The Blame Business

Bob Lincoln is Director of Acquisitions at the University of Manitoba
Libraries.

The Blame Business is a 48-page collection of prose poems that, according to the publisher’s release, offer a “radical and bleak vision of the social and political systems we have inherited.” While correct, this is a bit off the mark. The form that Eady has chosen to project his message is conventional. The short surrealist images are contained in complete sentences with typical punctuation and grammar. The form is not radical, nor does there seem to be lurking at the back of these poems a killer mind. There is a disjointed and strange vision at work in these poems, but it is recognizable. This is a collection of relationships and appraisals. But unlike some surrealist statements, Eady’s retains his humanism, which is most evident in his best poems.

These poems concern themselves with areas of shamed activity, with a thread of narrative discourse. The writer Donald Hall would call these poems with crutches, because of Eady’s use of normal speech patterns and conjunctions. More to the point, these poems find their real energy not from a “poetic” structure, but from the images that are juxtaposed. These are fantastic adventures rooted in facts — such as “Concise History of a Room” or “How to Lube a Car.” They also bring the reader into the unique, interior world of the poet. There is no radical polemic here; rather the twists of perspective that occur in each poem bring out a new understanding and insight, done with a keen sense of humour.