Susan Kay Anderson reviews Heather Cadsby's How to (2023)

Susan Kay Anderson was good enough to provide the first review of Heather Cadsby's How to (2023) over at NewPages; thanks so much! See the original post here. As she writes:

The prose poems in How To by Heather Cadsby are hilarious, and their titles are satisfying enough, let alone the bodies of the poems. Some examples: “How to catch flamboyant bohemians,” “How to tell if it’s different,” and “How to look at a broken fountain.” Each one offers its own non-advice and leads me to hunger for more.

I love how Cadsby plays with expectations. These poems offer surprises that are language-based without being frustrating to read. They are LOL poems, as in this line from “How to know if your venn diagram is pentimento”:

Golf is geometry as is burlesque.

These are funny and my mind creates illustrations or comic images to go with them as I read. I am challenged by this as a reader and also immensely entertained. Not a lot of poetry is funny. Many times, when poets try to be funny, they start rhyming or sound like Dean Young imitators (even though that is a good thing). Thank goodness to have read Cadsby’s inventions, I say to myself, wondering how I will manage to set this book down and get my mind back.

new from above/ground press: The Last Horse: Prologue, by Aaron Tucker

The Last Horse
Prologue
Aaron Tucker
$5

    Plague.
    By the time scientists pulled all the global data together, publishing a breathless set of papers in Nature that then crept into the mainstream media, nearly eighty percent of the world’s horse population was infected.
    Footage: a camera man walks through a barn, hay bales and farming equipment, and people in all-white decontamination suits look into the different stalls; each horse that comes into frame is listless, their manes flaccid and paling, their nostrils filled and noisy with heavy breath, the lustre of their coats lost to the ribs showing through. A suited person runs their hand down the long neck of one, the horse’s head turning towards the affection despite its obvious weakness, patting it while explaining to the audience that the animal has only a day more to live, that whatever had infected it had also sterilized it. That any horse found to be infected had roughly one week, a death sentence that no one could identify the cause of, let alone a cure.
    Cattlemen gathered and drew the obvious parallels to hoof-and-mouth disease and recalled stories, their own or the generations before’s, of having to quarantine then slaughter cows, healthy or not, who had come into contact with those infected. A coffee steams in a man’s hand, a diner with three others around the table, and he describes his father, rifle in hand, walking towards the field at the far end of their pastureland, the swish of bright green grass through his cowboy boots, grass that was perfect for grazing but now to left grow ankle-, knee-length, wild and weeds. The man’s father and his neighbours had cornered the cattle along one stretch of fence, where they clustered and bawled and tried to move forward, met each time they advanced with a rifle shot into the air to frighten them back. Seated on a tractor fixed with a giant earth-moving scoop at the front, the man watched the men march with their guns dutifully on their shoulders, to the herd, and, after a brief countdown, killed every single animal. The man helped his father and the others dig the grave, a deep long ditch that the cattle were rolled into, one after another, one on top of another, a heaping mass, steaming with fresh blood, hides, eyes, teeth, hooves, cattlebrands, then the dirt over top, afterwards packed tightly by the tromp of boots. The sun came over the mountains the next day, lighting the valley floor. “We never entered that field again. We left it and eventually God took it back and you couldn’t see the fenceposts, and it was like nothing had happened, that no life had ever been there. I dream about it, you know, often, when I come to remember my dreams in the morning.”

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2023
as the twenty-second title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Aaron Tucker is the author of two novels, three books of poetry and two film studies monographs. His latest novel, Soldiers, Hunters, Not Cowboys (Coach House Books) was named one of the best books of 2023 so far by The Toronto Star. His doctoral dissertation “The Flexible Face: Uniting the Protocols of Facial Recognition Technologies” (March 2023), and was nominated for the York University Dissertation Prize; his graduate work at York’s Cinema and Media Arts department won the Governor General's Gold Medal. In addition, he is currently a SSHRC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto where he is recreating the history of AI in Canada as a technonational project. He grew up on the Sylix Territory in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia, and currently lives and works in Tkaronto on the lands covered by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Covenant.

This is Aaron Tucker’s fourth chapbook with above/ground press, following apartments (2010), punchlines (2013) and Catalogue d’Oiseaux: Toronto — Mainz-Kastel (2018).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Susan Kay Anderson reviews Leesa Dean's Apogee/Perigee (2023)

Susan Kay Anderson was good enough to provide the first review of Leesa Dean's Apogee/Perigee (2023) over at NewPages; thanks so much! See the original post here. As she writes:

Apogee/Perigee by Leesa Dean is about relationships near and far. What is the poet’s relationship to situations, people, and other everyday items? I see Dean’s poems in a creative, concrete way; and see them as points on an astrology chart, which is circular and the connecting points to various houses/states of being. This is a sacred, esoteric book of poems not to be approached offhandedly. Slowly, by studying these dialed-up, circles of potency, there is a lot revealed, as in these lines from “House of Values”:

[. . . ] movies
on repeat. ice cream on repeat.
dinner at bedtime. toys kept in
Crown Royale bags.

At first, I did not get that these were astrology charts. They looked like maps with scroll and script writing. When I went back and examined them, it was plain as can be. In these lines, Dean remembers her grandmother’s teachings:

[. . . ] her eyes lit like
bright swans when her mouth
formed the words.

I love, “her eyes lit like bright swans” so much. I can see and feel this image. The mystery, the sacred, and the overcoming of what was endured make for careful reading. If I read nothing else, I would be satisfied.

some author activity: Unsworth, Weaver, Bell, Morton, Bowering, Hogg + mclennan,

Lydia Unsworth has a poem up as part of the Tuesday poem series; Andy Weaver is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Wade Bell, Colin Morton, George Bowering and others all have new pieces as part of the "Remembering Bob Hogg" feature at The Typescript; and rob mclennan answers one question for Hollay Ghadery at River Street Writing.

new from above/ground press: Misremembered Proverbs, by Adriana Oniță

Misremembered Proverbs
Adriana Oniță
$5

ȚARA ARDE ȘI BABA SE PIAPTĂNĂ

The country is on fire and the old woman is brushing her hair.

Because she can’t smell the smoke. Because she’s combing out the flames. Because her country is a rough draft. Because she set fire to the country. Because she’s seen it all. Because she knows rain is coming. Because she won the war. Because she lost her children in the war. Because she wanted to become proverb. Because she is the library about to burn. Because her body is bait.

Țara arde and she can’t smell the smoke.
Țara arde and she’s combing out the flames.
Țara arde and her country is a rough draft.
Țara arde and she set fire to the country.

Țara arde and she’s seen it all.
Țara arde and she knows rain is coming.
Țara arde and she won the war.
Țara arde and she lost her children in the war.

Țara arde and she wanted to become proverb.
Țara arde and she is the library about to burn.
Țara arde and her body is bait.
Țara arde și baba se piaptănă.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Adriana Oniță is a poet, artist, educator, and researcher with a PhD in language education. She writes and teaches in English, Romanian, Spanish, French, and Italian. As founding editor of The Polyglot, Adriana is proud to have published more than 200 writers and artists working in over 55 languages. Her recent multilingual poems appear in CBC Books, The Globe and Mail, and Tint Journal. She is also the author of two chapbooks: Misremembered Proverbs (2023) and Conjugated Light (Glass Buffalo, 2019). Adriana works as editorial director for the Griffin Poetry Prize and lives between Edmonton and Sicily. Discover her work at adrianaonita.com, and connect with her on social media: IG: adi.onita, Twitter: adi_onita.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Susan Kay Anderson reviews rob mclennan's The Alta Vista Improvements (2023)

Susan Kay Anderson was good enough to provide the first review of my own chapbook The Alta Vista Improvements (2023) over at NewPages; thanks so much! See the original post here. Although: is it angsty to consider the countryside? As she writes:

There must be an angst category in poetry called urban angst poetry when you realize you live in a city but have been feeling and acting like you are in the countryside. Maybe that’s not the case, here, exactly. More like pandemic angst, which the entire planet can relate to. rob mclennan’s Alta Vista Improvements is a place where such a realization occurs and is one of above/ground press’ unique pamphlets churned out in Canada. Here are a few lines in the titular poem in Section 5, which I loved reading:

[. . . ] this through-line
of patchwork housing, outcrop. A craft

of optimism, ignorance. The internet
equally bears each alphabet.

This is delicious writing! mclennan highlights the loss of the family goldfish through multiple fish, multiple losses; something is wrong in the picture of domesticity. What is it? We don’t exactly find out, yet travel the off-road territory with mclennan and enjoy every moment. In “Summer, pandemic,” as he waits for us in the car, his loyalty goes above and beyond to the complicated:

[. . . ] I perch in precooked car
awaiting our cat, in his follow up appointment
to recent dental extraction [. . . ]

Will life get itself all sorted out? In The Alta Vista Improvements, we sit and ponder (and hope) in all the wreckage.

some author activity: Armantrout, Hyland, mclennan, Jirgens, Hogg, Logan + Anstee,

Rae Armantrout and MC Hyland have new work in Copenhagen Lit; the audio for the interview RC Weslowski and Kevin Spenst did with rob mclennan for Wax Poetic is now online; Karl Jirgens reflects on Robert Hogg in The Typescript; Nate Logan has three poems up at cul-de-sac-of-blood; and Cameron Anstee has a piece on book culling at The Richler Literary Project.