Forty-five Ottawa poets : Michael Lithgow : Two poems

folio : Forty-five Ottawa poets

 

 

The rot under the tree

Dragging last autumn’s dry grey leaves
from their almost resting place under the apple tree 

I panicked. Raking is hilarious (to trees
and everything else), but I was excited to imagine 

this endless engine of debris as my enemy.
Who makes enemies of apple trees? 

In horror, I threw down my rake and ran to Costco
to buy new tires. Watching the swarm of our bodies 

at the food counter made me think about
what we’re doing, here -- you know, 

not in the moments of fervour that sometimes gush
like highlights of a career, or falling in love, 

the kick that throws us to the curb or churns a poem,
our pleas and moments of rage; but rather, 

everything else: eating, waiting, gathering, playing
uncertain roles in the stories we find ourselves in. 

Every so often finding a way out of the box,
poking a finger into the maw of god 

whether she’s a slug or some certain sensation
in my cerebral cortex. The finger goes in 

and I am eaten suddenly, unexpectedly, fantastically.
Whimsically. A difficult thread to hold, the rot erupting 

abruptly like gold, like lasers in the night, like beauty
on a public bus. Like the bottom of a box of old papers 

in a basement rotted from unwanted water.
We’re all buried there. The smell of the old leaves. 

A spring reunion.

 

 

Anthropocene
 

I cut my finger on an open edge of tin once,
the thin boundary holding in the din of blood
opened, a slippery undoing of my performance
as a solid bit of history. And then I walked
on a shoreline, trees still dull grey in spring
awakening and the ground brown and mostly
dry underfoot. A scuffle of animal prints in the mud
caught my eye, scratched patterns in the dirt
like herringbone, and amid the ruction of lines
the imprint of a predator cat, paws big as a fist.
I wondered how far the cat’s necessary expertise
in sudden death was from the mud on my shoes. 

The Anthropocene – that’s the smell of this poem –
in the memory, now, of breeze blowing
at my back in that mostly wild place, the sense
of my own footprints as all I will ever see,
or what I can’t like a fish never knowing water
until ripped out on a hook. That cat’s hand in mud
feels like a hook pulling me deeper into a web
of predators’ earth, pulling me forward
into sunlight I swear that seems to squeak as it passes
through the late morning air. I’m rushing, 

now, but I won’t show my dread to just anyone.
My blood is escaping certainties through my fingers.
This place knows itself without me, which seems obvious.
But I am still here. Disappearing.

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Lithgow’s poetry, essays and short stories have appeared in Canadian and international journals including TNQ, Literary Review of Canada, The Brussels Review, Canadian Literature, Topia and Fiddlehead. His second collection of poetry was published in 2021, by Cormorant Books. He teaches at Athabasca University.

Ethan Vilu : Who We Thought We Were as We Fell, by Michael Lithgow

Who We Thought We Were as We Fell, Michael Lithgow
Cormorant Books, 2021

 

 

 

A recurring thought flickered in my head as I read through Who We Thought We Were as We Fell, Michael Lithgow’s second collection of poetry. It was this: that it is a truly rare thing for a book’s mood and essence to be captured so effectively in its cover art. Angel Guerra’s gorgeous design sets high-impact words against a washed-out, pensive blue background; in my view, this effectively reproduces the central dynamic of Lithgow’s poetry. Who We Thought We Were as We Fell is a book that positively trembles with melancholy, and which strains for and routinely achieves real clarity against a fully pervasive and deeply somber backdrop. It is from this commendable effort that its many moments of beauty arise.

At the level of poetic technique, Lithgow’s work throughout this text can be characterized as pleasantly understated. The sonic quality of the poems in Who We Thought We Were as We Fell is sustained without coming across as excessive – even playful internal rhymes (such as “their pale shades of vinyl / siding hiding everything,” from “Lengths of Grass”) do not distract from the rigorously focused nature of much of the work. Neither does Lithgow’s commitment to a controlled poetic approach bar him from using compellingly unsettling imagery, as when feelings of grief “turned in my stomach like a cold fat snake” (in “What I Did With Mourning in the Morning, After My Father Died”), or when “the tops of far-off buildings appear like small teeth” (in “Hospital Morning”). Many of the poems in this book show Lithgow to be incredibly proficient in the art of poetic pacing – one can look to “At the Podiatrist’s”, one of the longer pieces in the text. A clear-eyed meditation on aging, it builds on itself with a quiet ferocity until it reaches its apex in this fantastic line: “I won’t be lamed by time just yet, but I’ve tasted its incivility, / and it’s not the first I’ve heard star dust roaring in my ears.”. This piece (among many others) is emblematic of the poet’s admirable ability to sit with the indignities of life, to contemplate their strange ineffability, and to persevere in attempting to set them out in words.

Though this commitment to a relentless contemplation is present throughout Who We Thought We Were as We Fell, not every poem in the book is imbued with the same level of focus. Temporarily leaving aside the pieces which have more of a prose poem sensibility (which are nearly all excellent – I have the impression that this is Lithgow’s specialty), I would contrast the poems “Barnacle” and “Love and Rockets” in the hope of illustrating the uneven nature of parts of the work. The former piece is both effectively concise and keenly observant (and furthermore contains one of the most enjoyable rhymes in the book, with “I feel them turn towards me / as I pass. Snowdrops are low / and blind in the grass.”). “Love and Rockets” is unfocused in comparison, containing discordant mixed images and a fairly clumsy attempt at overcoming a cliché through acknowledgment (the opening line of the poem being “O for fuck’s sakes another poem about the agonies of love”). There are a handful of poems in this book that feel more like sketches than complete declarations, though this fact does not take away from the brilliance of much of the text. If anything, it simply serves as a reminder of the profoundly complex and harrowing nature of the subject matter that Lithgow deals in.

In reading Who We Thought We Were as We Fell, one is imbued with that melancholic feeling which is so familiar to so many of us – and then, through the clarity of the poet’s observations and connections, that feeling takes on a subtle change, becomes slightly less opaque. In a world where everyone must live with grief and perpetual indignity, it is a sincerely heartening thing to have effective literary examples, in terms of both reckoning and perseverance. It is a project of tremendous difficulty that Lithgow takes on with this book, and the high degree to which he succeeds is very much worthy of praise.

 

 

 

 

Ethan Vilu is a student, writer, and editor from Calgary, Alberta. Their poetry longsheet A Decision re: Zurich was published by The Blasted Tree in 2020. In addition to serving as the current managing editor for NōD Magazine, Ethan works as both circulation manager and as a member of the poetry collective at filling Station. Currently passionate about absurdism, memory, and the dying art of golf club forging, Ethan can always be found working on a series of interminable manuscripts.