Book Review
Composing Nature Decomposing
- Ken Belford (Author)
Decompositions. Talonbooks (purchase at Amazon.ca)
- Mark Truscott (Author)
Nature. Book Thug/Literary Press Group of Canada (purchase at Amazon.ca
Reviewed by Travis V. Mason
Occasionally, a book appears for review that wants not to be reviewed. Ken Belford’s Decompositions, full of stanzas dense as rainforest understory, and Mark Truscott’s Nature, full of lines sparse as recently clear-cut fields, want not to be defined as poetry in any conventional sense. They ask, in uncertain terms, to be something else. So, what is a reviewer to do?
Don’t trust these books. One is full of words that trace erase a life’s singular trajectory, the certainties of certain narratives. One is full of space that circles words the way a doughnut (a cruller, say) makes holes. One reveals nature’s cruelness. One, crueller, revels in nature in/as language. One ’I’ wonders Who / says good writing conveys / a strong sense of place?
One ’I’ wonder[s] / if the / space this / creates will / hold it.
One, you see, decomposes lyric narrative, prosing it up, posing alternative ecological paradigms as personal history. One, you see, lacks composure, belies a calm position from which to, say, essay. But lack, you see, is the point.
Decomposition is nature: history.
One (Decompositions) ends strong, if strong eludes autobiography to plant seeds of arboreal wisdom: the cottonwoods grumble / and the spruce whistles its gliding pitch
in the time before a rain.
Decomposition: consider the consequence of reading / a poem
to be unpredictable.
Suspect your previous dependence on tools and compose yourself: It seems / the acceptance of risk is a science.
But risk, you see, is the point. What risk? Poetry and plants. Words and weeds. Poetry can make something more / dangerous than its parts,
and it’s probably a good idea to burn the GE crops.
To leave words,
as leaves leave trees bending in wind, to cause to be, and come apart again,
is what we’re left with.
Nature is decomposition: entropy.
One (Nature) ends strong, too. If strong strengthens what comes, ineluctably, before. Before: words afloat in/as doughnut holes, making space for/as nature as/in language. Infinity
:
one
two
six
ten
Or:
Things
fall
where
they
may
Others bother with specifics. Numbers are specific, though. Specific what? Exactly. During: that this
and that that
inhabit, generally, that page
and this page.
Not this page. Not that page, either. Pay attention. After: Words mark,
occur,
abut
on the way to forming and failing. Nature?
One is Laurel. One is Hardy. One is Bob. One is Doug. One is Fat Man. One is Little Boy. One is dangerous. One is danger. One is dang. One is da. One is fort. One is fortress. One is buttress. One is but.
One suggests: Many critics seem to be / disembodied drovers teaching / image recognition.
One suggests: a word,
the word,
these words
risk composing a thought,
the thought
that begins,
that starts
to falter,
to falter,
to falter.
Don’t trust this review.
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MLA: Mason, Travis V. Composing Nature Decomposing. canlit.ca. Canadian Literature, 16 Feb. 2012. Web. 23 May 2013.
This review originally appeared in Canadian Literature #210-211 (Autumn/Winter 2011), 21st-Century Poetics. (pg. 250 - 251)
***Please note that the articles and reviews from the Canadian Literature website (www.canlit.ca) may not be the final versions as they are printed in the journal, as additional editing sometimes takes place between the two versions. If you are quoting from the website, please indicate the date accessed when citing the web version of reviews and articles.
