A Manual for Lying Down

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

A Manual for Lying Down is a muted, restrained collection of poems. Lush is a reflective, careful writer who seems to choose his images to fit a landscape where the actors are civilized yet are ultimately resigned to their fate and past. It is a beautiful landscape, and the well-printed effort by Coach House adds to the enjoyment. The 43 poems rarely go to more than one page, and when they do the layout is double-spread, easily scanned by the eye. The tone of the book is monochromatic brown, with textured cream-coloured paper.

Production details are relevant because the voice Lush uses in the poems is muted and cerebral. Lush sets images up quickly with varying techniques of pacing, but he loses them at times in the wealth of detail and direction taken. There are few surreal remarks; the movement of narrative action is linear; any echo of poets like Lowther or Roethke is scattered. A poem that stands out because of its run-on language — “Interiors with Sol” — seems out of place, as though it were a first draft and raw material for a more refined later effort.

Lush roams over childhood. lovers, and age with a style like undulating conversation, urging but not urgent. Poems written at a distance. At times the lines are plaintive, wistful, almost cast-off: “...there are / the usual birds.” At the close of many poems direct questions or conclusions are offered, as if what the poet intended to say just came up as the door was closing, when contact with the reader was breaking. This summing up may be needed because the message is too painful to confront directly. These are the poems where one must peel away a variegated skin, to know the flesh and its desires.