Under the Abdominal Wall

Olga Costopoulos teaches English at the University of Alberta.

This is Sharon McCartney’s first book of poems. The contents chronicle
the poet’s life in a highly autobiographical, even confessional mode.
There are many poems about a sister dying of cancer, and the speaker’s
response to same. There are poems that track the speaker’s journeys,
both real and psychic, around America. They are all highly personal and
written in the very short lines that now seem to characterize a whole
generation of Canadian poets. McCartney slides toward the grittier end
of what I’ve come to call the “blood, breath, and bone school” of
Canadian poetry. These images on their own are perhaps a bit overused
and deserving of at least a temporary rest, if not an outright
moratorium. While there are moments of real intensity, there is little
that is memorable here.