Spending the year with new(ish) books by friends, locals, and other Canadian poets old and new. Follow along daily on Instagram.

Yes, we have Martins two weeks in a row. This week I read Lisa Martin’s “Nighthawks.” What were the chances that two Albert poets both named Martin would not only be releasing new books at the same time, but that both books would have such similar titles? Pretty good apparently. So good that they did a joint reading last night, April 18, at the Commodore Diner in Edmonton as part of the Edmonton Poetry Festival. So good that they called the reading “Night Martins at the Diner,” riffing Hopper’s famous painting, as riffed on in Lisa’s book.

These two poets played well off each other and the reading was fantastic! Lisa’s book too deals with loss: the loss of marriage, the loss of innocence, the grief of loneliness. Before we get to that though, I want to draw your attention to the first third of the book and a series of sonnets, (rhyming even!) on the Myers Briggs personality types. I am one of those unfortunates who have had this corporate workshop forced upon them more than once in their career. The existential limbo of a two-day personality workshop with colleagues is truly something else. I fully believe that Sartre wrote “No Exit” after being subjected to one of these sessions.

The one good thing about Myers Briggs and the multiple other “systems” of reducing and categorizing people is that it gives those of us who have experienced it common ground. Lisa read a couple of these poems last night and it had half the audience comparing their types in the social mixing after the reading. It helps that Lisa’s poems are really good. As one audience member pointed out in the q and a after the reading, her sonnets are not so much about the personality types as the are about specific people. Even so, I admit to trying on the poem on my type and not finding it completely wanting. These poems are fun, sonnets are fun!

I am going to end this micro-review by continuing a thought I had for yesterday’s daily slow reading line highlight social media post. For reference, it is the image int he top left of the grid below. My response to the highlighted lines was simply “Yes.” And what I mean by “yes” is that these lines belong in that slim collection of very clear descriptions of what life actually is.

What if the getting there / leaves an audible mark?

Yes, and that audible mark is poetry.

This is what has been driving my creativity this week; wishing I could ask the things I love to come back, knowing that all of these are words for what is broken.