Palimpsest Press, 2020
Mythical
Man is David Ly’s sharp debut collection of poetry, and it makes you think
about identity, race, social class, gender, and gender preference. It makes you
think about love and desire, about our relationships with one another, about
distances that grow when connections are shattered, and about how we constantly
define and redefine ourselves as humans. It’s a book of poems that questions
masculinity, as well as the notion of toxic masculinity, and it’s a book of
poems that is full of lines that sing with wit and bittersweet wisdom at the
same time.
The
four “Mythical Man” poems weave a thread through the collection. They feel like
tiny touchstones as you read, as you discover them one by one, like markers of
identity along the journey. In one piece, the speaker’s voice says, “We press
against each other/so hard/that I should just admit/I want to be/absorbed into
you.” In another, the poet writes “This will only feel/like forever for now.”
In the final poem in the series, he alludes to how we are defined by our
ancestral and familial bonds, suggesting that even these bonds can become
restraints—things to be broken free of, and the very things that need to be
questioned and destroyed in order to permit new creation. Our identity reveals
itself slowly, through the way in which we lead our lives, and through our
ability to question the patterning with which we’ve grown up. Ly asks us to
think about what identity means, but also about how we maintain our
independence when we come into the strange and exciting geography of a new
intimate relationship.
There’s
an underlying thread of desire and intimacy that runs through the collection,
with a focus on the nuances of gay love and creating relationships within an
urban centre. In “Logging On,” the poet writes, honestly, “As simple as it is,
hookup culture is confusing as fuck.” In “Poem Made From Kindling,” the speaker
wonders “how long is too long/to hold a gaze?” The poem, “Transit Romance Guy”
speaks to a situation that any of us could easily relate to—a chance meeting on
the city bus, and an imagined ‘what if’ sort of story that is woven in a
person’s mind. In “Hunt,” the speaker pleads: “Clutch me in the dark—together
we’ll stay/silent as I brush the vertebrae/protruding from your
charcoal-flecked skin.” All of it is about the importance of connection—emotionally
and physically—on a deep, human level.
Ly is a
poet who can craft beautiful images. In “Nymphaeacea,” the speaker says “I
should have believed more as a boy.” Now, as an adult, they say that they would
feel less guilty “for moments of self-compassion” that “bloom/in the
imagination like pink lilies/bobbing on a boiling black lake.” The images in
“Walking Together At The End Of The World” are—quite simply—stunning: “We
traverse hand-in-hand//across frozen seas, across engulfed metropoles/built to
withstand the apocalypse, the ice//beneath our feet pulsating with the glow/of
a skyscraper-sized cuttlefish.” An eyelash is lifted by a bit of breeze,
sending it “dancing through the air.” Sometimes, reading a David Ly poem is
like seeing a line, an image, or a stanza dance elegantly in slow motion across
your field of vision. You must pay attention.
Mythical Man is a collection of work that lays out the myth of what western society imagines
a man should be, based on the veneer that is so falsely and erroneously conjured
in popular culture. It makes a reader question what masculinity really entails,
and what makes toxic masculinity rise up in such a wildly unchecked way in our
culture. The poems also remind the reader that race and identity can never be
separated from our explorations in love and human connection. Then, it slays the
preconceived myths, charging the reader to consider and then subvert their own deeply
embedded biases and stereotypes. Why continue to propagate them without
purpose, and so thoughtlessly? Mythical Man offers alternate doorways of
understanding to readers who will likely find themselves with more open minds
after reading Ly’s work. Here is, to be sure, a strong collection of
poetry, and one that bodes well for Ly’s future releases.
Kim Fahner lives and writes
in Sudbury, Ontario. She was poet laureate in Sudbury from 2016-18, and was the
first woman appointed to the role. Kim's latest book of poems is These Wings
(Pedlar Press, 2019). She's a member of the League of Canadian Poets, the
Writers' Union of Canada, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of
Canada. Kim blogs fairly regularly at kimfahner.wordpress.com and can be
reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com
