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Marcus McCann review: Soft Where It Counts
Soft Where It Counts
Poetry book hits all the right spots
by Ashly Dyck, originally published in The Leveller, February 2009
Take a roll in the sack with one of Canada’s sexiest young writers. Sexually, technically, and technologically charged, Marcus McCann’s poetry is invigorating and accessible to anyone with an imagination, no matter how buried it may be under normative behaviours.
As a gay rights lobbyist, editor for Xtra and Capital Xtra—Toronto's and Ottawa’s gay and lesbian newspapers—and openly “pro-polyamony, pro-sex work, pro-BDSM, pro-casual sex” blogger, McCann has nothing to hide and actively encourages others to bear all.
The Toronto-based University of Ottawa alumnus takes issue with what he sees as our culture’s cautious approach to sex and seeks to redefine the normal in his poetry and challenge mainstream shame. In a June 2009 interview with Guerrilla Magazine, McCann explained, “I do see a lot of people—from foot fetishists to Internet-daters—who express their sexuality in a particular way but have a lot of shame about it.”
McCann’s first full-length book Soft Where is published by and available for sale through Ottawa’s Chaudiere Books. The book contains works of mostly unmetered, unrhymed, and often prose-like verse; as such, it frequently draws unity through alliteration and repeated similar vowel sounds and is best appreciated when read aloud. As critic and author Ronnie R. Brown has already noted, “Lines such as ‘Your head’s employees/ call in a snowday, crescent of wrist stung/ like electrical tape was yanked off. Yowsa.’ cry for a stage and a mike.”
McCann is as experimental with grammar as he is with sex. His poetry reflects a playfulness toward language that can stem only from an extreme sense of familiarity with the tools of his craft.
In a Q&A with Ottawa poet and Chaudiere publisher rob mclennan, McCann explains, “In everyday English, we tend to use the same sentence constructions—subject, verb, object—over and over,” he says. “In my own work, I'm looking to stretch rather than break grammar... give English a chance to show off.”
The overt sexuality and confident language play of McCann’s lines are not off-putting or intimidating as one might expect but, rather, invite readers to join them on their romp. Personal reflection is interjected with bits of cultural context in a way that critic Ronnie R. Brown says “is reflective of most readers’ lives.”
In the poem “Three,” McCann writes,
Russell spoke of it like renting
a boat, a lovely
eventual consequence
of map-making and curiosity
and while our anxieties pinged, we cuddled, discussing—
and therefore the rough-scumbled peaks
of our urge spread like cake frosting
after a knife’s first gooey lump,
sweet and thin, hugging what might
otherwise crumble—until one afternoon
we were three men naked
in a bedroom.
The language and line breaks stop and start and seem to fumble like the frantic fits of passion they describe—the tension in carrying thoughts over several lines and stanzas brings readers back to their own moments of anticipation and ecstasy before release and express the writer’s openness about sex while not alienating those with more traditional sexual relationships.
“I’m not trying to tell anyone what to do,” McCann said to Guerrilla, “but I hope by talking about things like casual sex, I can get some people to feel less guilty about what they’re already doing. Because there’s nothing worse than a self-hating slut.”
In addition to the sexy side of things, McCann’s book also deals extensively with technology in both content and form, adopting computer syntax in lines such as, “The system has halted./ Is this what you remember?, send.”
“I think a lot of writers write about the trepidation they feel around sex and technology, rather than writing joyfully about them. Writing your fears and your anxieties is an interesting exercise,” McCann said, “but it’s not one that grabs me.”
Far from ostentatious, this book is an accessible, guilt-free celebration of current sexual and technological culture that gives readers plenty to occupy their minds and tongues.
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