The Way Life Should Be

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

The truism that Canada is a country of immigrants that is continually
refreshed by newcomers’ ideas certainly applies to the poetry of Ken
Norris, an American-born professor of Canadian literature. His
background influences his sensibility, whether he acknowledges it or
not. In “Recurrence,” he wryly credits Robert Creeley (a leading
postwar American poet) by stating, “I read Creeley / and he ruins / my
poetry.” “To the Canadian Publishing Industry in Crisis” recalls a
Frank O’Hara poem, “To the Film Industry in Crisis.” Norris may
echo his predecessor’s style, but not his perspective. O’Hara
explicitly praised mainstream culture; Norris accuses it of “poisoning
its children with mindless fodder.”

Norris’s emigration from, and return to, the United States, gives him
a special perspective on his native land. In “Monday at the Mall,”
he describes a President’s Day holiday with daughter Zoe at a Bangor,
Maine, mall as “the way life should be.” On the other hand, he
deconstructs the American dream in “Small-Town America”; here he
meets “Congenial neighbours / who have little to offer beyond
congeniality,” and wisely notes that such a community “is a good
place to raise children until the age of ten. / Then they chomp at the
bit.”

Comedian Rick Mercer compared current Canada–U.S. relations to
dealing with “a wounded bull.” If that is true, then Ken Norris is a
skilled rodeo cowboy.