Mean

by Ken Babstock

Mean is a stunning exploration of the threshold and divide between our primeval origins and the meanness of our everyday lives. In this collection, the pastoral collides with the concrete terrain of motorbikes, prisons, and chainlink to capture our constructed isolation and our buried, yet resonant, connection to the land and seascapes that surround us.
Ken Babstock's poetic voice is wholly original -- searing and pure in its realism, evocative and affecting in its search for a place to call its own. Mean won the Atlantic Poetry Prize (1999) and the Milton Acorn People's Poetry Award (1999).

Genres: Poetry

96 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 1999

About the author

Ken Babstock is a Canadian poet. He was born in Newfoundland and raised in the Ottawa Valley. Babstock began publishing his poems in journals and anthologies, winning gold at the 1997 Canadian National Magazine Awards. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Reviews

[b · Rating 3 out of 5]

This isn't how I remembered the book being the first time I approached it. There seemed to be consensus that it was so frank and readable and that even blue collar folks would love it because that's how dang frank it was. I'm not sure where or why it's falling short this time, but it's so much more demanding and, well, weak in some sections, than I remember. The poet I think of when I think of "relatable guy talking about real things" doesn't feel like Babstock in here but maybe Gord Downie elsewhere, and that's not a comparison I'm trying to draw, but it's an assertion that this book is way more literary than a lot of the literary praise it receives for being "blue collar" lets on.

A couple things I like that I'll note:
In the section 'Measures,' there seems to be a rolling game of tag going on between successive poems, whether it's a rhyme between Ayn Rand in the final line of one poem and a not about the next poem being a reply to Mark Strand, or a "phone call turns us idiot" in one poem and we are "elk dumb" in the next. I don't know if I'm missing these tight connections in the other sections, but here they seem to run wild and it's nice; I have more of a problem with folks using lines from the poem as the title of the work than of people repeating phrases or potent words or ideas in poems; one poem isn't enough, sometime.

This was definitely worth reading, all and all. I can't tell you how many times people have told me they love "What we didn't tell the medic" (maybe because it's in open field and open field gets taught?) and I agree that there's a lot of vulnerable stuff and really good imagery and it's more masterful than you'd expect from a debut, but, it's a bit limited in its own machismo sometimes and, I can't believe I'm gonna say this because I too am guilty of it, but you can't just always sneak out of a poem with a rhyming couplet at the end; it drew attention to itself and couldn't be unread.

I picked up all of Babstock's books recently and so I think I'll try to chew through them in quick succession if I can and keep that trajectory in mind; I started with On Malice years ago and maybe that was the wrong way to start all this but that's okay too.

[Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of Babstock's poetry is breathtaking, some is entirely run of the mill. It's hard to see the editing in this work, where gems sit among uninteresting work that hardly exudes the new face of poetry, as he has be hailed as.

[Haig · Rating 4 out of 5]

What can I say about this book that hasn't been said already. It's raw, clever and very Ken.

[Katharine Holden · Rating 1 out of 5]

The poem in which he glorifies his own masturbation and ejaculation on to the floor pretty much sums up the collection.

[dirty derk · Rating 3 out of 5]

would give 3.5 if i could. lots of tangible and precise imagery. at times pieces stood out from their themes however.