Aperture
by Blaine Marchand
Ottawa: BuschekBooks, 2008, ISBN: 978-1-894543-46-0, 78 pp., $17.50 paper.

In his Prologue, Ottawa poet Blaine Marchand gives the reader background on how this book came about, explaining that he was part of a delegation sent to the Middle East who "met with Afghan refugees-in-exile in Pakistan and Iran, as well as with returned refugees in Afghanistan." [viii] It is evident from the book's content that the experience had a profound impact on Marchand. He goes on to describe Aperture as a triptych--one that he hopes captures some of his experiences there.

He uses the word triptych because the book consists of poems, prose descriptions, and photographs. Although the presentation they convey does seem to follow a fairly chronological order of his tour through the region, the three genres are interspersed in an almost-random manner. This is especially true of the placement of photographs, which generally seem to have little to connect them with the words on nearby pages.

For the most part, the prose is strong, the kind of present-tense travel writing that lets the reader feel she's there.

We drive up to a medical centre. Against white-washed walls are clutches of women in thrown back blue burqas, girls in tangerine and persimmon and boys in mocha and charcoal. All stand waiting. Most of the children have rust coloured hair, a sign of malnutrition. TB is rampant. The women draw down the burqas to hide their faces as we approach. [9]

Most of these pieces are enlightening, and offer much to help at least this reader to better understand the geography and circumstance of the region. But occasionally these prose pieces, which I assume are based on the journals Marchand kept, lapse into overworked metaphor, as in this description of an armed vehicle (which I understand to be some kind of tank): "A soldier, perched in a turret in the centre, scans the horizon as the turret slowly rotates. Its armoured belly, a modern-day Trojan horse, conceals officers whose inward arms nestle rifles. A flag flaps from an aerial that curves and is secured to the back of the steed." Trojan horse, maybe; steed, no thank you.

Yet there are just as many images that stand stark and sharp: "At one side is an archway that is being restored. Bamboo scaffolding surrounds it like bones picked clean." Although this bones imagery also gets a bit of a workout throughout the book, it is one that is certainly apt.

Marchand does create many clear visual images, especially in his poems, such as this, which also conjures The Kite-Runner:

In the spring of each year, the sky
is a phalanx of tinted shapes in all sizes,
tethered to glass-coated strings, manipulated
in a skirmish to cut each other down.

Mindful that during the rule of enforced cruelty
this simple pleasure was forbidden, the boy,
although posing for our cameras, runs away.
Rising up, behind him, his kite

a renegade against the sky. [46]

Although it is nowhere near this poem, but rather at the back of the book on page 73, there is a photograph of a "Boy with Kite, Kabul." Awkwardly, titles for the photos are located at the front of the book, so to identify images, readers must keep flipping there to determine what they're seeing. I'm not sure what would have been so difficult about running titles beneath each photo.

Geographically challenged Westerner that I am, I also would have appreciated the addition of a map that indicated where Marchand's travels took him. Even though names such as Khyber Pass are part of my vocabulary, they don't always translate into points that I can place.

Perhaps the photographic term Aperture as the book's title made me expect too much of the photo aspect of this triptych. The pictures vary greatly in both composition and resolution. Even when the images present a subject that appears to be near at hand, many of the plates look grainy or flat, as if they're lacking sharp contrast. Unfortunately, this quality rubs off on my overall impression of the book--it's as if the lens is fuzzy, leaving the collection's focus blurrier than it should have been, especially for a topic that's so urgently important for all of us to understand.

Heidi Greco takes photographs with varying degrees of success. Some of these can be seen on her blog for 2009, whatsfersupper.blogspot.com.

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