The Plural of Some Things
by Desi Di Nardo
Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2008, ISBN 978-1-55071-296-4, 75 pp., $15 paper.

A sense of urgency pervades Desi Di Nardo's new book, The Plural of Some Things, as its vision of spiritual transformation emerges. The collection reaches into a wide range of items and issues, including nature and the environment, human relationships, self and psyche, mystery and spirit, language, and animal behaviour. Yet any attempt to gain understanding by focusing thematically on separate and specialized areas would be misleading. This poetry appeals to us rather by conveying a sense of processes--discovering, confronting, and interconnecting on the way to transformation.

The volume begins with "Rainbird in the Annex," which enacts the poet's discovering of her personal vocation and also pays homage to the late Gwendolyn MacEwen. Seeking reminders and remainders of MacEwen's essence in Toronto's Annex area, the poet sets out to implant her own words, mark her own place, and find her own voice. A still-aching sense of loss manifests in such lines as "Her cordless poetry smothered by wind" (9) and "Deliquescent words lost to the sun." However, the aerial processes carry a suggestion too that MacEwen's spiritual presence still lingers.

The subsequent poems showcase artistry in word choice and acutely observed imagery, which carry us onward from an original discovery. In "Petals Left by Flowers" the process is one of metamorphosis from flower petals to words, exquisitely wrought around the letter "s." "Hoar Frost" contains an intense encounter, where the sight of the ground covered in rime while winter hiking leads the explorer to the dramatic discovery of death itself, terrifying yet weirdly beautiful and alluring. Grotesque and unforgettable images startle us. The fearful couple are "two sheared cowards slit from the neck down" (13), but a weeping ice-bound birch on the companion's shoulder is "growing forceps," marking the discovery of life's end as a beginning also.

The title poem "The Plural of Some Things" confronts "the copycats, the mimics" (42), purveyors of dominant discourses and of the repressive totalities of meaning that Theodor Adorno warned against. Going beyond globalization, their "organizing and masterminding of planets and agendas" extends towards "astronomical stardoms." This nihilism leaves us gasping, "rummaging for petunias and strawberries" in the earth's depleted soil. Yet the effort unexpectedly inspires. Confronted and threatened, shocked into understanding, we are made to confront in turn with breath bated and regained and libido spinning out. With this heightened spurt of energy and inspiration we find ourselves able to run magically atop lake reeds.

In "The Medium That Carries Us" the confrontation between a man-made world and a natural one, and the evolution of urbanization with its effects on language and communication, are central to the poem. Nature's purifying rain makes possible a leave-taking from the "mental chemical smell" (49) of engineered streets. And a courageous descent down drain lines leads toward bedrock, the past, and the unconscious. There is a temporal realm of creative action, more fundamental than the spatialized, surface world of streets and grids. The decentred subject remains indistinct as to its exact purposes. The medium is also ourselves and our stories, the etched words and Braille messages carved into cave walls over many historical epochs, both prevailing and durable.

Desi Di Nardo's ecological poetic world extends beyond flora, fauna, and the inanimate to include human and spiritual interconnection as well. These poems contain such powerful experiences that it is difficult to take our leave unaffected by them. We are enlightened by the discovery of a relationship of spiritual empowerment in "Poetry on Lake Simcoe," intrigued by mystery and the unconscious in "The Abstract Night," and enticed by sexual rapture in "White Rain." Whether confronting the dissembling self in "Inner Landscapes," dealing noncommittally with a parent's absent love in "Forget You Not," or expressing emotional repression in "Red Spill of Adrenalin," the poetry voices summon us to take heed. Meaningful interconnecting amid the surrounding turmoil becomes the most needful and redemptive process of all. gs.

Roger Knox is a Toronto composer, poet, reviewer and music educator/researcher. Dr. Knox has received composition commissions from The Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council, taught at McMaster University and Douglas College, and conducted reserach at Bloorview Kids Rehab. His poetry has been featured in The Toronto Quarterly.

Buy this book at McNally-Robinson Booksellers.

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