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Home of Sudden Service (Nightwood $16.95)
A slight book that packs a wallop of teenage angst, boredom and risky sexiness, this collection is set in the back seats on the back roads of Mission, Cultus Lake and all those roads that end at Hope. It's an unusual and highly accomplished use of form by a young poet on the subject of loose girls and the freeway culture of malls, necking, cruelty and tragedy. Elizabeth Bachinsky demonstrates more skill in a couple of sonnets and villanelles than poets twice her age do in a couple of books. She writes: "Your faults are mine and mine / yours. When we kiss, you light my vacancy. / yours is the trailer park fire of the mind, / a vinyl-sided wet dream.";
About her teen love of horses, growing up in Maple Ridge, Bachinsky writes:
"Is it possible that such a beast can swim? / He weighs a ton (at least) but here / he is, his expectant ears pricked forward, / forward, as he glides through murk. / The trees have made room for us, / surround our sounds, the sounds of girls / swimming with horses. / How far we are from the town. / How we animate ourselves.";
Not all of the numerous teenage moms and dads in the Fraser Valley feel stuck; there's the kids in the title poem who awkwardly work it out, hesitant. But for every one of those tentative "gonna-make it"; kids, there are teenage moms at the Valley Mall who know pregnancy means "his loving is over.";
A chilling poem called "Wolf Lake"; recounts the rape and murder of a teenage girl in the victim's voice, so poignant because the lake where her body is dumped is the place where she and the murderer used to swim as teenagers.
"This boy / I'd camped with every summer since we were twelve, /the lake so quiet you could hear the sound / of a heron skim the water at dusk, or the sound / of a boy breathing."; Most striking in this explicit collection is the contrast between the accomplished technique and the harsh realities of life voiced in colloquial language. The poet betrays herself; posing as a tough girl with a smart-ass mouth, she unwittingly reveals the sensitivity required for finely tuned writing. Miss Fraser Valley gets out of her tacky gear and turns out to be an Alice Munro in poet guise. 0-88971-212-3
[BCBW 2006]
About her teen love of horses, growing up in Maple Ridge, Bachinsky writes:
"Is it possible that such a beast can swim? / He weighs a ton (at least) but here / he is, his expectant ears pricked forward, / forward, as he glides through murk. / The trees have made room for us, / surround our sounds, the sounds of girls / swimming with horses. / How far we are from the town. / How we animate ourselves.";
Not all of the numerous teenage moms and dads in the Fraser Valley feel stuck; there's the kids in the title poem who awkwardly work it out, hesitant. But for every one of those tentative "gonna-make it"; kids, there are teenage moms at the Valley Mall who know pregnancy means "his loving is over.";
A chilling poem called "Wolf Lake"; recounts the rape and murder of a teenage girl in the victim's voice, so poignant because the lake where her body is dumped is the place where she and the murderer used to swim as teenagers.
"This boy / I'd camped with every summer since we were twelve, /the lake so quiet you could hear the sound / of a heron skim the water at dusk, or the sound / of a boy breathing."; Most striking in this explicit collection is the contrast between the accomplished technique and the harsh realities of life voiced in colloquial language. The poet betrays herself; posing as a tough girl with a smart-ass mouth, she unwittingly reveals the sensitivity required for finely tuned writing. Miss Fraser Valley gets out of her tacky gear and turns out to be an Alice Munro in poet guise. 0-88971-212-3
[BCBW 2006]
Submitted on September 14, 2006 in By David.
