Born in Sudbury, Ontario in 1962, Christakos obtained her B.F.A. in Visual Arts and Creative Writing from York University in 1985. Coach House Press published her first poetry collection, Not Egypt, in 1988. This is her sixth poetry collection. She has also published two recent chapbooks and, in 2000, a novel Charisma. Poets.org says that she "has shown consistent interest in recombinant poetics, process writing and seriality." Wikipedia adds that she "writes about the fluid and intersecting lines of sexuality and identity. In addition, she explores gender and motherhood in her work. She has shown an interest in recombinant poetics as well as in autobiography's formal and social concerns." She has lived in Toronto since 1987.
The collection is divided into seven sections. 'Visual Splendour Coupons', from the first section 'Little Latches', concerns the madness of early motherhood where the woman, longing for things that had become distant memories: "I wanted to doze. I desired a shower," had been transformed into a milk-dispensing machine, into a banquet: "Still, I rose to smells of a good breakfast. I mean, / I stayed flat on my back, supine. Breasts globes." The 'good breakfast' she smells is herself.
Also from that first section is 'Diary.' This should have been a powerful poem -- tense, kinetic, brittle. Should have been except that it is marred by the presence of completely unnecessary question marks [read Stein in this regard] and capital letters earmarking where new sentences begin significantly reducing the kinetic dissonance of the piece.
What if book just wants to be book? So
relieved someone could lend money, or give it
Hard tell when donor is loaded Perhaps will
owe perhaps not Now what should do for
livelihood Have examined merits becoming surrogate for childless
couple but type get over-attached III
The capital letters are disconcerting. How much stronger this poem would have been without them. Particularly in light of the absence of articles and other short words. This poem could have been completely prehensile.
Section 2 'Lovely One' brings us this untitled offering:
Do you know how lovely are clouds
or about the sound of opals
you know about this cold portal
you've known this moist movement
toward tone, melody over chaotic
topography of love, how
valley hope forlorns the Mondays
through Friday's consolation, a river's
montage sleep on sadness, you know
lovely one
'Opals' is a recurrent image in this collection. Christakos uses several of these to unite her poems. Note the absence of the question mark, of capital letters other than to begin a new stanza. But punctuation is still present in the form of commas. Given the play of punctuation in the previous two examples, as well as the way grammar is manipulated, where, here, short words find their place -- sometimes -- is there something deeper at play within this montage of sensory manipulation? Is Christakos creating topography of kineticism where the isogram maps the degree of dissonance? And is the valley a place of refuge or a place of carnal desire or both? Note the elevation of 'forlorn' to the status of a verb. On which isoline does it appear?
Another of the recurrent images is that of milk, that and 'visual splendour coupons' as can be seen in 'Day 1', the first poem in 'My Attaché Case', where, at p. 42, we read: "My breasts have held / milk to a new / stanza code held language / by the tit effect / like visual splendour coupons". We are left to wonder whether this codework unites the poems in which it appears and so they should be read in light of each other as one continuous, although interrupted (something like coitus but not), poem.
The first person doesn't enter until the section titled 'The Hoity-Toity Supplements' where we are introduced to 'Sherry Mary.' Somewhat reminiscent of Hopkins, in 'No Folic Folly, Okey-Dokey?', the double word makes its appearance:
Sherry Mary does know all about the hoity-toity supplements
one should ingest when Jesus Murphy! pregnant Sherry Mary can
dispense a lot of dilly-dally advice to anyone
who wants to get pregnant Sherry Mary's been loosey-goosey
there a hee-haw half-dozen times and would
go again to the altered brat-packing state of
pregnancy It's just a scritch-scratch example
This Language Writing reminiscence of a hick from the sticks chick is quite engaging and comical in a slanted sort of way.
Christakos has taken us on quite a ride through the annals of language and we haven't even arrived at the title poem where:
It is time to reveal something about being a writer. I
am restless as restless as you, and in my thigh something roves. I tense
and relax each buttock so my groin pulses and feels juicy. Sun
warms me. My thoughts shift to cunty full-out sex(84)
That should keep you coming back for more.
John Herbert Cunningham is a writer of poetry, reviews and whatever else he can put his pen to. He resides in Winnipeg, Manitoba where he hosts the radio show on CKUW-FM Speaking of Poets every Sunday from 4-4:30. He writes reviews in Canada for Malahat, Prairie Fire, Arc, Antigonish and Fiddlehead and, now, the Northern Poetry Review, and in the U.S. for Quarterly Conversations, Rain Taxi, Rattle, Galatea Resurrected and Big Bridge. In other words, he is an opinionated s.o.b.
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Gleaned from his four previous collections and garnished with more than a dozen new poems, Todd Swift's 'Seaway' is both a 'greatest hits' collection for those who've already read this verbally athletic Canadian-born poet at length and a comprehensive introduction for those on the European side of the Atlantic who have had, so far, only the occasional chance to get a taste of his work at the jostling, competitive buffet known as English language poetry. As such, it is long overdue. Swift, after all, has been a tireless champion of a distinctively cosmopolitan, open-minded, post-modernist strand of contemporary writing for quite some time and his work as an editor and ferociously scrupulous blogger in Budapest, Paris and, latterly, London has all too frequently occluded his reputation as a poet with a singular ability to be simultaneously learned, playful and profound...continue reading