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    Drift
    Drift
    Drift
    Ebook96 pages36 minutes

    Drift

    By Kevin Connolly

    ()

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    About this ebook

    What are we thinking at any given moment? What happens to a thought as that moment, on its way to oblivion, collides with its successor?

    Rambunctious, witty, joyous, and bittersweet, drift is an investigation conducted by a truly unfettered imagination. In fluid, sparkling cadences, Kevin Connolly's poems let the mind's downtime have the stage for a change -- the desert sky transformed; Spring Break as viewed by passing skipjacks; narratives of danger and dream narrative; a meditation on the business end of a sea cucumber; figures of history disfigured and left to wander the consumer grid -- such are the entirely odd, entirely current events in Connolly's world, a realm that stands at an acute angle from the place we normally live in but which we all seem to drift into. As one of Connolly's own high-voltage sonnets states, what stops the heart starts the world.

    In drift's constant juxtaposition of abundance and loneliness, we hear what it is to confront a new century, having quite likely failed during the last. We're reminded, by a voice unlike any other on the Canadian landscape, that our solitude is painful yet precious.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHouse of Anansi Press
    Release dateApr 1, 2005
    ISBN9780887849367
    Drift
    Author

    Kevin Connolly

    Kevin Connolly is a poet, journalist, and editor. He lives in Toronto's east end with his partner, writer Gil Adamson.

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      Book preview

      Drift - Kevin Connolly

      ABOUT A POEM

      It’s all so glamorous — the waiters, the bookkeepers,

      the chandeliers, the rock stars reviewing the Best

      Westerns of the Arctic Circle. Between tables,

      the actors are working on their motivation.

      "Think of the steak as conflict, the three-peppercorn

      sauce as a life lesson," a pretty blonde tells the maitre d’.

      "It’s all about process, process is everything."

      I’ve been thinking about the librarian as sex symbol.

      Is it the spectacles, I wonder, or their removal?

      The trussed hair, or its liberation — unkempt,

      straying over eyes struggling for focus?

      A waiter passes and I order a gimlet,

      not because I have a clue what a gimlet is,

      but because it sounds so damned Shakespearean.

      Such are my whims, such are my frivolities.

      It all reminds me of John Ashbery’s poem

      The Tennis Court Oath. Not the poem,

      really, because who can remember poems,

      except for parts of The Hollow Men

      (and I don’t think that should count).

      It had something to do with Cromwell or

      the French Revolution — The Tennis Court Oath,

      that is — though I’m actually reading something

      completely different at the moment, Anne Carson’s

      Autobiography of Red, which is so, like, Greek to me,

      I wish it was The Autobiography of Red Skelton,

      whose last name sounds a lot like skeleton,

      reminding me I’d better drop in something witchy,

      touching on mortality, perhaps, in the last

      stanza here if I really want to pull this out

      of its siren-screaming nosedive.

      But I am no John Ashbery, no Bugs Bunny;

      there’ll be no cartoon gas tank conveniently

      run down to empty two feet from fiery ruin.

      Time for another gimlet, I’m thinking, though it’s true

      they’re going down way too easy, what with all

      that crème de menthe, or whatever it is puts the

      gee whiz into that particular gin fizz. Sure,

      I could look it up, just like I could have looked up

      the Tennis Court Oath, but where’s the fun in that?

      As a pretty blonde between my ears reminds me,

      it’s all about process. So what say you grab yourself

      a gimlet, push the peanuts over my way, thank you,

      and we’ll just kick back and enjoy the artistry . . .

      ADDITION

      It’s all amusing, until you’re

      asked to laugh —

      dancehalls, dunce caps, fence posts,

      iron lungs, detritus

      Snore it out between dreams, after horrors,

      sweat wandering the neck —

      bend it to a whim, a corridor, any

      absence of composure

      bone grown hard over emptying chest.

      The lump on the springboard —

      scent of anger, panic, then the inevitable

      cannonball. A heart expands

      despite itself: new rooms thundering over

      the same stricken tenant

      AND . . . SCENE

      Citizens of earth, return to your homes!

      Your lease has not yet fully expired. The stones

      in the driveway are the same as yesterday’s,

      though not verifiably those of decades past.

      Yes, change is inevitable, the sea lions riot but

      their numbers wane, just the diehards now clutched

      around the embassy shouting the old slogans — no

      one serious pays them any mind. Go home, I tell you!

      Shrimps seethe in the bay. Angry, sure, who wouldn’t

      be? Still, far from murderous as some of the papers shout —

      not one tiny soul has called for blood. So, no worries.

      Disperse and go about your normal business.

      Nothing to see here but embers .

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