Recommended Reading: ROCKSALT a BC anthology by Mother Tongue/ review by Sean Arthur that might interest
ROCKSALT a BC anthology by Mother Tongue/ review by Sean Arthur that might interest
lrogers writes...
Building a Nest of the Swan’s Bones:
‘Rocksalt’,
Anthology of contemporary BC poetry published by Mother Tongue Press
edited by Mona Fertig and Harold Rhenisch
Review by Sean Arthur Joyce
(900 words)
…Oh monster home. Oh
specialty wine outlet. Oh auto mall. The wild white swan
is dead. The hawk hunts and kills the swan for love. It will build a new
nest of the swan’s bones. It will keep this nest unseen.
—Russell Thornton, Nest of the Swan’s Bones
As we enter the swan song of civilization—or at very least this phase of it—it’s appropriate that many of the poets in Rocksalt are writing poems on that theme. Thornton’s poem with its powerful archetypal swan image is thus an apt metaphor to represent such a collection. The swan facing extinction is earlier counterpointed by the “disinterested” hunting of the hawk, not unlike corporate entities trolling global waters for fresh kills. Unlike many urban-themed poems, Thornton’s focus doesn’t stay myopically focused on gritty street life but widens to contextualize it with what’s happening in the non-human world. Not only are there human casualties of civilization:
Moment by moment,
the men go back and forth. They search out what they trade
for a full bottle or syringe or pipe.
there are animals and ecosystems suffering our legacy of wastefulness:
Where I caught
trout as a child, no trout swim now. The drives
and crescents gouge ravines, make creeks disappear.
Given that, as Patrick Lane has pointed out, there is very little tradition in Canadian poetry for the dissenting voice, it’s encouraging to see so many of the poets in this anthology speaking for that which otherwise might have no voice in a technological culture. Harold Rhenisch, co-editor of Rocksalt, sings it beautifully in the closing verse of Foetus on the Wawa Pedal:
Surely you have seen
that the earth is only the raga of the mirror
broken across the heart’s floor? Surely
you are listening now as her rags weave you?
The singers are barefoot; they touch the earth’s body
and she touches the pedal, and waa waa waaa waa
goes the raga that is the earth’s swollen cry.
First Nations poet Peter Morin builds on aboriginal tradition by using Raven—the great Creator/Trickster talisman of West Coast native mythology—to give voice to the voiceless, much as Métis poet Joanne Arnott does with her “turquoise green grandmother / riding the mighty Sow / onto the battlefield.” Robin Mathews rips open the CanLit taboo on political poetry by writing a short but devastating poem showing that not only aboriginal peoples but everyone is being victimized by current political/economic agendas. That’s not to say that this unthemed anthology is overtly political, but it’s refreshing to see so many BC poets contemplating more than their navels. I once wrote that in the trajectory toward the universal, contemplation of the self is only going halfway. A poem can only outlast its time by calling us back to an experience that is simultaneously personal and universal.
Here is where Rocksalt delivers us a fine bonus, by offering brief essays on poetics by each poet. I haven’t enjoyed an anthology this much since Gary Geddes classic textbook 20th Century Poetry and Poetics. Naturally this will primarily be of interest to other poets, but with the art diminishing steadily in the public consciousness the same could be said of poetry itself. The great irony is that while the mass popularity of poetry is probably at an all-time low—except in the field of pop songwriting—we have a super-abundance of skilled poets writing, as in this collection.
As poet Kate Braid points out in her essay, poets are at least partly to blame for this decline of general interest. “In my naïve and foolish adolescence and young adulthood, I was often misled by intellect; I was easily dazzled by language and for a long time figured that to be incomprehensible was to be wise. …Now I find that for words to be merely pretty or merely clever is not enough. The reason we talk to each other – all those exchanges that make up culture and community – is connection.” Bravo! Twentieth century poetic movements such as concrete poetry or other ‘text-based’ experiments were interesting but arid and unlikely to last. Thankfully there is only one concrete poem in Rocksalt. Intellectual exercises are great fodder for academic careers but ultimately fail Braid’s criteria of making connection, i.e. communicating. As Susan Musgrave plainly puts it: “When we connect with a poem, when the words resonate, reverberate, they connect us with the history of the human heart.” Linda Rogers, another well-respected poet, advises working without a ‘recipe’: “Poems are gifts. The best ones are surprises, never to be repeated.” This would have been anathema to CanLit academia not so very long ago.
Rocksalt’s other great surprise is its inclusiveness. Alongside the names we all expect to see anthologized yet one more time there are many invigorating new voices. It’s a breath of fresh air to see young poets like Alison Blythe, not have to read long laundry lists of prestigious awards, and simply get the goods: a great poem. Her Greet the Light, though it does her poem an injustice to cut out an excerpt, provides as startling an ending/beginning as could be asked for:
There was no more room
in darkness. Still though,
after that first elemental rush,
how irreparable the light.
