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Killdeer: essay-poems
WINNER OF THE 75th GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD FOR POETRY
WINNER OF THE 25th TRILLIUM BOOK PRIZE
WINNER OF AN ALCUIN AWARD FOR DESIGN
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE
These are poems of critical thought that have been influenced by old fiddle tunes. These are essays that are not out to persuade so much as ruminate, invite, accrue.
Hall is a surruralist (rural & surreal), and a terroir-ist (township-specific regionalist). He offers memories of, and homages to -- Margaret Laurence, Bronwen Wallace, Libby Scheier, and Daniel Jones, among others. He writes of the embarrassing process of becoming a poet, and of his push-pull relationship with the whole concept of home. His notorious 2004 chapbook essay The Bad Sequence is also included here, for a wider readership, at last. It has been revised. (It's teeth have been sharpened.)
In this book, the line is the unit of composition; the reading is wide; the perspective personal: each take a give, and logic a drawback.
Language is not a smart-aleck; it's a sacred tinkerer.
Readers are invited to watch awe become a we.
In Fred Wah's phrase, what is offered here is "the music at the heart of thinking."
WINNER OF THE 25th TRILLIUM BOOK PRIZE
WINNER OF AN ALCUIN AWARD FOR DESIGN
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GRIFFIN POETRY PRIZE
These are poems of critical thought that have been influenced by old fiddle tunes. These are essays that are not out to persuade so much as ruminate, invite, accrue.
Hall is a surruralist (rural & surreal), and a terroir-ist (township-specific regionalist). He offers memories of, and homages to -- Margaret Laurence, Bronwen Wallace, Libby Scheier, and Daniel Jones, among others. He writes of the embarrassing process of becoming a poet, and of his push-pull relationship with the whole concept of home. His notorious 2004 chapbook essay The Bad Sequence is also included here, for a wider readership, at last. It has been revised. (It's teeth have been sharpened.)
In this book, the line is the unit of composition; the reading is wide; the perspective personal: each take a give, and logic a drawback.
Language is not a smart-aleck; it's a sacred tinkerer.
Readers are invited to watch awe become a we.
In Fred Wah's phrase, what is offered here is "the music at the heart of thinking."
- GenresPoetryCanadaNonfiction
112 pages, Paperback
First published May 31, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 11, 2012
Killdeer is poetry about writing. The central metaphor of the title is of the winter and of the season's totem bird, the killdeer, who feigns injury to lure other animals away from their nests in order to raid it while the animal is away. A writer in Hall's world is a killdeer.
What's most interesting about these poems is the structure. These are called essay-poems because they're extended contemplations on their subject. The average length of the poems is almost 9 pages of long wraparound lines. Most stanzas look like a block of prose. They do, though, read like notes jotted down rather than formalized sentences. Unpunctuated, too, except for a generous broadcasting of dashes. "The unfinished poem--face-down on the floor--under the desk--for months--is not really waiting--it doesn't care--when it gets the word it needs--then it will care" he writes. And always the subject is about writing, the emotional cost, what the individual commitment has to be in order to write, how to maintain the necessary solitude, how to find the language, where to find it. How to lure the craft and tease it out like the killdeer does.
What's also wonderful about Hall's poetry is that you can never use it up. You'll never get to the bottom of it. Come back to it, find something you didn't see before. There's a certain dissonance to the poetry here. If you look behind the words and dashes, there's a larger world. It's large enough for the killdeer, who we learn isn't injured at all, to soar.
What's most interesting about these poems is the structure. These are called essay-poems because they're extended contemplations on their subject. The average length of the poems is almost 9 pages of long wraparound lines. Most stanzas look like a block of prose. They do, though, read like notes jotted down rather than formalized sentences. Unpunctuated, too, except for a generous broadcasting of dashes. "The unfinished poem--face-down on the floor--under the desk--for months--is not really waiting--it doesn't care--when it gets the word it needs--then it will care" he writes. And always the subject is about writing, the emotional cost, what the individual commitment has to be in order to write, how to maintain the necessary solitude, how to find the language, where to find it. How to lure the craft and tease it out like the killdeer does.
