If Summer Had a Knife

Martin Singleton was a poet living in Toronto.

This is the first collection of poetry from Toronto writer and editor Beverley Daurio. In “A Clean Glass Cow, “ she describes “the way we talk / leaving everything out,” and much of this book’s strength derives from innuendo, the unspoken, the spaces and the often surprising connections this poet makes between words.

Summer consists of three sections. “broken cup” — Daurio eschews capitals, although her punctuation is otherwise regular — is comprised of 17 poems. Surreal yoking of image and fragmentation of scenarios combine to yield a kaleidoscopic — and unsettling — effect. Enough concrete detail is given to centre the reader, but Daurio is much more interested in ambience than reportage (similarly, a photograph by her on the book’s cover, whose individual elements are immediately recognizable, evokes mystery by their combination). To this end syntax is slightly disjointed (“handles for the men to carry shine”), and imagery is striking: clouds are “whales of summer,” a boarding house “a torture of zeroes.”

“a tree watching fire” consists of an equal number of love poems. The persona is more vulnerable, more open to both need and loss. There is a constant tension between the natural and artificial world: “we lingered in fields / that were small squalid rooms. “ This section chronicles the complexities of love in a contemporary relationship, without becoming sentimentality — happy. Couples are “paper dolls ... like hope you come and go.” The imagery remains precise, “the tongue bitten back like car at a red light.”

The final, title section is the most experimental. Its opening poem, “criticism,” is one 13-line stanza. The breathless run-on lines are undercut by continued qualification; the result is deliberately unsettling. The remaining poems, all brief, employ short lines; internal spacing generates tension. The chaos of urban life is explored from a feminist perspective, tempered with wit: “see brown chevettes rain down like cockroaches from the ceiling.” From its cover inwards, this is an impressive book.