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Living Under Plastic
Evelyn Lau gets lost in contemplation
Cancer, suicide, early death, depression, travel addiction, moods, migraine, allergies, drowning, leaky condos, sewage spills, shopping addiction, miserable weather, illness.
Like her earlier books, Evelyn Lau's Living Under Plastic is not a light read. The plastic refers on one level to people living in condos that are under repair. At another level, it's the muffling and claustrophobia induced by a heavy blanket of regret and grief.
Everyone has a personal or family cancer story these days, but few have written their stories so well. Lau describes in painful detail the death of a favourite aunt on a palliative care ward and it is grim. Cancer is our contemporary plague and most of us are trying hard to keep down the fear. This poet brings it right in our face and shakes the readers' numbness. That's what poets do. One of the functions of the poetic imagination is to keep on bringing the grief to our awareness.
We don't have a legitimate place in our culture for lament.
In many of these forty-five poems though, Lau's lamenting seems more like depression. The two are quite different. Lamenting clears the emotional fog while depression deepens it. In the third and last section, the absence of friends and mentors and parents becomes unrelieved. Every poem is about some adversity and connected with death; even the last elegant piece about heron returning. So little affirmation!
As Lau tells her stories, the reader is subject to confusion. These seem like narratives but key pieces of information are withheld. Is this reticence sloppiness or is it a form of tease? There are so many inclusions of "you,' "he,"; "she,"; "we"; without clear references. Who's dead, who's dying? |The grandfather, aunt, uncle, mother, father, friend D. or P. or the mentor doctor or more than one at a time?
The chronology confuses and one feels a little locked out. It's not that a poet needs to be explicit about these details but the reader, carried into caring about a friend or a parent, is astounded to discover the poem is actually about yet another death. Leaving out key linkages does not increase interest, it alienates.
Travel is a way to temporarily leave behind one's wearying identity. Lau travels to sunnier places; Santa Monica, Phoenix, the Grand Canyon, Oregon, but her disposition does not get sunnier. In the airport, as she's going home, she identifies her mood as heavy and still dissatisfied.
The poems set in Vancouver-all grey tall buildings, sea and beaches, white gulls wheeling-evoke a distinct sense of place. Lau has lived in this city most of her life and she captures its wintry moods. From her downtown apartment, the treetops are clouds though her rooms feel like a prison.
Honesty about shopping as an escape is admirable. Lau admits that it's not more stuff she wants, but rather something elusive. Is there a mall somewhere that sells gratitude?
Many scintillating lines in this collection show Lau has lost none of her former poetry skills. "I screamed for the silence of the monastery."; "My breath a kettle puffing small clouds of steam."; "A storm of starling overhead, sheet music in the sky.";
Lau's younger writing was more obsessive about love relationships and chronic loss. Older but no happier, she shows a possible development as a contemplative. A little more in control of her own dependencies, this poet yet may arrive at hope, "that thing with feathers,"; according to Emily Dickinson, "that perches in the soul."; It's not a raucous gull.
It's all anyone could want
or ask for, a glimpse of the eternal,
the possibility of something more,
like an aperture opening
onto heaven. Yes, like this __
to be transported outside yourself,
to be anchored to this earth
yet flying.
Review by Hannah Main-van der Kamp, B.C. BookWorld, Autumn, 2010
Cancer, suicide, early death, depression, travel addiction, moods, migraine, allergies, drowning, leaky condos, sewage spills, shopping addiction, miserable weather, illness.
Like her earlier books, Evelyn Lau's Living Under Plastic is not a light read. The plastic refers on one level to people living in condos that are under repair. At another level, it's the muffling and claustrophobia induced by a heavy blanket of regret and grief.
Everyone has a personal or family cancer story these days, but few have written their stories so well. Lau describes in painful detail the death of a favourite aunt on a palliative care ward and it is grim. Cancer is our contemporary plague and most of us are trying hard to keep down the fear. This poet brings it right in our face and shakes the readers' numbness. That's what poets do. One of the functions of the poetic imagination is to keep on bringing the grief to our awareness.
We don't have a legitimate place in our culture for lament.
In many of these forty-five poems though, Lau's lamenting seems more like depression. The two are quite different. Lamenting clears the emotional fog while depression deepens it. In the third and last section, the absence of friends and mentors and parents becomes unrelieved. Every poem is about some adversity and connected with death; even the last elegant piece about heron returning. So little affirmation!
As Lau tells her stories, the reader is subject to confusion. These seem like narratives but key pieces of information are withheld. Is this reticence sloppiness or is it a form of tease? There are so many inclusions of "you,' "he,"; "she,"; "we"; without clear references. Who's dead, who's dying? |The grandfather, aunt, uncle, mother, father, friend D. or P. or the mentor doctor or more than one at a time?
The chronology confuses and one feels a little locked out. It's not that a poet needs to be explicit about these details but the reader, carried into caring about a friend or a parent, is astounded to discover the poem is actually about yet another death. Leaving out key linkages does not increase interest, it alienates.
Travel is a way to temporarily leave behind one's wearying identity. Lau travels to sunnier places; Santa Monica, Phoenix, the Grand Canyon, Oregon, but her disposition does not get sunnier. In the airport, as she's going home, she identifies her mood as heavy and still dissatisfied.
The poems set in Vancouver-all grey tall buildings, sea and beaches, white gulls wheeling-evoke a distinct sense of place. Lau has lived in this city most of her life and she captures its wintry moods. From her downtown apartment, the treetops are clouds though her rooms feel like a prison.
Honesty about shopping as an escape is admirable. Lau admits that it's not more stuff she wants, but rather something elusive. Is there a mall somewhere that sells gratitude?
Many scintillating lines in this collection show Lau has lost none of her former poetry skills. "I screamed for the silence of the monastery."; "My breath a kettle puffing small clouds of steam."; "A storm of starling overhead, sheet music in the sky.";
Lau's younger writing was more obsessive about love relationships and chronic loss. Older but no happier, she shows a possible development as a contemplative. A little more in control of her own dependencies, this poet yet may arrive at hope, "that thing with feathers,"; according to Emily Dickinson, "that perches in the soul."; It's not a raucous gull.
It's all anyone could want
or ask for, a glimpse of the eternal,
the possibility of something more,
like an aperture opening
onto heaven. Yes, like this __
to be transported outside yourself,
to be anchored to this earth
yet flying.
Review by Hannah Main-van der Kamp, B.C. BookWorld, Autumn, 2010
Submitted on August 11, 2010 in By David.
