Stephen Cain, Walking & Stealing

 

No! I am not Madame Cezanne
Nor was meant to be

Those wine bottles in your neighbour’s garden
Have they begun to sprout?

The Art of Work in the Age
Of Mechanical Oppression

A future right turn
Overwhelm your comfort zone

A lyric in flight (“CANTO ONE”)

There is something curious about the accumulating distances between full-length collections by Toronto poet, editor and critic Stephen Cain, from the relatively quick appearance of his first three full-length collections every couple of years—dyslexicon (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 1998), Torontology (Toronto ON: ECW, 2001) and American Standard/Canada Dry (Coach House Books, 2005)—to the longer wait-times that emerged with False Friends (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2017) [see my review of such here], and now, Walking & Stealing (Toronto ON: Book*hug Press, 2024). Some of us have been waiting, sir.

There aren’t too many poets these days in Canada working through poems to see where the language might land or extend, offering the next steps in a conversation around poetics that seems to have quieted down over the past decade. Through Walking & Stealing, Cain offers himself as example of the standard-bearer for an exploration of thought and form, continuing a trajectory of sound and meaning collision, playfully battering around a lyric too often staid or safe. Where have all the language poets disappeared to? With so many poets of the aughts either shifted in poetic or publishing far less (if at all), Cain almost exists as a central Canadian counterpoint, one might say, to the west coast poetics of further still-standing poets Clint Burnham [see my review of his latest here] or Louis Cabri [see my review of his latest here], all pushing further variations on a language-play through social commentary, countless quick references, and deliberate collision. “Canada Post- / Ashkenazi Anishinaabe,” he writes, as the eighth section of the nine-part “CANTO THREE,” “Two nations under clods / Anti-Semitism & assimilation // Fuck breathing fire / Spit sparks instead // Almost cut my fear / Flying my antifa flag // Smoke ‘em when you see them [.]” Are there any poets on this side of the country, still, referencing the work of Dorothy Trujillo Lusk (I would suggest there should be more, certainly)?

For years, Cain was engaged in book-length sequences and stretches composed across ten sections, a kind of decalogue of extended language structures, whereas Walking & Stealing exists as a triptych that breaks down into further sections—the seventeen sections, some of which are broken into further sections, of “Walking & Stealing,” the ninety-nine short sections of “Intentional Walks,” and the nine “CANTOS” sequences of “Tag & Run.” The geographic composition points, setting the moment to the music of language, is an interesting mapping across Cain’s Toronto, almost an echo of bpNichol’s The Martyrology: Book 5 (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1982), a book I know that Cain himself has written extensively on, or Lynn Crosbie’s legendary “Alphabet City” abecedarian from Queen Rat: New and Selected Poems (Toronto ON: Anansi, 1998) [see my brief note on such here], a book that should have won all the awards after it first appeared. The mapping of Cain’s Toronto becomes, if not direct subject, a kind of backdrop and prompt, allowing the landscape of his city to breathe into the animation of his language. From the opening sequence, listen to the poem “Stan Wadlow Park (2017/08/12),” as the second section/half writes:

Map the Moores
Lede line locations
Also Etrog the obelisks
Opposing the ovarian objects

Short & sequestered in
   Scarborough
No more sinister than Sarnia
Oshawa obeisance
Adolescent anxiety
    accumulators
Score on the fly
Beach bleacher bingo
Blanket the yield

Walking & stealing

What was once propulsive has evolved into something more meditative, akin to a kind of walking-text, comparable to works by Stacy Szymaszek [see my review of their latest here], Meredith Quartermain [see my review of her latest here] or Bernadette Mayer [see my review of one of her more recent titles here]; Cain the flaneur, perhaps, but meandering not through the lyric narrative but across a field of language. “Articulate the known-lines,” he writes, as part of the opening sequence, “Map the Masonic / Toronto Chthonic [.]” As he offers as part of his “Notes” at the back of the collection:

Walking & Stealing is a long serial poem composed over the summer of 2017. Each section was composed at a park in Toronto & the GTA between innings of games in which my son, a Peewee AA ballplayer, was pitching & fielding. The composition time of each section is the length of a game, & the first draft of each section was recorded in a notebook in the shape & design of a baseball. While the impetus & origin of the poem is juvenile sports, baseball is not so much the subject of the poem, but the site & event that allows the poem to arise as I explore duration, association, & subjectivity. The game of baseball also functions as an analogue for poetic exploration; for example, the title of the poem refers to plays in baseball (two ways in which one can gain a base without hitting a ball), but also to psychogeographic perambulation & “stealing” as poetic intertextuality.

