Return from Erebus

Return from Erebus / Julia McCarthy
London, ON: Brick Books, c2010.
112 p.

Another fascinating collection of poetry that I discovered recently, Return From Erebus has a mythical theme running through it: Erebus is the outer edges of the Underworld, in Greek mythology.

This book was on the Relit longlist this year, and won the CAA (Canadian Authors Association) Poetry Award. The poems are rich and dense, exhibiting a vast control of language. Some of the images simply grabbed me -- for example, the beginning of the poem "Beneath Cyrillic Stars"

The full moon is a stamp
on a dark letter
arriving and arriving
Cyrillic stars ... their untranslatable script
bleeding through

and later in the same poem:

...the sound thread makes
pulling its thin river of colour
through the eye
of a needle

I think that was my favourite poem in the collection, but there were many others that caught the imagination as well. She's incorporating myth, colour, quotes, and references to other poets. I'm sure there is a lot that I'm missing, but as a relatively naive poem reader I still greatly enjoyed the way her words flowed from image to sound to deep reflection. There are many poems dealing with colours -- mainly white, black and grey -- which gives a sense of quietude and a wintery effect. I found the references to Erebus and to various classical figures fit together with the mood of the collection very well: it was constructed to feel like a work in which each piece was dependent on the others.

My only hesitation with the book was that some of the poems incorporate language so archaic, so obscure, that I had no idea what she was talking about. I consider my vocabulary and my etymological puzzling-out skills fairly good but I was stumped a few times, and it really took me out of the poem. However, as a reader it is our obligation to read what the author has written, not what we want them to have written, after all. After searching out the words previously unknown to me, the poems became perhaps more comprehensible but I still felt myself stumble a bit when I came to them.

Still, reading this was quite an experience. Lots of deep imagery and a sense of powerful movement as the collection progressed. I really thought the concept of Erebus added extra resonance to the way the poems were ordered within the book, with each poem adding layers to those found on either side. I will have to reread this one a few times to really grasp it; but that is a rewarding prospect.

***Update*** the publisher has just made me aware of a great series on AudioBoo -- Julia McCarthy reads 6 poems from this collection, plus there's a recent interview posted. And then check out Brick Books' AudioBoo account because there are literally hundreds of poems to listen to, read by their authors! Neat stuff :)

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For this year's Canadian Book Challenge I've chosen as my theme "Small-Press-Palooza" Thus, for each book I'm including a link to the small press who has published it. Take a look -- there are wonderful small presses all over Canada!

More on Brick Books

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Accessory to this Collection: In honour of this book's title and themes of the Underworld recovered, I'm suggesting another piece from my sister's Goddess Collection jewelry line: this time it's Persephone. As she describes it:
Dark Garnet symbolizes pomegranate seeds, and these ‘seeds’ are surrounded by an airy spring-like combination of Rose Quartz and Peridot. The beautiful embrace of Spring delivered into Winter’s icy grasp.

Happiness Economics

Happiness Economics / Shari Lapeña
Victoria, BC: Brindle & Glass, c2011.
240 p.

I read Lapena's first novel, Things Go Flying, as part of my Canadian Book Challenge last year. I enjoyed it so much that I knew I had to read this next one as soon as I could get my hands on it. While the cover is nowhere near as appealing to me as the first book, I was still drawn in quickly and enjoyed this read.

The story pits husband and wife -- and their worldviews -- against each other. Will is a stay-at-home dad who spends his days working on his poetry epic. He's been doing this for ten years now, and his immensely successful economist wife Judy is beginning to tire of it. She can't understand why he won't go back to teaching at the university, or even just get any kind of job. She feels that his fixation on poetry is ruining his (their!) life.

Meanwhile, their children (one daughter, one son) are caught in the crosshairs. Their teen daughter seems to be getting bullied at school, and their son is in danger of becoming fat & unpopular -- at least in his mother's estimation. He's fine with his life. But through a combination of factors, both kids end up having to take self-defence lessons, chauffered by their dad. This provides some of the funniest moments of the book, as the instructor is very tough and encourages the kids to scream out obscenities while flinging each other to the ground. It may sound odd but it was highly entertaining.

