The Predicament of Or

by Shani Mootoo

Celebrated novelist Shani Mootoo, author of the award-winning Cereus Blooms at Night, turns her hand to poetry in a nuanced and lively exploration of desire, identity and personal exile. In haunting and astonishing language, shot through with the speech and rhythms of her native Trinidad, Mootoo walks a breathtaking tightrope - between cultures and identities, between geographical locations, between memory and desire. In a series of bittersweet love poems, she tenderly exposes the contradictions in loving another woman; in a series of exhilarating riffs on language and the effects of colonization, she marries English words to Trinidadian intonation. Here are poems equally lush and philosophical, sensual and startling, spilling forth meaning from experience like blood-red seeds from a pomegranate.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, Canada

128 pages, Paperback

First published May 22, 2002

About the author

Shani Mootoo, writer, visual artist and video maker, was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1957 to Trinidadian parents. She grew up in Trinidad and relocated at age 24 to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She currently lives in Toronto, Canada.

Reviews

[CaseyTheCanadianLesbrarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I count Shani Mootoo as one of Canada’s most gifted writers, her first novel Cereus Blooms at Night being one of the first queer books I read after coming out and still one of my favourite books of all time. So I was interested to learn a while back that she had published an early collection of poetry. If I remember correctly, actually, I found my copy of The Predicament of Or in the discount section of Little Sister’s, Vancouver’s queer bookstore. The poems in this collection are often about identity, desire, and place; about immigration and colonization; about feeling neither here nor there; about life’s small moments of beauty and revelation; about the words women and queer folks use to describe themselves.

Unfortunately I liked, but didn’t love, The Predicament of Or. Likely my expectations of this book were a little too high, given that it represents really early work of Mootoo’s. In fact, it seemed like as the collection went on and the poems got older I liked it less, which is probably a testament to Mootoo’s growth as an artist. So I’m gonna talk about some of the poems that I loved, which were the ones in the beginning of the book, and her most recent...

See the rest of my review here.

[Naori · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title of this book aptly belies its nature - a predicament, a fluent and morphing predicament. If anyone has ever lived on an island, or for those of us who come from one, you know the constant staccato of patois, accompanied by the ceaseless tempo of the sea. Shani Mootoo absolutely captures that. What is different is how she attempts to transpose that onto a continental landscape, to explore how it feels to be outside those rhythms of language and environment, and to suddenly hear the sounds of another Trinidadian, only to have them claim a continental identity. This slightly reminds me of Dionne Brand’s book Thirsty, possibly because that is all one lyrical poem or because she is Guadeloupean/Canadian and this fusion has harmonized in her work (in a way I think Mootoo has yet to master). However, I recommend reading this all in one sitting, as I did, because it really reads more as a longer lyrical piece rather than individual poems.

I do want to add to this that Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night is one of my all time favorite books, and just because this poetic adventure isn’t off the charts it in no way detracts from what a talented and prismic writer she is.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sea salt and ocean breeze
can pick apart flesh,
bones of this house, this childhood

only soft-bellied vultures
are spread

they play dead:

perch one-legged
atop metal marrow disintegrating
out of crumbling corner posts,

wrinkled eyes
half closed

- Beach Composition II, pg. 12

* * *

my mother was Anglican
my father was a priest

they prayed hard together
and when spring came

they reaped the smoothest
stones you've ever seen.

- Faith, pg. 26

* * *

you said, and the words spread
a formal tablecloth,
"I am polygamous"

I noticed you didn't say
"non-monogamous"

and that the pupils of your eyes
are the colour of the sky
that straddles the fiery North Sea

- Identity, pg. 49

* * *

The day of your arrival
is tagged, like a present -
your name engraved upon it.

Alter the plan, if you must.
But think: what will come of that day?
No one else can open it.

- Eclipse, pg. 69

* * *

fat fish

tread

ing
water

flip
pin
f/s/lap
pin

silversilver
sil

ver
gainst

thequickened
gainstthequickened

- Mouth, pg. 75

[Apryl Wassaykeesic · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve loved Shani Mootoo’s work since I read her novel Cereus Blooms at Night, which I found eminently relatable in terms of its depiction of community life and community relations to individuals. Very profound. I like her poetry as well.