Wanting the Day: selected poems
by Brian Bartlett
Goose Lane Editions, 2003
Reviewed by Joanna M. Weston
This collection of Bartlett's poetry covers three decades and includes
poems from five of his books. It reveals his increasing maturity in the
use of language, its nuances, precision, and density. He does not waste
words, but rather builds from one image to the next, creating a journey
within each poem. In 'Weasel' the movement is with the boy from the
house, through 'forbidden mountains of sawdust', through mist, to the
moment when he encounters the weasel 'upright in a tractor print', and
into manhood with that boyhood moment held forever within him.
Bartlett's images of nature are clear-cut and incisive:
Our first snow in seven months
XXXXXXXrises to the top of a mare's hooves,
XXXXXXXcovers harness marks on her neck.
XXXXXXXDirty white, she is piebald with snow.
XXXXXXXShe stands still until the wind drops
XXXXXXXand a red barn returns from the storm.
The mare is as clear as a Joy Laking watercolour, the details finely
drawn but, because the mare is described only as 'piebald with snow'
the reader is left to imagine her exact colour.
Birds are a persistent image throughout the poems, used with meticulous
insight, 'They look at each other across/ the room, crouched, a couple
of blackbirds'; 'the heron for reach and poise.'; 'grosbeaks dipped
overhead'. It is only in the last collection, from The Afterlife of Trees, that repetitions occur as Bartlett uses a wide variety of
species, rarely using the generic term.
He is a poet of the outdoors, relating descriptions and actions to
nature, 'Women's faces/ the forests of their hair waving' or 'he felt
numbers falling./ a dark blizzard of ashes.'
In other poems he connects nature to humanity with clarity and
precision. The last stanza of 'In a house chastity was taught for a
century'
Heavy with pollen, wind crosses the yard,
XXXXXXXclimbs the window and laughs
XXXXXXXat the grandmother slipping her arm
XXXXXXXaround the waking child.
The child is a bastard and the laughter of the pollen-bearing wind has
an ironic note as it goes to fertilize plants over the world.
The people he writes about are vivid, interesting, and come alive under
the searching imagery that Bartlett uses. They not people one encounters
everyday: a podiatrist, a sonographer, a blind man skating, and 'A
soldier on a bus to Beersheba':
The soldier's rifle glibly sticks
XXXXXXXinto the aisle. Exhausted
XXXXXXXhe starts nodding, nodding
XXXXXXXsideways towards the purple-shirted
XXXXXXXstranger. Slack-mouthed, he slumps
XXXXXXXviolently, almost dropping
XXXXXXXhis head hard onto the other's shoulder.
The soldier's exhaustion is plain, the downward drift of his head to the
shoulder of the Arab beside him inevitable.
Bartlett reveals people with presicion, from an early poem in Cattail
Week, 'Gas-station girl, she wears the standard skirt/ which rides up
her legs as she stretches/ over a windshield, or bends to a tank' to The
Sonographer in The Afterlife of Trees, who claims to be 'the coroner's
sunny double, his lucky brother./.. I wonder if he'd bow to the
consummate promise of a fetus forming -/ if he'd weep to be in my
shoes.'
Occasionally Bartlett uses the third person singular when the hidden
voice is first person, as in 'Sick for the New Millennium' or 'Every
lion until now'. The protagonist is held back from the reader,
involvement is not required. Bartlett maintains the distance astutely
without losing control of the poem.
His language is always compact, pithy, and clever, challenging the
reader to understand.
Joanna M. Weston: THE WILLOW-TREE GIRL for ages 7-11
print edition now available: ISBN 1-55352-073-4 http://www.islandnet.com/~weston/ |
|
