Cantilevered Songs
by John Lent
Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-897235-66-9, 69 pp., $16.95 paper.

The poems in this collection, whose title evokes both the "song" of its Latin root "canto" and the architectural term for "a beam or girder supported at one end" used in bridges and balconies, focus on the ordinary with a lyricism that draws on imagery from carpentry and architecture. Along with this celebration of the everyday, a reverence for tradition, whether in architecture or literature, becomes evident, with nods to writers as diverse as George Ryga, Sylvia Plath, Richard Ford, and Tim Lilburn. The subject matter ranges from an appreciation of ordinary activities such as banking or washing a car to an abhorrence for fanatics and bureaucrats who, in Lent's view, defy what is reasonable and humane. Lyrical moments in Cantilevered Songs include the speaker's glimpsing an eleven-year-old's joie de vivre, his understanding the delight of a neglected dog when it is finally taken for a walk, and his nightmare about a school friend who died suddenly during his adolescent years.

The poems typically unfold in a free-verse form and often includes colloquial asides with the confidential tone of one person talking to another. Frequently, the poems end on a diminuendo, a shortening of the lines, when the urgency of the moment has worn itself to an end.

In "Weightless," the speaker talks about driving "around the city like everybody else" while he does his chores. Like everyone else's car, his is sometimes a "mess," but he envisions that he has the power to change this situation and to create a "brand new world / of car in an hour." These are simple delights of the modern everyman, but the poem does not end here:

. . . I walk past the enamel-painted frames of the windows
leading into my favourite café and order the usual the usual the usual,
lugging my take-out coffee onto the charcoal streets, squinting
into the afternoon sun, gripping the steering wheel with real
hands, real flesh, drop by the bank, take money out, pay some
bills, put some money in, all the usual stuff, all the usual stuff, ( 11)

The repetition of "the usual, the usual" and "all the usual stuff, all the usual stuff" strikes a perfect chord in its painstakingly clear evocation of our own lives. Furthermore, this "day in the life" prepares the reader for the joy of the speaker looking into the eyes of his "loyal dog" and for his meditation about resigning himself to the eventuality of becoming "dust."

"Gabrielle, Jumping for Joy" looks into an eleven-year-old niece's excited eyes after a road trip when she is too preoccupied to give the details of her journey. The poet comes to the conclusion that the world she perceives may not be the same one he sees, even though he looks off into the distance to where she appears to be looking. The speaker comments that he is

. . . happy to have been
there to see her
and be dragged
by her into this
fiercer world
we sometimes
forget to find,
even though
it is at
the heart
of the one
we see (12)

Here, as often in Lent's poems, the outpouring tapers to a final point (like an inverted tornado!), both modest and penetrating in its ecstatic/celebratory approach. One of the pivotal poems is "Molecular Cathedral," in which Lent discusses the philosophical problem of self-interest, that it may be described as the origin for all human actions, even altruistic ones. In characteristically down-to-earth colloquial style, Lent refers to this concept as "scary":

How can the poem resolve selfishness and connection to others
and the brutal green limits that gird these fields of time and matter? How can
we accept this vessel of flesh and bone, this home, and not destroy it and allow
it to turn in a bright field of other dancing bodies, occasionally intersecting, touching,
alive in a primal presence and a longing past safety and hunger, for replication, yes,
but for something more, too, something not anticipated maybe, always a surprise, (22)

Lent creates an iconic view of human relations with the construct of a "molecular cathedral," and concludes that a focus-on-self must be interpreted as a "pledge" of self-love from which other love emanates in an ever-expanding structure.

The speaker in "Morning Walk Backwards" considers how a landscape may look different if travelled at another hour or during another year, and focuses his attention on a school friend who unexpectedly died. He talks about their shared adolescent experiences, "eyeing up the girls from the other schools" and "hanging out at The Chinese Grocery" before "plopping [their] bikes down / on the smooth lawn off Saskatchewan Drive," the mention of the "fat brown river" ominously connected with his friend's end.

. . . the myth coursing through
our childhoods, the true length of our bodies, just
lying there yacking, before there were shopping
malls, before everything got processed, before
it all got weird: those great eyes you
had, Ron, your easy laugh, your
freckled good looks and will,
your difficult, early exit
from all this, your death (26)

He remarks that at the time they "didn't have the language to bring [him] back/ or comfort [themselves] even," and in a graceful image talks about accepting "the swish of a door closing / quietly." Although I would have suggested that this superb poem should end with this image, it continues in terms that verge on sentimentality--though not quite, since we have come to trust the speaker's integrity.

Lent's voice is one of realism with lyrical flights that soar above the ordinary he sets out to extol. We begin to see through his spiritually attuned eyes, and appreciate the simple patterns that make us human within a greater "molecular cathedral" of humanity. Lent's is a generous and wise verse that somehow combines William Wordsworth in its celebration of the everyday and Gerard Manley Hopkins in its spiritual exuberance (if that combination does not sound too preposterous).

Gillian Harding-Russell lives, reviews, edits, teaches and writes in Regina. Her latest collection of poetry is I forgot to tell you (Thistledown Press, 2007).

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