Recent Reads: "HEDGE" by Alyssa Bridgman

HEDGE by Alyssa Bridgman

Published by above/ground press, 2017.

Although a quick flip to the colophon of Alyssa Bridgman’s HEDGE reveals the chapbook’s chief inquiry – a comparison between Trump’s border wall and “the eighteenth-century enclosure movement in Britain” – it doesn’t portend the scope of these poems. By deconstructing the ideology of boundaries and undressing them of political and historical biases, Bridgman enables the reader to interact with them objectively. Ironically enough, it’s seeing our privilege, attachment and complicity from this neutral viewpoint that organically reinforces the material’s political/historical bent.

“Unnatural Haikus” efficiently parses the coarse duality of borders: what’s kept in, what’s left out. If one side has gains, the other has losses. If one side feels safe, the other is to be feared. And big surprise – those who determine where borders belong also ensure that wealth pools on their side of the partition. This untitled piece outlines the pendulum swing in vague yet validating buzzwords:

Though HEDGE admirably splits its focus between “hedge” and “fund” (even offering both terms a timeline of evolving definitions in the preface), the most compelling poems for me tread the imposed hedges of language. In “Mother” and “Between cracked words”, Bridgman sees language as a wall-like construct – a linear progression where thoughts and words accumulate like bricks. In the former poem, these constructs inform a family’s verbal and psychic sphere, wherein words guide children through both sturdy and faulty interactions. Bridgman masterfully evokes a sort-of Venn diagram in the mind of the reader, presenting the family’s boundary eroding when linked to outside language spheres.

That thought-provoking idea expands but struggles in the latter poem, as hedges of language and thought merge with the physical world. A disagreement gathers in bricks of blood and ink:


"water won't wash out this ink
spoken from the other side
of what was once a pathway
piled up with utterance
misunderstanding and standing firm"


Delivered in five sections, “Between cracked words” guides the reader through an architecture of misunderstanding and weighs the culpability of adding another voice to the pile. It’s heady stuff and admirably tackled, though getting there requires maneuvering some clunky lines that double as exposition (“my flowing train of thoughts is speeding / out of control on riverbed-tracks headed for the ocean”). That's the challenge of relaying complex meaning while still writing effective verse – one risks coming off as either too abstract or hand-holding. Still, the payoff is totally worth it:

IV.

the barrier of deafness

we create with inattentive ears

listens only to our own voice

barricades ourselves in enclosure

where we hear the echoes

of our words bounce back

in the dark room

in a loss of foresight

we turn on ourselves

as the water rises

Borrowing “barrier of deafness” from Susan Howe, Bridgman’s poem gets surgically prophetic by its close. Yet there’s no preachiness or fear-mongering, and readers don’t have to study up on “the eighteenth-century enclosure movement in Britain” to enjoy it. Maybe it’s a sign of the times that HEDGE is political even without making explicitly political references, but its message about discourse should appeal to both sides.

Recent Reads: "The Sourdough Collaborations" by Roland Prevost and Pearl Pirie

The Sourdough Collaborations by Roland Prevost and Pearl Pirie

Published by Phafours Press, 2015.

The Sourdough Collaborations is a rare consortium: an exchange between two poets that is chronicled in evolving drafts as well as informal discussion about the applications and results of each approach used. To put it another way, The Sourdough Collaborations is the making of The Sourdough Collaborations. And seeing as how authors Roland Prevost and Pearl Pirie have lifted the curtain, explaining their various intuition and internet-based means of manipulating text, I’m essentially writing footnotes on footnotes.

Regardless, I felt like a participant in the chapbook’s playful abandon. Whether they’re putting a poem through a series of translations (in one case: Spanish to Catalan to English to Klingon to French then back to English), riffing on the outcome or each other’s interpretation, Prevost and Pirie share an unguarded willingness to chase fresh writing. To give a broad idea of their interchange, here’s a poem undertaken by Pirie:

(Note: Although it’s customary to share a few excerpts, I must preface to remind that very satisfying context surrounds the creation of these poems. Seek out a copy here.) 

water-mind

sweet chap of bubble-language, nothing else

is in this (refillable) glass but us.

past refracted alfalfa fields, their roots like turnips

we 6 gaze, nod as seahorse steeds

ledge of seashells are Christian bystanders

in 2 hour litany of k’pows, daddy finger-blams

mangy fox, psycho cow, vagrant bear till Emmy holds up

her teddy, asks, would you shoot this in the bush?

an organ grinder in the gut claps, makes terrible

digestion, a useless sluice of gastric;

no bite against junkyard violence. us listing

as a group what gives reflux, cukes, orange juice…

the movement of ripples is a wobble in the plans

in the planes, in the planets

not the culpa of our wet earth.

