Kim Fahner : In a Tension of Leaves and Binding, Renée M. Sgroi

In a Tension of Leaves and Binding, Renée M. Sgroi
Guernica, 2024

 

 

 

Renée M. Sgroi’s second book of poetry, In a Tension of Leaves and Binding, plants itself (pun intended) in the space of a small vegetable garden. In the collection’s first poem, “systema,” Sgroi plays with form and draws a connection between language and plants. We read printed words on a page from left to right in English, and recognize the form of sentences and paragraphs—or lines and stanzas—so the poet compares the way in which “a book//sifts pages, weeds out loosestrife   ,  phragmites/ploughs fields like oxen.” The poet ploughs the fields, chooses where to plant the images and how to structure the piece. Then, in the first version of Sgroi’s “morphology” poems,  the piece takes on the shape of a box on the page, summoning up the concrete, visual image of a field in the reader’s mind, and the word choices that map out the space conjure the essences of colour, texture, scent, and taste. The reader, then, is left to consider what might fill in the empty white space of the middle, perhaps suggesting the space of the garden plot as a metaphor for life, even.

One particularly fascinating aspect of these poems is the way in which the various parts of the natural world and environment take on sentience through voice. In “earth,” the land chastises humans as the poet writes: “how you bulldozed me, ripped//me of flesh/inside   in   out, tied…bruises beneath bark, lies seeding the saltiness of oceans//my protuberances you chopped/math-like.” The voice goes on to intensify the litany of sins, speaking of how humans have been “reaping my fecundity//settling city after/city,” with “subway turnstiles/like animals, toxic/mix of methane and atmosphere.” In “Sciuris carolinensis,” which is the Latin phrase for ‘squirrel,’ the squirrel’s voice pleads “bury me under heavy snow and not by the road: I too/have seen my likeness flattened there, decaying, or bury/me beneath a tree, tall limb to my shortened appendages” and then finally ends by saying, “but do not bury me within the old growth forest thinking/you have blessed me with my habitat, for you will one day/raze that space to pour concrete and my body, like yours,/is meant for scavenging worms.” These poems give the various aspects and creatures of the natural world agency, all while reminding readers that they have a responsibility to think before acting senselessly when it comes to the fate and future of the environment in their own respective towns and cities.

The poems in In a Tension of Leaves and Binding are also about the passing of time, seasons, and of loss. In a poem like “apple trees in late winter as if angry,” Sgroi writes of blossoms that “eventually fall,” and branches that look “like wizened Medusas” when they bear snow. In the poem, “in metamorphosis,” too, the first line continues from the title to read “the Buddha says everything changes.” Yes, everything in the natural world is cyclical, and this theme is constant throughout the book. In “preparing to overwinter,” the speaker begins with: “after you died, they sent a bouquet//pink and white flowers with a bow/lilies, large stargazers” and ends with images of the same bouquet, before winter snow, being composted, “tossed on dead remains of garden/yellowed tomato stalks, blackened leaves of basil.” As the wilted petals return to the cold earth, the mourners “mulched/the petals in wet soil/returning a part of you/to earth.” The grief that follows death is further explored in “after the obit” as the speaker ponders how “death exudes its own scent, but grief//is sensed in colognes wafting/from darkly-dressed handshakes,/in cups of too strong coffee.” The initial pains of death and funeral ceremonies fade, but grief remains afterwards “in the first time you make tomato sauce,/sense your mother’s absent hands/in the aroma of tomatoes stewing.” These are the unexpected ripples of grief that follow a loss, surprising and occurring when least expected. These pangs are not to be mapped or reined in by a contrived socially imposed timeline; the heart simply won’t have it.

Sgroi uses Latin consistently throughout her collection, and I found the glossary at the back of the book, with the translation of the names of species—for plants, birds, animals, and insects—was helpful. She plays with language throughout, with both English and Latin words, as well as with the idea of how the craft of writing and storytelling is not unlike the ways of the natural world, so that the reader begins to think about how language can be as fluid as the changing of the seasons. The two—language and nature—are carefully and artistically interwoven.

