For a Cappuccino on Bloor and Other Poems

Chris Knight is copy editor of the National Post.

kath macLean, her book-jacket biography tells us, is “a doctoral
candidate at the U. of Alberta, [where] she dreams of one day returning
to Toronto for a cappuccino on Bloor.” But these 14 poems seem to
yearn for something far more elemental. There are echoes in these works
of 19th-century romantics for whom love and loss were as necessary as
air, as consuming as fire. The poem “in before dark” opens with a
quotation from Christina G. Rossetti, and then begins: “a small white
hand against night’s mouth / stifles the scream when the bus shifts
gears and rattles along streetcar / tracks above noise / lips hardly
move.” Elsewhere are gothic touches—candles, stormy nights, corsets
and lace, emotions measured in centuries.

There are, of course, thoroughly modern elements to macLean’s work as
well: the verse structure is free, and modern subject matter is not
eschewed. There is tension between the old and the new in these poems,
and while it is sometimes distracting, it gives the collection its
unique energy.