Reviews

A Thousand Profane Pieces
- review by George Elliott Clarke

JOHN TERPSTRA, of Hamilton, Ont., is a cabinetmaker — and the author of seven poetry collections. Two or Three Guitars: Selected Poems (Gaspereau Press, $19.95) reprints items which first appeared in books now out-of-print.

MYNA WALLIN, of T-Dot, is a freelance editor, small-press publisher, and a radio host for CKLN. A Thousand Profane Pieces (Tightrope, $14.95) is her first, full-length book of poems.

Terpstra is meditative and deliberately meandering. Even his short poems aspire to be longer, for he wanders around the contours of a theme, an idea or memory, eyeballing the places where the gold is buried, then unearthing it. His poems tend to be half-essays, half-maps. He is an explorer, taking us along for the tour.

Wallin is wry and spry, relentlessly personal. She turns an acerbic eye to relationships, how they falter and fail, and she turns mid-life crises into opportunities for reflection, on how the promises of sexual liberation (according to the Zeitgeist, or to advertising) break apart when confronted by tradition and biology. Her lyrics name heartbreak, with a half-smile.

Terpstra has been nominated for the Governor-General’s Award for Poetry and he has won the prestigious Bressani Award. His style is not one of flash, but of sure, steady craftsmanship.

The arresting poem, Twins of Five, a sermon to hands, is one fine example: "I applaud these twins of five / because they are Dexter and Sinister, and without them I beat the air . . . / because they are two of a kind, like thieves on the cross, belonging on either side . . . / because the fingers flex already a familiar expanse of wood across the saw, and wait for it / because the ten of them delight in this / because the two are twins, at marriage in their work."

A Ceremony to Dedicate a Tree and the Backyard It One Day Hopes to Dominate is another great demonstration of how Terpstra mines poetry from the prose of history, geography, and place, including, here, the story of the founder of Hamilton: "this is to the money he saw growing on his tree / to Mr. George Hamilton, and his zeal for husbandry / this is to naming the location after himself. . . ." The poem concludes, "this is to digging in / to eighty years from now."

Terpstra’s extended lyrics recall the sermonic aspirations of California’s Robinson Jeffers, or the chatty forays of Nova Scotia-born Alden Nowlan and Alberta’s Earle Birney, along with, from back in the Old Country, Kit Smart.

But to say Old Country is misleading: Terpstra writes in English, but he is second-generation Dutch Canadian. That heritage informs his exquisite poem, The Sheep Reports, which narrates his parent’s post–Second World War marriage, then life in Canada. The Atlantic is, then, for him, "An ocean / that for some of us, born here, / at times feels more like home / than here does."

Terpstra’s probing poems are about that search for roots, for a grounding, for a home that feels like home.

Wallin’s book is exhilarating: a dollop of sugar-coated acid. It’s subititle should be, Love and the Older, Single Woman: The persona has been hurt, has snapped back, but vows her vulnerability. The pink-and-black, lady-as Catwoman cover is just right: there’s cattiness, meowing, and hissing here. The tone? Ms. Sylvia Plath Atwood: Satire and Cynicism for the Discriminating Reader.

"Trophy poets" are, then, the gal pals of "Doctors, lawyers," who want "a woman with big / opinions, with Bohemian flair." These girls "are so clever, / . . . if you stare into their pupils long enough // it’s foreplay."

Screen Vixen presents a speaker who imagines hobbling, "stiletto-heeled, down the /cobblestone road, toward a man lying face-down in his own blood. //I’d like to have the breasts, legs, pout / that stop a man dead in his tracks."

Boy toys are idiots: "The last one hated ponytails and socks / in bed, the porn in the machine. . . . // Next time, I’ll wear / red socks to bed, a long ponytail. I’ll be ancient / in animal skins with bones in my hair."

Relative happiness occurs when the persona meets "Wilson, a chef and masseur, / who knows Everything about satisfying a woman. Details may change / but nothing fundamental."

Wallin’s wit exudes wisdom and wrath. Perfect.

George Elliott Clarke, a Nova Scotian-born author and poet, teaches literature at the University of Toronto. He won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 2001.