}

Like Smooth Stones....

The Coil of the Skin, by Mary Ann Larkin. Washington Writers' Publishing House, $4.00.

By Meredith Holmes

These 34 poems unite the voice of the woman and the voice of the poet in tone, image and language. Mary Ann Larkin is a poet who has worked hard at the challenge of vision and the craft of revision. These are finished poems, to be read and re-read; like smooth stones with muted colors, they deserve a long and meditative look.

The poems are grouped in three sections. The first, "So That No Light Will Be Lost," is the title of the fifth poem in the book, and in some ways the real introduction. The speaker is clearing a space for herself to think, and write, and be.

I am getting ready to entertain

I bathe and perfume myself

take pen and book and wait.

Darkness snuffs out more than sunlight here; it curtails the life of the speaker's mother, the stifling of expression, the closing off of possibilities:

one knew.

that life would not unroll brightly for them

In the pictures

they cling to each other

looking streight at ine their bravery

caught in a half light trapped by some web of darkness or inaction

In "The House on Broughton Street," the poet cherishes the gifts passed down from her grand-

"The Dance Half Done" is the first poem in the book, the most ambitious and mysterious. It introduces many themes found in Larkin's poems-light and darkness, birth and death, music and poetry, the past and the possibilities still open to us—with an unforgettable metaphor: Ireland and the state of mind it represents to many poets: Our fate was settled centuries ago When the huge floes cracked

loosening mist upon the island.

The island itself suspended

in a primal sac of light

fed by a dark cord from within the bog Poets send their words into the mist in this land where symbols live-

We are stamped by this

land of murmurs and half-heard chants a dreaminess in our gaze hands caught in mid-air

eyes following a pussage of light

The other poems in this section are about her own past and her family. Light and dark play an important part in a narrative poem about her mother, "The Island on Sunday Afternoon." Light gives the memory life:

In those photos of my mother und her friends on Neville Island

beside that old mill town'

there was something

'that hinted at a betrayal.

mother. She becomes the keeper of good memories, guardian of the light:

I have the carnelian ring now the diamond brooch

I wear satin when I can

and I am attracted to ald houses where the light passes

across the porch to the windows, making of the space between, a grace

cpf/LNS

The poems in the second section, "Coil Of The Skin," are about what goes on under the skin; the

MORE REVIEWS

feelings of loss, fear and love that are revealed to those brave enough to pull away the skin which protects us from experience. "Pilgrims" is one of three short powerful love poems:

We go like pilgrims

around some high stone wall

Girls in white dresses

look down on us

We are not

who we want to be

"The Sunday Tablecloth" documents our powerlessness to stop the disintegration of what we value.

› Some things you think you will have forever

like the cloth your grandmother threw

across the Sunday table.

How one year the cloth was stiff

and of a piece

and now

past any darning

it comes apart in your hands

The poems in the final section, "Survivors," are portraits of people who have found a way to live in the world. These stories of eccentricity and determination offer hope. There's "Tall Cool Kate," who lives by the sea and is sure that comfrey tea will cure everything; Molly of "The Visit" who

... carries her hopes before her glittering

shining snow

orange leaves

insistent on gaiety

and Peter and Shirley, the obsessed scavengers of "The Crows." "The Bushwoman's Gift," one of the (continued on page 13)

Attitudes and Illusions

Contract with the World, by Jane Rule. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980. $12.95.

By Pat Randle

In Contract With the World, novelist Jane Rule takes a candid and refreshing look at how to live in the modern world-and how to live with yourself.

Rule looks at the lives of eight loosely-connected friends over five years. She eschews both sentimentality and fashionable nihilism, and opts instead for interesting and credible characters, situations and crisp, interesting dialogue.

The story is told in six segments, from the perspectives of six of the eight main characters. Most are involved in some sort of creative endeavor. Rule opens with "Joseph Walking," told from the perspective of Joseph Raboniwitz, a teacher who is moved to recite poetry when confronted by the simple beauties of daily life. His doctor orders Joseph to walk ten miles. a day to burn off his mania, "his allergy, radical joy, ecstatic mourning, craziness, whatever it was". Joseph has the sensitivity of an artist, but no creative knack.

Walking one morning; he meets Allen Dent, who asks him to. pose for a photograph that ends up on the cover of Arts Canada magazine. Through Allen, a rising young photographer who is discreetly gay,

'

Joseph meets Pierre, Allen's boy-wife, and Roxanne, a "doll-like" woman Allen has discovered in a record shop and brought home as a playmate for his lover. The photograph on the front of Arts Canada also reacquaints Joseph with Mike Trusco, a sculptor who believes "there is no real power on earth but art," and his wife Alma, who is equally certain that power lies in money and connections. Alma introduces Joseph to Carlotta, who paints Georgia O'Keeffelike renderings of her own X-rayed bones.

As Joseph observes, "all of his friends seemed to wear attitudes like name tags, means of identity rather than principle.'

""

In the course of the novel, all the self-definitions prove woefully inaccurate. Mike, the sculptor who feels art is everything, doesn't have the talent to succeed as an artist. Alma finds that her illusion that money can buy anything, even safety, is a delusion. The one true artist in the group turns out to be Roxanne, who doesn't even make art in the traditional sense; she tape-records street sounds and composes intricate sound-maps: Rule's only real artist is a composer who doesn't write music.

I

In addition, all the characters are forced to face the hazards of being non-conformists in a world. where

(continued on page 12)

October Nova184; 1982 WSK WAKIYAN?