Candid voices behind mask: Debut collections delve into the personal past with sharp eye
review of Lean Days by Steve McOrmond
by Barbara Carey
Toronto Star
July 11, 2004
Splitting Off
by Triny Finlay
Nightwood Editions, 86 pages, $15.95
Lean Days
by Steve McOrmond
Wolsak & Wynn, 88 pages, $15
Autobiography is the starting point for many poets, but the "I" in a poem is also a fiction, no matter how candid it may seem. Even Anne Sexton, high priestess of confessional poets, regarded it as a poetic device to be put on like a mask. In these two debut collections, the poets rely on an autobiographical voice, but they use it in ways that create evocative resonance for an audience.
Splitting Off, as its title suggests, departs from the straight course of personal recollection and charts a playfully iconoclastic way through desire and domesticity. In fact Triny Finlay, a Ph.D student in English at the University of Toronto, slips on the mask of various characters with aplomb. She has a sardonic wit and a sharp eye for the contradictions underlying social conventions, especially those concerned with femininity.
A number of poems focus on food and clothing — objects that are often markers of our appetites and our sense of identity. In "Fancy Dress," for instance, the image of a wedding dress whose "beaded seed pearls chafed / my biceps" embodies the confining aspects of marriage; a flamboyant evening gown ("like a skinned / cushion") that she keeps in her closet and never wears suggests a transgressive carnality.
Finlay's take on romance is more leather than lace, and intimacy is often as threatening as it is enticing. Underlying an apparent seduction scene, for instance, is a hint of menace ("she stirs her Sling / with a steak knife"). The noirish notes in Splitting Off are nicely counterbalanced by a sly humour, particularly in a series of poems that spoof the notion of autobiography ("Self-Portrait As One More Potato," et al). In effect, the sequence serves notice that "up close and personal" is not what Splitting Off is about. Finlay's crisp, quirky phrasing can sometimes seem too self-conscious, but overall, this collection is an entertaining introduction to an inventive, versatile writer.
Steve McOrmond's Lean Days is generally more straight-shooting, though he has his tricks too. In the opening poem, he looks back to adolescence: "You try on adulthood / to see how it fits, practise saying / I love you and goodbye." Accordingly, most of the poems centre on desire and loss, and deftly combine a restrained lyricism with emotional directness.
McOrmond, who now lives in Toronto, grew up in a P.E.I. farming community, and there's both small-town genuineness and urban polish in his work. There's also a hint of the disappointed romantic, a wistfulness that is touching rather than hangdog.
In one poem, he offers a memorable image of longing: "I'm a chipmunk filling his cheeks for the long winter ahead. I store you up in my memory."
McOrmond's reflections on various aspects of growing up have a quiet charm. But his poems have more linguistic oomph when he shifts away from the heartfelt.
"Field Guide," for instance, is a wonderfully imaginative, witty appreciation of hearing and the bones of the inner ear ("Because it is an organ with 30,000 keys. / Because it is housed in a concert hall the size of a pencil eraser ...)" If Lean Days can yield such pleasing variety, surely even better days lie ahead.
Toronto's Barbara Carey, a poet and CBC Radio producer, appears monthly.
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