Frieze

Michael Williamson was Reference Librarian at the National Library of Canada in Ottawa.

John Lent’s third collection is divided into three geographical sections — Toronto, Regina, and Vernon — with each functioning as a “frieze-frame” capturing of what seems to be a quasi-bohemian lifestyle, namely movement for the sake of it and experience for sake of it. There is very little indication here of any overall meaning or scheme, and the photography metaphor is tediously omnipresent throughout the overlong 110 pages of the book. The poems are verbal snapshots without many images, producing often flaccid, impressionistic scenarios which are squelched by their static diction. Phrases such as “besmirched gas-station,” “flatulent self-portraits,” “nausea of imperfections,” and “sex somehow too” are clumsily inserted into brittle line-breaks which simply exhort the reader to participate in the voyeuristic, camera-like poems. It is ironical that the poems fail on a visual level and it is downright irritating that they also fail on an acoustic level: the flat, colloquial language gives the reader the impression that they are being told a story that is not only boring, but pointless: “so I started to build furniture instead.” Not much more needs to be said about this very disappointing collection. The best poems are about the death of one of the poet’s friends, but even these tend to pummel the reader instead of render a feeling: “maybe that’s it ridiculous maudlin.” Thistledown Press designed a lovely book, but one has to wonder why this collection was published at all. The photographs have all faded and Mr. Lent’s personal life is laid out too nakedly to be appreciated, never mind interpreted.