Passengers, Michael Crummey
Anansi, 2022
Passengers is an interesting exercise in creativity and poetics. Throughout his book of poems, Newfoundland writer Michael Crummey creates “loose, amateur translations of pieces” that he imagines the late Swedish poet Tomas Transtrōmer (1931-2015) might have written had he visited Newfoundland and Labrador. He didn’t, though, and so these are Crummey’s poems, but with the poet imagining they are Transtrōmer’s first. Then there are subsequent sections that still focus on the notion of journeying, but in a different sort of way. A bit of a cerebral jig here, poetically and imaginatively, and so you need to suspend disbelief as you read—especially for the Transtrōmer and Lucifer sections. Don’t worry. Crummey makes it an easy thing to do, to open your mind and imagination, as you slip into Passengers to explore this poetic landscape.
He begins with a preface that tells the reader that Tomas Transtrōmer “was a Swedish poet, psychologist, and translator, winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. His work explores the wonder and mystery of human consciousness, often using the stark landscape and weather of northern Sweden as a mirror or a foil for his obsessions.” Crummey continues, writing: “I’ve tried to remain true to the spirit and tone and to some of the most obvious strategies of Transtrōmer’s poetry. But it goes without saying that these pieces would in every way be superior in the original Swedish.”
The first section is “You Are Here: A Circumnavigation.” The first poem, “Transtrōmer on Arrival, St. John’s International,” will remind anyone who has flown into St. John’s of what it feels like to arrive there by plane: “Our feet reach blindly/for the city as it crests beneath us.” Passengers on the flight, on the journey, sit “upright at their narrow desks,” as if they are students “facing the empty blackboard.” We are all students of life as we observe the things that happen around us. Soon enough, the plane has landed and “the day’s lessons are about to begin.” The next page holds space for a map of Newfoundland, for those who may not be familiar with its geography. Other maps of the province lace through the book, as a cartographic touchstone of sorts.
“The Dark Woods,” the second section of the collection, gathers a grouping of place poems that hopscotch across Europe, with titles of poems named simply after various cities. In “Vienna,” Crummey writes of “Market street corners busked/by the classically trained who insist/on playing the same damn waltz.” Then, in “Belfast,” the poet writes of how surnames can divide a city when, in a pub, the “veteran barmaid” pauses in serving drinks, demanding “his name, his family provenance,/rejecting his disclaimers with a fatal charge: Your people likely come over here to kill us.” Read “Stockholm,” which begins with the single lined declaration: “No tourist escapes cliché,” and the reader hears an echo that has rippled through Passengers from the much earlier poem “Transtrōmer on Signal Hill.” With this repeated line, the poet seems to be saying to the reader, ‘follow me here,’ and so you do, recognizing the structural echoes of the book’s architecture.
The third grouping of poems, “Devilskin,” imagines what would happen if Lucifer had stowed away on a ship that landed in Newfoundland at the end of the Middle Ages. In “Native Devil,” Crummey writes of Lucifer’s initial reaction to the ocean, and to Newfoundland: “Christ, he/hated the ocean. Its featureless breadth, its mercurial savagery. How it/inspired the staunchest apostate to faith. Every sailor ends up on his knees eventually, praying for deliverance…It was love at first sight.” This tone, of push and pull, of revulsion and desire on the devil’s part, is consistent throughout these poems. Crummey writes of how Lucifer “lost his Latin altogether” and “is almost happy.” In “Lucifer on George Street,” the devil “lurches drunkenly as he/ navigates the drunken crowds, the bleary racket. He wears a leather coat to his ankles, his sulphur stink muted by the cold drizzle.” This section will draw you in as a reader, and poems like “Devilskin,” “Hinges,” “Lucifer at Health Sciences Emerg,” and “Lucifer at St. Pat’s Mercy Home” are ones that see the devil portrayed as being a bit less drunk and a bit more philosophical in his reflections of humans and their mortality. It’s thought-provoking poetic and philosophical stuff.
Passengers ends with “Departure (11/04/19)” which is a father’s poignant and tender poem for a lost son. It speaks of presences and absences, of how we are all passengers during our lives’ journeys. Who do we meet along the way? When we go, who will miss us, and who might we miss most? It begins: “There you are now. The lost child./In an empty departure lounge without luggage/or companions, your cell phone disabled.” Grief is here in the collection, too, and there are thoughts of how our connection to others cause great pain when we lose the people we love, in times when the world itself seems to be wobbly and so uncertain. The pain of unexpected and deep loss through death and grief is here, too, but the gratitude of having experienced such a deep bond of love is also present and that is what remains with the reader at the end of the collection. Beautifully structured, crafted, and moving, Passengers is a book of poetry that asks the reader to return to its pages over and over again.
Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her new book of poems, Emptying the Ocean, was just released by Frontenac House in October. She’s a member of the League of Canadian Poets, the Ontario Representative of The Writers’ Union of Canada (2020-24), and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Kim may be reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com
