Three Unique Poets: Reviews By Robin L. Harvey
Ghost Walk by Anton Pooles, Mansfield Press, 63 pages, $18.00
Ghost Walk, the first full-length collection of poems by Toronto’s Anton Pooles, is written in a minimalist, free-verse style, with tight structure and disciplined form. The Siberian-born graduate of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Toronto employs dark, concrete imagery that never strays near the ethereal. Despite his visceral style, the content behind his prose is abstract, making for a jarring contrast. As well, deep passion seeps through his work’s intellectual grounding.
Fairy tales, fantasy and horror, as well as film and visual art, are Pooles’s stated inspirations, though his work is coloured by a darkness the reader may suspect to be more personal. His poems often start out distanced by intellect. As his imagery intensifies the reader is enveloped in the poem’s uncanny and discomfiting impact.
Poems such as “Dove,” though framed by a first and last line that is exactly the same— “in the middle of the road”— offer no resolution to soothe the impact of the disturbing words in between. “The Way Down to the Lake,” packs enough substance in three tight lines to push the reader’s imagination down paths it might not wish to dwell.
In “Santi’s Poem - after The Devil’s Backbone (2001)” Pooles creates a chilling take on the fate of an orphaned boy, its title reflecting the film’s ghostly horror at the “low, dark edge of life.” Equally haunting is “A Cry Through Nature,” referencing the work of Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch. The poem imagines that the cries of the birds in the Dutch painter’s Wheatfield Crows carry to create the voice of angst depicted in the Norwegian artist’s The Scream.
“Van Gogh made the cries of crows eternal like his own cry . . . Edvard Munch heard it . . . like a swift black bird . . ., Van Gogh stole the red from Munch’s face, brushed it across the clouds.”
In “Goya After Dinner” the gruesome dominates Pooles’s depiction of the artist contemplating his most famous painting, Saturn Eating His Son. Goya hears “teeth grinding against bone, the drip of blood falling to the floor.” With the poem’s repeated cry, “I don’t want to die!” the reader wonders who issued the refrain? The eaten, or the artist who conjured up the troubled image on canvas.
“The Old Blind Guitarist,” relates the feelings of the subject of Picasso’s famous blue-period painting, The Old Guitarist. Pooles’ words resound with palpable agony, building tension through to the last stanza, “Each string feels like barbed wire, each note a thunderstorm far out at sea. He plays through the evening, through the stinging pain of his fingers and back.”
Yet, as is common in many of his poems, Pooles’ last line, “He plays as he drifts off to sleep,” reads unexpectedly open-ended. “Wishing Wells” shows the poet’s whimsy. “I am trying to wrap my head around why anyone would sit at the bottom of a well. Deities are down there with pails to catch pennies imbued with wishes,” he writes, ending with, “The worst sensation in the world is having wet sneakers.”
A few poems, like “Father, Ghost, Monkey,” are more personal and bridge the distance between the poems and the poet. “You bamboozled me into thinking I was born animal. No one I know now knew me then and so cannot tell if this is true or false.” This is a collection of intriguing work from an intriguing soul. Perhaps in his next collection, Pooles will let the passion that fuels his dark imagery create content that will brave the light.
Debra Black, Love, Lust, Existence and other Ephemeral Things, self-published
and printed by Blurb, https://www.blurb.ca/bookstore , 82 pages, $25.19.
Debra Black released her first collection of more than sixty well-crafted poems through Blurb. Her work reflects an extensive knowledge of literature, but is presented in direct, straightforward prose that never overreaches or contrives. The author’s notes say the collection can be read in any order like a “jigsaw puzzle” with each poem self-contained, yet part of a story reflecting the arc of a woman’s life.
A former journalist who is now an expert in yoga and meditation, Black writes poetry that blends the observational with the existential. Most poems are a page long. A few are tantalizing snippets and others more lengthy reflections. Though her work often uses the first-person perspective, it is far from confessional. Her free-verse conversational style is pierced by bursts of powerful imagery and phrasing, and she often effectively uses repetition and rhythm.
Some of Black’s poems embrace erotica, though they are not overtly graphic. “headless barbie” reveals Black’s razor-sharp wit in a poem that seems written for every woman. “childhood rivalries and jealousies, one seething moment of anger, head, legs, arms ripped apart from the torso, the blonde haired, blue-eyed head and her ridiculously proportioned body parts flushed down the toilet, creating headless barbie” In the poem, “untitled #1”,
Black’s words paint in all senses “the tectonic plates of my heart shift, split, splinter, quiver, quake, crack, the turquoise-green, green sea, the arid blue hillside, the dove white sky. and suddenly there is silence.” Many of her poems reflect on love but are not traditional love poems. Consider this excerpt from the bittersweet, “we could have.”
“i could have taken that turn, that one over there - where the road tweaks to the left - there in the distance I am with you still, after all these years our love deepening, maturing, never-ending. our love could have stayed true, not eviscerating, not piercing, not haunted by ourselves or others. we could have been happy . . . we could have been more.”
An excerpt from the poem “a ménage a trois with death and pablo neruda” reveals Black’s sensuality. “. . . i stare down death, each and every night. as i close my eyes, battling for sleep; for peace; for rest. deep, dark, darkly death’s shadows cross my soul, her hot breath against my breasts, her tears on my cheeks, her fingers grazing my face and then I finally sleep dreaming of you and pablo neruda.”
“in the busyness of your hands” will grip anyone who has lost a marriage. “in the busyness of your hands, i see the distant past, memories i swim up to and dissect. here - between your thumb and forefinger - is where you loved me; there - by your ring finger - is where you stopped; over there - at the centre of your palm - is where our son was born; here at your wrist is where you left.” This book introduces a talented new poetic voice, one that is powerful, yet heartfelt, and intricate without being overly complex.
LOVE. Atticus - Poems, Epigrams and Aphorisms.
200 pages by a purported anonymous Instagram poet, Simon & Schuster, $19.80
Most of the writing in this book (a best-seller) is not poetry. Its pages consist of three or four lines, mixed with dollops of scrawled illustrations, and a handful of longer, full-page-length works of prose. However, Atticus is a marketing sensation with a carefully crafted “anonymity” adding allure to his image. The book is created for a target market, a popular, lucrative one. In the same way people find comfort in French fries and junk food, they find comfort in Atticus.
At least the book’s marketers are upfront in its title, for it consists largely of epigrams and aphorisms, many of which use the rhetorical device chiasmus (think JFK’s “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”) - a staple in much Instagram poetry. It seems inverting syntax, mirrored simplistically, sounds profound to many.
Atticus writes for the love-struck and longing, no matter their gender identity, but more specifically, for women. Women who love to read words from a motorcycle-riding, whiskey-drinking, macho man with a passionate-yet-tendheart. Some examples? “He was the one who healed her who made her scars feel beautiful.”
“A million years of evolution evolving you to look this way and evolving me to llove it so.” “Whatever seed you are, bloom.” All the lines are written in carefully crafted, macho-yet-sensitive, male handwriting. Speculation runs wild about Atticus’s true identity. Some say he’s a reality TV star, some say he’s silhouettes of many different good-looking actors who read his words in wooing voices.
A story in Medium reported that Atticus is a woman who walked into a publishing house and pitched a book of Instagram poems she said women would die for. No doubt, Atticus will last as long as his publisher can make big bucks with little effort. - with apologies to the two poets also included in this review set, and to the many talented, fresh voices who have found a home and following on Instagram.
—Robin L. Harvey