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Romantic
Drawing on Arthurian myth, the Romantic poets, the ill-fated “Great War” efforts of the Newfoundland Regiment, modern parenthood, 16-bit video games, and Major League Baseball, these poems examine the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, both as individuals and as communities, in order to explain how and why we are the way we are. At its heart, Romantic interrogates our western society’s idealized, self-deluding personal and cultural perspectives.
From Romantic:
Like the Green Knight, stooping
to retrieve his own severed melon
from the stone floor of a banquet
hall where it rolls past startled
courtiers to then catch against a
table leg and stop, I’m fumbling
for an errant thought; without his
flair for theatre, the practiced ease
with which he grips a hank of
hair and hoists his head aloft …
From Romantic:
Like the Green Knight, stooping
to retrieve his own severed melon
from the stone floor of a banquet
hall where it rolls past startled
courtiers to then catch against a
table leg and stop, I’m fumbling
for an errant thought; without his
flair for theatre, the practiced ease
with which he grips a hank of
hair and hoists his head aloft …
- GenresPoetry
72 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 5, 2022
Consistent but never too overwhelming use of over-arching themes in this entertaining collection ...
August 17, 2022
Meditations of pure wonder and love for his family and close friends, frequently coming to domestic epiphanies about choices made long ago / the nature of choice itself, recurrent War motifs, and some fun and fancy little structural devices (eg: the diptych of “The Work of Art” and “In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” executing two of the overarching theme threads in a bound unit, that the two poems are separate yet connected a curious volta that laces together POVs that really do start to make unlikely sense athwart one another, a gesture that teaches us how the collection might gel in whole).
However I come away wondering if there’s a long-poem in Callanan. I know the poems are finely tuned, and the book is very economical and lean in a sound and mature way, but I wonder where the line might lead him if he pursued, in D&D parlance, a campaign of thought, instead of a one-shot. May simply lie outside of his interests / the craft he is capable of. Impossible to say.
Much like Andreae’s (Callanan, wife to mark) the debt, or Triny Finlay’s Myself a Paperclip, ROMANTIC is built out in part from an earlier chapbook (our Anstruther books came out the same season actually), “Skylarking,” which is a very strong little book all by its self.
I wonder if there wasn’t an opportunity to develop more original work for this title (like I said, a long-poem, particularly given his felicity with and love of heraldry, the romantics, and poetry of the Great War, all of which are full of such efforts).
Anyhow, immensely enjoyable, even though it’s so far out of my usual lane. I really should go read Gift Horse sooner than later.
However I come away wondering if there’s a long-poem in Callanan. I know the poems are finely tuned, and the book is very economical and lean in a sound and mature way, but I wonder where the line might lead him if he pursued, in D&D parlance, a campaign of thought, instead of a one-shot. May simply lie outside of his interests / the craft he is capable of. Impossible to say.
Much like Andreae’s (Callanan, wife to mark) the debt, or Triny Finlay’s Myself a Paperclip, ROMANTIC is built out in part from an earlier chapbook (our Anstruther books came out the same season actually), “Skylarking,” which is a very strong little book all by its self.
I wonder if there wasn’t an opportunity to develop more original work for this title (like I said, a long-poem, particularly given his felicity with and love of heraldry, the romantics, and poetry of the Great War, all of which are full of such efforts).
Anyhow, immensely enjoyable, even though it’s so far out of my usual lane. I really should go read Gift Horse sooner than later.
December 15, 2021
I felt it was very surface-level; I found that I didn't get a lot of thoughts on life in general, just tellings of the author's life, which is fine, but I usually expect more depth from a poetry anthology. It would have been nice to have the description of the poems from GoodReads on the actual book instead of a sample of a poem since I think, with the themes in mind, I would have enjoyed it more. The length was perfect, though. No poem went on too long, and the anthology was a nice length in total.
April 23, 2023
Mark Callanan, Romantic: poems
These poems run the gamut from the Arthurian Green Knight to Wordsworth to contemporary
life in interesting, often surprising ways:
“Sleight of hand became
the new heroics.
The real transmuted,
held us in its spell.”
“Arcane”
A gorgeous cover by Gordon Robertson from Biblioasis.
“—not ready to believe it yet.
too awed by how a distant grief has
travelled all the way to me in waves:
a shushing that’s supposed to soothe.”
“Shell”
“when flights inevitably
stalled”
“Skylarking”
These poems run the gamut from the Arthurian Green Knight to Wordsworth to contemporary
life in interesting, often surprising ways:
“Sleight of hand became
the new heroics.
The real transmuted,
held us in its spell.”
“Arcane”
A gorgeous cover by Gordon Robertson from Biblioasis.
“—not ready to believe it yet.
too awed by how a distant grief has
travelled all the way to me in waves:
a shushing that’s supposed to soothe.”
“Shell”
“when flights inevitably
stalled”
“Skylarking”
April 14, 2022
A lovely little collection that likens the romance of life to the adventure poems of the past. Looking forward to reading more of Mark Callanan's work.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews