Berg,
Sharon. (Ed.) (2016). Paper Reunion: an
anthology of Phoenix a poet’s workshop (1976-1986). Sarnia: Big Pond
Rumours Press.
Paper Reunion is a rich eye-catching anthology of
poems and narratives from Ontario’s seasoned writers, and well-worth a trip
down Ontario’s literary lane.
Big Pond
Rumours Press editor, Sharon Berg, of Sarnia, has assembled a cast of writers
out of the well-known Phoenix Workshop. Berg’s own glittery lines and sexual graveyard
of automobiles evoke Ontario’s James Reaney’s ‘cars with ruby red behinds’:
“But starlight gathered like silver
across those wasted bodies in the yard.
The cars were our fathers’ dreams,
a harem of submissive curves
in midnight blue or a red dangerous as
putting it all into a woman they wanted
on the tarmac, foot to the floor.” (Berg, p. 14)
Envisioning
the 1960s men using their unrequited energy to fuel the reconstruction of a ‘midnight
blue’ or red car with ‘submissive’ curves, so eloquently captures the trapped
lives of the husbands in her lines. Their physical exhaustion used for the re-capture
of lost love:
“We have both stepped in and out of our bodies
with our arms crooked for love.” (Berg, p. 15)
Similarly,
Marja Jacobs’ ‘Fifty-five socks’
(p.24) is one of several working narratives, and this one, I thought, was
particularly appropriate at Christmas, and in this world of global migration.
It captures beautifully the incredible resilience of newcomers over poverty.
Set in rural war-time Ontario, the ballad details a mother re-knitting, and
then selling, her bridal bedspread into 55 socks to sell for wheat and eggs, all
that her family must live off of for the Winter months in her new country. This
poem alone could be Ontario’s, “Gift of the Magi”.
As
writers, we go to other worlds, and make connections with the smallest of
fields, to produce our craft. Julie McNeill’s ‘The Paper Flag of the Poet’ provides a marvellous metaphor for the
poem, and its “first line/an invisible passport/ into the country of our
loyalties.” (McNeill, p.31) Writers like the Phoenix group in Paper Reunion are
the cruise ships to foreign borders. No, you don’t need a passport to travel
there, but isn’t it wonderful that, in this world of super-speed headlines:
“Some languages are never foreign
linked by subtle rhythms
the long lines dancing with the short,
stanza break and pause.” (McNeill, p.31) ?
