{"id":9932,"date":"2014-11-11T06:04:25","date_gmt":"2014-11-11T14:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=9932"},"modified":"2014-11-13T12:04:46","modified_gmt":"2014-11-13T20:04:46","slug":"new-patrick-lane-poetry-anthology-difficult-with-few-rewards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2014\/11\/11\/new-patrick-lane-poetry-anthology-difficult-with-few-rewards\/","title":{"rendered":"New Patrick Lane poetry anthology difficult, with few rewards"},"content":{"rendered":"

An anthology by Canadian poet Patrick Lane, Washita<\/i>\u2019s narrative stumbles laboriously like a circus bear on fire. It effectively embraces the disjointed reminiscence of old age, groping at limbs of sentimentality I usually reserve for commercials featuring glassy-eyed dogs and Sarah McLachlan.<\/p>\n

The anthology is meant as a disjointed autobiography, transcending personal experiences to contemplate the complexities of reality, as well as, according to the back cover, \u201cthe perversion of nature and acquisition of wisdom.\u201d I\u2019m too preoccupied with the annoying justification of the inner text (flush left, upper page) to read any further into it.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s easy to drown in the viscous nature imagery and rhetorical musings, which are accompanied by obscure, outdated references (the 79-page book has a three-page glossary to address that) and diction similar to an American poetry anthology from the 1920s abandoned in the trunk of my car. Although I appreciate the stylistic consistency, the repetitive visual imagery prevents me from being immersed in the deeper narrative.<\/p>\n

I could easily relate Lane\u2019s style of prose to James Joyce\u2019s nearly unreadable Ulysses<\/i>, complete with randomly interjected italicized adjectives between lines. This is both a compliment and a criticism, as my love-hate relationship with Ulysses<\/i> is akin to watching a solar eclipse without any eye protection: you have to turn away every few minutes to salvage your burning retinas.<\/p>\n

It may be the fault of youth that leads me to be so critical of Lane\u2019s prose: it reads through the paradigm of a man 75 years of age. As a young woman of 20, it\u2019s difficult to relate to the pastoral analogies between Lane\u2019s wilderness experiences and a modern reality. Despite this, I praise the introspectiveness of the poem \u201cSolstice Coming,\u201d which describes Lane\u2019s struggle with mental clarity and mobility in old age, relying on more easily digestible similes and literal description to promote empathy.<\/p>\n

\u201cComing out of the night is harder than you think,\u201d <\/i>advises Lane in the poem \u201cEarly Promises.\u201d That line sums up quite nicely my short literary affair with Washita<\/i>: fumbling blindly through the dense narrative, I came with relief to the last page… but found myself wanting to throw myself back in and find the reflections I suspect I missed, the ones that are hidden between the lines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An anthology by Canadian poet Patrick Lane, Washita\u2019s narrative stumbles laboriously like a circus bear on fire. It effectively embraces the disjointed reminiscence of old age, groping at limbs of sentimentality I usually reserve for commercials featuring glassy-eyed dogs and Sarah McLachlan. The anthology is meant as a disjointed autobiography, transcending personal experiences to contemplate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9933,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-november-12-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9934,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9932\/revisions\/9934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}