Human Acts

Laurence Steven is Chairman of the English Department at Laurentian
University and author of Dissociation and Wholeness in Patrick White’s
Fiction.

In Human Acts, Spears’s dramatic free-verse poems reveal her
dedication to political and social issues that involve people of various
cultures. Though her images are often Canadian—“in a sad hotel in
downtown Sudbury”—her scope of concern also extends to America,
Europe, and Asia. Through episodic poems, her criticisms of violence and
war—happening in both the present, as in “Mother of Battles 1,”
and the past, as in “The Russian Compound”—are clearly and frankly
stated. Fighting and suffering caused by militarism are the predominant
themes. They are not, however, the sole ones. Spears also covers a
spectrum of current, vexing social issues, from bulimia, to “how women
kill men,” to the “execution of pimps and prostitutes.” Her
poetry, arising from personal feeling, is forcefully presented. Simple
diction and short, terse phrases—e.g., “words were like
nails”—are combined to convey meaning, predominantly through image,
tone, and mood rather than through discursive, abstract idea. Her poems
are also often accompanied by dates and places, thus assuming the
semblance of a diary of her travels—the chronology adding an aspect of
stark reality. As the book proceeds, piling human act upon human act,
Spears’s themes—war, violence, political upheavals, weaponry,
“bandages, death, a death”—leave the reader overwhelmed with a
feeling of foreboding. This may be her intention. Her poems are nothing
if not solemn. Yet the obvious talent and commitment they reflect make
them worth reading, in small doses.