5. Michael
Boughn, Great Canadian Poems for the Aged, Vol. 1
2012, BookThug, Toronto ON
$20,
978-1-927040-37-9, 81 pages
reviewed by rob mclennan
You can’t get
much farther from snow
bound retreats into mountains, moose
and Mounties than where walking into endless
walking leads you. Walking while standing still
is another trick associated
with irresponsible identity violations. This
indicates a new range of mountains
walking away from the world making
a figure displacing her into a limited
number of elements. (“Walking Woman”)
Toronto writer,
editor and critic Michael Boughn has been skimming
just under the radar now for some time, far less known than perhaps he should
be, for his editorial work with Victor Coleman, co-editing, The H.D. Book by Robert Duncan (The
University of California Press, 2010), as well as his own individual works,
that include the poetry collections Iterations
of the Diagonal (Shuffaloff, 1995), Dislocations in Crystal (Coach House
Books, 2003), the Governor General’s Award-shortlisted 22 Skidoo / SubTractions (BookThug, 2009), and now, Great Canadian Poems for the Aged, Vol. 1 (BookThug,
2012). Great Canadian Poems for the Aged,
Vol. 1 is a collection of twenty poems that plays with “the fundamental
elements of the Canadian struggle for identity,” composing tongue-in-cheek
poems on what was considered a deeply-held (predominantly late 19th and
early 20th century) Canadianism, one that
feels nearly antiquated now, more than a century later. Reading, in part, as an
in-joke for a particular generation of Canadian readers (the “aged” in the
title, one presumes), might younger readers even comprehend Boughn’s
references to Johnny Canuck, “The Great White North,” Wyndham Lewis, Michael
Snow’s “Walking Woman,” Murray McLaughlin, the “Ladies and Escorts” door on
ancient taverns, Foster Hewitt, or the Mad Trapper? Might younger readers even
know that Canada Day was, from its origins on July 1, 1867 until July 1, 1982,
known as “Dominion Day”? As he writes to open the poem with the same name:
O
Canada who’s on top is your
anthem of immaculate plenitude, your endless
refrain. No domicile is complete without
it, no tempest truly fine. Who’s on top
resists metaphorical resolutions and leafy
insistence on benevolent and scalable
magnitudes as long as no answer
dominates.
A self-aware
collection of references, Boughn uses these bits of
information as jumping-off points, utilizing fragments once so strong in the
label of “Canadian identity” that have fallen by the wayside, or simply become
outdated, irrelevant or simply forgotten. Utilized as triggers, he composes
thick and playfully-dense, fully compact language poems relaying masses of
information, making the play itself the purpose and the point. In an energized
language, Boughn plays with “Doukhobor
Butts,” “Foster Hewitt goes to heaven,” “Stubbies,”
“Wyndham Lewis goes to Wawa,” and “Johnny Canuck and Miss Canada go to
Wonderland,” the first sections of which read:
If
it was as simple as the Queen
on a stamp the glaciers would be
just an embellished disclaimer.
The
other side of the mountains
however, exclaim later plenitudes
till glacial restitution circulates
freely among elk herds by the side
of a road that never gets there
because toward ends it.
Born in Ottawa,
Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan
currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of
poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove
Poetry Award in 2010, and was longlisted for the CBC
Poetry Prize in 2012. His most recent titles are the poetry collections Songs
for little sleep, (Obvious Epiphanies, 2012) and grief notes: (BlazeVOX [books], 2012), and a second novel, missing
persons (2009). The Uncertainty
Principle: stories, is scheduled to appear in spring 2014. An editor and
publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere
Books, The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of
poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds)
and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com).
He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the
University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and
other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com