Ox Lost, Snow Deep by Alice Burdick

a feed dog book, an imprint of Anvil Press, edited by the writers’ writer, Stuart Ross, is dedicated to contemporary poetry under the influence of surrealism. And Alice Burdick, author of Ox Lost, Snow Deep, is most definitely a woman under the influence.

Her latest collection of poems taps into the strange beauty of the unexpected, the uncanny, the disregarded and the unconventional. Burdick also dances with absurdism, not-so-gently mocking our earnest search for meaning and using dark humour to comment on the human condition (as well as the non-humane conditions that humans have wrought). As she said in a recent interview in the poetry journal Touch the Donkey, “I like to keep it light and heavy.” This juxtaposition between the serious and the silly is a repeating motif throughout the collection as Burdick explores what is considered important and what is considered not important. What is truth and what is not. As rob mclellan points out, Burdick’s work actively resists narrative logic and, as a writer (to paraphrase French artist André Gide’s take on non-narrative poetry & truth), she “modifies facts to such a degree they resemble truth more than reality.”

Burdick describes her approach as—

“… logic reveals itself in the making of the poem through the lines, and the structure and conversation of lines and stanzas. I relate it a lot to improvisational music, where something is formed through that play, even if it is serious. I have to not know where it is going.”

And once the reader agrees to surrender to this condition of not-knowing (and Burdick is aware this may be frustrating to some readers), her poems offer an unpredictable freefall into a “propulsive grocery list of hope, worry, laughter and grief” as she investigates questions of language, origins, Jewishness, middle age, motherhood, privation, and the weird quaintness of small-town living. As Nada Gordon, author of Emotional Support Peacock notes, Burdick moves skillfully between the modes of the overheard, the internal, the conversational, and the observational.

The fourteen poems in this collection range in length from three pages to a whopping seventeen pages. In this age of distraction and short attention spans, it takes a certain kind of courage to write a poem that extends beyond a single page. But as Burdick writes—

[it’s] Time for a brawl.

My favourite poem, the “Great Village Sequence”, happens to be the longest in the collection.

It’s funny to describe a village
as belonging to a poet, but it’s always
worth looking through time’s eyes.

I especially enjoyed the artful winks to the poet Elizabeth Bishop sprinkled throughout (“a rusty penny of time/ sends tender regards” and “Which bishop was busy/ as the gas station attendant?”)

This sequence also showcases Burdick’s facility with word play (“How many perimenopausal poets/ does it take to think of a word?”), her ability to distil quirky truisms (“… It is friendlier/ to fry eggs than to coddle fools”), and her well-honed straight-ahead observational skills—

Villa on the hill holds
we humans when we age
out of circulation.

The landscape of these longer poems and sequences gives Burdick room to do what she does best—have fun (in both light and heavy ways) with dreamlike images, musical language, and wry observations. After two decades, and with countless publications to her credit, Burdick knows herself as a writer. In a recent interview she shared—

“I’ve become more comfortable with the weirdness of my writing and so the writing shows that.”

Burdick is delightfully and deeply curious. Her curiosity is contagious. For example, this foray into hauntology—

I enjoy hearing your ghost stories.
Prove me wrong about the spirit world.
Knocks, steps on stairs, in the great beyond
there’s a Q&A with a rapping ghost.

Burdick is also achingly aware of the state of the planet and references events and cultural touchstones in quiet and not-so-quiet ways.

Some of us have made this happen,
the fires and floods, the crimes of intentional
pain, guns at the factories, children torn
from their mothers and fathers, water stolen,
oil forced through fake veins. No, not all
of us—that is a lie to keep the evil safe. 
And silence is a lie’s protection.

The first poem of the collection opens with the line “Cheers to fresh scandals” and “Life irritates art” offers up the wistful line “I dreamed I reminded people to remember Diane di Prima.” Throughout the collection Burdick invites us to a look at the world, with slant—

Everything was modern once

In archaeology, the things found are the things
that were buried or thrown away—not the kept things

The psychologist’s office
is now an escape room

Some of the poems in this collection may leave you baffled— but in a good way. For example, the title poem “Ox lost, Snow deep” references black holes, fuel companies, cows, and loose hinges on cupboards (and that’s just the first stanza!). It’s Burdick’s mastery of the short line, her unexpected turns of phrase, and her knack for creating quirky truisms (“If anyone breaks the doorknob, / there will be no way in or out.”) that makes you trust her and keeps you along for the ride.

Like the New York School poets and Modernists she loves, there is nothing “either/or” about Burdick’s writing. Her work is both spare and rambling, personal and imaginative, whimsical and philosophical, dreamlike and down-to-earth. She is a skilled and generous writer who does wild and simple things with language.

Being under the influence of Alice Burdick’s poetry is a fantastical freefall, a mystic joy, a glimpse into the power of the unconscious mind, into a world where truth matters (or does it?), where “life irritates art.” It’s an invitation to open yourself up to “a literary bonk” and let in a little “… strange, like life.”

Alice Burdick writes poetry, essays, and cookbooks in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. She is the author most recently of Ox Lost, Snow Deep (a feed dog book/Anvil Press), and of Deportment, 2018, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Book of Short Sentences, 2016, Mansfield Press, Holler, 2012, Mansfield Press, Flutter, 2008, Mansfield Press, and Simple Master, 2002, Pedlar Press. Alice has published poems and essays in a range of journals and anthologies, and she is the author of many chapbooks, folios, and broadsides since 1991. Her practice often includes collaboration, and recently her poetry has been featured in Woodlight, a series of three films directed by Erin Donovan and produced by Hear Here Productions. Alice has been a judge for various awards, including the bpNichol Chapbook Award. She is also a freelance editor, manuscript assessor, and workshop leader.

Publisher: a feed dog book / Anvil Press (October 30, 2024)
Paperback 9″ x 6″ | 96 pages
ISBN: 9781772142419

Catherine Walker

Catherine Walkeris a writer/editor living on the South Shore of Miꞌkmaꞌki (Nova Scotia). A founding member of the Little Books Collective, a community-building micropress in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Catherine is the author of two chapbooks: Short Takes: My seven-week career in the film biz (2024) and the call of many sorrows: fourteen poems (2023).