It strikes me that there can be an unabashedly strong link between Canadian poetry and the muscular vigor of certain British poets. Think Simon Armitage. I see this in a number of the poems in The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008, particularly in the work of Ken Babstock, with its consonants and metrical quick-step. I see it as well in Carmine Starnino's poem "Squash Rackets" with his homage to Christopher Smart's "For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry." (Starnino's poem begins with these echoing lines, pumped up for the squash court: "For they know us by their grip and the swordmanship/ of our swing. For they are chrome lariats/ always bellowing, "here I come to save the day!"/ For they love, whenever possible, the crosscourt smash/and channel our inner thug for that grunting drive."
If you compare a Canadian to a Brit, they aren't so squeamish as an American might become. Is it because the Queen is on a Canadian five dollar bill? There are no one dollar bills; they're coins (and they have her Majesty's image on them, too). Or it is because the essential historical difference between English-speaking Canada and English-speaking America is that the American descends culturally from people who broke away from England while the Canadian descends culturally from the people who didn't want to rupture that tie? It's the difference between the sibling who strikes off for parts unknown and the sibling who stays home with mom and pop. They both grown up, of course. They both grow into their wisdom. But from what different directions . . .
Check out Ken Babstock's poem, which Stephanie Bolster, the Editor for The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 called "quirky, wacky, noisy, dense and disjunctive," which Bolster, incidentally, attributes "perhaps . . . [to] an influence of work from south of the border." Well you never know about influences, do you? Here's the Canadian poem, caught in our own editorial crossfire of reasons why something is Canadian and something is the best. (Not to mention that the homekid never compares well to the prodigal.)
PS
Here is A.F. Moritz's clue to what's going in his ekphrastic poem, "Odds and Ends," posted yesterday. And to further edify American readers, the painter Emily Carr is an icon in Canada, our Georgia O'Keefe.
"Odds and Ends" describes a painting by Emily Carr in the city art gallery of Victoria, and, more particularly, the experience in which my viewing of the painting was set. Leaving the gallery, I walked through the surrounding neighborhoods, thinking to come out soon on the ocean, but it turned out to be a long walk on a hot humid day: I'd misunderstood my map. And in a front yard I saw a rhododendron petal . . . "
HUNTER DEARY AND HOSPITAL WING
Hunter Deary emits noises like peach pits;
dry scrotal humming that punctuates fits.
When a hip comes loose it comes loose
before breakfast and she pops it back
in with a winch, a rock, a clean tube and a sock.
Ask Hunter Deary what the microbes
are for. Ask Hunter Deary what the library's
for. Ask Hunter Deary what agent con-
tested her birthright, her being out late, her
transmission on broadband at night.
The men in the neon X. The hole in the
plastic. The ppb. The stitches. The snug.
The snug. The stitches. The parts per billion.
Hospital Wing sings to his children.
Children of blood lung.
Children of static.
Hospital Wing sings to his children.
The snug. The stitches. The parts per billion.
Hunter Deary has clicked on the task pane
reads there what they cut from the thought:
a topographical map of the region, a vein
darkening wetlands, strung north through
some temperate zone. Hunter Deary left gas
in a bird's nest, bags under bypasses,
phenobarbital in the mud of the Don. Hunter
Deary in traction. Hunter Deary in Huntsville.
She's counting down days to a hearing; fed
on black pumpkin, on cheese string, on
marrow sucked through wing of an auk. Ages
in ice bubble. Calving. The fake vermilion.
Calving. The ages in bubbles. The fake vermilion.
Hospital Wing sings to his children.
Children born sexless and cleansed.
Leaded gametes in frog ponds.
Hospital Wing sings to his children.
Calving. The ages in bubbles. The fake vermilion.
Ken Babstock
from The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008
published by Tightrope Books
