Here in There
Angela
Carr. BookThug Publishing, $20 paperback (96p) ISBN 978-1-77166-032-7
I gave my attention to the pause. I gave
my attention to the frozen Skype image. I gave my attention to waiting. We were
on hold. We could see but not touch and yet touch was composing us. We were
broken only where skin could not answer. Iris’ skin is ornamented with tattooed
threads, mingling with each other in scrolls and coils, and alternating with
straight lines. An image is truly raw and visible, fibres and sinews, strips
and straps. The sense of beauty merges with and is consumed by the sense of
reminiscence. Iris shuts down her computer. Iris stands up. Iris stretches her
neck, shoulders, back. Iris shakes the cramps from her elbows, wrists. Iris
releases, recollects.
Poet
and translator Angela Carr’s third trade poetry collection is Here in There, following her collections
Ropewalk (Montreal QC: Snare Books,
2006) and The Rose Concordance
(BookThug, 2009). Constructed in five sections of short, untitled prose poems, Here in There gives the appearance of
being a single, extended suite that even skims up against the structure of an abstract
novella constructed out of self-contained fragments. Predominantly constructed
out of an accumulation of prose poems, Carr’s structural focus appears to be entirely
upon the sentence, as she crafts lines that follow lines that build upon other
lines to forward, push and wash over like water, deep into a prose that swims
between abstracts and the concrete. As she writes in an early part of the
collection: “I was directed away from the Everywhere Beautiful. I turned off my
computer. I stood up. I stretched. I entered the kitchen. I gave my attention
to the refrigerator. I sought its answers. I sought the composition of
preservation in the cramped space of provisions.” The fourth section, “Other
Signs,” is particularly interesting for the sake of the shift in tone and
shape, moving from the prose poem to a series of individual sentences. The
entire fourth and fifth sections feel structured as asides from the narrative
of the first three sections, as the fourth opens an almost Greek chorus-like
conversation on the idea of naming. It suggests a number of questions,
including: just who is Iris, and what exactly is in a name?
A name is any number of cities. Wind
drives its enactment.
A name is any number of exits.
Ornamental letters are created from rows
of flat stitching.
The maximum strength of any geometric
pattern depends on a balance of tension vectors.
Then I may cease to address you by name.
The
fifth and final section closes as many narrative threads as it opens, allowing
the space for conversation about the citizen, the possibility of the occasional
poem, and the impossibility of full closure. Here in There is less a poetry collection than a fragmented
prose-work, structured around a narrator that speaks of and around the
character Iris as distraction, perhaps, away from an exploration of being and
narrative, and how the two can weave into and away from each other within the
space of a text. As she writes in a section close to the middle of the book:
The library ceiling was aqua and gold.
Iris waited for a rare book to be brought out from a closed stack. Iris gave
her attention to surprising 19th-century colour prints. Iris gave
her attention to symmetry. Symmetry was a factor of excessive influence, a flat
weaving of desire. Symmetry bides its time for a perfect illusion. Yet the act
of waiting has no parallel: it is an instance of asymmetry. Iris gave her
attention to the singularity of a unique action. A bias is a systematic
distortion in the social fabric. Ambition is a determination, an upward
measure. Iris gave her attention to the century. Let’s compile an index of its
errors. Iris gave her attention to suppleness. Not truth but the fact of
weather without borders. Here, pages were cracking. Water creaked through the
pipes in the building. There were 156 units. Every amatory relation contained
within the urban ambit both vast and miniscule. Iris and I were the creation of
parts of an amorous whole or a composite beast that could express nothing more
frightening than love’s unrelenting desire for beauty. Whether in a symmetry of
agreement or in symmetry of judgment, we were blushing.
Purchase
Here in There HERE.
Reviewer
bio: Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious
capital city, rob mclennan
currently lives in Ottawa. The author of nearly thirty 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 include notes
and dispatches: essays (Insomniac press, 2014) and The Uncertainty
Principle: stories, (Chaudiere Books, 2014). He regularly posts reviews,
essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com
