“The Hem
in Vehement”: a review, the title poem,
& Pearl Pirie’s the pet radish, shrunken
Jospeh LaBine
If
you glanced at BookThug’s Spring list for 2015, you may not have noticed Pearl
Pirie’s exciting, new collection of poems, the pet
radish, shrunken.
Here’s some basic information about it:
Cost—$18.00; paperback, also available as an
e-book; edition—800; length—96 pgs
It’s been described as, “the world in words in miniature,” an “incidental collation of plays on a
Scrabble board,” and a foray into words inside words; but Emblazoned on the
back of the book, Dapne Marlatt offers the following blurb:
In Pearl
Pirie’s poems, language ferments, foments a ‘vinegar vigour.’ Flipping the
labels off contemporary mores, cooking with sound, she offers quick food for
thought. Keep up with her if you can.
These descriptions are not wholly satisfying
though, because they do not interrogate Pirie’s lusty, zesty use of language,
nor do they explore word play in the individual poems.
One
of the best poems in the pet radish
is the title poem, which represents, in miniature, the humour of the collection
at its best. The speaker’s quirky observations are framed in an arms-length
perspective rather than the traditional, close lyric addressing a lover. Here
it is in toto:
the
pet radish, shrunken
it’s
kept as the head of operations
for
the methadone gaffe. no one question.
magical
thinking bile is required
to
med the agate ditz of comfy.
look
at that dory, minus the hunky
it’s
as seaworthy on the tines of gale.
pr
is the inevitable start of any time
of
prayer. the blitz howls its own oaths.
such
putz work avoids the snip snap of soars
of
the tachyon pulses of the fatal laws of later.
sidestep
the rule of: fresh is best.
much
is tucked inside the virulent must.
recall:
even the most buxom blues thin, thin out
by
dawn. to pray is to flick a spraying fez of gold.
chin
up, birth enzymes of a slug’s swagger
to shrink the antlers of their
onwards despites. (tprs 76)
One might speculatie that the radish at the “head
of operations,” is a scrotum, not a
vegetable; the “methadone gaffe” is likely the euphoric blundering resulting
after coitus; the multi-coloured, “ditz” – airheadedness “of comfy,” is orgasm.
Before this explanation gets too deep, or intense, errr…another poem, “how to root out the normal,” brilliantly
explores the codification of sexuality in language and offers some context for further discussion. It examines the “fruit machine,” what Pirie defines in
her note as:
a
device for a homophobic program run by the federal government in the 1950s and
1960s. Subjects were made to view pornography, and the device measured the
diameter of the pupils of the eyes, perspiration, and pulse for a supposed
erotic response. (tprs 10; 92).
In “…root out the normals,” Pirie employs an n+7
method (rough translation, a form of Oulipo,
‘Ouvroir de littérature potentielle’)—a method of selecting different nouns
from the dictionary (or another source text) just ahead of the initial poetic
impulse: i.e. “the impulses of the test homosexuals” becomes “the impulses of
the text hyenas” (10, my italics);
but later, also, “turning hyacinths” (10). Hyacinths also denote beauty, and
with it, a beautiful sexual connotation (See The Waste Land & Eliot’s “hyacinth girl”); but combined with
the tension of homophobia in the verb turning, as in converting. Wonderful words
emerge from this type of noun play: “hyacinth” (also “hyenas”) revises the negative resonance of the
word “homosexuals” within the original fruit
machine text. Pirie shows through Oulipo
that homosexuals, like hyacinths, are beautiful.
This method of masking words is used to greater effect in title poem. The
line, “look at that dory, minus the hunky,” tantalizes a look in the dictionary
for a different d-word. While “minus the
hunky” reveals a disembodiment with “seaworthy” qualities that do not go
unnoticed, nor do the “birth enzymes of a slug’s swagger / to shrink…” because
what is true of the slug is also true of the post-coital penis, the slimy
trail, its semen. The sex act: “the blitz howls its own oath,” and the sexual
connotation of this poem, the performance being expressed (like the lack of
sexual imagery in the “making children from scratch ’n sniff” poem), is only
one meaning within a vibrant language filled—brimming over with potential: “to
pray is to flick a spraying fez of gold,”—the line is as elusive as it is
orgasmic. Put that “fez” atop your head and cry out: “much is tucked inside the
virulent must!”
In 2011, Pirie won the Robert Kroetsch
Award for Innovative poetry. The three main sequences offered in the pet radish show that this award is
well-well-well deserved. But it would be foolish to think that this means much, beyond small recognition for good
work. However, it does raise a question about that word innovative, a lyrical quality Pirie arrives at by challenging
language to break apart into component words and meanings. Try the word
generator page at www.pearlpirie.com/wellthatputs, and have
fun with more matryoshka words like hem in
vehement.
If
anyone is “vehement” about anything, it is readers who have snapped their pens
(or laptops) in half, made furious by the thought that they did not [, could never] write the pet radish, shrunken. Pirie
entices readers with cartoonish, sing-song lyrics, the words ring out their
music, this is poetry sung to an air:
scholars
pulp
fiction & meadows & gun
a
dagger
a
digger
a
2 o’clock trigger
how
a summer comes undone
a cord of wood & an axe have
begun.
to begin
you begin
the lifted swing
under long slanting afternoon
sun. (tprs 91)
The jolly
atmosphere of “Scholars” (the final poem of the closing sequence) is rivaled in
the earlier sections by clever attempts to undermine negativity and twenty
first century cyncism: “shall we turn this can’t
/ into a canto?” (tprs 44). In “from
the annals 1,” the phrase, “wild dust bunnies (hereafter w.d.b.)” recalls the
over-used American abbreviation for “weapons of mass destruction”: w.m.d., and offers an ironic political gloss at depth of the speaker’s
joyful levity (tprs 31). The comic
turns are thematic to the playfulness of the collection: Pirie’s word play
tests the cultural constraints of language (i.e. the fruit machine and constructing gender identity). She tests the
sexual and political intentions of ordinary turns of phrase.
Earlier versions of poems in the pet radish originally appeared in several
magazines: the Ottawater, Touch Donkey, Peter F Yacht Club, and The
Best Canadian Poetry 2014. However, Pirie and BookThug poetry editor and
award winning author, Phil Hall, finalized the collection together, working towards what reads as sustained thought/argument. An editor
in her own right, Pirie publishes little miniature folded chapbooks under the phafours
press imprint. Hall supplied the drawing for the cover illustration and title image.
Copies are available through your local bookstore and online at http://bookthug.ca/
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