What is different about In a Tension of Leaves and Binding, structurally, is the inclusion of two reflective poems at the end of the book. “Binding” includes one poem, “of the first part,” which speaks from the first-person point of view, while the second poem, “In other words, two,” is written in third-person voice. Both are two sides of a coin, or mirrored likenesses, or perhaps even something like an overheard conversation between the poet and the natural world. In closing the collection with this dual-voiced, reflective piece, Sgroi offers her creative and poetic modus operandi. If the reader has any question of the poet’s intention, “Binding” offers some potential answers to questions that might have been posed in the reader’s mind. Best, then, to read the poems first, and then to arrive at the reflection having experienced the work of its own accord.

Renée M. Sgroi’s newest collection is one for gardeners, yes, and for those who love the natural world, certainly, but it’s also for those who want to explore the intersections that exist between humans and the natural world, even as it might be cajoled into the form of a backyard garden plot to offer a structure for contemplation. Here there are thoughts of what it means to be with the land, as settler, but also of how to live in concert (as best possible, and in good conscience) with the land and its creatures, plants, water, and earth. In a Tension of Leaves and Binding leaves a reader, then, with thoughts of how to be in the world, how to journey through this life, and how to find anchor points of comfort and contemplation in times when we recognize our temporal nature, our own mortality, and our responsibility to leave things better than we found them when we depart, rather than worse.

 

 

 

 

 

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her newest book, a novel, is The Donoghue Girl (Latitude 46, 2024). Her next book of poems, The Pollination Field, will be published by Turnstone Press in 2025. She recently won first place for her CNF essay, "What You Carry," in The Ampersand Review's 2024 essay contest. As well, Kim was named as a finalist for the 2023 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize. She is the First Vice-Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (2023-25), a member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. She may be reached via her website at http://www.kimfahner.com

Peter Hrastovec : The Sky Above, by Marty Gervais

The Sky Above, Marty Gervais
Guernica Editions, 2024

 

 

 

 

Though I suspect that poet/writer/raconteur, Marty Gervais, is bursting with stories that require telling, his latest book, The Sky Above, a collection of selected poems, may fill the need until the next book of new material surfaces. Published by Guernica Editions, this is a strong collection of the very best of Gervais’ poems, a retrospective look at his long career both as a significant Canadian literary figure but also as an award-winning journalist. If you don’t know Gervais’ work as a poet, The Sky Above is an excellent starting point to a satisfying reading journey. And if you have come to know Gervais, the poems assembled here will once again engage you and pique your interest as they truly shine a light on a celebrated writing career.

Several of Gervais’ poems are inspired by his many years in journalism, as a columnist and reporter, mostly with the Windsor Star. He has interviewed luminaries and witnessed the very great in action: activist and hero Rosa Parks, pianist Vladamir Horowitz, renowned portrait photographer Pat Sturn, opera virtuoso Luciano Pavarotti.  These and others are immortalized, less to emphasize their legendary notoriety than to capture their humanity and spirit.

His charming portrait of a physically failing Muhammad Ali is authentic and sincere:

The hands I noticed first---
          I sat across from him
          knowing the swagger
          and bluster and swiftness
          and now before me
          he moved with aching slowness
          not with the grace of history         

          still, his words were in perfect timing
          slow, yet ever calculating
          not surprising—they always were that way

And there are also the many works that draw on personal observations of people and things, the mundane and the everyday elevated to the deserved importance that is their due. Whether he writes about porch spiders, the status of his clothes, chance meetings of people in diners or on the street, stuff accumulated, or ruminations about nature, the moon or life in a hospital room, Gervais does not let anything escape his curiosity, his sense that everything has a time and place, that there is a reason for all that he sees and all that he chooses to celebrate.

His tender plea in “Let Me Go First” is sweet and sensitive and aptly captures the observational and accessible qualities germane to his style:

          I don’t want to mourn your death
          Let me go first, free me of arrangements
          solemnities, eulogies, loneliness, closets full of shoes
          and dresses, jewelry, eyeglasses

          Let me be the flattened bicycle tire
          hanging from a nail in the garage
          an abandoned, forgotten tennis racket
          a winter tire leaning against a post
          a cardboard box of old vinyl records

I’d rather be those than be me
          waiting to catch up, days spent writing
          sappy sentimental poems to your memory

I know it’s selfish but what else is new—
          I was always first out the door
          you always minutes late

I don’t want to change things—
          I just want to be first

P.S. I still love you

The poetry here is as good as it gets. Remarkably, I was moved by what two equally well known and revered Canadian poets had to say about him in the introduction and preface that accompany the book. Bruce Meyer, first poet laureate of Barrie, Ontario, who carefully arranged the manuscript, writes,

I wanted to honour the poems by allowing each one to speak for itself.  I wanted the craft and delicacy Gervais expresses to shine through. No other arrangement would do them the justice they deserve. This book is meant to be read as a portal into a beautiful, thoughtful, and loving mind as Gervais takes us on a journey through the world he loves.

And Brantford Poet Laureate, John B. Lee, honours the poet when he concludes,

          It would not be an exaggeration to claim that Gervais is one of the premier poets

of his generation. We who live in Souwesto are grateful for the presence of a chronicler of our place and time. Like Falkner’s Mississippi, Laurence’s prairie home, we have a poet who cherishes and reifies the landscape, this region, our home.

This is, indeed, high and mighty praise.  Marty Gervais has been described as “the people’s poet” and, accordingly, is a past recipient of the Milton Acorn People’s Poetry Prize, among many other accolades. He has always advocated that everyone should cultivate, nurture and tell their stories. It is his personal theme, deeply rooted in his psyche long before he became the Poet Laureate Emeritus of his beloved City of Windsor. In his many workshops, his perennial classroom engagements, his countless public speaking ventures, through his prolific writing, his creative camera work and his lauded mentoring of young and old poets alike, Marty Gervais has been a staunch opportunist for those who required a platform to share their stories, those who had to be heard and who had much to say. His fifty plus years as the artistic visionary of his beloved Black Moss Press is a testament to nurturing and promoting poets and story tellers from varied walks of life and experience.   In an age when some question, “why does poetry matter”, Marty, through his own pen and sweat equity exclaims that poetry does matter and the voluminous outpouring of work and his personal commitment to poets across this country speaks to this loudly and profoundly.

Like all writers, Marty’s reach may exceed his grasp. But so what?  May he continue to strive for all that is good and pure. And may his star continue to rise to “the sky above”.

 

 

 

 

Peter Hrastovec is the current Poet Laureate for the City of Windsor.

 

Poet Questionnaire #4: Paul Lisson answering Stan Rogal (with an essay by J.S. Porter

 

 

 

 

To be honest, I don't know that many writers these days, on a personal level. During the 1990’s there was a vibrant group I hung out with, partied with, put on events with, but this group has (sadly) long since dispersed. I thought it might be worthwhile to re-create some of that old-time camaraderie and "the interview" format seemed a nice, relaxed entry. I also wanted to interview writers who contributed to the literary community in broader ways, not only as writers, but as publishers, editors, event organizers, and such. I met Paul several years ago via email, due to our association with poet Judith Fitzgerald. I have since met him in person several times, including at his book launch for The Perfect Archive, where he put on a theatrical production that hearkened back to the wilder days of poetry events. Paul is, indeed, a wild and crazy guy, and a mover and shaker in the Hamilton art scene.  

1. Will the real Paul Lisson please stand up! Meaning, Paul, please give our readers some history and an overview of who you are and why you do what you do, as a multi-faceted and creative force in the Hamilton arts scene.

