Blind Zone: Poems

Martin Singleton was a poet living in Toronto.

This book is the work of one of Toronto’s better-known “performance” poets. It is comprised of four short sections. In the first, “writers,” Smith describes his peers. Although he is capable of the occasional strong image (“the sting of lemon / the actuality of yellow”), all too often he lets the poem degenerate into cuteness (one poem for the avant-garde composer John Cage is a total blank), babble (“portrait is a / is a picture / is a stephen / pic // ture a stephen”), or timed language: walls “transform to blue infinity.”

Section Two, “altared states” — Smith eschews capitals — is a collection of love poems for women identified only by their initials. Again, the image occasionally rings fresh: “here against my cheek / your hair / thunders.” But all too often it is flat — “magic fire burns,” “bodies’ arch.” The poem for “y” contains some equally uninspired high school French, and some lines both clumsy and pretentious: “the grotesque transforms in / beauty’s arched articulation / uttered / above the mosses’ subacoustic moan.”

These faults are especially irksome in Section Three, “white cycle,” in which words are scattered over the page with abandon. The tenuous unity of the earlier work gives way to frenetic (and private) association. Section Four, “blind zone,” is a welcome return to order and is more successful than the previous work. Smith’s poems about his father are good, and “morning” yokes together two lovely images: mist is a “filament veil / set delicately / on a morning lake // the poem / upon glass.” Overall, though, far, far too much of this book either does not try or does not convince.