Rotten poetry fish
by Hume Cronyn
Mosaic Press, 2000
Reviewed by T. Anders Carson
The first poem that made me really wake up was one
called "Rolled", a poem about the religious zealots who seem
to have their fingers in absolutely everything. It
captured the essence of oppression and ended with the lines
when you
tear out your heart with nail clippers,
you know you've been rolled by
one of God's messengers.
Mr. Cronyn's readers will sense that his work isn't dominated by some group or structure of poetry;
and they will be able to sense the urgency with which the poems needed to be
written. I have always been fond of this kind of writing. Obscure
writing loses the reader, which is something Cronyn doesn't do. One of
his poems - "Don't Call me a Poet" - goes on about the
different feelings and anxieties equated with writing poetry. His muscular literary engine
culminates in the lines
BEWARE OF
POETRY! IT IS WRITTEN BY POETS!
Call me a street, a child, a piece of
rubbish, an apple core, even an angel, but don't call me a poet.
Cronyn spent 20 years living in Britain before
returning to Canada, which must have been a bit of turmoil. After such
changes, one tends to see things more
clearly. The mundane and ordinary are all of a sudden vibrant and
flashy. How he has survived the onslaught of an
ex-pat returning home is reflected in the poem "A Day at the Cottage,"
which reflects the tug between two distinctive worlds:
and although I can hear
the wind in the leaves,
inside here, it's still sweaty,
and I feel pulverized
like the skin of the blueberry
caught in my teeth.
The poem "Doug Revisited" comments
on a friendship. One friend, Doug, is a bit
out there but enough in this realm not to be hospitalized. Doug
lives in a boarding house, the kind of place where screams are as
present as light bulbs; food is as eventful as rain falling; and he
spends much of his time sleeping to get away from the bizarreness that
surrounds such living environs.
The poet notes that both Doug and himself were born in the same hospital. He says that
Doug
showed me a number
'6'
brass & polished
no larger than a thumbnail
these are six
off-duty angels he said
who come to the rescue of the seventh
when the
demons of sleep
threaten
The differences between the two men are acute.
They have been together for so long that they are accustomed to the
daily eccentricities of each other's characters. Though one lives in
this roominghouse and the other in a rented house with a wife and 3
children, he realizes what a strange but necessary friendship.
I found Mr.
Cronyn's writing quite human. He has found his own voice and has courage
to dispell the words that come within.
I think there are snippets of Cronyn's own character in the last poem of
the collection, entitled "Stephen's House." It might be all of
him, it might only be some, but I felt it seethe in the lines. It is
about a hermit poet living in London. He attends the necessary functions
(the latest Turkish poetry reading) and is surrounded by books, grime,
dust, the passport photo of his child and the daily scribbling that he
writes on the stairs. It is a long poem, but stick with it:
he once described that taxi ride as
the longest journey in her brief life; some people travel to Bombay,
Timbuktu, Rio de Janeiro, Anchorage, some several times around the
world, her heart gave out before she finished her three minute journey.
T. Anders Carson's poetry has appeared
in The
Danforth Review. |
