MONDOmagazine

A Poetry Review

By Siobhan Mildred Watters

Sunnyoutside aptly calls itself an ‘independent publisher.’ A small business coming from humble beginnings as on online literary journal, Sunnyoutside was founded by Dave McNamara. McNamara got back to basics, establishing himself as a print publisher in 2005. The Somerville, Massachusetts-born, Buffalo-based company boasts of not one, but two, printing presses.

Sunnyoutside recently released two collections of poetry, The Sea Never Drowns by Jason Heroux and Diminishing Returns by Karl Koweski, each under 50 pages. McNamara designed the books and gives us a brief description of his font choices in the colophon at the conclusion of each text. A colophon is featured in most books, true, but one gets the feeling that McNamara is passionate about his design.

The Sea That Never Drowns
by Jason Heroux
Sunnyoutside, $10

Kingston, Ontario civil servant/poet Heroux brings us morose, city-worn poetry in his most recent release, The Sea Never Drowns. Upon my first reading of Heroux’s verse, I was struck by his reliance on simile to convey meaning. Taking the work in holistically—I am under the impression that these poems are collected under one name for a reason—the poems are structurally repetitive. However, when reading each poem as alien to another, I found myself able to bench my previous criticism, even saying Oh yeah, rain puddles do look “like expired mirrors/slowly lowered down/into their little graves” (from “Rue de la Quarantine”). Jason Heroux has a unique way of looking at the world, marked by sensory imagery and bittersweet—maybe just bitter—observations. Anyone leading the ordinary, workaday life, possessing the ability to look at things objectively, will see truth and familiarity in Heroux’s weary world. Comes with a beautiful cardstock cover featuring a watercolour illustration by artist Doni Connor.

Diminishing Returns
by Karl Koweski
Sunnyoutside, $8

With Koweski’s Diminishing Returns, the reader is quickly associated with the poet, almost certainly the “I” narrator of each poem. The poet’s self-expression is even made visual in the cover photograph—a black and white of a trailer, door open—credited to Koweski. Considering Koweski’s style, I immediately suspected that the poet has an interest in the late Charles Bukowski. Horse and whore references aside, my suspicions were confirmed in “My Literary Domestication”—a great poem that describes Koweski’s lost connection to literary heroes like Bukowski and Kerouac as he settled into married life. Koweski’s brutally honest take on life, wife, sex, debauchery, and children (naturally) is smart and witty. Whether the poetic tales are fact or fable, one never questions the existence of that person or moment somewhere in this world or somewhere in time. Notable in the collection is the title poem, “Diminishing Returns”, which describes the juxtaposition of the past and present of a Wild West theme town, and of a boy’s naiveté and man’s cynicism. The poem, harsh to begin, ends with a tender note rare amongst Koweski’s other work.

This Is Not A Reading Series, St. Barnabas Anglican Church, 8pm
Tuesday, November 27, 2007

By Kerry Freek

This past Tuesday, amid a packed audience (obvious Eggers fans, predominantly early-to-mid 20s, roughly the same age the Sudan’s Lost Boys would be now), Dave Eggers (author of You Shall Know Our Velocity and founder of McSweeney’s) launched What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, at St. Barnabas Anglican Church. As part of Pages’ This Is Not A Reading Series (TINARS), Eggers didn’t read from his book, but rather discussed the four-year process of fictionalizing one man’s memories of growing up in civil war Sudan.

The word “autobiography” in the title is a bit liberal. Read like a novel (some nice prose, an interesting non-linear approach) and narrated by Deng (one of Sudan’s Lost Boys), the book is a blend of fact and fiction. A cool approach, I thought. But some reviewers were not pleased. “How strange for one man to think that he could write the story of another man — and then call it an autobiography,” wrote Lee Siegel of The New Republic. “Where is the dignity in that?”

Funny he should ask. As Eggers explained on Tuesday, in preparation for the book, he and Deng spent a great deal of time getting to know each other. Deng shared his memories, starting from patchy recollections of when the war began — at this time he was around seven or eight years old. To supplement these gaps and provide more context, Eggers pored over books and reports, and threaded Deng’s story with the coinciding war timeline as precisely as possible.

