As an author of fifteen poetry collections and an editor of several more, one approaches the work of Brian Bartlett with no small degree of trepidation. After all these decades one would think one had encountered at least several of the titles, but sadly I have not. An interview here, a reference there and a sack of good intentions to play catch up.
Fortunately with such a tender, humane lyricist who embraces the reader with warmth and wit, such lapses can be easily overcome. There are few “monuments of unageing intellect” waiting to tangle with one’s spotty education, although I’ll have to admit I have a weakness for such challenges, let’s face it they are not everyone’s cup of tea. Instead we have affectionate reflections on antique shops, the gathering and gradual dispersal of family, childhood friends and foibles and the magical transformations of dreams.
One feels, as one meanders in quiet delight through the variegated tributaries of his ocean of inspiration, repeatedly befriended by a gracious heart giving forth in full measure. There seems to be no bruised ego seeking redress for perceived insults, no citizen aflame with righteous grievance, but only a spirit satisfied to simulate those unexamined pearls of life’s passing moments and have them populate that “astonishing room” with tiny treasures polished to some unassuming radiance, one which pleases without resorting to unseemly provocation.
For the younger reader, eager to see the pompous and pretentious cut down to size that their vision of reform be given some redress, such muted reflections might come across as mere rehearsals for retirement, where one folds the tent and retreats from the rain. As one ages such vituperation becomes more understandable, even as one drifts away from the open seas of anger and disgust and into the safe harbours of hardwon serenity and satisfaction. Did the ranting of yesteryear result in anything more than a heated exchange of views? Bartlett evokes this generational issue in “New Year’s Eve Question.”:
In the 1970s young poets writing into the night
talked of the heart and the mind. They praised
blood and veins, comparing the brain to a cage,
a cloud, a maze. Long before our thirtieth birthdays
(and house-hunting bank loans, children)
we dived into Hesse and Kazantzakis, gripped
by grand dramas of monk and criminal,
mule-spirited scholar and lion-hearted drunk.
We stormed through those novels
as if heading into a do-or-die choice.
From the start I spared my poems
the tricky word heart - spelling it out
like cutting off an eagle's wings, or making
a smoke puff to mimic mystery.
At a New Year's Eve party a friend
with red wine splashed on his T-shirt
asked "Would you call yourself Apollonian
or Dionysian?"
My fence-sitting reply
refused either mantle. "Ah...it all depends."
Next morning I cursed myself
for not having grabbed a fork or knife-
no Zorba, and easily pegged a Libra.
Decades later my mischievous memory
re-films the scene:
"The mind too," I answer
between bites of cheese, "holds grapes, birds and fire
and the heart can be a crate of lumber or
a bowl of keys." I am anything but tongue-tied.
On my solitary homeward climb
a full moon glows through snowy chaos.
Many poems in this collection, which, as Alice Major notes, expresses
“a deep kinship with the day-to-day”, reflect on the poet’s loves, both literary and familial. Perhaps the most touching is the lucid dream of the late and much lamented Don Domanski:
A slim package from the mailbox hints
at nothing exotic. Ordinary sand-brown,
reinforced with string I tug at and
slide free. With a knife I slit the envelope
open. A long awaited book slips
into my hands - a posthumously published
collection of poems, between green covers,
four seasons after the poet's death.
Title page, in pen ink the colour of a Blue Whale:
my name with friend and love.
How, I ask, with breath indrawn. How?
The surprise surpasses
those of mind-lighting metaphors
living in his lines. Near the page's foot,
those alliterative D's familiar, generously looped.
I weep with less shock than joy, that his going
was false report, fiction. He isn't ashes but lungs,
beard and weakened legs, though he remains
in silence and secrecy. His death is a shelter
where he puts words together at a moonlit computer
on nights when sleep stays out of reach
and creatures he praised circulate in the sky
above his room of books and icons and fossils.
With such heartfelt gifts abounding in The Astonishing Room, one looks
forward to uncovering the so far hidden gems of the recent and distant past.
That supposed shrinking audience for modern poetry only serves to sharpen my appetite.
Brian Bartlett’s seven earlier collections of poetry include The Watchmaker’s Table, The Afterlife of Trees, and Granite Erratics. He has also published several books of nature writing and a gathering of his prose on poetry. His work has received The Atlantic Poetry Prize, the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry, and two Malahat Review Long Poem Prizes. The many books edited by him include Alden Nowlan’s Collected Poems. After long periods living in New Brunswick and Montreal, Bartlett moved to Halifax/Kjipuktuk in 1990, and taught for three decades at Saint Mary’s University. He has kept a daily journal for many years.
Publisher: Frontenac House (2024)
Soft cover with flaps 9″ x 6″ | 68 pages
ISBN: 9781989466803