Only Insistence by James Lindsay

James Lindsay’s The Lake (KFB, 2022) caught my eye in a package of chapbooks from KFB last year. A poet who is new to me, the poems are simple, elegant and moving. The suite of grief for his father landed well, with its dignity and understated but undeniable undertow. I have reread it several times. I wasn’t unique in being wowed. The chapbook received a 2023 bpNichol nod.

This chapbook became a subsection of Only Insistence (Icehouse, 2023) which Icehouse had the good sense to pick up. There’s a continuity to the considered intensity, not revelling in trauma, not pushing away from the reader into flat language, nor being manically erratic to grab attention. There’s a steady examination of perception and self, but low waves, sometimes wry, sometimes tumbling, which push through the entire collection.

The entire work has a controlled tone of plain, but not simple poetry. It is not shying away from whatever words he needs and choosing apt phrases, such as “cheerless cooking fire.” A well-chosen adjective is a good telltale. There’s a love of language and whitewater run of them at times. Just look at the start of “Labour Day, Toronto”, (p. 36).

Let's be clear regarding the rabbits 
And flowers I insist hate us
What I'm trying to say is that they 
Are actually water vapour claiming 
Not to hate the air show as much 
As you but still not above sharing
In the schadenfreude but I will still miss 
The red puffs snuffing out summer
With fuck-off booms rattling
Our sunburnt nerves tsk-tsking

What an energizing roar of ideas and sounds over the falls, the assonances of long-A shuffling into a huff of sibilants.

The section “Labour Day” sets up the next section “The Lake” with the exit/entry point “It is impossible to learn to love” before Lindsay enters a meditation on how to understand love, towards, or from, a parent. His text suggests we must try and coming at oblique angles try to grasp things too large, like love, like history, like relationships, like influence.

He goes to the abstract and swims around among images but often touches the lake bottom, grounding himself and us with a return to “I don’t know how to talk/ about my biological father,/so instead I’m going/to describe the lake:” There’s mixed feelings and emotional truth spoken through the filter of observing water. The section “The Lake” elegantly segues to the title section “Only Insistence” though quoting Gertrude Stein, “There is no such thing as repetition, only insistence.”

“Only Insistence” is a long poem of 20-odd pages that compels rereading with its slow unspooling, careful steps recognizing that the very act of remembering distorts the original events, sets them inside new narratives and time: “Some couldn’t unsee//What had been seen// Mistook sequences// That were once so sure// In shape and structure// In routine and meaning// Until a slow imbalance// Detached everyday// From itself mooring// Afternoon after afternoon// Folding itself in and in and// In until unrecognizable.” (p. 62).

It has no poet voice/painterly problem. There’s no overstuffed fluffing. It is frank without being blunt, reaching for the larger picture without becoming visibly reaching for the profound. There is an insistent rhythm that builds the power without foregrounding itself yet pressures it forward into the gravity of its own waterfall and water system that makes my heart thunder. How exactly is he doing that?

Each section is, distinct, rather than following the rote rule of good policy to split a book into sections. “Amongst the Narcissuses” has a more open structure with snapshots and fragments of childhood, leaving gaps that gasp between, leaving open significances. The last two sections are “Insistence”, and “Insistence: Appendix” which break open the shells of previous sections. linking back to reweigh the first section “not wanting to lose/something it could be of use” (p. 84).

As phrases, as individual lines, as poems, as sections and as a book, it all holds together beautifully and is worth rereading. Hope you check it out.

James Lindsay is the author of the poetry collections Our Inland Sea and Double Self-Portrait and the chapbooks Ekphrasis! Ekphrasis!, The Lake, and Labour Day. His poetry has appeared in Train: A Poetry Journal, Taddle Creek, CV2, and Prairie Fire among other journals. He lives in Toronto where he works in publishing.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ icehouse poetry (Sept. 26 2023)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 80 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1773103040
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1773103044

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Pearl Pirie's latest is we astronauts (Pinhole Press, 2025). Pirie’s 4th poetry collection is footlights (Radiant Press, 2020). rain’s small gestures(Apt 9 Press, 2021) won the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize. www.pearlpirie.com and patreon.com/pearlpiriepoet