I was born.

I was born in Hamilton, beside the Coca-Cola bottling plant.

Proctor and Gamble, Dofasco, and the Steel Company of Canada (STELCO) were nearby.

I was born into a family of union-card-carrying steelworkers who played in bagpipe bands. In Hamilton.

"Where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on. You’re in Hamilton. There’s no cure for that." – adapted from Samuel Beckett’s, The Unnamable

2. What are your thoughts about Hamilton, affectionately known as “The Hammer”, as a culturally diverse and active arts centre?

Per capita, I believe there are more hammers in the city of Hamilton than in any other city in Canada. When I worked at STELCO there were more sledgehammers than you could shake a stick at. And you know they’re still around somewhere.

The name on my Dad’s STELCO union card was Jimmy Lisson. The President of the union was John Lisson. The Vice President was Brian Lisson. The union treasurer was another Lisson. These guys had been through a lot. They weren’t going to let the bosses have everything go their way. Labour activism continues to inform and influence what Hamilton is.

You can do anything in Hamilton. Anything.

You can start a magazine. Produce a play. My sister opened a gallery. It’s possible nobody will care, but they won’t stop you.

3. How and what is your involvement with the Hamilton Arts & Letters magazine?

There’s no one else to blame.

4. COVID seems to have been a catalyst that necessitated a shift from HA&L as a physical entity to an online magazine. How was your experience with that shift? How did it change the magazine?

That fucking plague…………

5. You are a poet in your own right, with one published book, The Perfect Archive, which I reviewed and recommended to readers. How does your involvement as an editor with the magazine affect your work as a poet? Or, does it?

Write for yourself. Edit for your reader.

6. Do you have another poetry collection on the back burner?

Yeah. It’s full of words. Some of them rhyme but most don’t. It will either be titled Ink Bone or Frail Deities. Not sure. It will likely never see the light of day. Never be published. But it is my monster and I am devoted to it.

7. What keeps you writing/publishing poetry given there are fewer poetry publishers and even fewer poetry books being sold? Or am I wrong in this evaluation?

I yam what I yam said Popeye. A poet is what I yam. There is no hope for a cure. Poet is scrimshawed across all me bones.

8. Poets deal in words. What is your favourite word and why? What about another word that maybe strikes your funny bone or makes you feel uneasy/awkward for no particular reason when you say it?

OK, it’s hyphenated: beef-witted. And the way Shakespeare uses it: “The plague of Greece upon thee, thou Mungrel beefe-witted Lord!”

9. Do you feel that poetry has the power to end war, hunger, discrimination and environmental destruction in the world?

Yes.

In his book Philosophy for Militants Alain Badiou says that “Wherever a human collective is working in the direction of equality, the conditions are met for everyone to become a philosopher.”

We are living in beef-witted times. Trumpian times. Poilievre times. A time of lies and liars.

Poets are part of the collective opposing these beef-witted times and working in the direction of equality.

10. Do you have any advice for anyone who’d like to be(come) a poet?

Yes. Send $5 and all shall be revealed.

11. What question is it that you’ve always wished an interviewer would ask, and hasn’t?

Q: “If you could be anyone else, would you be Stan Rogal?”

12. Add any additional comments of your own choosing. Manifestos included.

Stan! I'm shit at interviews. I've given it a go, but there ain't much to say about me. At the end I've tacked on a piece John Porter wrote about a talk I gave in 2013 at the Hamilton Public Library titled: “Thoughtcrime and the 14 Egg Cake”. John’s piece has never been published. It's better than my answers to the questions.

 

PAVEL IN PERFORMANCe by J.S. Porter

          (for David Cohen and Simon Richards)

 

I want to give you everything I’ve got, he says.

