Quarrels

by Eve Joseph

The poems in this collection reach for something other than truth, the marvelous. Leaves fall out of coat sleeves, Gandhi swims in Burrard Inlet. The poems are like empty coats from which the inhabitants have recently escaped, leaving behind images as clues to their identity. There are leaps between logics within the poems, and it is in these illogical spaces where everything comes together, like the uplift of the conductor’s hand to begin a piece of music where, as Arvo Pärt put it, the potential of the whole exists.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

85 pages, Paperback

First published June 30, 2018

About the author

Eve Joseph (born 1953) is a Canadian poet and author. Her books of poetry, The Startled Heart (Oolichan, 2004) and The Secret Signature of Things (Brick, 2010) were both nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her nonfiction book, In the Slender Margin, was published by HarperCollins in 2014 and won the Hubert Evans award for nonfiction.

Reviews

[MissBecka Gee · Rating 3 out of 5]

This cover 100% drew me in!
The contents inside...
The writing is beautiful and flowing, I just didn't connect with a lot of the poems in here.
My favourite?

Light stutters down the closed blinds and builds a spine, one vertebrae at a time up the bedroom wall. It lengthens cross the hotel room like a man searching the woods with a flashlight for something he has lost; a set of keys, a worn wallet, the dog he let out at dawn to pee. The sighted lead the blind by the hand knowing, at some point, they will let go. Follow the light, the living say to the dying. The logic in that escapes me. I have always been drawn to the shadows. Light arcs across the room and bends at the corner like a hinge. A door that could open but remains closed. The deeper the man goes, the thinner the beam of light until he's lost amongst the blue coffins of trees.

[Dianah (onourpath) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Open this book and inside you will find slender slivers, pulsating with life: a cooked capon wedged in the ceiling; a caretaker rescuing whores; frogs falling from the sky; "the blue coffin of trees;" a tacklebox of shiny lures; "the moon hiding in a bowl of blood oranges," a yard of white feathers; "the house you grew up in;" Prometheus locked in his bedroom; "little moons spilled on the floor;" the tattoo of a concentration camp survivor; a jar of commas; "people who suffer from boanthropy;" a keyhole of past lives. These tiny poems read like flash fiction, and they're bubbling over with humanity. Beautiful.

[James Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

These are prose poems and delightfully lyrical. There's a section on the photographs of Diane Arbus and a concluding 10 poems about the death of her father.

This won the Griffin Poetry Prize this year.

[Pétur Marteinn Urbancic Tómasson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wish I liked this book more. As I read, I kept thinking that I should like this book, as it is beautifully written. But unfortunately I didn't. Some of the stories were great. Maybe they all are, but if they are I didn't get the majority of them. Those that are good are really good though. Here's a bit I really liked:
"I want to know why the clouds told the Serbian poet their names in the quiet of a summer afternoon. And why didn't he share the names with the rest of us? Perhaps they did not translate into English. Perhaps the old want to stay hidden and keep their secrets all to themselves."

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each of Eve Joseph's "Quarrels" is a tightly packed postcard prose poem following an idea or thought. Each arranged in a justified block taking the upper third of a page.

Her verses are full of idiosyncratic jumps in thought. This parataxis promotes an anti-logical poetic reasoning within which entire worlds of meaning and image open up.

[Becca Babcock · Rating 5 out of 5]

An intricate, delicate, intimate, and surprising collection of prose poems. Each poem--even those that express raw grief and deep, stale sorrow--is tinged with a sense of the wonderful, the marvellous. A beautiful collection.

[Andrea Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will be sharing a review of this fine volume of prose poetry by Eve Joseph once I have taken the time to fully contemplate all of the thoughts that arise from reading her poems. One of my favourites!

[Dorothy Mahoney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tightly packed prose pieces with the first sentence of each in caps to suggest a title. This book requires pondering and is not a quick read despite deceptive brevity on each page. The word
'distillations" as used in the Griffin Poetry Prize Judges' Citation is accurate.

[Christine Bissonnette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

"These are my thoughts but not my words."

[Kari Burk · Rating 4 out of 5]

The collaged image of a gigantic human child body with a bird head stepping carefully on the tiny city below matches the content of this collection of prose poetry perfectly.
The ability of this author to create balance as she vacillates via words between a wildly irregular 'out of this world as we know it' realm of irregular intertwinement of things with the tender domain of the nitty gritty trueness of human experience is why, IMO, this Canadian gal won The Griffin Prize For Poetry for this book in 2019.

[Jennie Chantal · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF 43%
Well crafted poems but they didn’t move me at all. I prefer and seek out poetry that makes me feel and this just didn’t do it for me.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I liked this more but I just didn't understand anything...

[Jessica-Robyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Boy golly, this little book had a lot of words in it. I know I will be in the minority of people here, but I found this to be too high density for me to really connect with. I liked the style of poetry overall and the way the poet uses language is incredibly unique and interesting, but I just never clicked with it. By the time I was half way through I was trying to force it and that took away some of the joy in it.

[Diane B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Winner of the Griffin Poetry prize for a Canadian poet in 2019. Loved listening to the poet read from her work on the Koerner stage.

Brilliant, startling imagery; deeply resonant.