Saturday, August 1, 2020

Kim Fahner : Junebat, by John Elizabeth Stintzi


Anansi, 2020




I’ve followed John Elizabeth Stintzi’s work since I first met them on a writing retreat at the Sage Hill Writing Experience in Saskatchewan in the summer of 2014. They were in a different writing group—not poetry—but they  read their poetry at one of our open mic nights. It was something to take note of, so I watched with keen interest to see when they would release their first collection. Knife Fork Book, in Toronto, released their chapbook, The Machete Tourist, in 2018. I read it, reviewed it for Montreal-based Debutantes, and then kept waiting patiently for their first full poetry collection. I’ve found it in the glorious incarnation that is titled Junebat.

With Junebat, you can see that the flickers of things that were being explored in The Machete Tourist have grown into themselves. The archetypal and individual search for self is documented in Junebat. To begin, Stintzi offers us “Origa/me,” using the metaphor of making origami “butterflies,/pigeons, bats,” and finishing with a tiny crane that is held “on the continent of my fingertip.” With the final line of this opening poem, the poet writes “I’m not sure I can fold my life any smaller than this.” It’s from this place of feeling boxed in—of knowing you’ve touched down on the bottom of the metaphorical pool—that you can only ever begin to just push off and rise more fully. You have to begin to take up the space you know you’re meant to take up in your life. This line does all of that and more, as a place to push off from and move forward in terms of how we ‘become’ and truly step into ourselves.

So what is a Junebat? There are a number of poems that speak to Stintzi’s creation. In “Salutations from the Storm,” the poet opens with “Sometimes I wonder/if I’m really the best/person for this body.” In “The Junebat on the Dump,” it becomes clearer that the notion of what a Junebat is is something that isn’t easily defined, and maybe that is the beauty of it all—that it should not be boxed in and up, that it should be fluid and free. This, the poet tells us throughout the book, is not just about gender, geography, social status, or family history. “The Junebat is the body is the plastic bag is the wind/is the mountain is the dump of the mind is the hope.” The beauty and struggle that is present in “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Junebat” is a tribute to Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” but it’s much more poignant and honest. Stintzi writes beautifully of how

Junebats can only be seen
when your walls are down, when
the snowbanks grow tall as the skyline
and the world is frigid and flat.

This is where they fold.
This where they fly.

The image and metaphor of the origami bird that took flight in the very first poem carries the reader through like a silk-ribboned motif.

To be a Junebat inside, and then to embody its essence, isn’t simple or easy. It is painful, this emergence from a stubborn and often restrictive chrysalis. In “Another Weeping Junebat,” there is talk of finding “the shape you’ve found in your shadow” as you “shake and sob.” To find the right person, one who will understand your essence, is really a rare and glorious thing. In this poem, Stintzi writes “maybe the tears come” from “her believing you makes this all so true//it could never not be.” Imagine, then, that sense of overwhelming acceptance, of relief, and of being loved for who you are inside and out.   

I have favourites in this collection, I must admit. I’m fond of “Apophatic Junebat” and its mirrored “Cataphatic Junebat.” The other poem that I love is “Get Lucky?” which speaks of how love emerges sort of magically from a friendship. It documents that ‘in between’ space that is so full of presence and absence at the same time. It fills it with longing, and then with fulfilment.

We gaze up at the blank ceiling, talking,
our molecules inching—for hours, it feels—until
they reach skin, until they swirl in fear of what
could come from two troubled rivers merging.
I turn your face to me. We float a moment in estuary.

The sheer beauty of this imagery, and of the tension between two people who are both fearful and expectant, is perfectly captured.

In the end, what you learn from reading Stintzi’s work is that a Junebat can’t be boxed up and in, that identity should be fluid and creative, and that trying to define a person’s core essence is really quite futile. If we could only all learn that lesson, to be fluid within ourselves and not worry about what anyone else thinks, then the world might be a better place. Could we not, the poet seems to suggest, just allow Junebats to be Junebats, and not worry about what they mean or how they can be categorized? Could we not just be and not worry about anyone else’s journey or path through life? Reading Stintzi’s Junebat is a tribute to stepping into oneself, to accepting the uncertainty of journey towards understanding self, and an invitation to just keep exploring the world in poetic and spirited ways.





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

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