Looking like a Coptic priest or a Jordanian rabbi, with his long, mussed white hair, he begins in Russian by introducing himself, saying his name and getting us to say ours.  Then he says самизда́т, Samizdat, a Russian word describing literature that must be written and copied in secret, “shared and read through clandestine distribution networks.”

A cigarettes-and-wine voice, deeply resonant. The voice, regardless of content, would hold your attention. He says the name Daniil Kharms. He says he’s fond of the letter B: Bulgakov.  Böll, Balzac. Beckett, Barthes, Breton, too?

He says that his publishing house is called Samizdat Press; it puts beauty on the Internet in the form of Hamilton Arts & Letters (HALmagazine.com).

He says Dostoyevsky was beaten by his father. Is that why he turned to deep and intense reading?

Paul makes sounds. Sometimes his sounds are a kind of throat-poetry, hissed, whistled or hummed.  Often, he says, I fail.  But it’s good to try. He mentions the names of sound poets whom he admires.

 While I’m listening, I silently repeat lines from his poem “Awaiting the arrival of the butcher:” “O, But what shall I tell you?”  That’s the question I think Paul is asking himself as he walks back and forth, talking as he walks. How much do I tell? Too much: overburdening, failure. Too little: underwhelming, failure. Blowing words is as complicated as blowing glass. The word sparks, flames and burns. When the word burns, there’s always a danger that it burns out.

 Again from the butcher: “O, But what's left to say?”

Judith Fitzgerald: “Lisson's work — difficult, demanding and utterly transfixing — requires work, hard mental work on the part of its readers.” Words to Judith by Pavel – to find audience — pages are copied and distributed. This by hand. Audience huddles around table. Words are spoken. Recited.

Samizdat.

Only a few in attendance, but the energy Paul has worked up would have rippled through a football stadium. He paces back and forth the way his Russian history professor R. H. Johnston once did — a caged lion? Where does the cage come from? You understand why it’s exhausting being Paul Lisson, all the energy required, why he sometimes calls on other people to be him.

Shuffling through his papers, he looks for a story. He can’t find it. He starts to tell a story. He can’t remember it. Throws a line as far as he can throw it, reels it in a little, tells a joke, makes a sound poem. First we were in Russia (its serpentine history, its clandestine literature) and now we’re not sure where we are…tells us we must read a certain Russian novel (“It makes other books look safe” The Guardian), says the name Mikhail Bulgakov, starts to tell the story, then pulls back.  If he tells the wrong story, or he tells the right story wrongly, we may be repelled. No story sometimes is better than the wrong story or the right story wrongly told.  Pavel makes other performances look safe.

And the woman, with the surname of an Irish poet, whom he invokes throughout the talk, who is she? Who is Fiona? Co-creator. Co-maker of Samizdat Press. Deep and abiding Friend. Wife. Muse. Angel-Artist.  Her wedding cakes have teeth in them, and hair.  She believes in his genius (Lou-Andreas Salomé and Nietzsche) and he believes in hers (Rilke and Lou-Andreas Salomé).

Every now and then when he feels lost, he throws out her name like a clamp to grip the ice, for stabilization, for energy to climb some more. FIONA – his spiritbookword, his sun-and-moon word, his life-raft.

I’m sorry, Paul says. I haven’t been able to give you everything.

 

 

 

 

Paul Lisson – Born into a family of union-card-carrying steelworkers who played in bagpipe bands. Founding Member – Ontario D/deaf/HoH, Disabled, Mad, Sick and Neuroatypical Poetics Collective, (OD/d/HoH/DMSNPC) 2018. Facilitator – the AbleHamilton Poetry Festival - among the first disability-focused poetry festivals in Canada, annual. Founding Member of the VOKS Collective. VOKS began as a group instigating HIV activism in the 1990s. VOKS materials are held by the ArQuives in Toronto. Member of the League of Canadian Poets. Paul acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council for both his writing and visual art. (PaulLisson.com)

 

 

Belfast-born, J.S. Porter is a poet and essayist who reads and writes in Hamilton in company with his wife Cheryl and his dog Sophia.  He is currently looking for a publisher for his book of notes and poems (Reedrite) and his book of prose (Furrawn: Talk that Leads to Intimacy). He is best known for his Spirit Book Word: An Inquiry into Literature and Spirituality and Lightness and Soul: Musings on Eight Jewish Writers.

