I'm not entirely sure how I stumbled across Stephen Collis's On the Material, though I may have been looking up e-books published by Talonbooks or I found an archived review. As with The Cold Panes of Surfaces, I liked parts of the collection, especially the last part, which memorializes his sister Gail. However, I had a strong aversion to the politics and the poetics behind a much more recent book, Once in Blockadia, to the point that I am fairly unlikely to read more of his work going forward.
The first section of On the Material is titled 4 x 4 and it is comprised of 44 poems, each of which have 4 stanzas of 4 lines each (or 16 lines). There doesn't appear to be any specific rhyme scheme, though many of the individual lines are broken in two (perhaps in imitation of Beowulf). Poem #13 is a clear riff on Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo" (which ends "You must change your life."). In homage, Collis writes: "Archaic torso of Toronto /Shattered pavement on Bloor and /Bathurst hurt feet sidewalk / Scar of tramcar track / ... / People clutch pillows in the / Stink of the Greyhound station / ... / you must change your ideology."
Poem #41 has a tip of the hat to W.C. Williams: "Apropos of appropriation / I take a lyric from your limit / Please excuse the plums from your fridge / They were so old I had to throw them out."
Poem #44 is dedicated to the poet Jordan Scott. It is not immediately apparent if this poem borrows anything from Scott's work, though "Yawp for bardic hopes" may be a reference to Whitman's "Song of Myself." "Then rain comes to draw the city's lines / Telephones face books that breathe / ... / The street cobble jolt jolt jolt jolt of / Spine after spine of books the forgotten / Art of building stone walls to better breathe."
As I mentioned, the most moving section is "Gail's Books." Collis reveals that his sister told him she had cancer, and she passed away six months later. One month after she died, her house burned down, with her study and library destroyed (presumably while the family was still working through what to do with her possessions). Collis still possessed some books she had gifted him, as well as some that he had taken over that month prior to the fire, but almost everything else was lost or ruined. Collis doesn't list all of the books (either saved or lost), but Rilke's Book of Hours was one of her favourites, and Collis adapts from it here. "Book of lost circles /Fingered in water I / Teach to rout loss / From the word may." Also "Book of blasted gates / Who isn't comprised of / The office and the home." And "Book of dissolved tears / It's merely resistance / Every wing is closed / Every wing choosing anomie / ... / Cloth of the fallen cities / Stone which we effigy / Our nothing which remains / Small."
The poems which are not directly tied to Rilke are generally about nature, rebirth and of course the fire always circling back to the forefront of Collin's thoughts. "Even her post-it note smoked / In my hands it still smells of smoke / ... / In the book not the dream smoke / ... / Water damage at one corner crushed and smoked / But you can still read open up prophecy pretend."
In this short poem Collis invokes the phoenix: "In the fire / A window opened / In the window / Pages turned / As though a wind / A bird passed / Through my hand / ... / I sat by the water / Filled with books / Reading its features / Floating in flame."
It's hard to imagine processing such a terrible loss, and the poems seem rawer here, than in the 4 x 4 section, though of course that may stem from own perceptions and reactions to loss. While I wouldn't say this section was an easy read, it had its own rewards.
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