 

 

some recent adventuring : someone editions (Toronto) + drift/line (Kingston) (and Calgary tonight, fyi

Oh, adventuring. Christine and I are reading in Calgary tonight as part of the single onion series, at Shelf Life Books, but you probably already know that. We've been wandering around, there and here, over the past little bit to help promote our new books: her hybrid/memoir Toxemia (Toronto ON: Book*hug Press, 2024) [see my essay on such here] and my On Beauty: stories, (University of Alberta Press, 2024). You should pick up copies if you haven't already! I mean, they would make great holiday gifts, I would think.

You probably already know I was interviewed by Alan Neal over at CBC Radio about On Beauty: I was admittedly startled by how good an interviewer he is, although I probably shouldn't be. He's been doing this a long time. It was such a good interview (and you can listen to such here). And I even wore my CBC t-shirt! Out of respect, naturally.

On Friday, November 8 I did a short reading as part of a launch over at someone editions on Dundas Street West in Toronto. Given Christine had done a Toronto Book*hug launch the prior Monday, and a Hamilton launch the night before (she had been in the area across that whole week), we managed to figure out overnight childcare so I could leave the kids in Ottawa and meet up with her in Toronto (nights out without tasks or readings seem to be a rarity for us, so we took it upon us to enjoy the small space), and drive home the following morning. We were there to help someone editions launch a series of publications in their French Letter Society project, curated by Beatriz Hausner, which including a beautifully designed letterpress publication with a small poem of mine (part of my work-in-progress "Fair bodies of unseen prose," by the way) alongside artwork/design by Someone editions printer/designer/founder Deborah Barnett (who had produced, moons back, a prior letterpress object with poems by myself and Nathanael G. Moore, actually). There was a young Toronto poet, Agata Mociani, who also had work in the series, so it was good to be introduced to her, and her work. Saskatchewan poet Mari-Lou Rowley also had a poem produced in the series, but she wasn't able to attend.

Deborah had requested I land early, to sign all the copies of the publication (I think I'd signed half the run before I was even offered a glass of wine, which was probably wise). I probably signed them all properly, I'm sure. I mean, I wouldn't do anything ridiculous as part of such a project as that. Would I?

We got to hang out with Beatriz and Deborah and meet Agata; we met "writer, researcher and book artist" James Nowak (who passed along a chapbook he'd produced), and hang out for a good long stretch with writer (and Guernica Editions founder) Antonio D'Alfonso! There were a couple of other folk as well, but I'm terrible at catching names. Either way, it was a worthy event (and you should pick up copies of these publications)

Be aware that Someone does absolutely beautiful work. You should go by their space to see some of the things they've produced.

me an' Deborah Barnett

On Sunday, November 17, Christine and I did a reading together in Kingston, alongside Kingston poet Allison Chisholm, as part of Wanda Praamsma's Drift/Line Series (the last of the 2024 season), with a musical set by Kingston musician Megan Hamilton. Allison mentioned upon stage that she'd manage to forget her glasses at home, so I made a point to only take blurry photos of her (out of respect, of course). Her reading was great! Such small, careful, delicate poems (although she should have read longer). I'm hoping there might be a further book on the horizon at some point, soon. [see my review of her debut here]

Christine was, of course, remarkable. You really need to hear her read from this hybrid/memoir collection [you can catch the video recording of her incredible performance as part of the Ottawa launch here via the Ottawa International Writers Festival, in case such intrigues]. It was lovely to be hosted by (and hang out a bit with) Wanda! And it was great to see local folk, including poets Jason Heroux (above/ground is soon producing a collaborative chapbook between him and Dag T. Straumsvag), Armand Garnet Ruffo (reading soon at VERSeFest, you know) and Eric Folsom (whom I have now known for thirty years! he was good enough to pass along a recent chapbook of his I hadn't yet seen). It was a packed (admittedly small) house! A lovely time had by all. Although, exhausted by adventuring (and the prior day's ottawa small press book fair), we crashed pretty early, and drove immediately home the following morning (where I delivered Christine back to work around noon). A day and a half or so of regular, before we're all back up into it. Calgary! Might we see you tonight?

