More from Rob McLennan’s new press

This week I’m continuing my coverage of Ottawa’s Chaudiere Press with a look at the final two books in their small but potent roster: Clare Latremouille’s The Desmond Road Book of the Dead and Meghan Jackson’s Movements in Jars. Editor Rob McLennan is known as an admirable poet in his own right, having produced dozens of books of complex, allusive poetry. Under his watchful (and occasionally bloodshot) eyes the press seems to be making a literary statement of the same type, as both Jackson and Latremouille can be seen to tap power from the same general reservoir of linguistic manipulation.

Jackson in particular seems to have flourished with this style, and is most powerful when she employs it. She whips out a breathy manner reminiscent of the Persian ghazal, using the pause to generate power, the syncopated beat of the existence/non-existence of words generating an emotional response. It is a remarkably elegant and serene kind of poetry. Rules of grammar, punctuation and syntax are wiped out in favour of a sort of absolute smoothness that glides over the mind like a clear stream of water: “You stand in the rounded doorway / your arms upward / the walls freshly painted blue / a you aquarium / stomach wet and / blue you swim thinking / in the blue doorway.” Sometimes Jackson pursues this device too far, reducing her poetry past the point of pure elegance and into a chopped word salad instead. But overall, this is a pretty piece of art.

The Desmond Road Book of the Dead is a proud and fascinating piece of work. Latremouille weaves a delicately complex web of poetic words around the frame of a traditional novel. It is mostly beautiful, though also difficult for this poetic prose to remain consistently compelling over the entire novel – sometimes she misses the mark entirely, as in this inadvertently hilarious description of a cat’s death: “At the very end, the aged mound breathed only in bunches, yet not quite infrequently enough for burial.” She has a hugely impressive talent, but lacks the subtlety that long years of practice would provide in order to make this into something great. But that’s hardly a criticism for an author at the beginning of her career.

So despite this, the book is reeeal good.

Two stockings, two feet, two books! Merry Christmas!