Stan Rogal lives and writes in Toronto along with his artist partner Jacquie Jacobs and their pet jackabee. His work has appeared almost magically in numerous magazines and anthologies. The author of several books, plus a handful of chapbooks. Currently seeking a new publisher: anyone??? Co-founder of Bald Ego Theatre and former coordinator of the popular Idler Pub Reading Series.

Elana Wolff : Panick Love, by Antonio D’Alfonso

 

 

 

 

 

Panick Love was the first book I read by Antonio D’Alfonso, founding publisher of Guernica Editions. This was shortly after Antonio accepted my first collection of poems, Birdheart, for publication—back at the turn of the century. From cover-to-cover and outside-in, Panick Love introduced me to the ‘House of Guernica’, to Antonio the publisher, designer and poet; to qualities of thought that kindled my thinking, and writing that nudged me out of my comfort zone.

A book-length prose poem compromising forty-six unnamed pieces, fifty-three pages in all, Panick Love was first written in French under the title L’amour panique, published by Les Lèvres urbaines in 1987, translated by Antonio himself, and published by Guernica in 1992. The slim volume, its silk-finish matte cover with flaps, also known as French flaps, displays a chic aesthetic with a European edge. And the cover art, A Mythological Scene, by Italian Renaissance painter Piero di Cosimo (1462-1522), known for his moody, quirky depictions of mythological subjects, complements the moody text.   

Panick Love is a beautifully-designed and produced, compact book that made me prize the compact over the bulky book of poetry, and piqued my awareness of the importance of the cover spread—how it stages an author, the work, and brings a reader in; the back cover no less than the front. The back cover of Panick Love features a black-and-white headshot of a very youthful Antonio—photo credit included, a synopsis of the work, a two-sentence bio note, and cover art credit in small font at the bottom. Clean, minimal, informative. No blurbs. Nowadays blurbs are di rigueur and all the rage. Front, back, and inside. Authors (and/or publishers) want to trumpet praise rather than let the work speak for itself. As a new Guernica author, twenty-two years ago now, Panick Love was a model of uncluttered elegance. Just the essential. A pleasure to hold, behold, and open.

The “long poem” itself is an idiosyncratic homage to the myth of Ulysses—a man abroad, on a journey, in search—rendered in Antonio’s distinctive voice, laying out, early in his oeuvre, personal themes and concerns: the complex texture of plurilinguistic and pluricultural realities (identity): paradox and oxymoron; failure and negation; love and fear; community and singularity; form and style.  

Looking back, I now see Panick Love as classic D’Alfonso—an abiding companion to his other books of poetry, fiction, criticism and ideas: among them, The Other Shore, Fabrizio’s Passion, Duologue: On Culture and Identity (with Pasquale Verdicchio), A Friday in August, In Italics, Gambling with Failure, An Irrelevant Man, The Two-Headed Man: Collected Poems 1970-2020, and the many works of translation that intimately connect Antonio to publishers, editors, writers, filmmakers, performers and artists across Canada, and beyond.  

What struck me in my early reading of Panick Love was what felt to me like its unruliness, discordance. Juxtapositions of sentences like, “For so long, sickness was synonymous with creativity. The cry, an interstice between two silences.” And “Our eyes do not darken in the clarity of communion; thinking leaps over the vicious circles of fixation.” Juxtapositions that challenged, lines that gave pause for thought: “What is important: our refusal to harden into fossil … The truly free person circumscribes his freedom.” The leaps in the writing, the provocations and restraints. Panic Love felt transgressive, anarchic (there’s reference to Bakunin, “oh dear brother”). At the same time, it felt exciting—a prod to let go of what I considered a poem, or prose poem. Charles Simic has called the prose poem “the result of two contradictory impulses, and therefore it cannot exist, but it does. It is the sole instance of squaring the circle.” The contradictory impulse is thematic in Panick Love. Tensions reverberate and electrify the whole work with a magnetism of opposing charges: “White night”; “sad happiness”; “Never alone and yet totally solitary”; “In which strait-jacket will you feel free?”

