Connect the Dots

Julie Rak is a Ph.D. candidate in English at McMaster University.

Nicole Markotic’s first full-length book of poetry is a playful,
fast-paced look at connections formed and broken between family members,
romantic involvements, and the poet’s sense of place. Readers who tire
of angst-ridden poetry by younger authors will find much to appreciate
in Markotic’s amusing yet poignant prose-poem style. Her
conversational voice reads well in poems like “Stand There Talking,”
which explores the personal history of the parents of Markotic’s large
family using the connections maintained and broken by the telephone as a
motif spread over the four seasons. Lines like “autumn: the birds
evaporate, the wires become empty branches. we don’t see voices moving
anymore” sit near sly comments about “your father. who converted you
into a telephone. your father also your teacher. made you report what
your classmates said did. how they spoke about him outside class.”
Rapid-fire lines like these make family history into a collage that is
constantly in motion, linked together by technology the heart of a
friendly affectionate family portrait.

Even when describing the end of a relationship, Markotic remains wry:
“I arranged our break-up the way most people do weddings. if it comes
down to it, you get the tv, the vcr, I’ll take the stereo.” A
painful tracing of her feelings begins with a joke about aging: “when
you look in the mirror you see wrinkles as well as zits. you think there
should be an interval, no matter how short, between acne and old age.”
As the poems progress, friends, her former lover, and family members
reappear as characters, making the later poems take on the qualities of
engaging, gossipy short fiction. This reviewer looks forward to more
work from this exciting new poet.