Nunt

Douglas Barbour is a professor of English at the University of Alberta.
He is the author of Lyric/anti-lyric : Essays on Contemporary Poetry,
Breath Takes, and Fragmenting Body Etc.

With its carefully constructed foreword by Marvin Gander, and the
context of Mingus Tourette’s broken marriage and subsequent travels
through the dark sides of U.S. cities, Nunt is really an
autobiographical novel pretending to be a collection of poems (the 63
“nuntos” that follow). In the way all the pieces represent Tourette
as the centre of every action, Nunt reminds one more of Hunter S.
Thompson’s wild ravings than those of Tourette’s named
heroes—Bukowski, Kerouac, Miller, Purdy. But they’re all present and
accounted for too, in verses that, as Daniel Richler says, “have
something to mortally offend everyone who reads them.”

Which is to say, Nunt is not for everyone. The verse is often sharp,
and has some athletic moves. Although most of the poems are about sex,
violence, and a professed hatred for smug Americans and smug religion,
Tourette every so often allows a littler lyric beauty to shine:
“I’ve walked from our den / to the steel world / and back / to the
dew in the garden remaining // and outside / the pillars of concrete /
like sutures / torn by exertion // I am stationary / it is the world /
that is spinning away from me.”