Dalhousie University Libraries Hosted Journals

Enns, Anthony

Front Matter

Chisholm, Austin

AUSTIN CHISHOLM
ANAMORPHOSIS
It was the kind of war that didn’t seem to matter when it was over.
The children had gotten their early rides home, and we began getting drinks
Together again. That day was the worst of my life, as if getting strapped to a gurney
Never happened before we lived together. Our falling out was distasteful
But unique to that time and what everyone was going through,
What everyone wanted to say without the courage
To restrain their resentment. Had we not purchased a bird cage together?
We used to visit antique stores that made you sneeze,
Like chocolate milk or the space heater your father gave you.
Solipsism never handled a toilet brush the way you always had
Or danced in traffic. By the time the river delta had said what it did
One of us was already running out of the basement and bitten by the dog.
That was the era of pride and animosity, of show tunes and anamorphosis.
Slowly, the conversions had less to do with Arctic sea moss
Or bedroom manners. The gloaming of the entire street and elms turned away,
And the feelings began to involve practical instruments like dishware, screwdrivers,
And more. We read our books. We challenged the teeth, resigned to the sound,
Learned to breathe and eat in a particular way and reminisced
About alternate theories of the 20th century’s standard toxins, inertias of progress,
Or chafing of the voice. It was your face that asked me if I was thirsty,
Your hands that resembled the others’. Only retrospect gives it the vindication
Of what was threatened. But undoubtedly, our art of hypervisibility
Eased the lightness of that photograph, as if the distortions of light
Weren’t also a part of that reality. The lesson, however, has little value now.

Anamorphosis

Longstaff, Clayton

CLAYTON LONGSTAFF
IF
Douglas Fir, Quaking Aspen,
Hemlock, Juniper; waving wind
alive within the shores of white pine
that whet these shapeless drifts of being—
See the snowy owl perched aloof
like grief upon the branch’s naked edge?
See her test the pull of gravity against
her weight, as she dives
just before the branch will break?
I have cleaved to the branch as I have
yielded to its shadows. I have held
the world in a mouthful of hallelujah,
hallelujah warm and dizzying, unfurling
between these splintered lips. I have
known unbridled rage by the gilted
flare of Ginkgo in October. I have
harboured hatred in the bast of love,
the two rooted like North and South.
Felt wringing at my core the pangs
of rapturous desire in a blistering Arbutus
burnt to grey along its peeling contours,
and then peeled further to the hues
less easily defined. It’s here I rest.
It’s here that I, like brume amid the brae,
418 The Dalhousie Review
like contagion, am substance stretched
of definition. And when daylight blooms
from a cleft wedged far in the night,
I know a question has been heard.

MOORE, GERALD ARTHUR

GERALD ARTHUR MOORE
PARADISE LOST
My binder-twine blisters
are trophies that bleed.
Not only have I been keeping up all
day long, at fourteen I’ve outworked
every man below; at the supper table
I’ll be seated like an apostle.
The wagon arrives like a great ark
birthing sun-warm rectangular bales,
tractor generator spinning, ramped
conveyor’s metal teeth riding up track
to yawning hay shoals, laid like
terracotta tiles stacked to the rafters.
Below, men spitting cheeks
of tobacco over each golden offering
ascending Jacob’s Ladder.
Was this where I became a man?
Father is wiping his forehead with
a Co-op hat, looking up, smiling.
Under the gambrel, the mow pulsing
heat like a forge,
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working from our knees, breathing dust,
dripping dirt, blowing snot;
crepuscular sunset rays capture
hayloft effluent and chaff;
careful now, the rafter-nests are close,
I’ve already been stung twice,
I knock a wasp’s nest, hear it thump down
like the decollation of John the Baptist,
start up like a pull engine—it’s every
man for himself.
Slide down the elevator on the inside
ankles of my boots,
driven from Paradise by the swarming
seraphim, fearing Michael’s spear,
crawling over bales on their way
to ascension as I am cast out.

PARADISE LOST

WILSON, ERIN

ERIN WILSON
SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE ARM￾CHAIRS OR ICONS
“there was no place we could sit or look / that was not changed to an
icon, cursed / with significance . . .”
—Don McKay, “Suddenly, at home” (1997)
It has happened to me.
The road is, by and large, behind me,
even though I didn’t see it coming.
My cuffs drag. Are dusty.
I check my pockets,
knowing there’s no watch
(never been a watch), no wallet,
but feel their absence.
Then a hand to my chin.
A hair sticks straight out.
There comes a time in a life
when one ceases talking with the living,
and begins the intimate conversations
with empty armchairs and rest stops:
breve rest, semibreve rest, quaver.
Isn’t the moon frightfully bright tonight?
Yes. And isn’t the sky frightfully black?
Yes. And aren’t we lucky?

SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE ARMCHAIRS OR ICONS

GREENSTEIN, MICHAEL

TORPHY, WILLIAM

BHAT, KIRAN

LAWRENCE, ADAM

MALCOLMSON, ROBERT

BOOK REVIEWS

ENNS, ANTHONY

EDITORIAL
IN AN ESSAY PUBLISHED IN SLATE IN 2007, in which she reflects on
the writing of her bestselling memoir The Liars’ Club (1995), Mary Karr fa￾mously said that “memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory,
which is innately corrupt.” She later expanded on this idea in her book The
Art of Memoir (2015), in which she noted that modern readers have lost
their “confidence in objective truth,” as “formerly sacred sources of truth
like history and statistics have lost ground,” yet memoirs are paradoxically
seen as more reliable because they “openly confess the nature of their cor￾ruption.” While her first statement suggests that histories and memoirs are
fundamentally opposed, as the former is based on reality while the latter
is “corrupted” by memory, her second statement seems to qualify this as￾sertion by suggesting that they are not really that different after all, as they
both involve an active engagement with the past, which always involves a
conscious negotiation between fact and fiction. Our spring issue features a
special section of works that engage in this negotiation by selecting, fram￾ing, and manipulating elements drawn from the past. While these works
may seem quite different at first glance, as the histories are based on a wide
range of archival sources and the memoirs are based solely on personal rec￾ollections, they all seek to translate the contingencies of reality into compel￾ling narratives that are consciously designed to produce aesthetic effects.
This section begins with Eric Miller’s story “A Dialogue Concerning
Chickens,” which takes place in colonial Canada in 1793 and features a fic￾tional conversation between various historical figures. This is followed by
Jason Brown’s story “From the Journal of Robert Wills,” which describes
the life of a merchant sailing family in the early 1800s, as recorded in a
fictional logbook. John Barton’s poem “The Douglas Treaties” reflects on
the infamous series of land purchases made by James Douglas, Governor of
the Colony of Vancouver Island, in the 1850s, and Rebecca Păpucaru’s story
“Booming” describes a possible encounter between Pauline Johnson—the
indigenous Canadian poet and performer, who was more popularly known
 The Dalhousie Review
by her Mohawk stage name Tekahionwake—and Sarah Bernhardt—the leg￾endary French actress, who gave a series of performances in Quebec in the
winter of 1905. This is followed by a series of works on maritime disasters,
including Stephen Henighan’s story “One Night in Her Life,” which recounts
the experiences of a Titanic survivor in 1912; Ron Ennis’ story “On the Ice,”
which focuses on the 1914 Newfoundland Sealing Disaster, when over a
hundred sealers were stranded on an ice floe; and Marion Starling Boyer’s
poem “The Men Asleep at the Bottom of the World,” which describes the
experiences of the Ross Sea Party, who were part of Ernest Shackleton’s Im￾perial Trans-Antarctic Expedition and who were stranded when their ship
became frozen in an ice floe that broke off from the main shelf in 1916. This
is followed by Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt’s story “Doc Millington,” which is
set in Beirut in 1983, shortly after a multinational force was sent to oversee
the Palestinian withdrawal from Lebanon. David Yerex Williamson’s poem
“Through Disassembled Houses of Perfect Stones” signals a shift from his￾tory to memoir, as it reflects on the relationship between memory and the
past. The speaker notes, for example, that “the weight of history lies / on the
spine of memory,” but over time the “years eat the memory out of history,”
and the past becomes “more suited to memoir.” This is followed by a series
of works that illustrate the process of translating the past through memory,
as seen in Wayne Curtis’ essay “War Bride,” Gerald Arthur Moore’s poem
“Paradise Lost,” J. Alan Nelson’s essay “Lila Leichenberg Hides a Card,” and
John Wall Barger’s poem “Dreaming of a Small Call for Help,” which all
feature personal reminiscences from childhood or adolescence. This section
then concludes with two memoirs that focus on how the past continues to
impact the lives of the writers in the present: Jaclyn Kar Yin McLachlan’s
essay “The Nutbar Book,” which tells the story of a childhood friend who
suffers from a mental illness that has deeply affected their relationship over
the years, and Tara Mills’ essay “Golden Jack,” which similarly focuses on a
child with special needs and the impact this has had on the lives of his par￾ents.
Our spring issue also includes two new chronicles: Jerry White’s review
of Robert Eggers’ new film The Northman (2022) and Chris Elson’s review
of the Marcin Wasilewski Trio’s new album En attendant (Waiting, 2021)
and Edgar Wright’s music documentary The Sparks Brothers (2021).

EDITORIAL

This movie night program plan provides librarians with ideas and suggestions for leading a 3-hour, interactive screening of Hayao Miyazaki‘s Spirited Away that includes a scavenger hunt and origami folding. This plan includes timelines, activity ideas, and links to additional materials

Coyle, Molly

English

Spirited Away Movie Night Program Plan

Tabletop roleplaying games such as Dungeons &amp; Dragons, Pathfinder, and others, are reemerging in popularity among young people and moving into mainstream culture.  RPGs allow young people to collaborate in building a world and narrative that is entirely their own, allowing them to escape reality while simultaneous building real-world skills and relationships

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Front Matter

Anamorphosis

If

PARADISE LOST

SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE ARMCHAIRS OR ICONS

BOOK REVIEWS

EDITORIAL

Spirited Away Movie Night Program Plan

An Enriching Experience: 8 Real-World Benefits of Role Playing Games

Reports from the Annual General Meeting, May, 2022

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