Eyes Like Pigeons

Anne Burke is the editor of the Prairie Journal Press.

The source of the title is suggested in “why / eyes like pigeons / i
in pigeons birds / pluck the eyes / the eyes of / woe / pluck the e.”
As a first book, this one is visually interesting, with the
juxtaposition of images from “Truck,” an artist-run centre. Despite
a photograph of the author, the book is primarily other-centred, to the
extent that at one point in the narrative one of the voices argues,
“you listen, Roberta, but you never tell me about yourself.”
However, the author is revealed through others and eventually takes on a
reality of family and her own experiences.

Much of the text is devoted to “Thi” as a central character; we
hear her voice and attempt to understand her significance because, among
other thing, “Thi” in Vietnamese means poetry (“but what means
meaning”[?]). I suppose some of us are past caring about genres, since
the boundaries are commonly challenged or blurred. I am not surprised
that some sections appeared in Open Letter, or were influenced by Fred
Wah, because the concrete, the breath pause, and the language-centred
and synaptic writing might not have happened without Tish and the West
Coast, although Rees is continually drawing on women’s experience and
the semiotic.

She is to be commended for her good humor (“multiculturalism is
ruining this country said my friend we should / all just be Canadian and
be One Happy Family”) and sensitivity, translated from the vernacular
into art.