How Will We Know When We Get There?

Andrew Vaisius is a Winnipeg day-care director.

Most of the poems included in this volume attain a level of craftsmanship I’d unhesitantly call competent. However, few poems rise above that level. The end result is a book of poetry deserving middle-of-the-road praise: nice, thoughtful, attentive to detail. The poems are well written but indistinct, and more often than not easily forgotten. I believe it’s accurate and fair to call this soft-spoken poetry. This is Bailey’s métier and I’ll point out its positive characteristics.

In “Merry Christmas,” at a time when “It’s seasonal to be in touch,” Bailey makes the requisite phone call to his parents before the twist of placing another long-distance call to himself backwards in time to childhood. It is a relaxed and gentle poem. It’s not used, tempting as it might be, as a vehicle for grand statements about the biggest sentimental holiday in North America. Instead, Bailey tones it down to semi-serious personal kidding and gives a nod to the continuum of life.

my resolution for the new year is to trade flung snowballs
with everyone
while there is snow on the ground.

in the Spring we can chase frogs.

Bailey shows no problem with form. In “The Season” he works alternate stanzas between childhood and nature in a most satisfying way. He uses this alternating stanza device in other poems too. He is never stifled — or stifling — with form, and I think it’s fair to say he employs form as a means to an end, not as an end in itself, or independent of theme.

Bailey’s themes include nature, love, despair, and our ways of perceiving. Perhaps he gives himself away too much in one of the stanzas from “Complacence”:

my movements consist of snapping shutters, lighting candles, writing letters, giving an air of being unconcerned about important things.

There is a kind of nonchalance about this volume which suggests that I can only recommend it if you’re so inclined, or you have the time. And, if not, well, I don’t know ... maybe. Why don’t you think about it, pick up a copy on a slow Saturday, and let me know.