White Noise

Nora Drutz was a Toronto-based freelance writer.

Garry Raddysh was born in Saskatchewan. He attended the University of Regina and now teaches high school in Churchbridge, Saskatchewan. His first book of poetry, Eye of a Stranger (Coteau Books), was published in 1978, and a poetry pamphlet, Every Mother’s Son (Thingvalla Press), in 1980. Some poems from this latest work, White Noise, have appeared in Eye of a Stranger, in Grain, The Fiddlehead, and Canadian Dimension, and have been heard on CBC radio.

White Noise is a book of very personal and disciplined poems. In a sense it could be considered autobiographical — the poet setting out his emotions for us in an orderly manner upon the dissecting table. His world view is pessimistic. There can be no happiness for him in personal relationships, only “the killing of souls / and brief resuscitations.” He is alienated from himself and society and unable to escape the loneliness resulting from this. He seems to consider himself somewhat of a romantic hero, “... bedevilled / on the level road, / searching to please / and pleasing no one.” Very occasionally, he is able to look outside of himself, and to consider such broader issues as death, cyclical growth, and change.

Somehow we don’t seem to care all that much. There are a number of good lines, but they are interspersed with writing that is banal and trite. “Red dawns” and “cold suns” are not original. Although the writing is contained, some of the imagery is needlessly dramatic and contributes nothing to the intensity of the poet’s statement. For example, “you have given me the women, / taught me how to love / they come to me in dreams /of famine and disease / their stained faces covet / my dignity”; and “no snow has fallen / in late november / and the agitated women / hover about their children / marring their impatience with fear.” Out of context, these lines seem to be highly expressive; in context, however, they are too heavy to support the simple statement of the poet.

When Raddysh is not trying quietly to display his virtuosity, he does have something to say and can say it rather well. One of the best poems is “When I Am With You”:

“they say women who drink scotch

are easy, but you

are difficult, wanting to know

casually, what I desire

why should this simple

word from you

prevent a lie?

I desire to be left alone,

the items fabling away

less real than my loneliness

and I desire to be with you

though my words are stifled,

pauses impolite

as an open mouth,

urgent as departure”

Here, all the starkness and intensity of his pain is summed up.