By Judith Fitzgerald Feb 13, 2008, 10:09 GMT
From iconic Ottawa poet rob mclennan (a.k.a. the prolific author of a dozen-plus chapbooks or the perspicacious mini-mogul of the small-press publication set) comes a slim yet impressive triple helping of the highly accomplished wordsmith's better work, The Ottawa City Project, Poems from the Blue Horizon, and the self-published we live at the end of the 20th century.
As its publisher so succintly states it, maclennan's newest works (and truly, it surely does) "in the tradition of such previous poetry collections as Daphne Marlatt's Vancouver Poems (1972), George Bowering's Kerrisdale Elegies (1986), Joe Blades' River Suite (1998) and, closer to home, William Hawkins's own Ottawa Poems (1966)."
Despite mclennan's tendency to rush to print and post every last word he writes, the lack of editorial spit-and-polish (more often than not) works in his favour, primarily because the preternaturally gifted wordsmith's rough-cut gems sparkle with a kind of substantiality and unsentimentality so often lacking among the plague of Canadian po(e)seurs currently infesting the be-all / bend-all "marketplace." His work captures the imagination and, the imagination, so snared, revels in the fact the contents of his mind come across so generously pared and shared.
In "the marilyn monroe lookalike / turns her head & smiles" (from Blue Horizon), mclennan deftly grafts lines from a host of careerists at the popular-culture trough while simultaneously paying poetic homage to George Bowering, Jack Spicer, Frank O'Hara, et al: " . . . waiting for her sleek white body, sitting / two hours in a trailer. unfamiliar hands, / applying makeup like a plaster cast, tight like mummification. tar / and white gauze. in the mirror / losing herself. / her name left on the trailer floor / like a haircut."
Many a moon ago, now, mclennan installed himself in the window of Ottawa's Octopus Books in a brazen and telling effort to attract attention to both himself and the paradoxical aspects of the creative act, slyly anteing up for the new millennium, boldly strutting his poetic stuff, serendipitously proving the solitary point of departure for the artist capable of distinguishing between performance-poetry spectacle and the objects of measured perception.
During that month he wrote we live at the end of the 20th century, an uneven collection, somewhat weakened by its intransigent rejection of standardised spelling and punctuation (yet undeniably strengthened by its command of language, control of the poetic line, and originality of both insight and outlook).
Probably, the tone of mclennan's ironic self-deprecation in "peter gzowskis voice" best exemplifies both the context and concerns of a generation on the pauperised edge of a compromised world gone missing for the duration: " . . . willing to learn the game of golf / to be on a morning w/ peter gzowski . . . listening to peter gzowskis voice / like an old uncles soothing charm . . . not a public washroom w/in 3 blocks // cbc radio on me again / theres just no escaping it."
(BTW, should you — that rare, wonderful, and discriminating reader who has come to this conclusion on the soaring wing of a shared love of the finest art — wish to learn more about the premier poet of his generation, have a peek-see @ his pulchritudinous blog, http://ottawapoetry.blogspot.com/. No thanks necessary. You are most welcome!)
Canadian poet and literary critic Judith Fitzgerald's critically acclaimed Adagios Quartet's BOOK III: Electra's Benison has just been named one of The Globe and Mail's TOP 100 BOOKS (2007). The Almaguin Highlands resident is currently completing Leonard Cohen, Master of Song (Dundurn Press, Fall 2008).
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