Polite to Bees: A Bestiary

Bob Lincoln is the director of acquisitions at the University of
Manitoba Libraries.

Despite its subtitle, this is no book to read at bed-time to young
children. The collection is more an exploration of dissimilar images,
ideas, and description. There is both an acid pen at work as well as a
lyrical brush, but the overall effect is sombre. Even poems with titles
such as “The fox, the rabbit, the duck” are set pieces for the
author’s wit and verbal dexterity. Her book is addressed to adults and
instructs them accordingly.

Hartog loves language and the exotic noun. Her images move rapidly from
beast to skin to idea. In “Spider web,” she sets the subject quickly
and effectively, broadens it by linking images of a snake and music,
views the web at a distance as it floats south, and then introduces the
real serpent: “... A web of lies can be spun from a single kiss.”
She contrasts this web with a convent and a nun’s habit, and in the
last line brings the poem to a wistful but knowing conclusion (“...
From his cheek I pluck a small black spider. He says it was only one
kiss”).

Like any good modern bestiary, the best poems in this collection are
simple, rich with image and metaphor, and didactic. Hartog is concerned
with our inner lives and emotional crucifixions, which she keeps close
at hand, on an elastic leash. She often explores the dark side of our
predicaments, as in “The wrung neck of a swan” or in the story of a
veteran who lives with a giant smooth boulder. The image of an idea that
falls from the brain of a man like a stunned bat is particularly
interesting. What other ideas are hanging on up there? The bestiary is
too polite to tell.