Methodist Hatchet
by Ken Babstock
House of Anansi
ISBN: 9780887842931
Trade paperback
112 pages
Poetry
$22.95 CDN
About a week ago a friend sent me a link to a review about her cousin, the poet, and his latest release, Methodist Hatchet. Now, this was not the first time my friend had mentioned this fellow, so I figured it was time to spend a little time with his writing.
The Globe and Mail wrote Brainy, beautiful, brilliant. That’s Ken Babstock’s verse.
An anonymous critic wrote back to the Globe and Mail and said that Babstock’s techniques are really just linguistic pyrotechnics designed to keep a reader flummoxed, at a distance, and properly impressed.
The Edmonton Journal proclaimed that reading Ken Babstock is like following the trunk of a tree upward as it divides and subdivides, fraying into the finest threads until a beautiful but complex circuitry webs the sky. Simply put, he makes the brain hurt, forcing us to exert that dusty 90 per cent we rarely use.
Interesting. Next, I read all the poems I could find online over the space of about 1/2 hour. It was quite plain to me that Ken Babstock poems were not my kind of poems. I write poetry and read poetry that I consider more approachable. End of topic.
I’m not that lucky. My friend had been very polite about my reaction to Babstock’s poetry. So, who knew?
Ken Babstock is the author of three previous collections of poetry, including Airstream Land Yacht, which was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, won the Trillium Book Award, and was a Globe and Mail Top 100 book.
Time called his first book one of the best things to happen to poetry in Canada; the Globe and Mail said his last book was perhaps the most important poetry book yet from any Canadian born in the 1970s or beyond.
Some call Ken Babstock the best Canadian poet of his generation. Others call him King. In general, he seems to be considered one of the most exciting lyric poets writing today. I think, maybe, I will spend some more time with this fellow’s poetry.
Copyright, Clayton Clifford Bye, 2011
MAURICE MANNING, the author of four collections of poetry, was awarded the 2009 Hanes Poetry Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His first book, Lawrence Booth’s Book of Visions, was selected by W. S. Merwin for the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Manning, a former writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, teaches at Indiana University and Warren Wilson College.