Speaking of Quill and Quire ...

... my review of D.D. Miller's debut short story collection David Foster Wallace Ruined My Suicide is also now up on the Q&Q website. While I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as the Shepard novel I posted about yesterday, I still thought there were a number of really solid short stories in Miller's collection. This book was part of the debut launch of titles for Wolsak and Wynn's new imprint Buckrider Books, and I have a couple of other titles from that same debut on the nightstand that I'm hoping to review eventually here on the blog. So stay tuned for that!

M.

My Quill and Quire review of When Is a Man, by Aaron Shepard ...

... is now online at Q&Q's website. I really can't recommend this novel enough to readers who really dig hyper-realistic yet lyrical fiction. This was another example of a novel with a setting I'm not overly interested in (the wilds of nature) and yet still managed to absolutely enthrall me. It's also quite rare to see a writer take on the softer (no pun intended) aspects of thwarted masculinity, and Shepard handles his subject matter both boldly and bravely. Definitely a writer to watch.

M.

Acceptance: FreeFall magazine

So I'm pleased to announce that FreeFall magazine, out of Calgary, has accepted my poem "Lusus Naturae" for its upcoming fall issue. This will be my second appearance in the pages of FreeFall, as I placed second in the magazine's annual poetry contest back in 2011. (You can even hear audio of me reading the poem here).

FreeFall is a feisty little journal that has been around for years. It has published a number of my compadres in the literary salt mines, including Zach Wells, Ron Schafrick, J.J. Steinfeld, and, of course, my wife Rebecca, and I am very stoked to be back in its pages. I'll do a follow up post once the issue has been published.

M.

Review: Career Limiting Moves: Interviews, Rejoinders, Essays, Reviews, by Zachariah Wells

Zach Wells is incredibly good at Scrabble, or whatever the Facebook version of it is called these days. Anyone who has attempted a game against Zach (and I will refer to him here by his first name, as I have – full disclosure – known him for nearly 20 years and consider him a friend) is well aware that he plays to win and has a preternatural ability to score high on virtually every play. Like any truly good Scrabble player, Zach probably knows that it’s not the depth of your vocabulary or the letters on your slate that ultimately win you matches. It really comes down to knowing how to place your words strategically, to read the board and use those coloured tiles better than your opponents do.

So it’s probably no accident that the cover of his collected reviews and essays, Career Limiting Moves (a book that shares its name with his well-known blog), is laid out to resemble a Scrabble board. It’s as fitting a metaphor as any for Zach’s 10 years as one of Canada’s most vocal and pugnacious critics of poetry. While he is also the author of two well-regarded trade collections of his own verse, as well as chapbooks and other texts, he is probably best known for his sharp, incisive and oft-excoriating reviews and critical essays. Career Limiting Moves collects the best of these, and reveals a writer adept at setting words down with incredible precision and maximum impact.

As with Scrabble, it’s often possible in an essay to score a lot with relatively little. I was reminded of this in Zach’s piece “Soaked in a Heart of Sapphire, Delicate As an Origami Bird,” in which he takes the piss out of poetry award citations. At one point in the essay, he uses two words to describe the genre of purple, empty-calorie prose that often compromises these citations: “intrinsic mediocrity.” Just two words, and yet there is so much conveyed there, so much effect delivered on the page. He goes on to dissect the 2010 Gerald Lampert Award’s citation for Marcus McCann’s shortlisted poetry collection Soft Where, putting on an absolute clinic in just how a piece of writing can achieve what he calls “incredibad."

I must confess that I had already read most of what’s included in this essay collection, having subscribed to Zach’s blog for years and seen these pieces promoted there when they were first published in magazines and journals. Still, many of them reward multiple visits. I think his takedown of Jan Zwicky’s asinine essay about negative reviewing is a masterpiece, and provides a necessary framework to describe the mindset that continues to keep Canada’s literature in a protracted adolescence. Equally accomplished is Zach’s retort to Andre Alexis’ incoherent essay “The Long Decline,” published in The Walrus, in which Alexis bemoans the state of reviewing in Canada and places the blame (at least for part of the essay, before contradicting himself) on the shoulders of CanLit’s original shit-disturber, John Metcalf. Zach’s reply is written in the form of a rejection letter to Alexis, and is, like the Zwicky critique before it, a wonderfully crafted shredding of a flawed and small-spirited argument.    

Yet, one should not presume that Career Limiting Moves is limited to snark. Indeed, the very best essay in this book is a piece called “Small is Powerful,” a glowing review of poet Souvankham Thammavongsa’s collection Found. Here, Zach puts on a tour de force of critical writing – combining biography, close reading and interview quotation to create not only a panoramic view into Thammavongsa’s art, but to forge a work of art in his own right. Anyone who dismisses Zach’s criticism as brutish needs to read this essay. Thammavonga’s minimalist verse possesses incredible power, succinct emotional arcs, and a vitality rarely seen in Canadian poetry. One gets the sense that Zach was deeply moved by its beauty, maybe even devastated by it, and could not wait to tell the rest of us about this singularly talented poet who may very well hold the mark of genius.

Not everything quite worked for me in Career Limiting Moves. I felt Zach’s critique of Anne Simpson’s Loop was a bit short for something so negative and needed more substantiation to back up his claims. And I remember his essay on the works of Don McKay to be a bit fairer when I first read it on poetryreview.ca. (I can’t tell if the essay changed before it was collected here, or if I have.) But still. There is a great deliberation and organization to these essays. Even the included interviews with Zach, in which he discusses some of his own poetics, fit very well with the rest of the book. He makes some interesting statements, for example, about man’s place in nature as a part of nature, which echoes across more than one of the essays included in the collection.

Ultimately, I think Zach will continue to be a controversial figure in Canadian criticism, if for no other reason than he holds up the dual torches of cogency and honest appraisal, which makes him a target for those who value neither. Zach’s largest critics tend to be those who not only fail to match his chops on the great Scrabble board of book reviewing, but who have a vested interest in incoherent criticism itself. Indeed, some have built entire careers around it. But for the rest of us, a book like Career Limiting Moves reminds us about the strengths – and the dangers – of standing behind one’s opinions. Of being honest. Of being clear. And of loving a good fight.

Interview with Canadian Writers Abroad

A picture of some of my students in Korea, taken about 10 years ago

So this Q&A with me is up at the Canadian Writers Abroad website, discussing the genesis of Sad Peninsula, the expat life in Korea, and other topics. Here's a little snippet:
"I think it’s really important to make the point that when you write, you’re part of a larger picture. Your work fits in to not just your region’s literature or your country’s literature but really the literature of the world. I think living abroad makes you realize that there is a whole world out there that your work can be a part of. And you shouldn’t be afraid to branch out and allow your vision to be expanded by what you are seeing out there." Read the full interview here.

Review: This Location of Unknown Possibilities, by Brett Josef Grubisic

It’s nice to know I’ll be in good hands. As you may recall, back in November I had a short story collection accepted by Now or Never Publishing of Vancouver for release next year. While I wait for the launch date, I took the opportunity to read one of the press’s latest releases, Brett Josef Grubisic’s second novel, This Location of Unknown Possibilities. I’d seen Grubisic’s name around – mostly doing the occasional weekend book review for The National Post – but I’m happy to report that his true métier is clearly novel-writing. NoN has once again shown, ahem, impeccable taste by publishing this bold, bawdy, and downright hilarious sophomore effort.

This Location flips between the narrative threads of its two main characters: university professor Marta Spëk, an expert in the life of Lady Hester Stanhope (1776-1839), who gets hired as a consultant by a film studio that has decided – at least initially – to do a biopic of Lady Stanhope; and Jake Nugent, the film’s brash, priapic producer, who is about to give staid Marta a crash course in the topsy-turvy, lunatic world of commercial entertainment. Over the course of the story, the film’s script changes dramatically several times (it ends up as a cheesy sci-fi flick rather than an august historical movie), and both Marta and Jake find themselves on a quest for romance – only not with each other. Marta soon strikes up a relationship with an on-set dogsbody named Chaz while Jake sets out across the countryside on the hunt for anonymous bisexual encounters.

Grubisic shows a skilled hand at balancing these two characters’ threads, with lots of telling detail from both Marta and Jake’s worlds. We get a pitch-perfect portrait of the academic ladder that Marta half-heartedly climbs (Grubisic himself is a professor at a university in British Columbia), as well as Jake’s shallow, materialistic worldview that comes tinged with a desperate need for human connection.

What’s interesting, though, is that the various machinations of the plot – an injury on the set, the impromptu hiring of a waitress as the new star, the wrap-party shenanigans – are almost immaterial to the enjoyment of this novel. The real star here is the novelistic voice that Grubisic has created, so assured and observant and full of erudite wit. This Location contains a richness of language that immediately establishes a trust with the reader: no matter the twists and turns of its off-the-chain plot, you’re happy to follow them wherever they leads you.

Indeed, the comedy here is reminiscent of vintage Kingsley Amis or Evelyn Waugh, and This Location establishes Grubisic as a daring new satirist in the CanLit fold. I’m excited to be myself publishing a book with Now or Never, and honoured to be included among such talented company.

Review: More to Keep Us Warm, by Jacob Scheier

Religion, faith and observance loom large over More to Keep Us Warm, Jacob Scheier’s debut collection of  poetry which won the Governor General’s Award for poetry in 2008 (under, it can be noted, a stiff wind of controversy: two of the judges were mentioned on Scheier’s acknowledgement’s page and yet failed to recuse themselves). From the cover depicting a stain glass window to poems with titles like “My Religious Upbringing,” How to Wrestle an Angel,” and “Christmas,” the poems in this collection unravel spirituality in a secular world, shining a light over religiosity’s strengths and solaces but also its failures and shortcomings.

“My Religious Upbringing” captures an representative sample of the themes you will find in this collection. Here we see a narrator torn between the homes of his presumably divorced parents: the mother’s house recognizes both Christmas and Hanukkah, while his father’s house has no items to mark either (or any) holiday whatsoever:

“Why can’t we have …
… at least a candle tree?” I pleaded.
He looked down at me, paused for effect,
and in his most serious voice,
which was very, very serious, said:
“Religion is the opiate of the masses.”

In this poem we see the collision of religious artifacts and the cool realities of an atheistic world, leaving the narrator caught in between, baffled and yet somehow self aware.

It’s an occurrence that repeats itself several times over More to Keep Us Warm. We even spot it in poems that don’t necessarily have spirituality at their core, such as “I’m not here for Sushi” (“I no longer know what it is a man and woman speak about/ over dinner, only that there is a law/ about loving or hating fully” ) or “North America,” (with its allusions to Jesus, Buddha and Jerry Springer), poems that hint at the infinite, and the inexplicable, even when capturing elements of the mundane world.

The poem that stood out the most for me was “Kaddash for 1956,”  a piece that implies the Jewish faith from its very title and yet comes to speak of much, much more. Here, Scheier uncorks his muse and lets it rip over everything from Ginsberg’s Howl to the foibles of publishing in Canada’s little journals. The poem is at times vulgar, luminous and comic. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it is a small masterpiece.

Not every piece in More to Keep Us Warm worked for me but overall I found this collection poised, clear-headed and gripping. A strong debut worthy of its accolades, no matter the dark cloud they found themselves under.