What's also wonderful about Hall's poetry is that you can never use it up. You'll never get to the bottom of it. Come back to it, find something you didn't see before. There's a certain dissonance to the poetry here. If you look behind the words and dashes, there's a larger world. It's large enough for the killdeer, who we learn isn't injured at all, to soar.
January 26, 2021
When this book is doing these mourning, sad, craven inward adjustments, it really works. When it bloats into a big CanLit namedrop “here’s what real writing probably should sound like” moralizing endeavor, well then it gets a little harder to love. Maybe it’s just the annoyance at little jabs at theorists while simultaneously generating a mythic canadian vibe, anti-academy but otherwise uncritical; maybe this is the killdeer motif coming through as intended, or maybe it’s just the kind of anger poetry holds onto. Whatever it is that draws in a lot of obtuse telling muscles out the strengths of the book that lie in feeling, in remembering. Anyhow, toss in a mound of Irving Layton mentions and an opinion on Purdy falling flat once he’s dead and the award-world will love that you fall into the tradition by referencing it and you’ll get your GG. I hope to look up other work by Hall soon because I think he does have a felicity with the poe(m/ssay), and I assume some of his writing must be less alienating, less bitter; maybe that there’s a lot of bitterness and not much anger, maybe that’s what ejects me each time I come back. Maybe hype killed it. Either way, disappointing. Sometimes I agree with the obtrusive thoughts on what makes good writing, but that it seems to be the only anchor outside grief, and seems too to tug away from the grief’s potency, kills the energy. To spend so much time complaining about how “Each year Father bestows MAs for bad sequences on budding / novelists” while speaking in such a popular Canadian poetic voice, one that those MA students get taught to parrot (and I would say do so to great success) makes me wonder in what world PH thinks “authentic” writing comes from, because I am w(e)ary of all that M(F)A polished writing too, but I’m tired of the Atwoods and Ondaatjes and even the Purdys and the Nichols some days too. PH voice here implies that good writing and any hope of political liberation died off with a bunch of writers he was friends with when they lived, and it seems the strength of his craft outstrips the depth of his reflection in the collection; and immediately I want to say “that’s how grieving can be,” but it’s not the grieving moments that have that strange attitude. Anyhow, he already won the GG and me sitting here with brain damage writing a moderate goodreads review so I can remember what the hell I thought of the book in 6-months isn’t gonna take that away from him.
//
On Bronwen Wallace:
“I write poems so that if she were to knock again – I’ll have some”
//
“Our sometimes worthy impulse to shock & say the unadorned – / can become aligned – by form alone – with art that is too careful / / Too accurate – too simple – too ‘good’ – in a school-bookish way”
//
“I was there [in Crete] – writing on an old door propped between rocks / under a fig tree – because I admired those people who had fought / so intractably for their island back – in ways my own country never / would”
//
On Bronwen Wallace:
“I write poems so that if she were to knock again – I’ll have some”
//
“Our sometimes worthy impulse to shock & say the unadorned – / can become aligned – by form alone – with art that is too careful / / Too accurate – too simple – too ‘good’ – in a school-bookish way”
//
“I was there [in Crete] – writing on an old door propped between rocks / under a fig tree – because I admired those people who had fought / so intractably for their island back – in ways my own country never / would”
April 2, 2013
Are Canada’s poets getting old? I feel like so many poetry collections I read lately or nostalgic ruminations on the poet’s development. I’m certainly not complaining – I enjoy a good Prelude as well as anyone – I’m just making an observation after reading Phil Hall’s wonderful GG Award winning Killdeer: Essay-Poems from BookThug. These poems, most of which have been published in some form elsewhere, collected together constitute a reflection not only on Hall’s development in life and poetry but also a sensitive consideration of poetry and life in Canada today. In turn the poetry is painfully honest, haunting and heartbreakingly beautiful. Killdeer is a wholly remarkable work.. . . .
The rest of my review can be found at: http://behindthehedge.wordpress.com/2...
The rest of my review can be found at: http://behindthehedge.wordpress.com/2...
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August 2, 2024Killdeer: essay-poems (Department of Critical Thought) won the 2011 Governor General’s Award for poetry, the 2012 Trillium Book Award and was shortlisted for the 2012 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize.
This is a narrative, a series of musings, of his trajectory as a poet, his encounters with luminaries, most long dead and lost to me: as a student he hitched from Bobcaygen to Lakefield and knocked on Margaret Laurence’s door with a clutch of wrinkled poem; he loved the way she said darn sure. He delves into a deep friendship with Bronwen Wallace; knowing Daniel Jones. This is an interface of a Poet as a young man and Poet with gentle advice to impart on the importance of prosody and
“The small sacrifice”
The only desk sacrifice a writer can make is patience and silence and
focus
“The bad sequence” (P. 90)
If poets clap for themselves – so what – only pets get enough attention
But then who claps for the reader
“A thin line: p 99
My writing has been more about my life than my life has been
about writing – the goal always better balance – a safer self – poetry has to little to do with writing
P 103
When I can’t sleep – when I’m sick – when no one else is home –
when I am lost in transit – I tinker
This is my word for what I do – a slow – un-clever – tactile – cheap
– harmless rearranging of odd bits of my nature & gatherings –
until they sing—off key
I breathe and ponder with the em-dashes. The poems in this book are sometimes fierce, sometimes vulnerable, always tender to the touch.
This is a narrative, a series of musings, of his trajectory as a poet, his encounters with luminaries, most long dead and lost to me: as a student he hitched from Bobcaygen to Lakefield and knocked on Margaret Laurence’s door with a clutch of wrinkled poem; he loved the way she said darn sure. He delves into a deep friendship with Bronwen Wallace; knowing Daniel Jones. This is an interface of a Poet as a young man and Poet with gentle advice to impart on the importance of prosody and
“The small sacrifice”
The only desk sacrifice a writer can make is patience and silence and
focus
“The bad sequence” (P. 90)
If poets clap for themselves – so what – only pets get enough attention
But then who claps for the reader
“A thin line: p 99
My writing has been more about my life than my life has been
about writing – the goal always better balance – a safer self – poetry has to little to do with writing
P 103
When I can’t sleep – when I’m sick – when no one else is home –
when I am lost in transit – I tinker
This is my word for what I do – a slow – un-clever – tactile – cheap
– harmless rearranging of odd bits of my nature & gatherings –
until they sing—off key
I breathe and ponder with the em-dashes. The poems in this book are sometimes fierce, sometimes vulnerable, always tender to the touch.
August 10, 2018
In the first few pages I could tell that I was going to love Hall's collection of essay-poems. I loved his cheeky prose-poem style, and his ability to make fun of things while doing them. Like his poem "Bad Sequence" in which he criticizes list and sequence poems in the form of a list poem. I also loved "Becoming a Poet", in which he shares loving and irreverent stories about his claimed poetic family, including an episode where he decides to meet Margaret Lawrence and knocks on her door unannounced.
June 1, 2023
very canadian poems - perhaps more academic and with way to many literary references that I was not familiar with the details.
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February 26, 2024Read for class
March 9, 2012
This is a risk-taking book that challenges much of what poetry has been all about in recent years. Phil Hall gets personal while also reminding the reader to always beware of a poet's purported honesty. He delivers astute one-line analyses of other writers' work. And the Killdeer metaphor is perfect for what a writer does - the bird that feigns injury to distract you away from something more important. A rewarding read.
February 5, 2013
Phil Hall creates poetic analysis through a terse autobiographical package that you open like a jack-in-a-box. His sharp insights into the impediments of the culture of academia, the creative writing school and the illogic of false poetics are a motley jester. You should have known better. Don't spoil yourself for love with self-love. Phil Hall is good.
December 21, 2011
I understand now why Phil Hall refers to these as essay poems: part memoir, part musings, part poems, with commentary on poetics threaded throughout. Killdeer stretches. A fascinating read, and deserving of its Governor General's Award. Recommended!
June 29, 2012
Phil Hall welcomes us into his progress and process as a poet in a fascinating and often intimate fashion. He classifies this as a collection of essay-poems, but however you choose to receive it, Killdeer offers arresting storytelling.
January 3, 2015
another masterpiece.
December 14, 2014
A little too......wordy?
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews