13th Canadian Challenge - 13th Review - Short Talks

Short Talks by Anne Caron was recently reissued by Brick Books as one of its Brick Books Classics.

There are 45 short talks in the book with a very short afterword that was added for this new edition (where indeed the new introduction by poet Margaret Christakos is nearly as long as the rest of the book!).

I guess I would classify the talks as very short prose poems.  Most are quite curious.

Here are a few excerpts:

Short Talk on Mona Lisa - "Every day he poured his question into her, as you pour water from one vessel into another, and it poured back.  Don't tell me he was painting his mother, lust, etc."

Short Talk on Shelter - "You can write on a wall with a fish heart, it's because of the phosphorous..."

These short talks are certainly poetic and intriguing -- and misleading, since they are presented somewhat flatly as if they were non-fiction, though seem wildly fanciful in some cases.

(This review was a bit too short, even for me, as pressed for time as I am, so I extended it slightly.)

There is a bit of a theme running through many of these talks, focusing on artists (Kafka, Van Gogh, Prokofiev) and sadness.  It isn't entirely clear what form the sadness takes -- being unappreciated in a world of philistines, never finding the right word or note until it is too late, perhaps only becoming an artist due to unrelated mental illness (Sylvia Plath).  Ovid is a particularly interesting case, as he was exiled for crossing Emperor Augustus, and indeed Ovid died in exile, writing several long poems during his long exile to try to regain favour, though of course he remains best known for Metamorphoses.

Here is Carson on Ovid: "He sups and walks back to his room.  The radio is on the floor.  Its luminous green dial blares softly.  He sits down at the table; people in exile write so many letters.  Now Ovid is weeping.  Each night about this time he puts on sadness like a garment and goes on writing."