And there's more to this book than family dynamics. Will has to deal with jealousy over other poets' successes, with the realization of middle age as he develops a highly inappropriate crush on a young, passionate poetry lover (Lily White, who admits that she's a pretty bad poet herself), and with developing his Big Idea -- setting up a Poet's Preservation Society to support all the indigent writers he knows. With his link to the poetry world and his wife's connections to rich people he figures he can't lose. Add to this Lily's peer group of poetic activists and parkour practitioners and you get a Mission Impossible: Saving Poetry situation.

There are also deeper questions of the meaning of Art in our commercially fixated world. Will and his wife represent two perspectives on the question but in the end, poetry -- all art -- is obviously the winner. Judy ponders the idea of a real economic theory, Happiness Economics, near the beginning of the book, and returns to the discussion at the end, and I think this encapsulates the "idea" of this book quite well -- thus the title. Here are the two excerpts:

At the moment she was hastily skimming an article about a new branch of economics called Happiness Economics. It was the first she'd heard of it. She liked the idea that economists could assign an exact monetary value to things like divorce, or the death of a loved one, or once-a-week sex. It seemed inherently right to her to be able to measure human happiness in dollars and conclude, for example, that once-a-week sex (compared to once-a-month sex) offered as much happiness as adding tens of thousands of dollars to your bank account.

Happiness ought to be measured in dollars! Then you knew what you were dealing with.

**

Judy realized now of course that she'd missed the point about Happiness Economics. What did it matter that economists could assighn a dollar value to something that didn't come with a dollar value attached to it? The point was that happiness research consistently showed that the highest value -- the greatest happiness -- was attached not to tangible things but to the intangibles -- to human relationships -- time spent with family and friends. And to the benefits that flowed from strong social policies such as good health care, education, and, yes, culture. The whole point of Happiness Economics was that perhaps governments, when making decisions, shouldn't be so focused on purely economic measures.

While I didn't fall in love with this book as entirely as I did with Things Go Flying, I still enjoyed it. The skewering of personalities in both worlds was fun and yet not too cruel. And I was glad that in the end both Will and Judy were shown to be complex people with no villainy ascribed to either. Definitely a book to put on the "poets in literature" list; I think it would be in great company with Nicholson Baker's The Anthologist and Lynn Coady's Mean Boy.

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For this year's Canadian Book Challenge I've chosen as my theme "Small-Press-Palooza" Thus, for each book I'm including a link to the small press who has published it. Take a look -- there are wonderful small presses all over Canada!


More about Brindle & Glass

Beekeeping for Beginners

Beekeeping for Beginners / Laurie R. King
An e-novella (available here)

This short novella takes fans of King's Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell stories back to the beginning...to the point at which Russell literally stumbles over Holmes on the Suffolk downs and amazes him with her brilliance. Holmes has retired and is now keeping bees (a mystery in themselves) and Russell is trying to spend her time on the downs away from her abusive aunt and sly, ill-intentioned cousin. Inevitably, they meet.

It was a delightful read, perfect as an introduction to these two at the beginning of their relationship -- great if you haven't read any of the marvellous Mary Russell books yet, but also great if you have. I was trying to remember the details of the first book as I read this story in order to tie the different perspectives on their meeting together.

It's brief and serves as a concise introduction to Mary Russell herself and to Laurie King's take on the well-known characters of Sherlock Holmes, John Watson, and even Mrs. Hudson. Mary's brilliance is made clear and Holmes' admiration for her, unusual though that might be, makes sense in Laurie King's world.

I love Sherlock Holmes, and the only 'rewrite' of his character that I can stand is this series. King is able to create a fresh story that still hews closely to the feel of the original stories and the original characters. This story lays the groundwork for all the adventures and drama that follow upon the meeting of two minds here...well worth the read for that alone. But it also gives us a gentler side of Holmes, especially in his capacity as beekeeper. I've reviewed this story and talked about the life lessons found in beekeeping at my Four Rooms business blog as part of a bibliotherapy series I add to now and again, and love how Holmes' Rules of Beekeeping have such great application to the social lives of humans as well as bees :)

It's a fun read and a reminder that a reread of this fabulous series would not go amiss. If you haven't discovered it yet, treat yourself to an introduction to Mary Russell. You won't be sorry!

Whoops!

Oh my, where does the time go??

Just checking in to say I am still reading but somehow not getting a chance to talk about what I'm reading! Busy, busy days recently ... a brief holiday, then work to catch up on, presentations to plan, proposals to write, a little 40th birthday celebrating, and Guilder to blame for it!

