REVIEWS
The Lake Diary
George Elliott Clarke Maple Tree Literary Supplement Issue #21
The Lake Diary is avant-garde and jazz guitarist Arthur Bull’s second homey collection of poetry. It’s a quiet book, full of Zen riffs on “nature / longing / isolation / calm.” Bull is from Toronto and travels the world, playing gigs, but lives in Digby Neck, NS. He’s grounded there—and in his experiences of his family home on Lake Ontario.
There’s zero pretentiousness in Bull, no sloppy overreaching for “F/X.” At the lake, the “first thing / dawn does is pour pink / over the whole surface.” On another occasion, on the lake, his speaker loses his hat. The event is ironic, for the hat bears the slogans, “Amistad Freedom,” and so, like a fugitive slave, it has stealthily escaped the speaker’s ownership. Bull’s brief bio states his “love” for nature, “Chinese literature, and jazz,” and these motifs recur and resonate throughout the slim, reader-friendly book. It is amiable because it has no ambition beyond perceiving the self in the moment. Looking at a red maple reflected in the blue lake, Bull’s persona says, “I took those colours / renaming them // vermilion and cobalt / to dress my sorrow in.” Image and thought compact to illustrate profound self-criticism.
In spring, we discover that “sentences / come apart // In our hands // And reveal the hidden / Syntax of our bodies // Scattering // I, garden, thee, / Glove, eyes, brows, // Tender // Everywhere, / between.” It takes a special eye, to see that “The fishplant nestled in the woods / could be a temple.” There’s a Bohemian, Beat sensibility at play in Bull, and it is attractive, suggesting the power of art to establish magical equilibrium: “I have only / to curl the eaves with my pencil, // To bend the tower’s rulered lines / a little toward China.” There is sorrow in his world: “My guitar / leans silently on the bookcase. // Its strings haven’t vibrated / for weeks now.” But there’s also healing: “More and more / I have come to value only / whatever sees us through.” Bull’s simplicity and down-to-the-bone spirituality are welcome inaugurations for MMXIII, The Year of the Snake (in Chinese astrology).
Fifty Scores
George Elliott Clarke Maple Tree Literary Supplement Issue #21
Arthur Bull is the antithesis to Major. The Nova Scotian poet doesn’t want to microscope stars or telescope trees; he wants to hear, instead, the jazz of everyday doings. Fifty Scores is just that: 50 ways of listening to the heavenly sounds of earthly existence. These poems could be yoga instructions for the ears.
Here’s #5: “On a windy day, stand by a brook in the woods near the ocean. / Move your attention from foreground (brook) to middle ground / (branch-wind cracking-soughing) to the background (surf), before / gradually letting the small sounds of the forest break in.”
#7 is modeled on soul singer James Brown: “Find an echo in the valley or against a building, and test it, measuring / the interval with the loudest, shortest wordless sound your voice can / make. Yell once, twice, three times, four times, as far as you can go / and still get back to its complete echo.”
#11 is a cuisine soundtrack: “While chopping vegetables like carrots or parsnips, attend to the / ‘sshh’ of the knife going through with the ‘kkk’ as it hits the cutting / board, arranging the rhythm and tempo to the sound of oil heating in / the wok.”
I’ve added line-breaks, but the pieces are prose poems. Who does Bull echo? Experimental composers like John Cage and R. Murray Schafer. Plus whimsical poets like bill bissett and ee cummings.
#39 is fun: “While undressing someone else, follow the sequence of clothing / music: Velcro, snaps, zippers. This also works as a duet.”
The Blue Mat
Michael DennisToday’s Book of Poetry, April 29, 2018
Bull’s mantra, meditation and musing all poetic feels exactly like that of his long departed Chinese partners in crime. Except they contain some of the scraps and flotsam and jetsam of our so called modern world. Bull does capture, very succinctly, our slow march against time and circumstance. It’s all done carefully as mice and with admirable brevity… Arthur Bull has done a remarkable thing with Blue Mat, Poems After Yang Wanli. Bull has brought two Chinese poets, long part of the ether, back to life and respected them with his beautiful homage. We should all be so kind to our heroes. Blue Mat, Poem After Yang Wanli was nothing but pleasure. Arthur Bull writes the simple line, with the weight of the world hovering.”
