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    Table Manners: Selected & New Poems 2004 - 2018
    Table Manners: Selected & New Poems 2004 - 2018
    Table Manners: Selected & New Poems 2004 - 2018
    Ebook245 pages1 hour

    Table Manners: Selected & New Poems 2004 - 2018

    By Marty Gervais

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    About this ebook

    In this follow-up to To Be Now: New and Selected, Windsor's first poet laureate turns his attention to the border stories of southwestern Ontario. Gervais writes about the flat open farm country outside of Windsor, but also about living and working in the shadow of Detroit. The table becomes the metaphor for all that takes place in a lifetime: a place for conversation, creativity, work, sustenance, deal-making, and relationships.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMosaic Press
    Release dateSep 1, 2018
    ISBN9781771613439
    Table Manners: Selected & New Poems 2004 - 2018

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      Book preview

      Table Manners - Marty Gervais

      Window

      But who says this is true

      Marty Gervais is a poet who knows the value of a good story and he proves himself in every poem in this collection to be nothing short of a master storyteller. His poems honour the narrative impulse set in lyrical form. And he is often something of a mischief maker in that he frequently writes with a twinkle in his voice, teasing the truth out of sometimes peculiar experience. He is a confabulator who makes one think pity the poor historian adhering slavishly to the dull plod of facts. But when the facts serve the truth they come embraced in varity. His poems revel in humour, invention, and wonder, for his is the sagacious tease of the wise fool. We all have a favourite author who enlightens and enlivens, entertains and teaches, giving us the gift of sacred truths along the way. He is by times the court jester and by times the court poet lifting his more serious voice in song. We may look to him for the art of wishful thinking. We may look to him for the lessons of the parable and for the keen eye of the reliable observer. If we pay close attention we find those phrases that lift the hair on the nape of the neck and deliver the frisson of delight when the poet’s language has the rhetorical dash of genuine music in the line. Consider then Gervais’ lovely phrasing Time is a fugitive/ in a landscape of fancy, from his poem Turning Back the Clock. And know - this is the work of a major poet at his best.

      Gervais is an important practitioner of the tradition of Peoples Poetry. Both as a publisher and as an author he has always been something of a champion of poetry that is actually about something. A highly deserving recipient of the prestigious People’s Poetry Award, Gervais confirms his place as one of the most gifted poets working in that tradition. Table Manners gives the reader the affirmation that when poetry has content that is both deeply moving and profoundly intelligent, when it serves deep need and it stirs the common feeling of what it means to be fully human. We might carry these poems with us into the future, folded up in our wallets, committed to memory, remembered and cherished and we might buttonhole friends and strangers and say, Just listen to this:

      Let me try again

      Let me make it up

      Let me imagine

      something better

      Let me find some joy

      search their eyes

      touch their lips

      comb their hair.

      These lines from Gervais’ poem Barber Shop in Iraq, are worth the price of admission into the world of Marty Gervais. Imagine this. Remember this. Dream this. Say this of me. They have all the answers, he writes in Sunday Crossword Puzzles, I only have questions.

      What do you know, he asks of his hands in his poem Piano Hands. It wanders by itself/ seeking wisdom or truth/ the eye with the mind of its own, he writes of his own rogue eye. Hey lady, how does this thing work? he quotes a grandson frustrated and disappointed by the magic wand that fails to dazzle and amaze. It’s a dud and his grandson feels cheated. There’s laughter in this, and wisdom and a clear understanding of the imagination of a child discouraged by the discovery that the wizard’s wand is just a painted stick.

      Marty Gervais is a poet of black cats, lucky chestnuts, smashed eggs, magic cows, headless chickens, garrulous monks, wolf soups, hospital dogs, blue ladies, upside down cities, and at one point he closes a poem saying I’m everybody. And the breadth of his imagination, the quality of his mind does not end with the odd or the strange. It is perhaps at its most moving when he writes about his family. Notwithstanding the wry humour of that disappointed grandson, the reader is also treated to the mystical appearance of his grandparents ghosts in the landscape of the family farm in the French region of southwestern Ontario. We also see how a sunny summer day spent poolside at his suburban home in Windsor might suddenly turn tragic when a grandson falls into the deep blue water and drifts dreamily to the bottom … the poem begins The pool lay/ like a sweet blue sky/ in the advent of summer and it transforms into …the blue torment with his son the hero rescuing the boy I saw tiny thin arms wrap tightly/ around my son’s neck/ I saw the boy’s face swimming/ in tears of sunlight. In Breathing Sweet Hope, the poet as god writes I will stop time/ - here and now - to move/ all these pieces into place/ the perfect farm/ in this imagined game/ I will open the eyes of those I love/ and breathe sweet hope/ into their limbs and words/ I will let prayers/ finally have their day. In the poem Plotting My Way Home, the humble poet acquiesces But who says this is true … plotting his way home in a studied avoidance of black cats, almost believing in the supernatural powers he surrenders to the possibility that the pesky black cat might possess the ability to unleash a host/ of unfortunate events. Who says this is true, indeed! For his part, the persona in the poem goes searching alternate routes desperate to find any other way home. We are there with him in the early morning light, there with him at sundown, there with him at the coffee shop and in the press room at the newspaper, there with him at a family gathering, and there in the city where he is Poet Laureate giving the city meaning, gravitas, humour and wisdom in full gulps. Table Manners ends with these wise words turn your faces to the night/ forget everything/ let it go. And so we surrender and begin again to study the ants … in the light of an ordinary morning.

      John B. Lee Poet Laureate of the city of Brantford in perpetuity

      Poet Laureate of Norfolk County for life

      Wait For Me

      In The Light of An Ordinary Morning

      I study the ants

      swarming the counter tops

      in the light of an ordinary morning

      Some march in single file

      others in twos

      Some pause momentarily

      remembering suddenly

      they left behind their wallet

      or prescription

      on the dresser at home

      Some stand stock still

      maybe waiting for a friend

      maybe talking on the cell phone

      Some scurry like they’re late

      for an appointment

      Some walk in circles

      confused and desolate over

      a bad piece of news

      A dab of strawberry jam

      is the prize, the mother lode

      It sits on the cutting board

      amid toast crumbs

      and the engineers are drafting

      a strategy to spirit this

      to the nest, to the Queen

      who paces in front

      of a tiny ant mirror

      despairing over the weight

      she’s put on and what

      she’ll wear for the feast

      celebrating their great find

      I’m way ahead

      I know something they don’t

      I know it’s a matter of time

      before I wreak havoc

      upon this industrious colony

      What shall it be?

      Flood from an overturned mug?

      Tsunami by wash cloth?

      Death by a giant finger

      flicking them into insect eternity?

      Or should I be the benevolent god?

      I’m way ahead —

      Let them live an hour longer

      while I drive to Home Hardware

      and buy those tiny plastic

      feeding stations

      — space age looking drive-ins

      I’ll invite them one by one

      to pull into these rest stops

      along their route

      to gorge themselves

      on super-sized meal deals

      I’ll give them time to go back

      and tell friends

      and bring the little ones,

      the old, the sick

      I’m

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