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Going Down Goose Lane to Broken Jaw:
Frederiction Poems and Short Fiction, by Wayne Ray, Harmonia Press
A Book Review by David Fraser In the moving from one place to another,
even if the transfer is only temporary, there is a fusion of the new and the old, the present
and the past, and there is a distancing and a drawing closer. Wayne Ray in his poetry
and prose on a journey to Fredericton, New Brunswick, 2002 has created in his portrayed
encounters on the road and in this new city a melancholy yet hopeful feeling of distancing
and connecting, and a sense of individuals searching and being in two places at once.
The effects are subtle and lyrical giving the collection a variety of perspectives that
are entertaining and thoughtful.
In the opening dedication, the haiku "in a dream/they become one/moth and flame"
he sets the stage for a Zen-like fusion. The following haiku allude to glimpses
of place and relationships and we are drawn into poems that are full of reminiscences
on love and relationships that were or could have been. There is an atmosphere of a
dream in the re-creations, and the fragile vulnerability within the relationships.
In "Cora's: At the Window, Behind the Pane" the narrator is behind the glass looking in,
catching a glimpse of a waitress or a patron dreaming, "lost in laughter" and wonders "where
are you my friend". In "Going Home" we get a sense of place, of the fall - the "Old Loyalist
Cemetery" with its inhabitants covered with the season's leaves, - a sense of things needing
to be dome, an impatience to be leaving but also a feeling of a beginning. In fact throughout
the collection there are comings and goings, leavings as odysseys that are both physical and psychological.
The poet as voyeur is at work here from his first watching the waitress
or the patron through the glass of a Queen Street café, to observing a friend or
a lover in "Cynthia Bachelor" at the mall, not approaching to say hello or goodbye
but rather holding the image and her graceful face frozen in his memory.
There is a melancholy longing in these distanced observations, in this "waking,
wondering, wandering mind" that speculates "if… all you see is someone in the distance
and your eyes say you wish it were me" in "What if…You Walk By Me". In "Talking to Friends"
the narrator says to the person fixated on the internet connections of chat room cyber-friendships
"Too many months you've felt alone" and he stands behind her like a shadow wishing she'd turn off
the monitor so she could see his reflection reaching out for her.
One thinks of the lonely hunting of the heart where characters touch and almost touch,
connect and almost connect. Three friends at a cozy Valentine's Day dinner - an odd number
- sipping wine, dissolving the icing flowers of the cake in their mouths but it all ends
with " we dissolve the petals on our tongues", very sensual, "and go home alone". In "Wippett Lounge",
a rollicking romp of "beer sloshing", "gyrating and groping" as in former college tavern days,
the narrator is high on the moment and the memory, but wakes up in his own bed alone, "pockets
empty" and we sense there is more of the emptiness lurking in the shadows. In the collaborative
poem "You Cannot Give A Heart That Has Been Taken", a great title, this theme of love and longing,
memory and melancholy flows out in wonderful lines such as "gathering shadows about you to keep you
warm at night", "the drums of singers…wails the longing", "thorns long ago tearing at the flesh',
"burning memory on my life/leave a sunburn on my heart."
There is always the vulnerability in relationships, a sense of sacrifice
as in "Romeo and Juliet: prick of the dagger". It is the pain of love that is spoken.
"for daggers deep they have known
and sleep in quiet peace, together sewn."
In "Not Looking To Be Protected from Liking You" there is an irony in the title when we hear
"I found you tearing down the heart wall to my house."
In "Sego Road" the metaphor of the highway, the journey becomes linked to
friendship and the journey of a relationship. Here "the signs are blurred on
the other side but on his side "your name and the/remaining mileage to your door" is clear.
Other poems are more objective and allude to the war in Iraq, Princess Diana's response
if she were still with us, a rant to George Bush and a letter home from a body bag.
The poems in this collection are narrative reminiscences, lyrical meditations that illustrate
an actual journey over a space of time but also an internal journey, a reflection that takes us
"time after page" through pleasant and painful memories and re-creations.
The second half of the collection is in the form of connected pieces of short fiction that compliment
the poetry. Here again characters are always on the move, or wanting to go. Ryan, a recurring character,
is in the process of leaving London in the first piece. He struggles to set things in order while lumbered
by a metaphorical "hitchhiker", Jessica. In the second piece actually titled "Leaving London" he is
physically on the road engaged in "a random act of kindness" picking up a one-legged hitchhiker.
