Deborah-Anne Tunney : all things small, by Susan J. Atkinson

all things small, Susan J. Atkinson
Silver Bow Publishing, 2024

 

 

 

 

The moving and warm-hearted poetry collection, all things small, by the Ottawa poet, Susan J. Atkinson, gives the reader a variety of opportunities by which to sample her overarching compassion, not only for a woman’s life, but for life generally. The collection is broken into the topics of: ‘love’, ‘sorrow’, ‘memory’, ‘divorce’ and ends with the section ‘all things small’, from where the collection takes its title. What this tells us is the poet sees in the small things that rim our lives, universal and profound truths, and through these truths a kind of purposeful meaning.

          In the poem ‘Things that Never Come Back’, Atkinson, an elementary school teacher (and I’m assuming, by the interaction in this poem, an exemplary one) asks a nine-year-old to write a list poem. When he writes about things that leave and come back (yo-yos, the tide, for example), in order to challenge, the poet asks him to write about things that leave but do not return. The final lines read:

          His new poem had
          one line ­–
          my father.

          Not only does this poem show us Atkinson’s kind imagination in her dealings with the child, but it also shows us how her appreciation for the simple, yet heart breaking, admission of this child holds such deep meaning and pathos. And I think it illustrates something fundamental about the poet’s vision and her approach to what she sees as poetry’s gift. She realises it has the ability to make us focus on the small but crucial aspects of the everyday, and that in these aspects we can see the whole fabric of a life and what is universal and links us in our joint humanity.

          In the poem, ‘This Past Month’, where the topic is loss and change, Atkinson lovingly speaks of her daughter, and how the poet and her mate are also searching for a way to deal with loss – in this case, the loss of parents:

          Our youngest daughter
          collects small pebbles,
          curled bark of birch trees,
          rocks with eyes,
          small things to bury loss.
          We, too, look for ways.         

Atkinson gives us profound moments from her life that, in turn, link to our own lives – from the experience of romantic love, the sadness of loss, the erosion of memory and the heartbreak of divorce. She acknowledges that the small things which holds such significance for this collection are not small but universal in import.  They are the elements that allow us to share the most intimate of thoughts and emotions, to see in her work our own life, with its challenges and losses and loves.

          It would be impossible to not relate to the situation described in the poem ‘How Can Things Die on a Morning Such As This?’, with its urge to:

          Look closely. Already, summer blooms
          bend their heads, their brown-tinged
          leaves hang tired like crepe paper

followed by this sad but tender explanation:

          This is how it happens:
          a beloved parent dies,
          soon the other follows.
          Loss cradles the space
          between heart and rib
          and grief becomes a shadow,
          shares its mo(u)rning with sorrow.

I want to say to the poet, yes, I know these emotions, this heartbreak, for here in such consummate language I can feel the commonality of sorrow, a commonality that allows us empathy and a sense of community as we struggle to find meaning in the inexplicable.  For here, in this collection, is a vision that is steeped in warm-hearted certainty, a vision of fundamental kindness, our better selves in fact. It is ultimately a generous view – open-hearted and inclusive – and even though what Atkinson may give us is a single word or image, it is always a vision that welcomes the universal into its interpretation.

 

 

 

 

Deborah-Anne Tunney is a poet, short story writer and novelist who was born and lives in Ottawa. Her prose and poetry have appeared in Canadian, American and U.K. literary journals and anthologies, notably Threepenny Review, Missouri Review, Narrative among others. Her linked short story collection, The View from the Lane (2014) and her novel Winter Willow (2019) were published by Enfield and Wizenty. Her first book of poetry A Different Wolf came out in June 2020 from McGill-Queen’s University Press, and won the 2021 Archibald Lampman award.

Deborah-Anne Tunney : Openwork and Limestone, by Frances Boyle

Openwork and Limestone, Frances Boyle
Frontenac House, 2022

 

 

 

 

After my first reading of the poetry collection Openwork and Limestone, I went for a walk by the river – the place I often go to contemplate. There I found myself identifying with the order and beauty of nature surrounding me, an apprehension not possible if I had not read the order and beauty of this remarkable collection. In poems stilled to the essence of what it means to not only be a woman alive in our time, but to be human – to use our perception to appreciate not only the beauty and wonder around us, but also its discord and mystery.

          Boyle has given us honest – at times heartbreakingly honest – moments in the life of a mother, daughter, sister, mate, all the roles we inhabit – for it is through this deeply personal lens that the poet leads us to an attentiveness of life. It is through art of the highest order, such as the poetry in this collection, that our quest for meaning is possible. At its best, art quiets us, cocoons us in its magic and says, “look at this; pay attention”.

