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Issue # 126
| Rob
Mclennan
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CREDO
by Carmine Starnino |
The Hugh MacLennan Poetry Series, McGill Queen's University Press, 2000.
ISBN# 0-7735-1907-6, 64 pages. $16.95.
A Dream of Sulphur by Aurian Haller. The Hugh MacLennan Poetry
Series, McGill Queen's University Press, 2000. ISBN# 0-7735-1908-4, 100
pages. $16.95.
As a reviewer and essayist, Carmine Starnino opens himself up far too
easily to abuse concerning his poetry, a target again through his second
collection, CREDO. I haven't yet decided if his writing is strong
enough to support the kinds of arguments he makes about other people's
work. I'd lean towards not. That being said, I'll try to talk about CREDO
for what it is: a book of poems by a competent young Montreal poet, never
lacking in confidence, on the heels of his first, The New World
(1997, Vehicule Press).
Starnino is an obvious admirer of Michael Harris & his group (David Solway,
Eric Ormsby, et al), much the same way Seymour Mayne, early on, placed
himself in the shadow of Irving Layton, suggestions that influence can
sometimes overwhelm. It will be interesting to see what Starnino accomplishes,
especially now, after recently being named replacement to Harris as editor
of Vehicule Press' Signal Editions poetry series.
Starnino writes of family and small devotions, threads of belief, spiritual
and otherwise - "men who wear caps are men who talk weather. / Mio
cappeluccio, my father called his, and used his first, // one summer dusk,
to carry six yellow pears to woo my mother." (p. 13, "Short
Essay on the Tweed Cap"), the simple evocative beauty of the poem
making up for the high-seriousness of the title. There are some beautiful
poems in this collection, such as "1955" (p. 20), "Saints"
(p. 7), and "Saints, Again" (p. 8). In "Saints", for
example, he calls for a return to real wonders, of what the saints were
said to have achieved. "The cherry tree's / brief, begrudging miracle
of white blossoms / bores me." he writes, ending with "Give
me / the withered tree that promptly burst into leaf / when the crowd
pushed St. Zenobius against it." (p. 7).
There is obviously a strong storytelling tradition in Starnino's background,
rich with stories of immigration & original Italy that parts of me want
more of, but something else, too. This is what Starnino seems best and
most comfortable at, when he taps into these stories, but there is always
the risk of over-telling, so much that the individual pieces blur their
unique qualities. Also, many of these, especially parts of the second
section, building up to the last poem, "The Immigrants" (p.
28), feel like an extension of The New World, his first book, as
though he hadn't mined all he needed to in previous work, and really adding
nothing new to the discoveries. Starnino needs to do more than just write
poems about family history. Layton used to be accused by some of writing
the same poem his whole career, and it would be a waste for Starnino to
stick to the same song. I'm sure he'd rather keep the implications and
ironies aside, considering he did win the Irving Layton Award for Poetry
in 1991.
What I find most interesting about CREDO, and conversely, most
disappointing, is the fourth section, the long poem "Cornage,"
a salvage-type operation where he works to extend the range of his writing.
Both stylistically and through content, many things are achieved by Starnino,
in a sixteen part piece on the changes in the English Language from medieval
times. Through it, Starnino manages an ordinary series of sonnet-sized
bits with some great lines. "There are accidents / so serendipitous
it's nearly impossible to stand / out of their way." (p. 54).
When Starnino isn't playing clever for the camera ("waes hail, dear
reader! They call this sillyebubbe. / Its frothiness discovered by surprising
some cider / with a spray of milk." p. 54), there are some rather
worthwhile parts to the poem, and interesting too, because he does manage
to reach outside. Despite this, the attempt still isn't enough to hold
the series together, of a highly structured form of random bits that seem
to go nowhere.
CREDO is a wildly uneven book, by a poet I would have expected
better from. In the collection, about every fourth poem is a very good
poem, and admittedly, Starnino has always been good at what he's good
at. But still. Critic, heal thyself.
The most attractive book in the Hugh MacLennan poetry series, of nearly
a dozen so far, has to be Aurian Haller's A Dream of Sulphur. First
poetry collections are always an exciting risk, especially knowing nothing
of the author's work previously. Haller's energy is quiet, slow and grounded
in the real; a Group of Seven geography with a west coast slant - "...an
urban island / in the thick of wheat // make the prairies up like a /
postcard makes a holiday - / pinhole-view every thousand miles."
(p. 62, "EAST").
It's interesting to see the stylistic frame of the series shift a bit
westward, in less formalistic strides (despite building globalization,
the bi-polarization of east-west Canadian formalism still exists) than
others, such as Starnino, or Rachel Rose. I never would have imagined,
previously, a George Bowering quote in a McGill-Queen's book, and I'm
always a sucker for a GB quote.
Haller's poems, divided into five thematic sections, write as small poetic
stories, a recording of events - "That was the summer people were
prone to melancholy / as a hill settling into its slope. Mornings lasted
until sunset and / even journalists wrote poems in praise of islands"
(p. 57, "ISLAND ELEGY") These are poems on movement and travel,
a map stretched far and wide, from west coast mountains to Montreal, the
prairies to San Francisco. In quiet degrees of excess, these poems are
very aware yet unaware of themselves - "Every mark on the body has
its / corresponding event. As if you were being / written on by things
that touched you." (p. 76, "MIRAGE").
Sometimes, though, Haller uses more than he needs to speak, wanting not
every moment spelled out. Also, parts of the layout are odd, with the
occasional line a shade smaller than others, just minor enough to notice,
and be off-putting, as well as the American spelling of the title "PERIMETER"
(p. 3).
The poems in A Dream of Sulphur are clean, clear and deliberate,
and hit full on the mark in lines that ease into themselves, such as the
multi-layered "LATE LUNCH" (pp. 69-70) - "calling up with
your hands / what the heart shelved / short years after to make room for
/ dried sprigs from this fall's walk / in the endowment lands." (p.
69).
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