In the third story, Brinda is high in the sky flying to Dublin to meet a friend/possible lover
who she hasn't seen in thirty years. She looks down from the plane and sees the solitary car
that could be Ryan's on the Trans Canada Highway and wonders about the lonely traveler and
speculates if he ever looks up to see her plane in the sky. From the previous story we know
that he does look up and sees the vapor trail "cutting across the sky heading east".
In "Plaster Rock" a character, Peter, drives a truck across a road leading to the
Trans Canada Highway on an intersecting course to Ryan. He has stolen
something that is hidden under the flapping tails of a tarp covering the truck bed,
and he is haunted by an apparition of an old man. In the last story Karen plans
a costume party, picks up a close friend, Sarah who is internally bruised and scarred
by her insignificant other, who turns out to be Allen, who has randomly connected to Karen
at the library where she works, and he too will be arriving by invitation from Karen at
the same party. The stories do not end, just as life and relationships do not end,
but continue and evolve.
There are mysteries. Leviathan, Ryan's cat from London doesn't seem to be with him and appears
to have gone missing. An empty cage is in the back seat of his Corsica as he heads east. Karen's
cat, Kafka, is left "wedged in the hole (in the window screen) that he had created". Sarah's
gray cat is remarkably similar to Buster, Allen's cat. We get a hovering sense in these stories
that characters desperately need to connect and the cats seem to exist on the periphery as surrogates for affection.
We meet Ryan through a stream of consciousness describing in two paragraphs all the repairs
and renovations that he had been putting off that he has now been doing, now that he is renting
the house and preparing to leave for Fredericton. In his kindness he rescues a friend who owns
an art gallery store, by agreeing to get a homeless, disturbed young women, Jessica, out of the
store. This one act of kindness is followed by many more as he helps Jessica, a dependent, yet
independent, trusting, yet not trusting woman who is her own worst enemy. Ryan is a Good Samaritan
who gives her shelter, non-sexual massages, many, many hot showers, lots of comfort, friendship
and a place to stay. He even loans her his old Hudson Bay car blanket, which he "knew would
never be returned". The blanket is symbolic of the friendship, the empathy; the caring that
would never be reciprocated. He says "no gratitude, just want, want, want." The tale is a
bizarre account of two characters connecting but not connecting really. Jessica rearranges
all the books on the shelves of his library, a helpful gesture, but the arrangement is
by book color, a spectrum "with the reds and greens on one side and the yellows, blues
and whites on the other row of glass shelves".
Jessica showers incessantly and at length. These symbolic acts of cleansing finally
get to Ryan and he cuts off the water, which brings about a bizarre and potentially deadly
reaction. If Ryan didn't need to escape or run away from anything, he does now as is suggested
by the hitchhiker in the next story.
In "Leaving London" Ryan says that the hitchhiker is "unlike anyone I had ever given a ride to".
Here is a man who has just come with nothing, didn't tell anyone where he was going,
can't recall the name of the town he now lives in or the name of the place where he works,
and has recently lost his wallet and ID in the car of some so-called friends while on a
drinking spree in Cornwall. Images from the works of Kafka jump to mind. Ryan says
"I knew where I was going and where I was coming from," but a friend has told him,
" I hope you find what you are looking for". The characters seem to be in contrast.
Ryan as he drops off the hitchhiker advises him " to stop running away from the life
you had and to go home". However we get a sense that there are similarities.
The hitchhiker can't see the similarity between Edmonton where he came from and
Edmunston where he is now, but Ryan sees the connection coming from London Ontario
where there is a Woodstock close by and the Woodstock, New Brunswick that he is driving toward.
Maybe there is a bit of T.S. Eliot here?
"What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning
The end is where we start from…"
Brinda on her trip to Dublin in answer to an old male friend's invitation asks,
"What was a week out of one's life anyway?" Maybe that week makes all the difference.
Maybe a year in Fredericton also makes all the difference. Certainly the collection
of poems and pieces of short fiction arising out of that year away reflect a sense of
the encounters, the "moth and the flame" in the dedication haiku, the connections,
the reminiscences, the work of memory and reflection, the journey which is not so much
a running way, but rather a running toward. This is a thoughtful collection that challenges
the reader to delve deeper into the psyches of its characters.
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Ascent To read reviews and testimonials for Going to the Well click on the sidebar under "Collections" To read more poetry and short fiction by David Fraser click on Poetry and Short Fiction respectively.