The love in these poems is felt by its absence: "the earliest map of the heart has never been found". The attempts to reason and explain a life are pin pricks of feeling, "trails of kisses through the intricate dark".
mclennan doesn't seek comfort in pain, or sentimentality - he "wants to scar in the runcible spoon ... trading glucose for mercury". Feelings of grief can be counted "as fixtures" in a world where "there are no fixtures".
In the personal narrative, sense is much bigger than reason. Even though we have been told many times, in many ways, that reason triumphs over emotion, that our senses can't be reliably recorded, we look to the artist to pull off the scabs, reveal the scars, of the unexamined beliefs and myths that make the individual homeless and alien within his or her society.
rob mclennan is the author of some twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction; his most recent titles are the poetry collections: gifts (Talonbooks), a compact of words (Salmon Poetry, Ireland), wild horses (University of Alberta Press) and a second novel, missing persons (The Mercury Press). He regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com.
Published by Lipstick Press
767 Chelwood Road, RR 1
Gabriola BC V0R 1X1
lipstickpress@shaw.ca
http://www.lipstickpress.com/
ISBN: 978-0-9781204-6-7
16 pages
$8.00
1 comment:
Post a Comment