But soon -- very soon -- I will be posting some reviews of some great books. Poetry, novels from Russia to France to Canada (of course), a memoir of sorts, and lots more. Until then, I'll just be...reading :)

Faithful Ruslan

Faithful Ruslan / Georgi Vladimov; translated and with an introduction by Michael Glenny.
Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, c2011.
224 p.

I love this new series (The Neversink Library) put out by Melville House. The name of the series comes from a quote from a Melville book which I copied out into my own commonplace book many years ago now, because I found it so perfect. It reads:

I was by no means the only reader of books on board the Neversink. Several other sailors were diligent readers, though their studies did not lie in the way of belles-lettres. Their favourite authors were such as you may find at the
book- stalls around Fulton Market; they were slightly physiological in their nature. My book experiences on board of the frigate proved an example of a fact which every book-lover must have experienced before me, namely, that though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much.

—Herman Melville, White Jacket

This series has wonderful covers: solid coloured with some kind of silhouette relevant to the story. I love the simplicity and the power. I've read a few in the series so far and have enjoyed them; I'm grateful for Melville's intent, which is to republish novellas that have been overlooked, forgotten, underappreciated.

Now -- on to this specific title. Faithful Ruslan is about a dog: Ruslan, a guard dog at a Siberian prison camp. He is dutiful and faithful, almost to the point of fanaticism. One of the other dogs, the recognized leader, is more pragmatic and thinks Ruslan is taking things a bit too far in his devotion to The Masters.

We begin on the day that the camp is being disbanded and all the prisoners are released. The soldiers are supposed to kill all the dogs; Ruslan's master can't do it, however, and releases him outside the camp. Ruslan, and the other former camp dogs, end up in the nearest settlement, a place they know from the times they guarded the prisoners arriving via train as they marched to the camp. The dogs all find a place for themselves somehow. Ruslan finds a place to live, with a former prisoner, who thinks that Ruslan is now a kind of household pet. Ruslan knows better -- he is still faithfully guarding this prisoner until the time comes to return to the camps.

The story is told from Ruslan's perspective, and reveals the dog training methods that have made him into the perfect guard dog. From a human perspective we'd call it brainwashing. There are really no sympathetic humans in Ruslan's life, except for the original dog trainer at the camp who states that he comes from a long line of trainers. His methods are humane; the dogs love him. But when his favourite dog is killed, he goes mad, moving into the kennels and barking so that the dogs understand him -- he's preaching rebellion against the masters.

That was an emotional high of the book, along with the ending. I couldn't help tearing up at the end; it was violent, sad, full of regret and of pathos. It's a deceptively simple narrative style which reveals complex mental and social entanglements. It's at the same time the "Among the greatest animal stories ever written..." (richard adams) and an allegory for the dissolution of Soviet Russia. It reveals the manner in which those twisted by Stalin's regime -- animals and prisoners alike -- were simply left to do the best they could with no acknowledgement of their experiences.

It's a powerful read about loyalty, betrayal, and the darkness in human nature. If you want to read something about the Stalinist era, try this brief novella; it provides a larger impact than you might expect from such a brief tale.

Anna's Shadow

Anna's Shadow / David Manicom
Montréal: Véhicule Press, c2009.
260 p.

Moving from 2007 North America to 1990's Moscow, this story follows the life of Adrian Wells, minor Canadian diplomat. In the days after the breakdown of the Soviet Union, he meets particle physicist Anna Mikataev, who has figured out how to bend light. She's now the centre of interest for Soviets and NATO alike, and is being held in a small room in the basement of the Canadian Embassy in Moscow (or as they like to call it, she's "protected" by the Embassy).

Adrian has to interview her and record everything, and their relationship deepens as he spends countless hours listening to her. He discovers a link between Anna and a Russian businessman who lives in Montreal but has returned to Russia recently. And he finds out the dark secrets of Anna's past.

Anna is going stircrazy with being confined and convinces Adrian to help her secretly escape, long enough to confront her Russian businessman. Adrian's naivety allows him to assist her, and things -- of course -- go terribly wrong.

This is a brief plot summary of a thriller featuring Cold War diplomats and scientists -- but this book is so much more. It doesn't depend on fast movement or conspiracy to move the book along, rather it moves slowly, following the characters. It has a sense of tired, world-weary corruption and acknowledges the allowances governments and their organizations make for one another, over the interests of the individual.

