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Lependu
A prose/poetry sequence concerning the hanged man of London, Ontario, by the award-winning author of Birding, or Desire; Sanding Down This Rocking Chair on a Windy Night; Night Field; Apparatus and Another Gravity.
- GenresPoetry
48 pages, Paperback
First published January 16, 1978
10 people want to read
About the author
Don McKay
57 books24 followersDon McKay is an award-winning Canadian poet, editor, and educator.
McKay was educated at the University of Western Ontario and the University of Wales, where he earned his PhD in 1971. He taught creative writing and English for 27 years in universities including the University of Western Ontario and the University of New Brunswick.
In June 2007, he won the Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip (2006). He is the co-founder and manuscript reader for Brick Books, one of Canada's leading poetry presses, and was editor of the literary journal The Fiddlehead from 1991-96.
In 2008, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.[2]
McKay was educated at the University of Western Ontario and the University of Wales, where he earned his PhD in 1971. He taught creative writing and English for 27 years in universities including the University of Western Ontario and the University of New Brunswick.
In June 2007, he won the Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip (2006). He is the co-founder and manuscript reader for Brick Books, one of Canada's leading poetry presses, and was editor of the literary journal The Fiddlehead from 1991-96.
In 2008, he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.[2]
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 8, 2020
Not for the faint hearted, Lependu is a verocious and uncompromising set of experimental poems that leaves you bemused, dazed and, sometimes, inspired. Don Mckay has a sprawling, expansive style that can switch tone and structure in an instant. His poems range from broken free style to blocky, breathless prose passages. Thematically they range from urban English life to native Canadian tales of colonialism and nature. The mysterious, almost threatening persona of Lependu shadows the poems (French le pendu? the gallows?). The language is often jarring; it varies in register from formal and academic to very colloquial. It's a true melting pot of linguistic, thematic and structural experiments. The end result is overwhelming. Invidual lines jump out at you but grasping onto the bigger picture takes some doing. In walks the tightrope between intriguingly different and frustratingly obscure.
Straight away we are plunged into Mckay's strange juxtapositions. "The Relic" is a prose poem complete with poetic interludes, inserted inscriptions and illustrated house signs with historical texts printed inside. But it's not until the poem "Portents" that the collection really takes off on its own lingustic wings. "They begin to appear quietly / as scruffy, balding squirrels" it starts, a simple observational poem with the mystery of the identy of these squirrel-like entities. "And then-" Mckay breaks with the expected and launches into a beautiful spring time reminiscence before returning to a sad, less breathless poetic ending. There are short, comic poems like "Lependu flu at the U" and meandering five part prose poems like "The Trout". Whatever the structure or the topic, one of Lependu's strengths as a collection is that it has a powerful sense of cohesion, even a hint of an ongoing narrative. Despite the eclectic styles on offer, Mckay manages to make everything fit together into an interesting whole. The range of vocabulary is astounding and Mckay so often throws in the most surprising flashes of figurative language. In this mix of the sublime and the mundane, Mckay certainly finds his voice.
Other poems of note; "Shadow city shadow city" is a creepy little urban stroll, "Ballade du Pendu" brilliantly takes the form of a devilish pub shanty, drumming in its nonsensical repetitions to atmospheric effect, and the best of the prose poems, the narrative "The Report of an Old Man whose Life was Changed after briefly becoming Lependu back in 1946" which seems to take something of the character of the previous song and run with it. "True Confessions: a phrenology for the antlered man" is perhaps the most ambitious and successful of the poems in this collection. It includes the words "screwzensoftly" and "kissmacking", plenty of Canadian history, randomly sketched maps, labelled pictographs and even a spooky developing stick man at the gallows who seems to be slowly unravelling and metamorphosizing (or disappearing/dying). The scattered, fragmented texts read like lost documents of Michael Stipe lyrics, abandoned in his youth for being too obscure. But there are stories in here, something heartfelt and connected to land, nature, nation and the poet's identity. It's not the most consistent or most accessible collection of poetry out there but, given time to seep into your consciousness, Mckay can take you on quite a ride through weirdness and hidden beauty. 6
Straight away we are plunged into Mckay's strange juxtapositions. "The Relic" is a prose poem complete with poetic interludes, inserted inscriptions and illustrated house signs with historical texts printed inside. But it's not until the poem "Portents" that the collection really takes off on its own lingustic wings. "They begin to appear quietly / as scruffy, balding squirrels" it starts, a simple observational poem with the mystery of the identy of these squirrel-like entities. "And then-" Mckay breaks with the expected and launches into a beautiful spring time reminiscence before returning to a sad, less breathless poetic ending. There are short, comic poems like "Lependu flu at the U" and meandering five part prose poems like "The Trout". Whatever the structure or the topic, one of Lependu's strengths as a collection is that it has a powerful sense of cohesion, even a hint of an ongoing narrative. Despite the eclectic styles on offer, Mckay manages to make everything fit together into an interesting whole. The range of vocabulary is astounding and Mckay so often throws in the most surprising flashes of figurative language. In this mix of the sublime and the mundane, Mckay certainly finds his voice.
