Movements in Jars is an appropriate title, because this early collection from Meghan Jackson (and new Canadian press Chaudiere Books) feels like exactly that: tidy piles of striking images that are compelling if not always clear, as though the reader has discovered an old room, the contents of a series of mason jars on a shelf, cloudy and enticing.
We get "green dress moving / in green room / hand outstretched / to touch leaves," which begins the poem comparison image first (rather than actual object) so the reader figures out in the fourth line we're talking about a tree. Well, er, possibly. This kind of poetry is delicate - it can fail if the images are even a little too disconnected, leaving a frustrating heap. But Jackson does well here, creating work that's in focus just enough to be meaningful with effort, and yet incoherent enough that putting together the pieces is enjoyable. Poetry David Lynch would appreciate.
At times, poems provide images without even giving the reader any real action, necessarily, as in parade of dolls:
come wide
vinyl eyes
through
the kitchen
and wandered
without bending
knees into
the living
room plastic
arms stop
motioned in
a Polaroid
of tea
coffee
and plastic
conversation
At first it isn't about much, but the idea of "wandering" mixed into a stew with "kitchen, plastic, Polaroid, coffee" leaves the reader with a loosely unpleasant, shifting image of suburbia, now buried ("Polaroid") in memory. I do wish poets didn't leave words sitting on their own line, more or less using a line break instead of simple punctuation. On its own, one word can so rarely gather any momentum or meaning. Or to put it another way, compare the line "coffee" with "vinyl eyes," above. "Coffee" just isn't strong enough, pardon the pun. But I love other moments, like "plastic / conversation."
There were certainly poems I've have preferred to see one or two steps closer to clarity, here. Another poem that ends with "miscellaneous tangled objects," simply doesn't leave the reader with enough, given the use of a generic word to cover the objects. Far more often, the images are a treat, as Jackson opens an artichoke to find "postcards / milk / frames / ball bearings / sandcastles / arms / salmon / flashlights / round faces / swollen lips / microscopes / june beetles / ice / pennies."
This is a patient kind of surrealism at work here, not frantic or impenetrable, or overly satisfied with its own cleverness. The dominant impression the reader is left with here is a quiet, sharp voice that could easily be overlooked, and deserves more attention.
Alex Boyd is co-editor of Northern Poetry Review.
Canadians have an odd relationship to the U.S. We define ourselves against them, first of all. Many of us in urban centres find guns appalling, our history is closer to compromise than conflict, possibly born out of the need to accommodate both French and English, and the same need has introduced a greater love -- at least in theory -- of diversity, and a recognition diversity is a strength, not a weakness. There is a distinct Canadian identity that Canadians...continue reading
Your second collection of poems, The Cold Panes of Surfaces, is out now. Your first book, Bonfires, won the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award in 2004. Did winning a national award for your first book bolster your artistic confidence while working on your second, or did you find it daunting, as though you had more to live up to than other poets working on a second collection?
I think it certainly gave me a boost of confidence and the permission I needed to do what I wanted to do artistically with the second book. I didn't feel any outside pressure because of winning the CAA award, or feel that I had any expectations to live up to. Winning the award was terrific, and it was good publicity, but it was also an education on how fleeting such praise can be, and how it leaves your writing life virtually...continue reading