          In her poem, Girl on a Hill, after Prudence Heward’s 1928 painting of the same name, Boyle gives us a distillation of the woman in the portrait (‘I peer closer’). The poet finds in her close examination what the painting does not at first glance reveal:

                               …I seek to feel
through fabric that black earth, slightly damp,
to sense the yield of needle-bed against my left haunch
and thigh, along my bare calf, the top of my toes

where they press the ground. Can I hear the river,
feel the wind that blurs the trees, the imprint
of dirt on my naked soles? The Laurentians
beyond, clouds piling up blue upon them. Her
uncompromising regard, green leaves
sprouting succulent at her feet.

In the poet’s careful rendering through her own expansive art, we feel both artists’ urge to the observer and reader – to stop, to truly look, listen and recognize the import of this Girl on the Hill, who stares out at our world. In both these artefacts, we can see the power of art to freeze a subject into a moment, which in turn makes it permanent and definable, a stasis we can scrutinise, and if not totally understand, then appreciate.

          In ‘Camel Hair Coat’, one of her most personal and touching poems, Boyle asks, “If mothering is the thing in my life that’s pained me/most, how can it also have given immeasurable/ lightness? Tripwire delight.” Here we witness the poet’s amazement in the joy and, yes, ambiguity of parenthood, a theme continued in the poem, ‘Rocking Chair’: ‘My girl   part of me   an instant ago/It seems         In my arms//her skin against my skin’ As this daughter is now ‘looking/ at the world’, we are witness to the natural and yet painful moving away necessary in the relationship of child and parent, a need and an evolving that leaves the parent always vigilant for the child’s well-being. As in ‘Passage’ where the daughter’s sudden claustrophobia leaves the poet wishing she had ‘a lifeline to throw, /a silken cord for her safe passage back through time.’ How tender this impulse, as it mirrors what we as readers feel is the poet’s desire for us and the intent of art itself – to be provided safe passage back through time. The poet also uses the myths and rituals of history and even pre-history. By evoking ancient belief systems, the poet creates an intelligence and density which can be applied to our present-day life. In ‘Evoking Awen’ (we learn Awen is a Celtic/druidic word for poetic inspiration) we appreciate the way the poet sees in the past the same need to explore in words what is the essence of our existence, the same need in fact to find meaning:

no easy way     to translate
                                        a rapture    a breeze,
               to put words to
the flow of essence
                               the bards knew as Awen.

          In ‘End Times’, a storm is personalized as it shakes its fist at Earth, the ‘sulky teen’, and ‘Earth’s huff/hides her fear they will all turn//away, leaving her a cold blue stone.’ One has the impression after reading such imaginative work that no one but Boyle could have written it – for it is distinctive and the product of an inspired imagination. Who but someone with a unique grasp and appreciation of how beauty and time comingle could have written such graceful words as the following:

What tuning will bring me past static
to clarity, to that thrum of silence,
voices chiming, twining, a braid of sound
within that space between breathing
behind the exhale, pulling the inhale

in animate energy, that silent moment
that might be death, but for the animal
compulsion willing our squeezebox lungs
to echo ocean, and breathe.

This excerpt is from ‘The Whole Tall World’, the last poem in the collection, and with its urge to consolidate essential elements of the poet’s unique poetic imagination, a fitting place to end.

          The book itself has been lovingly made, with a beautiful image of rocks and lacework on its cover, a detail from Kathleen’s Vaughan’s textile assemblage called: Iceland: Earth and Sky. It matches in tone and subtleness the words and images it introduces.

          There are some collections of poetry that after you read them you are left with a deepening appreciation of the miracle of just being here. And Openwork and Limestone is such a collection, as it addresses the need for clarity in the quest for meaning, a meaning often obscured by the busyness of the everyday. This is a collection that will quiet the noise of this busyness and give the reader beauty and thoughts to contemplate what is not only important, but essential to the examined life. It is a collection to be savoured, and one I know I will return to again and again.

 

 

 

 

Deborah-Anne Tunney is a poet, short story writer and novelist who was born and lives in Ottawa. Her prose and poetry have appeared in Canadian, American and U.K. literary journals and anthologies, notably Threepenny Review, Missouri Review, Narrative among others. Her linked short story collection, The View from the Lane (2014) and her novel Winter Willow (2019) were published by Enfield and Wizenty. Her first book of poetry A Different Wolf came out in June 2020 from McGill-Queen’s University Press, and won the 2021 Archibald Lampman award.