Other poems of note; "Shadow city shadow city" is a creepy little urban stroll, "Ballade du Pendu" brilliantly takes the form of a devilish pub shanty, drumming in its nonsensical repetitions to atmospheric effect, and the best of the prose poems, the narrative "The Report of an Old Man whose Life was Changed after briefly becoming Lependu back in 1946" which seems to take something of the character of the previous song and run with it. "True Confessions: a phrenology for the antlered man" is perhaps the most ambitious and successful of the poems in this collection. It includes the words "screwzensoftly" and "kissmacking", plenty of Canadian history, randomly sketched maps, labelled pictographs and even a spooky developing stick man at the gallows who seems to be slowly unravelling and metamorphosizing (or disappearing/dying). The scattered, fragmented texts read like lost documents of Michael Stipe lyrics, abandoned in his youth for being too obscure. But there are stories in here, something heartfelt and connected to land, nature, nation and the poet's identity. It's not the most consistent or most accessible collection of poetry out there but, given time to seep into your consciousness, Mckay can take you on quite a ride through weirdness and hidden beauty. 6
January 24, 2022
That final syllable, so hard
in "plain English Canadian":
the narrowness of u
suggestion of a zed
Lepahnd(z)u:
say it like sipping very dry wine, perhaps
with fingers clustering in air.
To tell the truth in French (says Conrad)
n'est pas possible, and so also
dans la musique.
Scales and exercises, étude, séance,
technical pursuit until
you catch him by mistake
* * *
When Lependu flu hit Western U
there wasn't an allusion free from the phlegm
that fell from the air.
Scoffed at profs.
Chalk him not meet blackboard
square but ugh - squawk - sending
shiver of ù sont les neiges d'antan
down each individual backbone.
* * *
Along the scarecrow's arms & head shoulders sit
the blackbirds
laughing.
"This is an image of a scarecrow
thinking about blackbirds" they
laugh, thinking of themselves as the thinking
of the scarecrow - ha!
hilarity
fills the air around the scarecrow.
This could almost twist the stitched
mouth into smiling.
To this backbirds he seems suddenly
bemused.
in "plain English Canadian":
the narrowness of u
suggestion of a zed
Lepahnd(z)u:
say it like sipping very dry wine, perhaps
with fingers clustering in air.
To tell the truth in French (says Conrad)
n'est pas possible, and so also
dans la musique.
Scales and exercises, étude, séance,
technical pursuit until
you catch him by mistake
- , pg.
* * *
When Lependu flu hit Western U
there wasn't an allusion free from the phlegm
that fell from the air.
Scoffed at profs.
Chalk him not meet blackboard
square but ugh - squawk - sending
shiver of ù sont les neiges d'antan
down each individual backbone.
- Lependu flu at the U, pg. 21
* * *
Along the scarecrow's arms & head shoulders sit
the blackbirds
laughing.
"This is an image of a scarecrow
thinking about blackbirds" they
laugh, thinking of themselves as the thinking
of the scarecrow - ha!
hilarity
fills the air around the scarecrow.
This could almost twist the stitched
mouth into smiling.
To this backbirds he seems suddenly
bemused.
- Lependu nearly materialized by his blackbirds, pg. 28
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews