Trouble Sleeping

by Phil Hall

"If only my cousin had kept off me, kept out of me his brown fly-strop glue, his shot dog-eye cream. Afterwards, he would comb my hair to a wet Elvis point between my eyes and warn me what his wolves would do to me, and where I'd be sent, if I ever told." This experience is at the core of Phil Hall's Trouble Sleeping . It is the source of bad dreams and also, paradoxically, the source of his crisp, luminous text. Trouble Sleeping makes visible the poetry of hopeful despair by remembering a poor working class family of Irish descent, living outside the margins of respectability at the edge of the Laurentian Shield in mid-Northern Ontario in the 1950s. This raw world is seen by a child who is a misfit in it (especially among its brutal, drunken males). That child will eventually come to speak for the plight of unregarded misfits in society at large. "Orthodontics is a class issue" to the writer looking back on a time when it never occurred to his parents that crooked teeth might be fixed - not that they could have afforded it. In Trouble Sleeping , working a variation on the Japanese form of haibun, Hall alternates prose passages with poems that reflect nightmarishly on the interwoven narratives.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

80 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2000

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

stigma ovary water fog ease Siam

 H-trap's horns - stops short of the
jaws of the zygal - backs out)
 I sip coffee - nothing is
going on - in heap's clothing
 in marble green ocean froth
in Ulterior Thule
 in transitu
- pg. 12

* * *

 ALL HER BONES bled into her mouth
to form an egg there when she died

 allowed - that damp enormity smell
of crimped dirigible tripe

 despite - many a starched Adam's apple
given - flabbergasted stump-puller patents

 of course - the functional architecture
of animal husbandry's crude features

 in any egg bequeathed to an only daughter
egg the daughter shoved up inside herself

 behold in granddaughter eyes
candled china
- pg. 22

* * *

 UNDERWAY / STILLED
raft of squared pine / ash

 mid-porridge half-chawed
(John L. Sullivan mustaches)

 indefinite articles facing
definite articles facing back - 'the secret

 of the Particular transforming itself into the General
& of the General transforming itself into the Particular'

 (Czeslaw Milosz)
History playing Red Rover with

 the names for things - aaas
& thethethes calling each other

 over - Sirs & forgotten Givens &
mobbs of Nicks trickling in alone

 erudition-overpasses that lead down (& out)
to pseudo-wisdom-gulley scrims - this theatre-heat

 the a the a the athe atheatheatheatheathe
that is us as almost each other

 on a radiator the warm phone book
we are all in - peptides & amino acids -

 anonymous whirring
posed adrift
- pg. 33

* * *

1. THE BANJO / in the canoe: sex

2. C-section / chord

3. a flat head & one arm in a banjo case
 overboard

4. drift & pick / choice meander

5. enough of 'yet not despairing' (new funtears)
 enough of 'ultimately transcends confessional'

6. as if late optimism weren't fear come up at sea
 for the third time / abloat / gangly with bio's
 godawful song

7. let groans fill the ruts in the hills
 of widening jetstream reflection be

8. broken ribs & wires awash -
 another long dockless scar
- pg. 44

* * *

'I'm SORRY too. I just have to go back into town.'

'Do you want me to drive you?'

'I'll drive her,' said Joan. 'I can.'

'No. No thanks, Joan. Dad.'

'Is there skating tonight?'

'I think so.'

'What about supper?'

'I'll get some chips and Ming's or something.'

'Do you need money?'

'No.'

'I'm proud of you. We showed them -'

'I'm going, OK? Should I turn some light on in here?'

'No.'
- pg. 59

* * *

 DEAR NOW LATE YOU candle light

as if you could read by candle light
 how in my dreams these days doorways
are stopped up all but for headspace
 near the floor (or transom) my shoulders
won't fit through even if I get down
 on the floor on my back & turn my thoughts
away from you so I get up & in my fury
 butcher rooms again with that little sword
you gave me then I take another bath
 not cleansing really a long soak
two three times a day these days - rehearsing
 a re-write of caesarian birth maybe

night candled tremble y/our fear
- pg. 65

* * *

SHE STUCK her thumb our and smiled hard.
- pg. 74