You Break It You Buy It By Lynn Tait

look down the long table,
a yard sale of porcelain hearts

Memories – especially ones that are negative – can be quicksand. And while it’s tempting to revisit them, they can be exceedingly difficult to escape once one is down the rabbit hole (indeed, anyone with a social media profile and an excess of time can attest to this). In addressing weighty subjects like a harmful relationship with a mother and its complicated legacy, the untimely death of her son, her own dealings with a Parkinson’s diagnosis, it would be easy for Lynn Tait to be mired in the dark (and, understandably so).

Instead, she uses these, and other heavy topics, to great effect as the underpainting of a sharp and bright meaning-making that makes up her first full-length collection of poetry. Describing a childhood that left her feeling like “a children’s book with missing pages“, she pulls no punches, be it in addressing the trauma of a mother who lacked in many aspects (noting that she “passed through her and should have kept going“), or penning a missive to faceless, everyday jerks, who she hopes they “be wing-slapped by angels, until they see stars“. She also takes on other challenging relationships, reflecting on times where “she’s forgotten how to navigate/he has swallowed all the stars“, or where she has been asked to stop being “too many colours for one woman“.

(It is here I should note that part of the charm of these poems is Tait’s ability to weave and lace biting criticism with razor wit. Even for the most mundane of topics; she will call out marmalade as “an acerbic freak of jams“, and it’s these quirky statements that had me barking out a laugh just after I was in full reflection over a previous stanza’s gut punch.)

But the images that she uses are simple on the surface, but burst out of the page, uncovering complex lived experiences that uncover what it already in front of us in a new light – a kaleidoscope of wit, wisdom, pain, and hope.

It is for this reason that I admire this collection immensely. It’s a difficult task to give something the weight it deserves -to uncover and examine an artefact without sitting too long in the quicksand, while also acknowledging its’ inherent light and humour. Rarely are events and our perceptions of them black and white, but Tait, in learning not to mute her own natural vibrancy, has learned to play with the nuanced tones in between the dark and the light.

It’s a great example that, indeed, “our scars: poetry“.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lynn Tait is a Toronto-born award-winning poet and photographer residing in Sarnia, Ontario where she lives with her husband Robert. She has published poetry in major magazines and journals since 1978 including Contemporary Verse 2, FreeFall Magazine, Windsor Review, Vallum, Feathertale Review, and the Literary Review of Canada, as well as in over 100 anthologies. She is working on her second book of poetry titled The Realm of In Between.

Publisher: Guernica Editions
Publication Date: September 1, 2023
Language: English (100 pages)
ISBN: 978-1-77183-810-8 (Paperback)

Bryn Robinson

Website

Bryn Robinson lives in Quispamsis, NB, although she still, and always will, consider herself a Saint Johner. She uses her BA in psychology and French, and her PhD in experimental psychology, from the University of New Brunswick, to help her support health research in the province. She prefers contemporary fiction, narrative non-fiction, graphic novels and poetry - and if they are humorous, all the better. When not reading, she's exploring the New Brunswick forests and seascapes, camera in hand.