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Console: Poems
The second collection by "one of the most significant literary figures in the Caribbean" ( The Globe and Mail ).
Assured but chance-inflected, ever rooted in the local but always world-aware, Console reconsiders languages, geographies, and memories as luminous soundscapes. With lyric dexterity, Colin Channer jolts old notions of New England, cross-fading from the Berkshires to Anguilla, from Connecticut to Senegal. A dissolve to the poet’s childhood in Jamaica occurs after glimpsing an old record player in Providence, leading to the title poem’s meditations on reggae, religion, marriage, justice, and transgressions in the home.
With allusive links to photography, music, sea mammals, mistranslation, and the universal ritual of “the walk,” Console reorganizes our sense of time, collapses and rebreaks the remembered and certain, renames the familiar, reaches for settled etymologies, and turns words inside out.
Includes 8 black-and-white photographs
Assured but chance-inflected, ever rooted in the local but always world-aware, Console reconsiders languages, geographies, and memories as luminous soundscapes. With lyric dexterity, Colin Channer jolts old notions of New England, cross-fading from the Berkshires to Anguilla, from Connecticut to Senegal. A dissolve to the poet’s childhood in Jamaica occurs after glimpsing an old record player in Providence, leading to the title poem’s meditations on reggae, religion, marriage, justice, and transgressions in the home.
With allusive links to photography, music, sea mammals, mistranslation, and the universal ritual of “the walk,” Console reorganizes our sense of time, collapses and rebreaks the remembered and certain, renames the familiar, reaches for settled etymologies, and turns words inside out.
Includes 8 black-and-white photographs
- GenresPoetry
144 pages, Hardcover
Published July 18, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 21, 2023
Read my review at Open Letters: https://openlettersreview.com/posts/c...
July 30, 2023
I was immediately in love and blown away by these poems. They made me stop, gasp, smile, laugh, say yes, this! Just like a great song can do, and I wish I were a poetry expert so I could rhapsodize on how brilliant they are in a serious, academic way, but will have to just say what I loved. I am still thinking of these poems and am mentally planning a college course on them.
I am from New England with its rain and sopping humid ocean and so I love that it is a character in his poems, as only a Jamaican born, Rhode Island living poet can do.
swept in a fog, a wet so thick//it blended with the snow that//settled plenty on the sand. from Spumante
Like the coast of New England,
There were many rivers being seduced
By dreams of being sea and they moved… from Shunting from Dakar to Casmance.
Out on long lug-sucking walks through marshes south of Boston,
close-west fairly of the Cape…… from Roots
Similarly, the attention to the natural world resonates with me. The small ordinary things leading to huge things connected to the whole planet.
I’d driven
miles to walk and think,
find peace in sweat and sea racket,
that ancient wise asthmatic sound. from from Spumante
I know what its like to be mammal
Filled with deepest ocean sounds:
Oblivion, solitude, stillness,
Intermitted by quake roar,
Tectonic slipping, lava fissures… from Spumante
The poet also is a speaker of his country, his people there and here, and of exiles, and of the wider truths of their experience. Florida with their latest view that slavery was beneficial because it taught them a trade is atrociously on my mind as the poet reminds up of the violence of slavery and colonialism and how that lives in people descended from slaves. The above stanza continues:
tectonic slipping, lava fissures,
Ship propellers drilling,
The human croon of whales.
There is slave in me, fat heritage,
No fluke I’m invested in hurt,
Echo of the hunted, located, natural
Rights redacted, meagered to resource….” from Spumante
…
and a bygone orange grove where slavery
Kept imagination ligatured
To bias more than law… from Shunting from Dakar to Casmance.
I mount a crest in coffee country and it’s Oregon.
In all directions, ridges saw the Caribbean out of view.
…
I’ve never lived on
the West Coast much less Oregon, but those hills
I walked beyond Portland called me home to here,
these arabica mountains draped in mist… from Lent
Small point: none of these trees are native. Like,
well, me, in the generic, they were brought. And as I
inch here in self-cloud wrapped in dense wetness that’s actual…
I imagine what it must have meant
to be a bringer, one gifted with the say to make a cut,
a shift, a graft, a cauter—suggesting by decree as interrogative:
“What if we bring this from there and make it grow here,
and transport it thusly so I can have more comfort in my
part-time home?” from Lent
I love the way he has with language, and I think that stopped me in my tracks the most; whether weaving some patois in the poems or dub lyricism, or just putting this verb with that noun, my god, it was/is amazing.
Rights redacted, meagered to resource
Weeks…jetted, they shoot certain.
Error-maker, I navigate on faith.
…the notes come in pellets staccatting, stutter-staggering…
I sense ahead of me oblivion in the green-absorbing white-gray silver..
…banks of white sand umbrellaed //by ferns, cataracts with chromatic pools…
In some language somewhere there has to be
a word that means melancholicallybewildered,
an anfractuous set of glottals, slipping vowels
like a counterwailing helix of wet stone stairs.
Now I’ve partly taken leave//Of language, have given incoherence due.
Once, I pilgrimed to another coast of my island….
