ELEGY FOR EIGHT BELLES
euthanized after running the 134th Kentucky Derby
May’s early evening, the spectator sun romps
all round as it cheers the victor’s
muscles having streaked by the end-line;
_____like a lunatic pours
heat and champagne into the upturned glasses of us.
The winner winding down the scorched
dirt track, delicate hooves a-tremble
the body drips, sleeked in some kind of
_____ejaculate, hardly able
to contain the last two minutes in his pounding mind.
So for a moment the sun beats him silly,
somewhere disappears as we shatter,
erupt in a million shards of grief:
_____a filly on her side batters
air, gallops with two fractured fore ankles, hardly able
to contain the last two furlongs in her mind,
compelling wind to brush her face
as all about wrap the veterinaries who
_____form a bandage laced
with troubled brains and a needle-tip’s quiet finality.
From the corner of my eye your tears
as though you hear those eight bells that toll
one shift’s end, one creature’s instinct
_____quelled in a limp lull
borne from the grounds of a downcast Churchhill Downs
where colt and filly stirred the same earth
heaved chests, made the air magnificent.
That wild stomping, shudder of body
_____sleek, dripping in a sun
that shouts its drunkenness, mad with favour, with praise.
___
___
Back to Poems
Mole (2009, Anansi)
Mole
Patrick Warner
Anansi 2009
ISBN: 978-0-88784-821-6
Some poets have the ability to take the mundane or often uninteresting and through a rebranding in depth and metaphor present to the reader something fresh and attention-grabbing. Patrick Warner has just this talent and throughout his new collection, Mole, creates an assortment of vignettes that draw on everyday happenings.
Many of the poems in Mole are brief meditations on discussions, places, or tasks that take the reader deeper into the mind of the poet, but also father into the impact these things can have on the person involved. One such case is the poem “Picket”, in which the speaker recounts work scraping and painting a fence. This is tedious and repetitive, but the longer the task takes the greater the intrinsic reward. Warner refers to a scraper as “long handled…with cupboard-door grip, / its buttoned-down blade like a hieroglyph.” Later he uses terms such as “rote”, “bubble jet’s ink” and “actor on stage” to compare painting a fence to an act of creation, in particular that of knowledge, writing or the arts in general. To an extent, there is rote learning and study, but these later give way or provide a basis to higher learning that comes through in an artist’s work, whether it is on paper or the stage.
The settings chosen for poems throughout the book highlight the scope and variation of the writing. At times these places are local or personal in nature (around a mother’s sewing machine, a small town with which the speaker is intimately acquainted); at other times there is an element of labour involved (painting a fence, conducting research in the archives of Minneapolis); at others still a social quality, a sense of relaxation (a southern sun-bathed beach, a Japanese restaurant hosting social events). This mixing of place and situation allows Warner much creative leeway when exploring the intense personal and reflective effects these varying occurrences can spark within us. In this endeavor the poet does not disappoint.
Through a combination of place, task and a mind occupied with focusing on similarities between the personal, social and educational, Warner leads the reader through his own backyard on an enlightening tour of what is at once known but strange, delving into experience and the sense made of them.
Just found out that Rhythm Poetry Magazine has posted it’s latest issue which includes three poems by yours truly. Be sure to drop over and check it out. There are some other great poems from an excellent list of contributors as well.
Things have been slow lately. I’ve been doing some last minute editing of the manuscript since the final version is due to the publisher by the 15th. That’s pretty much done. I wanted to print and bind a final version for myself to have and so did that with the help of my lovely librarian wife.
Other than this I have been trying to catch up on some reading. I’ve picked up a number of titles recently that I want to read, including the following:
- James Langer, Gun Dogs (Anansi, 2009)
- Patrick Warner, Mole (Anansi, 2009)
- A. F. Moritz, The Sentinel (Anansi, 2008)
- Sachiko Murakami, The Invisibility Exhibit (Talon, 2008)
I’ve read Gun Dogs and The Invisibility Exhibit already and will get to the others once I finish Karen Solie’s Pigeon, which is, so far, an incredible book. Langer’s book is excellent as well. It’s once of the first times I’ve read poems inspired by places I know intimately. Even an event in the book concerning a person being run down by a car happened in an adjacent community about 15 minutes from the place where I grew up (I also know the person involved). I’m not used to being this acquainted with subject and it really took me offguard and I was able to experience this and other sections of the book in a wonderful way.
I’m developing quite a back log of other books I want to read as well and hope the summer will provide the reading time I so desperately want.
