Recent Reads: Jason Christie and Jessica Smith

Government by Jason Christie

Mnemotechnics by Jessica Smith

Both titles published by above/ground press, 2013.

Anyone who has watched Question Period on Parliament Hill likely understands why politics turns a lot of people off. I’d wager that most people intrinsically care about counting ballots, improving government programs, standing up for what’s right and so on. But I’m far less optimistic that even a tenth of that population will watch, with hands clasped, as MPs play the blame-game across the aisle while the marrow of their issues gets cast aside. The art of speaking in circles can make a nihilist out of anyone and that apathy lands squarely in the crosshairs of Jason Christie’s Government.

Bearing no author’s name on its cover and opening with “The Golden Fleece”, a lengthy examination into the spectrum of political consumption, Government has the radical air of a manifesto. But notice I use the word examination and not attack; Christie isn’t keen on getting sucked into the vortex of identity politics as it would negate Government’s raison d’être. Instead this chapbook observes from the eye of the storm, underlining thoughts on materialism, ownership, conscience and ambition – existential subjects at the roots of litigious jargon. From “The Golden Fleece”:

3.

“It’s the abuse of

acceptable practice

that really puts

chapstick on my

grocery list. It’s

really that smile

and nod and smile

and smile when really

nothing hangs

balanced and

backpatting and

gladhanding and

co-signing and

winking and

book publishing and

obligatory face time and

it all amounts to

churning for the sake

of making someone

else superior because

that’s what you both

want, isn’t it? Necessity

and utility attached

to knowledge with

wonder shackled

to output and process

turns lush greenery

into rigid structures

that make us an

authority on rigid

structures.”

Sticking with “The Golden Fleece” for a moment, since its nine segments do occupy half of Government, there’s a copious amount of opinion anchoring this work that I don’t wish to downplay. Christie employs repetition to reduce meaning and spins unique phrasing to obfuscate simple points. Yes, strategies straight from the Question Period survival handbook! But even Christie’s opinion resists being politicized, choosing to anchor Government with a desire for simplicity rather than hinging the chapbook on a reader’s allegiance.

Christie’s stanzas cascade in tight fragments, creating tongue-in-cheek observations that pertain as much to society as to the parties which govern. Perhaps the most searing poem arrives with “Ceres”, wherein Christie speaks of the human condition as a cycle of wants and achievements that requires destruction for distraction. Heavy stuff, I suppose, but it maintains the un-preachy logic that matches philosophical food for thought with the satisfaction of a good read. Excerpt from “Ceres”:

“We demand, um,

a round planet

to conquer and

grapes to crush

and woods to raze

and my fingers

smell like bacon

what were we

demanding again

now that we have

our roundness and

promises of voyage

and desperate

skyward pleas

launched with

arcing smoke trails

which way is home

when everywhere

we look burns

new memories

into the fabric

of our great need”

Sometimes the book you've recently finished and the new one you’ve just picked up compliment each other in unexpected ways. Fresh off of reading Jason Christie’s analytical Government, I turn to the wholly bucolic, undaunted echo-space of Jessica Smith’s Mnemotechnics. Betraying its tricky title, which refers to “the practice of aiding the memory”, these poems reside in a state of wakefulness untroubled by the march of humanity.

What makes Smith’s latest chapbook so imaginative – yet also difficult to transcribe – is her liberal use of spacing, which isolates outdoor imagery and one’s sense of place with a more meditative pulse. Occasionally, as in “warning”, spacing obstructs the very direction in which the poem should be read. I took these gray areas as cues to go off-trail, so to speak, and experience Smith’s details in new ways. Mnemotechnics’ content lends itself well to reorganization and, even when subbing one line before another, each fragmented string contributes to a rewarding sum, a greater awareness.

So there’s no rushing to identify the arc in “robins” or the unfinished Roger Tory Pederson quote in “canada geese”; one simply appreciates the scope. With each line as deliberate as a brushstroke, Smith constructs scenes on standalone details, which – like the birds she muses – contribute insights best when taken as a flock. Unlike Christie’s Government, this is very much a chapbook to cleanse one’s mind, to take outdoors and read with nothing but the breeze to assist it. In fact there’s probably no better way to approach Mnemotechnics, a work constantly conversing with nature. Read "ghost" below, captured authentically in an image snagged from above/ground press: