Category Archives: Isa Milman

Long-silent poet’s voice surprises

Tilt
By E. Blagrave,
Cormorant Books, 61 pages, $18

Reviewed by Isa Milman

There is a wonderful, literal, backstory to this first book of poetry by E. Blagrave, who is herself somewhat of a mystery. Thirteen of these poems were first published in one issue of The Fiddlehead in 1973, when the author was a young woman. Soon after, she disappeared from print for more than thirty years. She’s now returned, having gone full circle, with this collection.

My usual approach to poetry is visual, but this collection came in through my ears. What a happy surprise. I heard E.’s young voice, and her mature voice, but couldn’t always distinguish which voice was speaking. Another happy surprise. Her opening poem rang in like a folk song, with lyrics delicate yet sharp and moody, and set the stage for what was to come. Reading her book, I conjured Jethro Tull, Judy Collins, and Sting in his early days, singing about the golden sun and fields of barley. He was fairer than corn growing/ and brighter by far than the dawn. I found myself moving from past to present, not sure which tense to dwell in.

As in the heady heart-break of the best folk songs, love is finely rendered in these poems, but slippery, not easy to hold. E. points to a laburnum’s flowery cascade and tells us:

our love is left to time,
to braid the yellow clusters up;
to give to me what isn’t mine.

E. extends her hand and invites us to saddle up for a ride, to join her in a meadow, by a lake, or to lie down with her in her great-grandfather’s orchard, and observe the rows of apple trees: We take comfort in such precision. It gives us an inkling of our situation.

And such is our situation. Joy is the natural world, but also uneasiness in its frightening fragility. The man-made world is less secure, and often a source of discomfort. In “You are So Alone” . . . the buildings are chained/and have in them lonely places. Better to lie in the orchard.

I appreciate her bijou poems, so spare, so evocative:

Here lie the agencies
.         of my heart:
The still lake
.         and small fish
.        simmering therein,
the sun in my fist,
the drowned world
and all that spins.

Toward the close of her collection, E. prepares us for winter with the beauty of

November:

The little tree
was butter-yellow,
was fall.
Fall still graced my window.
After a while the leaves
turned black at the edges
like a blighted rose,
and frost was on the roofs
in the morning.
Then the leaves fell
and winter closed the door.

The record has stopped spinning on the turntable. I pick up E.’s volume and listen again. It’s even better the second time around.

Isa Milman is a poet and visual artist who has called Victoria home for the last sixteen years. Her first two poetry collections have each won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Poetry. Her new collection, Something Small to Carry Home, was recently released.

 

 

Margoshes’ stories capture Jewish New York

A Book of Great Worth
By Dave Margoshes
Published by Coteau Books, 250 pages, $18.95
Reviewed by Isa Milman

Dave Margoshes captivated me from the first page of his book of linked stories. I thought I was reading a memoir of his father and his family life in New York, but it was only after the first two pieces that I realized that it wasn’t really a memoir, but short stories masquerading as memoir. A beautiful hybrid, a labradoodle of a book. Far from confusing me, this boundary blurring increased my pleasure, as Margoshes’s story-telling is a feat of seamless cross-breeding, bringing out the endearing qualities of each genre, while creating something adorable, in the original sense of this word.

I was grateful to be brought back to Jewish New York of the 1920s and ‘30s, the life and times of a Yiddish newspaperman and his newspaper sons, and the cast of characters that made up their world, a world now virtually gone. I saw the sunset of this world as a young woman in the ‘60s, when I tramped the streets of the Lower East Side, frequenting the delis and coffee shops and dives, reading The Forward ever so haltingly in Yiddish while looking for summer temp jobs, but you don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate Jewish New York. Margoshes brings you home to meet his parents, invites you to the local haunts for a drink and a schmooze, rides the subway with you to Harlem, Brooklyn and Coney Island, even takes you up to the Catskills. He delivers a complete experience, including matters of the heart and soul, in a language and style that’s rich in all the important details and note perfect.

I save my pleasure reading for bed, which is a good and not so good thing when a review is called for, because it’s hard to take notes. Every night for a week I’d read a story or two, before turning out the light with a smile on my face. I managed to put a pink sticky note at the beginning of the title story, which is probably my favourite of the collection, but they are all so damn good. Mazal tov, Dave Margoshes, on a book of great accomplishment.

Isa Milman is a poet and visual artist who has called Victoria home for the last sixteen years. Her first two poetry collections have each won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Poetry. Her new collection, Something Small to Carry Home, was recently released