Book Review
Pathos and Presence
- David Groulx (Author)
A Difficult Beauty. Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd (purchase at Amazon.ca)
Reviewed by Michelle La Flamme
A photograph evoking the sombreness of the winter sunset seen through the broken glass of a windowpane is followed by a single black page with the title a difficult beauty
in bold black font on cream paper. The visual starkness of the cover and introductory pages of A Difficult Beauty prepares us for the cryptic poems that follow.
This collection of poetry is a passionate snapshot of poignant aspects of life on the rez depicted in simple scenes that are propelled forward with a sparse economy of language. It is little wonder that Groulx has won awards for his poetry and it has appeared globally in over one hundred periodicals. In addition to the stark realism of the poems, the crushing blows of poverty are evinced in poems such as one set of tracks
: this is skid row / here everybody drags their body / from pawnshop to bar stool.
The collection includes poems punctuated by ontological concerns, as in
i am still
Frozen were
These veins in my throat
Life chains
My bones dripping
Into these rivers
I am being made into memory
The landscape, song, the natural world and the highway weave their way into the reader’s mind. The symbolism of the widening highway on the rez [i]ts teeth clamped down / on the Indians, dogs and their houses
is a frightening personification of impending encroachment. Some of the poems represent the anger of the impotence that is part of this existence as in urban indian,
hate is long distance,
the hunt,
changing names
where the uranium mine and the highway make adamant demands for social justice. Death themes, hard labour, survival, and asphalt are woven with memoirs on the effects of alcohol on self and family in dancing with my father
and monsters.
These poems that deal with harsh realities mingle with those such as i am here
and sweat
that offer solace and ceremony, told in storytelling fragments that aid in the healing from the violence of colonization.
The overarching poetic statement I’ve done my time/America
is understood through the body of poems that chillingly recount the impact of history and personal and cultural memory. The physical, mental, emotional, and physical effects of colonization on the soul are told here in a dense and personal poetic that is almost cinematic in its crispness as when the reservation is described simply as the colony of broken fridges and worn down/houses
in returning to the rez.
These poems ultimately resist and describe the effects of colonization. The visual imagery and layers of symbolism in this frank book of poetry depict survival despite the chaos of an occupied postcolonial Canada for Aboriginal peoples.
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MLA: La Flamme, Michelle. Pathos and Presence. canlit.ca. Canadian Literature, 13 June 2012. Web. 24 May 2013.
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