Lunar Drift

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.

Marlene Cookshaw opens Lunar Drift with a series of historical narrative
poems, “Time’s Arrow,” concerning the ways humans have tried
through the ages to measure time mechanically. Beginning in 4241 BC,
these poems register the many machines we have constructed to contain
chaos, usually with some negative side effects. The speakers sometimes
live in the moments represented, and sometimes appear to be scholars of
those moments. In both cases they make arguments, and reach conclusions;
lyric containment results.

In “in illo tempore,” the poems are more straightforwardly lyric,
with a speaker who appears to be the poet, remembering moments in her
own life and meditating on their meaning. These too tend to story and
reminiscence—a telling that indeed tells. In many of them, some lines
shine with wit, but the general movement is somewhat prosaic or
memoiristic. The poems make their points and argue their cases, often to
demonstrate the human failings with which we meet each other and the
world. Parents, lovers, friends—all take their place in a life
recalled. Cookshaw has an eye for the pointed detail, but the tale is
most important.

Cookshaw demonstrates a mastery of various forms, like the glosa, and
she makes fine use of various quotations in her work. But a couple of
smaller, tighter poems stand out, wherein the speaker gets a bit sharp
and speaks directly to some self, her own or another’s, as in
“Brava” and “Savasana.” Each reader will find her or his own
delights in Lunar Drift; for me, it’s the lively cry of “The barest
sliver of yearning / goes forward, remakes you. // Nothing to do but
look lovingly / at the upturned self, / kiss that uncomprehending / face
goodbye.”