Breakfast at Mel's and Other Poems of Love and Places

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Laconic, minimalist, enigmatic, elusive: these are some of the
adjectives that spring to mind after a reading of Douglas Lochhead’s
poetry. Breakfast at Mel’s is a collection well up to the standard
that his admirers have come to expect. Its subtitle defines his
characteristic range. The book contains a number of poetic sequences.
The majority of them are about love (“Love Sequence of Sorts” is a
classic Lochhead title). Some are about places—rural in “Wood
Country Poems,” which evokes the New Brunswick landscape that Lochhead
has made his own in High Marsh Road, Upper Cape Poems, and
Dykelands—urban in “Breakfast at Mel’s,” which celebrates a
congenial Sackville tearoom that he has patronized for years.

As always, Lochhead’s is a poetry of the understated. Take, for
example, this: “Perhaps we should dance / when we are finally
together. / Should I take / the necessary steps?” The quiet wit of the
play upon words prevents an excessive romanticism yet creates a tone
that is engagingly intimate in its muted aptness. Lochhead is masterful
at catching the imperceptible essence of moods that generally pass
unrecorded in prose, let alone in verse: “It has been / a difficult
year. / Just as others. / Everything is going. / Ice is a promise / for
any morning.” The reader is left to make the connections between these
staccato, only half-connected phrases. And the poetry also resides
within these connections.

One could do worse than describe this as confessional poetry for those
who do not normally like confessional poetry. Such verse is not
generally characterized by reticence, yet this is one of the features of
these poems that give them their quality. Indeed, Lochhead’s engaging
stylistic reticence is one of the secrets of his art.