Life
after Life,
A. Garnett Weiss
Aeolus
House, 2024
In the new book, the poet heightens her challenge by drawing lines or phrases from prose rather than poetry, notably obituaries and death notices in the Globe and Mail. The poet sets a further discipline by insisting that each poem be created from writings published on a single day and be compressed into a tight, spare form—a three-line stanza followed by one of two lines—reminiscent of tankas.
Despite (or maybe because of?) these strictures, Weiss’s curation has yielded another rewarding collection of poems. Sixty plus works, which vary in mood, subject, and tone but all in some way reflect their roots in individual human lives. While the poems cohere internally, they retain a mysterious edge, since no line was originally created to follow from the previous or lead to the next. This edginess left me tantalizingly destabilized, open to whatever interpretation(s) might spring up by the end of the poem.
Some poems, such as this one, captured my attention through a vivid scene, then left me pondering its inscrutable end:
Opening Scene
Dancers shadow-play
with the elegance of animals
fearless of the wilderness,
a risk close to
the heart of cruelty.
Another tells a succinct and moving story:
Harvest
Mostly in the capacity of people who
struggle,
they ramble along, guided (often without
words)
to understanding the prairie sunshine,
abundant yellowgrass burgeoning
in roadless wild spaces.
Others offer thumbnail sketches of (composite) individuals:
From a world away
Schooled in
adaptation,
a refugee
remembered
hymns and
panpipes,
ancestors on
paths
over rough earth
to home.
One of my favourites is this:
Splendid terms
Make a toast to those you love,
to one-of-a-kind places that meant the
most
right down to the lawn chair.
Recall one act of disobedience,
rarely-made
Mistakes, holy like a startled forest
animal.
Though the elements used to write Life, after life are not drawn from poetry, they are drawn from accounts of real lives, each with its specific pleasures and griefs, adventures and disappointments, and Weiss has found the poetry in them. She has creatively selected and juxtaposed concrete and original images, spending time among the original fragments to allow her poetic imagination to discern a thread of story, feeling, mood. The tightly compressed poems she weaves with these threads, convey astute political commentary, emotional weight, and philosophical insight—all applicable to lives beyond those celebrated in the original obituaries. This book is a box of savoury bites to please a poetic palate.
Jean Van Loon is a writer from Ottawa, on the unceded
territory of the Algonquin Anishnaabeg people. Her second poetry book, Nuclear
Family (McGill-Queen's
University Press, 2022) won the 2023 Ottawa Book Award. Her first, Building on
River (Cormorant, 2018), was a finalist for that award. Her story,
"Stardust," published in the Queen's Quarterly, was included in Journey Prize Stories 19. Her stories, poems, and reviews have appeared
in magazines from coast to coast.
Facebook: Jean Van Loon; Instagram: jeanfromottawa