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Antigonish Review
# 124
| Daniel A. Boland
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Home and Away by Ian Wiseman
(Lawrencetown Beach: Pottersfield Press, 1999) Paperbound, 79 pp.,
$12.95.
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The concept of home is one that naturally evokes a complex network of
associations and feelings, and has served as soulful inspiration for a
host of disparate artists. Many writers, especially, have attested to
the heightened awareness and sense of individuation that leaving home
tends to provide. Paradoxically, it is this very distance that often illuminates
the rich meaning of the past and its bearing on an individual's interior
landscape.
In this impressive first poetry volume, Ian Wiseman, who has worked
as a journalist and television producer for CBC, draws upon his memories
of a rural Newfoundland upbringing, and goes on to explore his varied
life experience elsewhere. The structure that Wiseman has chosen for his
book is, as one might expect, chronological. He opens with " The
Bay" - a series of poems that vividly describe the Newfoundland of
his youth. He then proceeds to examine his early adulthood in "The
City", and finally his later life experience outside of the province
in the "Away" section.
Wiseman's strength is sharp, evocative imagery rather than any sustained
sense of emotional intensity. This is most apparent in the "Bay"
section where - in the best poems - the writing transcends the ordinary
subject matter and provides glimpses of ineffable mysteries. This comes
through beautifully in "New Snow" (a personal favourite of mine),
a lovely, simple poem that provides a fresh sense of the momentary liberties
allowed to living beings:
maddened by freedom
her snout tossing the snow
the dog races near the trees
into the meadow I tramp
returning carefully, backwards
overprinting each footstep
Jacob lies on his back
gingerly crafting arcs
outlining a perfect angel
white patterns on a white field
already disappearing
as the snow continues to spiral
too dark to see the dog now
can't read what we have written
unaware that we are mortal.
"Chimney Fire" is another example of Wiseman at his best.
The taut imagery of the poem bestows a sense of life and meaning upon
the commonplace and the inanimate:
We burn the stack of spruce and fir
that leans against the shed, split tinder,
dry enough to lift with fingertips
but streaked with hardened myrrh and gum.
Softwood leaves a stringy carbon rosin
welded to the mortar in the flue,
to rough surfaces in the chimney pot,
brittle when cold, sparkling with diamonds.
One night this sooty distillate erupts,
a terrible sucking roar, the masonry cracking,
a luminous blue gas loose in the attic
creeping on the brick.
In "The City" section, Wiseman contemplates another reality
with its attendant light and shadows. These poems are characterized by
a darker, more confessional tone, and at times they have real impact as
in "Major events" which describes some of the more horrible
things that the author witnessed during his career as a journalist.
"White Fleet" also works very well with its stark description
of the docks at night. Here discordant images are celebrated and imbued
with their own vital power, as in the lines:
A cold truth, a night truth, stirs on the docks -
the air blows acrid, keen, raw.
We stop kicking the empty can,
quicken our steps
and look for a place to urinate.
There is a good sense of poolhall atmosphere conjured up in "East
End Club" which provides some earthy, believable portraits of urban
nightlife. This setting is again featured in "St. Clare's Mercy Hospital
" a rather grim poem which provides an interesting situational juxtaposition
of the city with a character from Wiseman's rural past. The poet's contrast
of the dying Hogan with a game of pool is very effective.
Some of the pieces in the final section, however, are noticeably less
rich. "The Missile", for instance, fails to hit the mark. The
poet's whimsical consideration of a crow is a clever idea that simply
does not gel, limping to a weak, annoyingly smug conclusion:
He takes what he can get from the frozen street -
today it's road salt.
As hard as I can I throw my apple core.
(Poets know crows.)
This poem, and a few of the author's other brief forays into humour,
suggest that this is a style of writing he should probably avoid.
The best poem in the final section is "January Night" which
contains a number of sharp auditory images which capture the harshness
of bitter cold, evident in such lines as
Sleep is lost
to the peal and clap
of aluminum siding
contracting in the cold,
arid two-by-sixes
detonating, twisting
back into their natural
arboreal forms
As in "Chimney Fire", one is struck by the poet's sensitive
treatment of the image of nature as a kind of revenant shape-shifter.
Here natural elements - carefully fashioned and structured by human hands
- transform themselves back into a liberated state. This is good poetry.
It would seem that Wiseman, at his strongest, is primarily a poet who
lets the imagery breathe on its own - conjuring its own tones, flavours,
and connotations; it is only when an editorial ego intrudes that the poems
lose some of their impact. Overall, however, this is a highly-promising
first volume containing a number of first-rate pieces, and I very much
look forward to seeing more from this writer in the future.
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