A Minor Operation

Mark Bastien was a Toronto-based journalist.

This is probably the first book of poems to document a man’s vasectomy, and Phil Hall has the unusual honour of having written it. A Minor Operation is a collection of what Hall calls “post-humourous” poems, written after his 1982 vasectomy. This is his third book.

Given his already startling subject, the author has written a fascinating account of his hospital stay. The long title poem is supported by graphic depictions of the doctor’s procedure in the operation. Hall begins by giving the facts:

I gave my testicles

into the hands of a man

Surgical details are given: “He shaved the hair /from the 8 /froze it /cut each side twice /took out two sections of duct.” But the author soon abandons the facts of his operation and gives us the feelings he experienced. Much of the poem seems to be anesthesia-induced hallucinations and connections. Some of these are unclear, but most deal with rites of manhood and the ties between father and son. Hall writes:

to keep holding you

on the pony machine

on pushing you back

through the rain

Hall’s attempts to understand his son and his father are alternately puzzling and touching.

The poems in the first half of the book are collectively titled “Disgust.” Most successful in this section are “Kitsch,” “Javex,” and “On the Eve of the El Salvador Election.” In the latter poem Hall shows his flair for making bizarre but successful connections: the ordinary becomes extraordinary and takes on worldly proportions.