The Universe and All That, John Oughton
Ekstasis Editions, 2023
Following the preface of The Universe and All That, Oughton looks back nostalgically, tracing the architecture of his family tree. In the first poem, “Architectural,” he writes: “Parents are pillars,” the people who “are all we see” until “the world opens/between, around them.” Soon enough, children grow up and become “columns” that “support only sky,/clouds, and space.” Following on the heels of this first poem, both “Arthur” and “Jack” are loving tributes to the poet’s grandfather and father. One is a carpenter who could read knots of tree branches and who could “frame up reality/to stand a century.” The other is a scientist father who is more comfortable speaking about bees and trees than of humans and their complex interactions. Even after his death, though, the father’s lessons live on.
In amidst observational poems that root themselves in the regular rhythms of life, there are poems about love. They feel held inside the body of the collection, in terms of structure, surrounded by poems that document the tiny details of lives lived. In the cleverly structured couplets of “Uncouplets or Fifty Ways to Love Your Leaver,” the poet alternates between two voices, from “She dumped him because” to “He dumped her because.” The reasons offered are both logical and ridiculous, from lines like “He dumped her because she narrowed his creativity,/which he proved by never writing another poem” to lines like “She dumped him because he couldn’t see her grief, or angels.” Here is Oughton’s witty, yet tender side revealing itself in his work.
In “Footwrote,” Oughton reflects on the nature of love when a college student stamps out the word LOVE on a snowy campus lawn: “each time I pass the window I see/love is the way boots walk/love is leaving/love is leaking into the ground/love is lessening by the hour/love a fading intention.” In “Long Distance Love,” the poem slips back and forth across the page, embodying the way in which long distance relationships can both excite and challenge lovers: “So many roads between you me/and planes/that tilt as we navigate them,” until the piece ends with the poet theorizing that the lovers “will embrace/somewhere over Manitoba.”
There are poems, too, that reflect on the ways in which we age, and how the world changes with the passage of time. In one poem, “22 Forest Hill Drive,” there is reference to a childhood home, when the poet realizes that he “can’t go home again.” Both “Summer Camp” and “Down I Dug” are pieces that also reflect on childhood times, as places to begin, but not as places to remain, except to go back to visit them briefly in memory and nostalgia.
The final ekphrastic section in the collection is something that will make the reader feel as though they’ve walked into an art gallery. Oughton’s keen sense of craft is obvious here, too. In observing Judith Davidson-Palmer’s photographs, Flowing I and II, he reminds us of how the viewer can be altered by considering art: “You only see what eyes set for/I look: water is never still/look longer and the leaves keep changing/look long enough and I/have changed.” In “House, Pool,” he describes the effect of Marjorie Moeser’s Key West, saying: “This is Key West/after you throw away/the compass,/unlock your longing.” The poet suggests that observing artwork, just like observing life’s tiny details and the visible proof of time’s passage in a human life, are things that lead humans to change, grow, and evolve.
The Universe and All That feels like a philosophical, poetic portal of sorts. John Oughton’s poetry is rooted in the rhythms of regular, everyday life, but it is his keen use of sensory imagery, metaphor, and humour that often work together to direct the reader towards contemplating larger philosophical concepts.