The story includes love, betrayal, loss of innocence, questions of intellectual vs. commercial research, and of course, some physics. Anna is a prickly, stubborn, and marvellously individual character, who gets involved with things out of her usual reach -- and has her life altered irrevocably. Adrian's role changes him as well, and leads to the events of 2007... the arrival of CSIS agents at his country home near Ottawa, to question him about events in Moscow nearly 20 years before.

I enjoyed this book. The main characters were well drawn, and I found their moral struggles absolutely absorbing. The atmosphere is smoky and grey, whether in the basement of the dingy Embassy where Anna lives for months, or on the streets of a uncertain and demoralized Moscow. In the scenes with Anna in Siberia, at her research institute, the town comes to life through the descriptions of the public spaces -- two restaurants in particular stand out for their realistic menus and decor, which show the differences in social strata among the poor and the newly rich. Only at the beginning, as Adrian works outside at his Canadian home in 2007, is there a sense of sunshine and of life progressing naturally.

It's a slow moving story but well worth it for fans of Russian-set stories, or those who find diplomatic intrigue of interest. The only thing I would have liked to see added to it was a little more physics. Although Anna's research was considered to be dangerous because of its military applications, we didn't find out enough about it for my taste. But then I love to read about physics ;) I'm glad I discovered this story; I'm still thinking about Anna. Great character.

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Véhicule Press

Véhicule Press began in 1973 on the premises of Véhicule Art Inc., one of Canada's first artist-run galleries. The large space occupied by both the gallery and the press at 61 Ste-Catherine St. West was once the Café Montmarte--the renowned jazz club of the 1930s. In spring 1981, Simon Dardick (who had joined the press during the summer, 1973) and Nancy Marrelli continued Véhicule Press from Roy Street East, not far from The Main (just around the corner from where the poet Emile Nelligan lived) in the Plateau area of Montreal. Since 1973 Véhicule Press has published award-winning poetry, fiction, essays, translations, and social history.

Saramago's Cain

Cain / José Saramago; translated by Margaret Jull Costa.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, c2011.
176 p.

This is the last posthumous work by Saramago -- I recently read his memoir, translated after his death; it was very Saramago, and I enjoyed it very much.

This novel is quite different. He is very sharp with his religious opinions in this one, so much so that I found it almost a screed rather than a novel. The basic story follows the character of Cain as he is cast out for killing his brother Abel, and then moves throughout time to become a character in many other well-known moments in the biblical story -- such as when Abraham is about to sacrifice Isaac, and it is Cain who saves him. Episodes like this occur in most of the places that Cain finds himself, and he complains to and about a God who is inconsistent, vainglorious, and demanding. Cain is a strong-minded individual who has a strong sense of himself and his place in the world. He is grounded in the here and now, and is a sexual being as well as a physical labourer. His concern is for this world, not in following the dictates of a capricious Lord. Through his strength of mind and his long association with The Lord, they begin to develop a bit of a relationship that goes beyond a minion worshipping his betters.

It didn't grab me the way some of his others works have. But it was interesting to read, and to figure out where and who Cain was going to encounter next. As someone who is intimately familiar with bible stories, thanks to my youth, I was intrigued by the skewed vision of the stories I've read; a different perspective changes things, certainly. But I also felt that Cain was a rather one-sided figure, a puppet for Saramago's own strong views on religion and culture. Rather than a story that unfolded organically, it was carefully orchestrated to provide examples of what Saramago wanted to say. And while he is certainly entitled to his opinions, and entitled to write a parable of sorts which illuminates them, it didn't make for a deeply engaging novel. It didn't have that kind of world-weary sympathy for the characters which I have enjoyed in his other works, even those which express similar themes. The writing style he is known for is in full flight though, and I loved it as much as ever.

The ending was a bit discombobulating. I'm not sure yet what to make of it. But it's a book full of vim and vigour -- it would make a fabulous book club selection as there are sure to be strong opinions on both sides amongst readers. I'd love to discuss this one myself, as there are moments where I would like to ask WTF? and then other moments which I found both clever and incisive. It exhibits Saramago's intellect wrestling with tradition and is worth reading for the ideas he raises, even if you don't agree with all of them yourself. I found it more of an intellectual exercise than an emotionally satisfying novel though. If you're a Saramago fan or someone who likes to imagine alternate lives for neglected characters in well known stories you will probably want to read this one.