city treaty
by Marvin Francis
Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 2002, ISBN 9780888012685, 69 pp., $12.95 paper.

bush camp
by Marvin Francis
Winnipeg: Turnstone Press, 2008, ISBN 9780888013248, 79 pp., $15.95 paper.

Marvin Francis died in 2005 in Winnipeg at the age of 50. He has two book credits in poetry: city treaty from 2002, and now posthumously, bush camp. His poetry sears, soars, see-saws and stuns. Each book accomplishes what the other doesn't undertake and together they provide a cohesive large picture that lesser poets labour their long lives to achieve. Francis's poetry doesn't stir guilt and shame in this white man's heart. There is nothing I hear in Francis from which I recoil. In fact, I want to hear it all from him, not mediated by white voices and white noise. I want to listen to the treaty misconceptions, the breaking amber bottles, the fun and games with an adopted language, and the dislocation, the bust-ups in the back seat of the squad car, the pain of being a red descendant in an ascending white society.

The unifying device in city treaty is a native guy designated "me" sitting curbside with a clown watching life pass before them. It is said that in Aboriginal cultures one must first be able to open up and laugh before one can deal with the darker things. The clown or trickster figure usually serves this purpose. Francis is merely covering the bases with his clown; more often than not the meat of the text drives this long poem forward. For example:

         there has always been talk of crow
ted hughes robert kroetsch so many others
                         write in crow
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
there is a crow movie the crow tv scene what is next
               son of crow? crow goes to hollywood?
                              crow the sequel
                                the native tribe
                                                                 (city treaty 24)

Francis knows first hand the co-option of a culture, and he works the trans-cultural co-option in return. He sees the 'before,' does his best with the 'during,' but doesn't yet posit an 'after.' In bush camp, Jenny, a white urban woman, labours on a railway gang in the bush while her native lover, Johnny, tends to his urban trap lines. Francis seems to be saying, 'Scramble all this up; do our particular advances/retreats change that much?' In spite of all the differences, which Francis feels to his very toes, he searches for bridges and connections in bush camp. city treaty meanwhile mines the differences. "let's see, my driver's licence is from the NWT, my plates from Alberta,/ the insurance from god knows where, and this is my buddy's car from/ Manitoba." (21) All the details add up to that Indian difference. All sorts of lines are drawn. All sorts of tracks are laid. Jenny walks the bush alone because the other members of the gang are too afraid of the wood ticks and getting lost. She finds a cruise missile on one walk which symbolizes a twisted technological update from the railroad. Instead of transporting people from place to place, it transports people to oblivion. "err craft air borne air dying" (bush camp 38). This irony doesn't faze Francis, who notes of native trappers: "we apprentice for ten/ thousand years so you can get your beaver/ hat" (city treaty 55). In a flashback to the love generation, or Disney's Bambi, Jenny brings the cruise missile flowers and keeps it company with the birds and animals of the bush. Meanwhile in the city Johnny becomes a sidewalk chalk artist/storyteller. With Francis the most probable is the least likely. In a piece spiced with nods & winks he riffs on feeling blue.

                  you know you are feeling blue
             when you have to change provinces
                         so you can get utilities
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
                    when you start looking at that
greyhound driver like he was your dear old dad
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
when all the park benches are booked with your
                              friends
                                                                 (bush country 58, 59)

We hope Johnny gets back together with Jenny for the sake of love and humanity, but we don't know where--city or bush?

These books contain so much that sparkles: the humour, both self-deprecating and wickedly pointed, the wordplays and far-ranging references on every page. Francis had an amazing talent for making the slight grand, and the grand seem easy. These volumes form a panorama going back at least ten thousand years and zooming forward, compacting time until today, when we should be viewing our fate as a collective. These books have staying power. Any talk of a Manitoba literary canon should include them. Marvin Francis has given us--all of us--a marvellous gift that initially will render us speechless. When we do find our tongues again, perhaps it will be to understand instead of forcing the issues with our insatiable need to be understood.

Andrew Vaisius is a writer and childcare worker living in Morden, Manitoba.

Buy bush camp at McNally-Robinson Booksellers.

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