The two also took a trip to Sudan together, which required becoming official members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and finding an aid worker willing to fly them in from Nairobi. When they finally made it to Deng’s hometown, Marial Bai, they were greeted by several villagers — including Deng’s birth mother and father. After so many years they were reunited, each having thought the other was long since dead.

To top it off, the book is prefaced by Deng, who confirms that the story is a “work of art” — not necessarily strict fact, and definitely a collaboration of two minds. But no mention of his dignity being compromised; in fact, praise for Eggers for helping him share his story and raise funds for the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation.

The same reviewer called the book’s “innocent expropriation” of Deng’s story a “post-colonial arrogance — the most socially acceptable instance of Orientalism you are likely to encounter.” Now surely the book doesn’t fit within the technical confines of an “autobiography,” and it’s not entirely Deng’s personal story, but What is the What is an honest attempt to convey an approximation of what the Sudanese people endured (and now, as refugees in North America, endure). The approach is non-traditional and sort of experimental. But bringing Orientalism into the argument is missing the point. The fact remains that we learn through stories. And no matter how you slice it, Eggers’ stories appeal to young people with open minds and energy to act. On Tuesday night he helped educate a couple hundred people in Toronto about the very real atrocities of war. Many of us, I’m sure, had little-to-no prior experience learning about Sudan’s conflicts. Imagine not being informed on the topic of one of the worst wars of the 20th century — you probably don’t, do you? That’s probably more undignified than a well-written, well-researched novel.

September 21st, 2007 @ Bloor United Church, 300 Bloor Street West
7:30 PM

by Stewart Byfield

Sure enough, it starts out with a reading. This is fine by me, as I haven’t had a chance to read Gibby’s latest novel, Spook Country — his eighth by my count. Once again, it appears to be about a hapless, conventional protagonist who finds himself present for the emergence of a new and revolutionary technology. I would like to say that Gibson’s reading interested me enough to go out and buy the novel, but sadly I had to strain real hard just to extract a few precious words from the pulpit. Where have all the competent sound engineers gone, anyway? It seems that, in the past few years, the number of potentially great shows, readings, lectures etc. that have been denied their full impact due to shitty sound has risen dramatically. And fair enough, a huge church is a pretty tough acoustic monster to contend with, but really! The entire presentation: the reading, the ensuing interview, the question and answer period from the audience, was unintelligible. I spent the bulk of it sitting with gritted teeth as the whole PA system threatened to implode our heads with shrieking feedback. So yeah, I think his new book is about the global positioning system and rogue artists chasing virtual artifacts across the world, but as far as I can remember from the presentation it’s actually about a totalitarian government that controls dissenting voices with a crack cabal of incompetent sound guys and emergency vehicles.

Gibson closes his own book after reading the entire fourth chapter and settles into a chair opposite the MC/interviewer. The pulpit mic peels out with one last high pitched squawk and then goes dead, then the new lapel mics on Gibson and his inquisitor click and a new type of sonic mischief ensues. I think I can almost make out what they’re saying this time when a parade of sirens begins to strafe the church along Bloor Street, although they seemed to be coming down at us from the sky. Apparently, the whole emergency force of Toronto was out joyriding that night and had decided to circle our location, effectively massacring any thoughtful thread we might have gleaned from our new author friend. It’s actually a funny image watching three-hundred cyber nerds and literary fans perch their eager faces on their elbows, which in turn are perched atop the railings of their pews, perhaps not realizing how much they resemble a solemn catholic mass.

Thinking back to his novels and short stories I do think Mr. Gibson is a dissenting futurist of sorts, or at least a cautionary one. Here’s what I did manage to decode from Mr. Gibson: On Google:
“Google helps me remember things… universal prosthetic memory.”
On eBay (apparently the Gib just loves it!):
“…a vast and complex system of whittling down the world’s additives.”
And on his own writing process:
“When I discovered what the McGuffin was it was a very lovely day in the basement.”
My apologies to you, reader. Perhaps if you didn’t know anything of Gibson’s work, you were hoping to learn a bit about it here. No such luck, I’m afraid. He is one of the most important writers of this century (and the last) and if you are really curious, you should pick up one of his books. Any of them in fact; they are all quite good. And if you do know William Gibson well, then you already know, don’t you?

I also managed to get the last question asked of him from the congregation that night. A slight, energized young woman sauntered up to the mic and with regards to his body of work, asked if she was reading it right.