A Brief and Endless Sea by Barbara Pelman
A Brief and Endless Sea
by Barbara Pelman
Caitlin Press, 2023; 96 pages; $19.95
Reviewed by Heidi Greco
Barbara Pelman is one of those poets who can write about what we might think of as the ‘everyday’ and raise it to a realm that’s far from ordinary. Gardening, her grandchild, mullings about her own parents — such basics are what constitute the substance of these poems.
But really, matters that might seem everyday to her aren’t always what most of us would deem as ordinary. How many of us have a mother who’s alive well into her second century? Last count, at least according to these poems, we see her still kicking at 106.
A longtime student of Patrick Lane, her poems are preceded by a pantoum of lines from his work, and evidence of his influence lingers throughout the book. There’s a Lane-like spareness to many of the pieces: strong verbs, not much reliance on descriptive adjectives — clearly, Pelman learned much from the poet she refers to as her mentor. In a poem where she questions her own poem-writing techniques, she considers
The choices she makes —
what she keeps, what she crosses out,
the static verb she tosses for one with energy,
the excessive adjectives. Will others approve?
She frets, those who might hear, might read.
Is it the truth? Leaves it in.
Indeed, it is truth that serves as the foundation for these poems. Whether she’s writing about helping at her father’s shop in downtown Vancouver when she was still a girl, dealing with the break-up of a marriage, or the pleasure of her own sexuality, her tone is one of honesty.
And, as in the work of Lane, her voice is one of the West Coast. Who but a longtime citizen of BC could sing praise to the Himalayan blackberry?
An invasive species, it has taken over
my backyard and the cycling paths. Cut back, it
grows again like yesterday’s rumour. Dug up,
it finds roots to start again. Fully armoured, its
thorns are spikier than roses, a gauntlet thrown
in the face of city planners and horticultural-
ists. The worst tease, its juiciest ones hidden
behind swords and daggers. Yet every morn-
ing, walking to the gym, I reach in. …I ignore
the scratches to get at that one, and that one,
and just one more…
She’s not shy in writing about her Jewish heritage, and makes references to rituals and beliefs, yet not in a way that feels offensive to a non-religious soul such as myself. She shares traditions I never knew about the pomegranate, a fruit whose name she chooses to mistype as “poemagranate.” The story of her surname, Pelman, turns out to be one of the many where officers at Ellis Island determined that the original name was too long and too “unpronounceable” to be suitable in North America.
Some of the most intriguing poems in the book find their form in glosa, that form P.K. page is so often credited with popularizing among Canadian poets. The poets she riffs on range from Hopkins to Walcott. My favourite of these pieces may well be one called “Cello” based on lines from Carl Phillips; the surprises she works into the piece amazed me.
But back to that mother of hers, featured in several poems that note the dementia that marks her mental decline — losing her keys, not remembering the names of those she loves, making paranoid accusations — and then the remark from this truth-telling poet which I found downright startling:
I am ashamed to write this. Other people
are tender to their mothers, grieve their passing.
I fear my mother will outlive me. I will one day
short all the circuits in my body, die in electric rage.
In the closing poem, inspired by lines from Jewish folk tradition, Pelman leaves us with words that seem especially urgent at this dark time in the world:
In the meantime, love all things,
Listen carefully to the words of your children,
plant small gardens,
hold tight.