Confidence is often thwarted.

I’m a glutton for punishment and nit-picking, so Ins & Outs is an absolute treat. And I anticipate that this review holds all the same frustrations as the mumbling text itself. Another satisfying and characteristically complex read from above/ground press.

Jeff Low reviews Pete Smith's A New Love/ An Aching Stone (2016) in Broken Pencil

Jeff Low was good enough to provide the first review of Pete Smith's A New Love/ An Aching Stone (2016) in Broken Pencil. Thanks so much! You can see the review here. As he writes:

A New Love/ An Aching Stone is, contextually, pretty clear from the get go. The cover introduces the text as a somewhat fractured spirit: partial photos of two men are arranged side by side, yet separated by a triangular wedge of negative space. Their half-smiles align but do not meet in the middle. The dialogue is frustrated and I haven’t even flipped the thing open yet. The title page reads: “A double-cento out of Yehuda Amichai Mahmoud Darwish.” The former was an Israeli poet and the latter, a Palestinian poet. And so, the text’s political backbone surfaces. Throughout the text, Pete Smith examines the correspondence of Israeli-Palestinian art and identity with a whisper of futility. “Poetry isn’t poetry / because of the wall. / Which exile do you want?”

A New Love/ An Aching Stone is quick to set up circumstantial boundaries. But there is plenty of poetic ambiguity throughout, rest assured. The speaker laments the loss of identity both individual and collective: “The dust is my conscious, the stone my subconscious: / a heavenly horizon … and a hidden chasm / which wasn’t even good for thorns and thistles / in the emigrant’s night.” History is clouded by dust and dark convictions: “Perhaps I’ve been here once before, / the road of invaders who want to renovate their history, / make again a new love / over an aching stone.”

Pete Smith’s writing is strong and produces a clear poetic vision — a vision of fragmented political and cultural histories. And, in doing so, A New Love/ An Aching Stone remains wholeheartedly empathetic.

Jeff Low reviews damian lopes' Yasser Arafat is Dead (2015) in Broken Pencil #70

Jeff Low was good enough to provide the first review of damian lopes' Yasser Arafat is Dead (2015) in Broken Pencil #70 (with the review itself online here). Thanks so much!

Yasser Arafat is Dead is a poetry chapbook published by the notable Ottawa press, above/ground, and it features the work of Damian Lopes, Barrie’s own Poet Laureate. It’s the first chapbook he’s published in 15 years and, understandably, there’s a lot of ground covered here: lost relationships, cultural heritage, bloodlines and borders. In terms of physical composition, there aren’t any frills. It’s simple, but clean looking: 16 poems printed on regular white paper, except for a page of blue for the title and back copyright pages. And save for the concrete poem on the front cover, there aren’t any illustrations. It’s a purist poetry chapbook, more or less. But in terms of convention, the poetry itself isn’t quite so pure. The first poem, “converse” is a 4-stanza, 21-line poem full of dense wordplay, stark imagery and enjambed thoughts: “clipped / consonants separated / by bakelite tie / tongues as teens / bash teeth”. The poem explores linear constructions of meaning and how those meanings are so often interrupted, undercut along a trajectory of complicated premises: everyday conversation, coming-of-age personal development, the written word in general. It’s pretty dense stuff. To give context to Lopes’ writing, it seems this chapbook is dedicated (albeit, critically) to his father, Anthony D. Lopes, who passed away in 2014. The concrete poem on the cover has the title text, “yasser arafat is dead” arranged in portrait – not of the prominent Palestinian leader, but of the late Anthony Lopes. It’s an interesting comparison. The poem, “remembrance day” further ties the two figures together: their shared “concealing smile / paths of resistance / navigated elusively / manipulated hand”, though of course, “a people likewise do not / pick their sire”. The next poem, “the call” bridges this sense of global conflict with domestic reality: “we have not spoken / since my sister’s wedding / my nephew is four”. But relationships are not lost by chance: “you evade my concern / but the mitosis / is slow”. Separation, like liberation, is not an easy process. Despite its critical perspective, the poems throughout Yasser Arafat is Dead form an act of recognition; the chapbook picks up the pieces of a broken relationship, not to put them back together, but to place them along a line of identification, no matter how arbitrary that placement might be. If this collection is any indication (and I think it is), Lopes’ future work is sure to be similarly thoughtful and expressive.