The Lake Diary
George Elliott Clarke Maple Tree Literary Supplement Issue #21
The Lake Diary is avant-garde and jazz guitarist Arthur Bull’s second homey collection of poetry. It’s a quiet book, full of Zen riffs on “nature / longing / isolation / calm.” Bull is from Toronto and travels the world, playing gigs, but lives in Digby Neck, NS. He’s grounded there—and in his experiences of his family home on Lake Ontario.
There’s zero pretentiousness in Bull, no sloppy overreaching for “F/X.” At the lake, the “first thing / dawn does is pour pink / over the whole surface.” On another occasion, on the lake, his speaker loses his hat. The event is ironic, for the hat bears the slogans, “Amistad Freedom,” and so, like a fugitive slave, it has stealthily escaped the speaker’s ownership. Bull’s brief bio states his “love” for nature, “Chinese literature, and jazz,” and these motifs recur and resonate throughout the slim, reader-friendly book. It is amiable because it has no ambition beyond perceiving the self in the moment. Looking at a red maple reflected in the blue lake, Bull’s persona says, “I took those colours / renaming them // vermilion and cobalt / to dress my sorrow in.” Image and thought compact to illustrate profound self-criticism.
In spring, we discover that “sentences / come apart // In our hands // And reveal the hidden / Syntax of our bodies // Scattering // I, garden, thee, / Glove, eyes, brows, // Tender // Everywhere, / between.” It takes a special eye, to see that “The fishplant nestled in the woods / could be a temple.” There’s a Bohemian, Beat sensibility at play in Bull, and it is attractive, suggesting the power of art to establish magical equilibrium: “I have only / to curl the eaves with my pencil, // To bend the tower’s rulered lines / a little toward China.” There is sorrow in his world: “My guitar / leans silently on the bookcase. // Its strings haven’t vibrated / for weeks now.” But there’s also healing: “More and more / I have come to value only / whatever sees us through.” Bull’s simplicity and down-to-the-bone spirituality are welcome inaugurations for MMXIII, The Year of the Snake (in Chinese astrology).
Fifty Scores
George Elliott Clarke Maple Tree Literary Supplement Issue #21
Arthur Bull is the antithesis to Major. The Nova Scotian poet doesn’t want to microscope stars or telescope trees; he wants to hear, instead, the jazz of everyday doings. Fifty Scores is just that: 50 ways of listening to the heavenly sounds of earthly existence. These poems could be yoga instructions for the ears.
Here’s #5: “On a windy day, stand by a brook in the woods near the ocean. / Move your attention from foreground (brook) to middle ground / (branch-wind cracking-soughing) to the background (surf), before / gradually letting the small sounds of the forest break in.”
#7 is modeled on soul singer James Brown: “Find an echo in the valley or against a building, and test it, measuring / the interval with the loudest, shortest wordless sound your voice can / make. Yell once, twice, three times, four times, as far as you can go / and still get back to its complete echo.”
#11 is a cuisine soundtrack: “While chopping vegetables like carrots or parsnips, attend to the / ‘sshh’ of the knife going through with the ‘kkk’ as it hits the cutting / board, arranging the rhythm and tempo to the sound of oil heating in / the wok.”
I’ve added line-breaks, but the pieces are prose poems. Who does Bull echo? Experimental composers like John Cage and R. Murray Schafer. Plus whimsical poets like bill bissett and ee cummings.
#39 is fun: “While undressing someone else, follow the sequence of clothing / music: Velcro, snaps, zippers. This also works as a duet.”
The Blue Mat
Michael DennisToday’s Book of Poetry, April 29, 2018
Bull’s mantra, meditation and musing all poetic feels exactly like that of his long departed Chinese partners in crime. Except they contain some of the scraps and flotsam and jetsam of our so called modern world. Bull does capture, very succinctly, our slow march against time and circumstance. It’s all done carefully as mice and with admirable brevity… Arthur Bull has done a remarkable thing with Blue Mat, Poems After Yang Wanli. Bull has brought two Chinese poets, long part of the ether, back to life and respected them with his beautiful homage. We should all be so kind to our heroes. Blue Mat, Poem After Yang Wanli was nothing but pleasure. Arthur Bull writes the simple line, with the weight of the world hovering.”