Zoe Whittall, no credit river

 

April Tornado Watch

COFFEE LID THE COLOUR OF a pinched lip, a spring so avoidant I’m attracted to it. This rain is wet-whispering a menacing taunt. Because a tornado took our barn in 1983, I am untethered by wind. I don’t like the wind, I say, as I make origami hearts on the living room carpet. We got the rug thick, so we could sink into the floor, so it would call us to nap. I order blush and Victorian nightgowns that come in the mail. I pick up my phone between lines. I scroll to feel the weight of me lift. I know he’s beside me but he isn’t. He’s with all the followers. I can never be as simultaneously far away and close as they are. I am just here, in parallel play, with our phones out and our bodies on pause, the wind throwing elbows outside.

From Prince Edward County novelist, poet and television writer Zoe Whittall comes the prose poem memoir no credit river (Toronto ON: Book*hug Press, 2024), a book self-described as “a contribution to contemporary autofiction as formally inventive as it is full of heart.” As the first line of the introductory poem-essay, “Ars Poetica / Poem in the Form of a Note Before Reading” begins: “IT IS A CONFUSING THING to be born between generations where the one above thinks nothing is trauma and the one below thinks everything is trauma.” Approached as a hybrid/memoir through the structures of lyrc/narrative prose poems, this is Whittall’s fourth poetry title, following Pre-cordial Thump (Toronto ON: Exile Editions, 2008), The Emily Valentine Poems (Montreal QC: Snare Books, 2006; reprinted by Invisible Publishing, 2016) and The Best Ten Minutes of Your Life (McGilligan Books, 2001). As the opening piece continues:

Of course a poet likes to be in love. To fall for someone you have to be vulnerable, to hold a teaspoon of existential terror in your mouth and let it go. Intimacy is the only cliff jump I like. Otherwise I’m in a lifelong battle with catastrophic thinking. On his podcast the comedian Marc Maron says the only risks he takes are emotional and I pull over to write that down. Oversimplified attachment theory memes on the internet would say the anxiously attached person is just as afraid of intimacy as her avoidant partner but has someone else to blame for the distance. I started writing this book and stopped prioritizing love because I had a broken heart that bordered on lunacy. That’s a poetic exaggeration but also not. In the spring of 2021 my therapist, through Zoom, said, You’re doing well. You really seem like you have it together. I was telling her that it had been two years since the breakup and I still felt grief. I was holding stones in my palm, telling myself their heaviness was the relationship, and throwing them into the lake to let them go. I watched them sink like a wilful tangible metaphor but they didn’t help. If my therapist is the person I tell the worst things to, and she says I’m doing well post-breakup and miscarriage and rewatching the same Gilmore Girls or Grey’s Anatomy every night over and over, then how can you ever be perceived?

Set with introduction and three numbered sections of shorter pieces, no credit river is constructed through a sequence of self-contained prose poems as a first-person essay/memoir with lyric tilt, offered episodically, each piece unfolding as a kind of lyric moment or scene. Rich with fierce intelligence and a deep intimacy, Whittall’s sequence of diary-poems unfold and meander, and there’s an ability that I admire about her (or her narrator, alternately) ability to be present, whether discussing the wish to possibly have a baby, the devastation of a break-up, or seeing an elk outside her window at Banff Writing Studio, all while allowing the blend of daily life and writing life to shape and inform. “Form is content, I tell the elk. My girlfriend and I have an arrangement,” she writes, as part of “Neurotic, / Bisexual, Alberta,” “a type of freedom whenever we travel. This makes me cconsider all strangers from a different angle. When I’m the one left at home it makes me sleepless and on edge. I go see Dave read from a new play. I watch Jonathan give a talk. When I’m with a woman, I look only at men, and vice versa. You should know you’re bisexual if you answer the question Are you ever just happy with what you’ve got? I know gender isn’t that simple.”

Across whatever flow or ebb, there is still a larger structure upon, through and within which the assemblage of short pieces can shape, cohere and, in the end, hold, simultaneously composed as document, process and an attempt to find her footing after and through a sequence of upheavals. “THERE IS A BEAR BETWEEN the theatre and the house a literary festival has rented for me.” begins the piece “Sechelt.” “An orange cat outside, I seem to attract them everywhere I go.” As a sequence, the poems assemble across a period of time that includes “abandoned love, the pain of a lost pregnancy, and pandemic isolation,” attempting to articulate and reconcile those gains, experiences and losses, while in the midst of the work of a daily writing life, and odd moments that pool and tide against the shores. “Nadine Gordimer said that writing is making sense of life.” This, as Whittall writes, is her working to make the most sense of it all.