Sometimes a book’s associations are so alien to the person
reading it that the latter can only concede defeat in making a bridge to the
work. Such was the case for me when attempting to gain anything from Triny
Finlay’s 2010 Histories Haunt Us. The first components that puzzle are
the headings for the first five poems. Not a sequence, suite, or connected
whole, they comprise five separate poems,but they’re pegged as “Abstract Loss,
1”, “Abstract Loss, 2”, and so on, until 5. This suggests that the poems are
separate entities, even though they display a titular connection. The confusion
increases after reading each poem since we're treated to a disjointed personal history that could just as well have no title, or even merge with the rest of the book. The first poem is bizarre. It references
John Thompson in line one, and is composed in five couplets, so the obvious
conclusion is that it’s an English ghazal or bastard ghazal, where the strict rules of the Arabian form, let alone the spiritual yearning and grief-with-joy
coexistence is neutered, if not eliminated entirely. Actually, as a flippant
Andy Weaver would define the term (and what’s a modern ghazal if not flippant
or slapdash – cf. Margo Button’s shameless attempts), this is more
appropriately a bastard bastard ghazal since its most important rule – contained
couplets – is broken. Rumi? As Alice Cooper sang, “I’m so adaptable for you”.
The first couplet is self-contained, as is the second. And there’s the leap in
subject between them. So far, it’s the singular bastard. But then, there’s
another jump, and the enjambment begins between couplets. And the content, or
narrative, is of a piece. So we have a bastard mixed with a bastard bastard.
This is like a novice “revolutionary” unsure of how far to go. One of column B,
and one of column Q. And the content? Line 6: “Purple orchids slumped like
shamed teenagers.” Now I know that our subjective experiences colour all our
emotions and thoughts. But this line shows how a past emotional trauma or (at
least) unresolved or difficult memory can intrude on the most innocent of
sightings. It reminds me of the old game where one tells another, repeatedly,
not to think of pink elephants. Even here, in a neutral thought experiment, we
can see how the mind is diverted, and how our will can be a puny and wayward
force unable to marshall our thoughts. But poetry, if it’s any good at all, isn’t
about regurgitating whatever happens to spill into our minds at any and all
times. It’s as much about editing and exclusion as it is about what is said.
And of course, what is said then has to be ordered or, if that’s too
militaristic a choice of words, shaped into something more memorable, apt, and
metaphorical. In what world are purple orchids like shamed teenagers? Or – in
what world are shamed teenagers like purple orchids? Wouldn’t a shamed teenager
show red instead? Would the slumping be that graceful? But Finlay, as the book
proceeds, isn’t interested in using images in order to effect comparable
associations. The best surrealist poetry could achieve this. Disparate images can
work. But they work in the same way
that slivers of dream sequences do, by a feathery tail-link to what came
before it. Finlay wrenches the first image into a distorted second comparable,
the better to engineer what’s really on her mind: her narcissistic and
crushingly depressing 6 x 8 internal world.
There are far too many other examples to use as evidence,
and it’d be piling on to a pile-up, anyway. But I’ll include a few all the
same, since quoting is necessary.
“What Is Cut Or Negative”
I
“After the bliss of the baby came the flies.
...
They cruised through a hole
in the screen and gathered,
a buzz of watchful parishioners.”
What is the relationship between the flies as parishioners
and the newborn baby? It was a blissful occasion, after all. Here’s
where a backstory, a meta-explanation, is necessary. Because without it, confusion is amplified. It
turns out that the author’s lover left soon after their child was born. But
even with this knowledge – (and surprise! autobiography is elevated) –
questions persist. Why are the flies parishioners? Are the parasitic dregs the
man who flees? But if so, it’s a poor association, since flies stay in order to
feed, and in any case they gorge on garbage, not the actual fruits (of a
relationship). Is it self-castigation? Flies as mind, feeding on the mind’s
garbage? Or (what I believe, and what fits the orchids-as-teenagers link) is it
just one more slapped-on cheap metaphor for attempted shock value, to underline that the writer is suffering, and that that
fact alone validates and excuses emotional falsity and moral assumption?
Hysterical poems inevitably include lists since the
catalogue of whatever’s-on-hand nouns increases the force of the simple
assertion at the list’s outset. Hence, “Prestidigitation”, wherein “[f]or my
next trick I will devastate all insects.” (Maybe that fly-parishioner was
the departing lover.) And a few lines later:
“And balconies
potted plants
flimsy window screens
patio doors
knives in blocks
heavy televisions
earrings
paper.”
But if orchids can be teenagers, then any of us are allowed
to complete the puzzle by equating patio doors with admen, potted plants with
yesmen, and knives in blocks with stab wounds by troubled lovers. There’s no
end to this kind of imprecision. If leaps are going to be long and wild, there
needs to be some accountability.
And speaking of leaping, after this latest poem, the long
and final section commences, and it’s – yes – a series of 26 bastard bastard
ghazals. The book’s opener was just a tease. I’ll let those who truly value
ghazals fulminate on these stabs and feints. But this isn’t modification. It’s
belittling. Why are these narcissistic burblings set in a cheapened ghazal
form? Well, Finlay has some roots in New Brunswick, and Thompson thundered and
blundered in that province. A bad boy romantic, he was an attractive
possibility for poets who loved the authoritative subversiveness he represented
while disguising its responsibility in the incompleteness of the Canadian
ghazal. And Finlay is up to the template here. (xxii) starts out with “vaguely,
just vaguely, from my point of view: into/ the book about red, for the world
about flight, about red/running out, or growing wings, volcano-like,
monstrous.” Monster, flies/flight; incomplete conceits. That is, until the melodrama later in the same poem. Why, then, a ghazal, which lives in association? This is a ham-handed, slow link. Now, each of these 26 pieces have, in the book’s back-page notes, a
listing of the corresponding authors who gave birth to these efforts. But with
any good allusion, the entire point is to disguise it artfully so as to elicit
a guess or surprised and pleased recognition from the reader. This is like
providing the answers in bold text right next to the blank crossword. Just
because it’s “hidden” after the poems doesn’t make it a mystery. Associations
should be there to be discovered for months or even years, not garnered in a
casual glance at the back matter after completing the poem sequence the first
go around. And “red/running out”? Mary Wollstonecraft gets the nod, but Katia
Grubisic also would like to raise a hand. It’s funny because it also reveals
a young poet anxious to be seen as having read the canon (intoned in a
slow baritone). Let’s face it: these ghazal-lites, or rather sham-ghazals, have
nothing of the regenerative, let alone sacred, in them, despite the closing,
stuttering last two hysterical depictions, and the last-gasp insincere positive
sop-throw, “The truth is, it stings, it sings to me now.” The truth is? That
reminds me of businessmen who say “frankly” to preface their imprecisions.
Triny Finlay, after two books, is a creative writing
teacher. I remember when a mentor was a forbidding presence, the gulf between
student and master so wide that it caused the former to either quit in logical
hopelessness or get on board with manic ambition. But this kind of authority
can only lead to a confused student union, and a discipleship with more
fervency than talent.
No comments:
Post a Comment