Thirty-two of the forty-six segments feature some form of the negative: no, no one, nothing, never. In my early reading of Panick Love, the prevalence of negation in the poem seemed to be a calling out for the opposite—the yes, the someone/anyone, the something, eternal. Even healing. I suppose I was reading into the work my own proclivity for resolution, a homecoming, a happy ending. In fact, there is no resolution in Panick Love. There’s assertion of “unequivocal failure.” In the penultimate segment, “the end is a wall we cannot cross.” And in the final segment, which features the name Penelope twice, for the first time, the author submits an entreaty: “help me find my way out of this labyrinth of panick passion.” Panick is written with a ‘k’, as the Notes relate, “to stress the often forgotten etymological link that exists between fear and the Greek work panikos.” In Panick Love, “fear” and “love” are poles that sizzle each other.  

Panick Love introduced me to Antonio’s poetry, a style of writing that was not familiar to me. So different from the poetry I was drawn to—by Louise Glück, Mary Oliver, Jack Gilbert, Charles Simic, and from my own toned-down, lyrical work in Birdheart. And yet Antonio accepted my first manuscript, published the work, and fostered my writing. Already by my second collection, Mask, I was an altered writer, and a more open-minded reader of poetry. 

In recent readings of Panick Love, I noticed lines that had not stood out for me in early readings: “To go from I to the other, there is God; the rest is commerce.” “Life is tough when death cannot kill.” “The sheet of paper is atheist, far from any theological inspiration.” There’s darkness in the poem, plenty of it; the admission that “This scatterbrain is tired of the non-poetry of the too-poetic:”—hence the defiance, the pushing against the grain. But there’s incandescence too. And now I saw a spiritual/metaphysical side to the work: “spirit” (three times), “Supreme Being” / “God.” And lyricism, which had not stood out for me in earlier readings: “we will speak the language of water-listening men and women who crawl on ocean beds”; “drops of white blood on the lilac trees”; “the golden coin blazing on the forehead of the world.”

Perhaps I’m reading my own hope into the poem—we do, after all, read with our own sensibilities and proclivities—but in recent rereading of Panick Love I also discerned a nod to the notion of simultaneity: “This baroque movement set on going beyond the straight line and circle. To seize the perspective of a spiral. All, the conglomeration of spirals that at times overlap.” A kind of embrace of antipodal forces: “the temporalness of our state” … “where eternity begins.”

Panick Love challenged me when I first read it twenty-two years ago. It still has provocative power, but I now see its intimate connection to Antonio’s subsequent works, that have deepened into the author’s themes and concerns while not eclipsing the early work. And I’m now heartened by a light note and benignant vision that I failed to see earlier on: “The future of poetry. Images of our dignity.” I can close with this.     

—October, 2022

 

 

 

 

Elana Wolff lives and works in Thornhill, Ontario—the traditional lands of the Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat First Nations. Her poems have recently appeared (or will soon appear) in Arc (Awards of Awesomeness), Bear Review, Best Canadian Poetry 2021, CV2, Grain, Literary Review of Canada, Montréal Serai, Pinhole Poetry, Prairie Fire, Taddle Creek, The New Quarterly and Waterwheel Review. Her latest poetry collection is Shape Taking (Ekstasis Editions, 2021). Her cross-genre Kafka-quest work, Faithfully Seeking Franz, is forthcoming with Guernica Editions in 2023.