Book Recommendation: Pris Campbell: Sea Trails

Here's a book I enjoyed.  Pris Campbell's best poems celebrate sensuality and passion in direct, plain-spoken language that is nevertheless revelatory.  This particular book is a blend of prose, poetry and photographs concerning a journey on a sailing sloop that also served -- in retrospect -- as an attempt to save a failing relationship.  The attempt -- almost needless to say -- failed, but the discoveries made on the journey affirm life in a more essential kind of way.

I always enjoy a well-rendered blend of prose and poetry. To be frank, not all the poems in the book pack the kind of intensity that others that I've read of hers have, but the book has its own earthy authenticity, adding up to a truly pleasant read like a warm cup of coffee on a cold day.

One of my favourite poems is Original Sin, featured below. The lognotes fill us in on practical details a landlubber like myself would be unlikely to learn otherwise, and produce sketches of temporary communities set up between wayfarers which would be impossible on land. The book is a journey into new territories, but also -- and more deeply -- into memory.  Thoreau is a definite precedent: indeed, this book could be described as a Waldenesque experience on the waves.

Sea Trails is available at Lummox Press and Amazon; signed copies of the book are available via the author's website. 


Original Sin

When Adam bedded Eve in these dark pines
I wonder if they laughed in their nakedness,
threw kisses at lopsided stars.
I doubt Adam searched for other Eves to ogle,
found fault or ignored her.
He likely never took joy in jabbing her
with sharp twigs or thorns.
I dream of them cooing blissfully,
serpent and apple still in their future.

Our boat swings with the tide, waking us.
He slides inside. My very own Adam,
already tainted by original sin.


Sea Speak

The Chesapeake opens beneath us,
a woman spreading her skirt wide
to greet the Atlantic, already throbbing
with September winds at her feet.
I learn to lay down a trot line,
haul hungry crabs to the surface, tossing
the lucky red-bellied females back.
I learn that fish gasp in upper Bay
pollution, that sea grass cries,
that watermen chug out at dawn past
clanging buoys and clearing mist
hoping to net their catch for the day.
I learn that heaven is right here
in these blue waters, the upside-down sky,
that the spirits of old sailors walk
on our bow at night, telling lost stories
about Tangier Isle, Shanks, Queens Ridge,
Piney Island. I learn how love
of the sea can rush right through you
with the wind, until your heart is translucent
with joy as intense as pain.

Local Scene: Griffintown Garden Reading

Poèsie au Corridor culturel // Poetry in the Cultural Corridor

Place to Grow // Un endroit à la croissance : Poèsie

Saïd Azzaoui

Brian Campbell

R de Smit

Angela Leuck

Ehab Lotayef

Dale Matthews

Abby Paige

Lesley Pasquin

erika white

& Micro ouvert // Open Mic

mardi le 24 août à 19h // Tuesday August 24th at 7 pm -

corner Ottawa & Dalhousie (Griffintown)*

*The closest metro is Bonaventure... the gardens are due south. To come by bus, the #107 south from Peel or North from Charlevoix...get off at Peel & Ottawa. There is also the Wellington bus, #61, which leaves from McGill Metro and lets you off at Wellington & the Expressway...walk up to Ottawa and turn left.

Do Ho Suh

Floor

Do ho Suh

Susan Briscoe: The Crow's Vow

My review of Susan Briscoe's "The Crow's Vow" is up at The Rover. 

A Decastitch in Time: The Crow’s Vow
The Crow’s Vow, by Susan Briscoe, Signal Editions, Véhicule Press

by Brian Campbell
16.08.2010

Susan Briscoe’s poetry is one of telling details, subtle hints and indications. The Crow’s Vow, her first collection, follows the slow breakup of a marriage as it is reflected in the passage of the seasons around the couple’s cabin in the woods. What most readers in our story-based culture would expect to make up the central plot – the scenes from the marriage – is reduced to a hazy, thinly evoked background, while what normally would comprise the background becomes the poet’s chief focus: the trees, the garden, the foxes and mice, and hints of happiness, resentment and tensions as projected by her states of mind. More →

Before the Deployment by Jehanne Dubrow

He kisses me before he goes. While I,
still dozing, half-asleep, laugh and rub my face

against the sueded surface of the sheets,
thinking it’s him I touch, his skin beneath

my hands, my body curving in to meet
his body there. I never hear him leave.

But I believe he shuts the bedroom door,
as though unsure if he should change his mind,

pull off his boots, crawl beneath the blankets
left behind, his hand a heat against my breast,

our heart rates slowing into rest. Perhaps
all good-byes should whisper like a piece of silk—

and then the quick surprise of waking, alone
except for the citrus ghost of his cologne.

I Have News for You by Tony Hoagland

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don't interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don't walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others' emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.

SMALL TALK BY ELEANOR LERMAN

Since April 1, I've been receiving a poem a day from Poets.org.  Not all have I read -- but of those that I did, I copied a number I liked and thought I'd share them here.  Here's the first.

Small Talk
by Eleanor Lerman


It is a mild day in the suburbs
Windy, a little gray. If there is
sunlight, it enters through the
kitchen window and spreads
itself, thin as a napkin, beside
the coffee cup, pie on a plate

What am I describing?
I am describing a dream
in which nobody has died

These are our mothers:
your mother and mine
It is an empty day; everyone
else is gone. Our mothers
are sitting in red chairs
that look like metal hearts
and they are smoking
Your mother is wearing
sandals and a skirt. My
mother is thinking about
dinner. The bread, the meat

Later, there will be
no reason to remember
this, so remember it
now: a safe day. Time
passes into dim history.

And we are their babies
sleeping in the folds of
the wind. Whatever our
chances, these are the
women. Such small talk
before life begins