Not Noir

Betsy Nuse, the former owner of Boudicca Books, is a Vancouver poet,
writer, and editor.

Not Noir by Kate Van Dusen is an exceptional first book. Most of the poems are, as the title poem explains, “not noir, / but utterly unredeemably / / black” in tone. They speak about the poet’s estrangement from her lover, her loneliness, and her subsequent alienation from herself, even in the “poetry scene.” She probes her own feelings as relentlessly and unsentimentally as doctor might probe a wound, using interesting and varied images and techniques (for example, frozen ice and blood in “View of the Statues,” ghost limbs in “Ghostships (Ghostdrip),” broken lines in “Sawed Sonnet”) as tools. The violent (“An Afternoon Alone”) or egotistical men (“An Occasional Conversation”) of this book can offer her no comfort, but the poet does start to achieve forgetfulness (“Sometimes I forget that I”) — if not forgiveness — as the book proceeds.

Van Dusen’s voice and technique are equally assured in the short and two longer poems in the collection. “Strange Trains” uses jagged lines, phrases — even single words isolated by periods — and images of dismemberment to comment on the relation of words to each other in poetry as well as the poet’s relation with the other poet she addresses. “Something Simple )Synapse(” is a clever and not-at-all simple counterpoint between bits of talk and interaction with other poets and an explanation of the brain’s electrical functions in which each “circuit,” with its own short-circuits and flashes, reflects and comments on the other.

It takes courage to make such a merciless and bleak debut, but Van Dusen is already a poet with a strong and steady voice who, we can hope, will be published soon again.