Girls and Handsome Dogs

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.

Norm Sibum has lived in Canada for over 30 years, and has published a
dozen books of poems, yet is still little known. This, I suppose, is
because he gives every indication of being a loner. He is a poet
fascinated by incongruity and odd juxtapositions. He tends to pose as an
inconspicuous observer commenting wryly on the strange people and events
he sees around him in a dead-pan and highly allusive style. This style
is erudite in reference, requiring readers not only to keep their wits
about them but also to be imaginative enough to make connections between
statements that often appear challenging and discontinuous.

Girls and Handsome Dogs, attractively produced by the Porcupine’s
Quill, possesses the same quirky wit and insight that characterizes his
earlier work. Prominent within it is a long poem, “Aginthorpe on the
Divan,” that follows its main character through the drunken aftermath
of a party in a series of poems that have the surreal vividness of a
dream—and may, in part, be presented as dream. In it we encounter a
view of the contemporary world in all its bemusing combination of the
absurd, the sublime, and the horrific. It is one of those puzzling if
somewhat infuriating poems that do not give up their secrets easily but
reveal enough to intrigue the mind and invite continued rereadings that
prove more rewarding each time.

Sibum, then, is his own man, and writes poetry that, for good or ill,
is like no one else’s. It can be as challenging as a cryptic crossword
(one of his poems is actually about a crossword) and can become
similarly addictive. An acquired taste, perhaps, but one that deserves
to be both sampled and savored.