Trout Stream Creed

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.

Although David Carpenter is best known for his fiction, he has been
working at poetry since the 1960s. Trout Stream Creed is a collection of
the poems he has written that he wants to keep. The poems date from 1964
to 2002, most of them from the past decade. Indeed, a series of glosses
accompany the oldest one, wittily putting it and its crass young writer
in their place. Like the good fiction writer he is, Carpenter tends
toward narrative in these poems, either in memories or in little stories
whose characters are richly comic.

In the title poem and many others, the poet–speaker is all too aware
of his readers, and alerts them to his various problems, beliefs, and
humour. “Remember,” he says, “we’re in this together. I /
don’t know about you, but my waders are leaking.” Carpenter has paid
attention to Robert Kroetsch, and his prairie comedies of manners owe
much to Kroetsch’s influence; nevertheless, in his memoirs of his
parents and his thoughts about various times of the year in Saskatoon,
Carpenter’s voice is his own.

Indeed, despite their comic moments, the poems for his late mother and
father are deeply empathetic. Their stories—even just the glimpse
small poems can give—emerge as worthy of his remembrance. Other
characters, friends, loves, and fellow poets all get their moments, and
are often allowed to speak for themselves. Carpenter’s
self-deprecating humour in “Rediscovery of a Poem I Wrote a Long Time
Ago” and “His Last Poem” is winning.

Trout Stream Creed doesn’t pretend to anything special in poetic
terms; it fits itself firmly in the tradition of Prairie Vernacular. As
such, it’s an entertaining example of the genre, full of witty
insights, playful puns, and a wondering sense of the great comedy of
life.