it’s only you and me here; what matters now?

let us have as much compass direction as a rake.

that APB? never mind. self was never lost but a rain walk. 
(Pirie, pg. 16)

And here is Prevost’s response:

our slow liquid

The original bottle of us, filled and capped

permeates our travels

undersea fields of the kelp-woman

as she rides quiescent undertows

thin calcium armors, whose ridges

foretell an upcoming sparagmos

even landlocked prey will plead

with many-faced little-girl gods

what we stomach laughs out loud

weak acid drips harmless off skin

a stack gathers to attack

a lining that shrugs away

shaken by what should stir

the edge curves around the globe

tides, tidings on this stage

this known story still surprises

the map or mapless number

remains one small-big-whole fraction

that walks from and into fog

as enjoyable as ether 
(Prevost, pg. 17)

Despite appearing surgically removed from their authors’ comments, “water-mind” and “our slow liquid” present the core infallibility of this collaborative unit: Prevost and Pirie are keen readers and listeners, capable of shaping one another’s gambits into sturdy morsels worth pulling apart. Though the exercises seem custom-built for Pirie’s elastic dissection of koan and colloquialism, Prevost proves totally up to the challenge, often distilling these ‘bastard ghazals’ to their imagistic potential. Like any thriving partnership, one person’s strengths must balance the other’s. At various points in-between the peaks of exploration and consolidation, the Ottawa-area poets achieve a single, hybridized voice.

It could be said, albeit unfairly, that the procedures and approaches they discuss outshine the poems themselves – but that’s like saying limitless possibility outshines the closure of a finished piece! At one point, Prevost and Pirie realize their exchange could go on forever:

“As in renga, the poetic conversation starts conservative, safe, and gears up. By mid-point it can go wilder as at the height of a party where speech is most loose. More politics or violence or conflict or general chaos can be engaged with. Likewise with this. Once we were comfortable with the back and forth, we could stretch, throw wilder and assume the other could run for it, catch and throw something back.” (pg. 12)

The allure of possibility is magnetic because it’s theoretical. But these poems, often thoughtful, warm and surprising, double as blueprints of choice, using stream-of-consciousness, linguistic and homophonic translation, a bunch of excisions and intuition as ways of keeping options open. Given the imagination on tap for The Sourdough Collaborations, it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine these bakers finding their way into the kitchen for a second batch.

Recent Reads: "North" by Marilyn Irwin

North by Marilyn Irwin

Published by above/ground press, 2017.

(&)

he said he wouldn’t speak

to me ever again

if i killed myself

This is the opening page from North, a chapbook by Marilyn Irwin that documents a woman’s unraveling life. Perspective here is obscured by depression, plainspoken in sparse lines that communicate exhaustion but just as evocative through omissions – the disassociated flitting between subjects and settings. After moving from a clinical environment of bed straps and wired windows to a domestic refuge of bedcover stasis, the text hones in on smaller maneuvers, sharing various interactions in a semi-present state.

(&)

goes to an interview

she puts bright colours on

and what she thinks is a smile

she doesn’t get the job

she repeats this 17 more times

And in a later stanza:

(&)

her mother asks if she is tired

this is my voice now

she says

A lot of creative writing about depression drives to the net: protagonist suffers a steep mental decline followed by an act of self-harm (which, callously speaking, acts as the money shot). This isn’t a totally inaccurate depiction so much as a limited one, often exploited in CliffsNotes form as a plot point in some greater narrative. Inattention to the broader scope of depression – the creeping isolation, fatigue and gradual surrendering of capacities – might rescue readers from "the boring stuff" but it also implies that the author looks in on this condition as otherness.

Quite the opposite, North shapes this woman’s chronic fog like a lived-in experience, embodying mental illness through feelings of exclusion and the banality of repeated tasks. The intentional overuse of the ampersand may entwine each narrative instance for one marathon, run-on sentence but it’s the author’s restraint – the precision in voice and diction – that transmits so much despondency in so few words. Almost every line feels like it could be the last.

Where the title comes into play is “epilogue”, wherein Irwin switches from “she” to the personal “I” and makes an oblique reference halfway through:

a thank you card in the mail

a job application to Toronto

she chose north

It’s the only mention of “she” in “epilogue” and, given the prior couplet, it’s possible that “north” is being used geographically. Or, perhaps the abrupt change in perspective is making a solemn, figurative pronouncement – who’s to say? With the uncertainty of “epilogue”, Irwin throws a wrench into her own well-constructed malaise and alerts readers, who had settled into the woman’s decline, to re-evaluate both voices. No spoilers here – I only have theories – but North is a haunting little chapbook that sharpens "the boring stuff" into vital, heart-churning attempts at salvaging a life.