Kim Fahner : A Different Wolf, by Deborah-Anne Tunney

A Different Wolf, Deborah-Anne Tunney
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020

 

 

 

You’ll know this is a different sort of poetry collection when you see the cover for Deborah-Anne Tunney’s A Different Wolf. It’s an oyster colour, with a solitary eye peering out from a peep hole at the centre of it all. This suits the overarching tone of the book, given that the poems explore the cinematic worlds that were created by the famed 20^th century British born filmmaker, Alfred Hitchcock. In places, the work feels voyeuristic, but perhaps that comes from my having read about how terribly Hitchcock treated his female actors and employees. I bring that pop culture knowledge and reference to my reading of Tunney’s book of poems.

For some reason, I remember watching a few Hitchcock films while I was in my teens. I specifically recall Rear Window, Psycho, The Birds, and Dial M for Murder, although I’m not even sure why these are the ones I recall more vividly than any others he made. I remember thinking they looked slick on the television screen, and that the women and men always seemed one-dimensional, perfectly dressed and turned out. They seemed so stylized, and epitomized what I thought and imagined Hollywood was about in the glory days of cinema. Those films of his, though, were illusions—all polished and seductive on the screen. Still, I was always left thinking: what’s buried  underneath it all? What’s hidden? Where’s the substance? Why is it so superficial?

Tunney gets at this notion of appearance versus reality in a number of her pieces, including the Vertigo-inspired poem, “The Redwoods Bear Witness,” with the lines: “The crash of waves held in his/mind as he bends her head/back, locks her in a kiss/love, like light, illuminates her fake face.” Then, in “Charlie and Charlie,” the poet writes: “This was the moment when she/tore the front door off his façade and saw the/tailored swine lurking within.” No one is who they seem to be in any Hitchcock film. They are all superficial and slick, hiding underneath with satchels of secrets yet to be discovered.

You read the poems almost hesitantly, a bit nervous, and feeling the suspense that Hitchcock created, but also unsettled by the way in which women were portrayed and presented in so many of his films. He was that omnipresent eye—as director and filmmaker—and his presence is felt throughout A Different Wolf.  The epigraph—and the title—for the collection finds its origin in something Hitchcock himself wrote: “Nothing has changed since Little Red Riding Hood faced the big bad wolf. What frightens us today is exactly the same sort of thing that frightened us yesterday. It’s just a different wolf.” Hitchcock is a creepy cinematic genius of sorts, and maybe that is why we find him so fascinating as a strange Hollywood icon—perhaps because his work was able to reflect some of the unsettling social and cultural undercurrents of his time.   

The part of the collection that really sings, I think, is titled “Time and Death.” These are the poems where Tunney explores her own personal connections to Hitchcock’s films. In “Watching Vertigo,” the poet writes: “I understand that evening out/the rear view window of the DeSoto/the bridge distant over his shoulder.” Her skill with imagery and metaphor is evident further in the poem when she writes: “I know what it means: the fabric of his longing/the unfurling of waves pulling him out/like the moon pulls him free of his wrong yearnings/past the crags, into an eternity of blue and loss.”  Then, in “Drive-in, 1969,” Tunney reflects on the draw of Hitchcock’s films. They offered an escape from the realities of life, so that “we did not notice our fate/playing out in that living room with its piano, its portrait/of dead parents, the fireplace…” In “The View from Point Reyes,” she writes: “I’ve been there, by that bridge, by the lighthouse on Point Reyes/I’ve seen days like that, starkly bright, when the hills are burnt/and faded from the sun.” Tunney can, as a poet, root her memories in images that are beautifully cinematic in scope.

Each poem in A Different Wolf is inspired by a film, but you needn’t worry that you won’t understand the poems if you haven’t seen the movies. If you haven’t seen them, it feels—from a reader’s point of view—that you can now almost enter into them in a sort of strangely voyeuristic and interactive way. The section titled “Woman in the Male Gaze” also speaks to the time in which Hitchcock lived and flourished, and reminds readers of the social mores by which many men and women were strangely governed at the time. What’s seductive about this collection, though, is the way the poems feel like tiny excerpts of films you may or may not have seen once in your youth. A Different Wolf is both poetic and cinematic; it walks between worlds, and it invites readers to tread carefully—to find their balance so they can always come back to the present if the internal world of a Hitchcock film becomes too dark or overwhelming. For those who love poetry and film, this book of poems might be right up your film noir alley.

 

 

 

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 Ontario representative of The Writers' Union of Canada (2020-22), and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Kim can be reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com