I am from New England with its rain and sopping humid ocean and so I love that it is a character in his poems, as only a Jamaican born, Rhode Island living poet can do.
swept in a fog, a wet so thick//it blended with the snow that//settled plenty on the sand. from Spumante
Like the coast of New England,
There were many rivers being seduced
By dreams of being sea and they moved… from Shunting from Dakar to Casmance.
Out on long lug-sucking walks through marshes south of Boston,
close-west fairly of the Cape…… from Roots
Similarly, the attention to the natural world resonates with me. The small ordinary things leading to huge things connected to the whole planet.
I’d driven
miles to walk and think,
find peace in sweat and sea racket,
that ancient wise asthmatic sound. from from Spumante
I know what its like to be mammal
Filled with deepest ocean sounds:
Oblivion, solitude, stillness,
Intermitted by quake roar,
Tectonic slipping, lava fissures… from Spumante
The poet also is a speaker of his country, his people there and here, and of exiles, and of the wider truths of their experience. Florida with their latest view that slavery was beneficial because it taught them a trade is atrociously on my mind as the poet reminds up of the violence of slavery and colonialism and how that lives in people descended from slaves. The above stanza continues:
tectonic slipping, lava fissures,
Ship propellers drilling,
The human croon of whales.
There is slave in me, fat heritage,
No fluke I’m invested in hurt,
Echo of the hunted, located, natural
Rights redacted, meagered to resource….” from Spumante
…
and a bygone orange grove where slavery
Kept imagination ligatured
To bias more than law… from Shunting from Dakar to Casmance.
I mount a crest in coffee country and it’s Oregon.
In all directions, ridges saw the Caribbean out of view.
…
I’ve never lived on
the West Coast much less Oregon, but those hills
I walked beyond Portland called me home to here,
these arabica mountains draped in mist… from Lent
Small point: none of these trees are native. Like,
well, me, in the generic, they were brought. And as I
inch here in self-cloud wrapped in dense wetness that’s actual…
I imagine what it must have meant
to be a bringer, one gifted with the say to make a cut,
a shift, a graft, a cauter—suggesting by decree as interrogative:
“What if we bring this from there and make it grow here,
and transport it thusly so I can have more comfort in my
part-time home?” from Lent
I love the way he has with language, and I think that stopped me in my tracks the most; whether weaving some patois in the poems or dub lyricism, or just putting this verb with that noun, my god, it was/is amazing.
Rights redacted, meagered to resource
Weeks…jetted, they shoot certain.
Error-maker, I navigate on faith.
…the notes come in pellets staccatting, stutter-staggering…
I sense ahead of me oblivion in the green-absorbing white-gray silver..
…banks of white sand umbrellaed //by ferns, cataracts with chromatic pools…
In some language somewhere there has to be
a word that means melancholicallybewildered,
an anfractuous set of glottals, slipping vowels
like a counterwailing helix of wet stone stairs.
Now I’ve partly taken leave//Of language, have given incoherence due.
Once, I pilgrimed to another coast of my island….
January 5, 2024
Spumante
Weeks diffuse into each other like
they’re sprayed; jetted, they shoot certain:
days, times, doodles, kept appointments,
next is lull, pool, fading, flash-disperse.
I was shook and shocked by death,
chanced upon it on a winter walk,
proof of plod for miles behind me
swept in fog, a wet so thick
it blended with the snow that
settled plenty on the sand. It
was not yet daybreak, and I’d driven
miles to walk and think,
find peace in sweat and sea racket,
that ancient wise asthmatic sound.
The light took its lazy time for lifting.
In the shift I saw a darker shaping
than the gray—at two miles a boat
of some proportion, at quarter mile a whale.
Since then I’ve been lamenting,
moving as if held in gel.
At night I dream it, see it stretched
across the wrack of high tide,
belly to the stars—flung shells and gravel—
throat-part grooved, fins unflappable,
balletic flukes symmetric
in their pointing, how they fused:
all this in half-light, all this in sea dirge,
wet air matte, toned silver,
and I hunched in the hood of my parka,
God-awed before shavasana,
stilled as if the glassy eye that looked to me
had fixed me in a century of tintype.
Ah-gah-pay. I’ve only recently discovered
love of animals—well, Kili, Nan, and Rebus,
three dogs. Now I’ve partly taken leave
of language, have given incoherence due.
I know what it’s like to be mammal
filled with deepest ocean sounds:
oblivion, solitude, stillness
intermitted by quake roar,
tectonic slipping, lava fissures,
ship propellers drilling,
the human croons of whales.
There is slave in me, fat heritage,
no fluke I’m invested with hurt,
echo of the hunted, located, natural
rights redacted, meagered to resource.
All is flux as I’m collapsing
love and distance, moving through the gel,
my life, edging the canals of my city,
clomping up its hills, memory aerosol,
head in self cloud, getting Melville
as I should have, watching at him
contemplate the vista from a landlocked house,
hills becoming pods of transmigrating giants:
Greylock. Berkshire range.
There’s thirst for music in this less than solid
state. Ampless back in my office,
I knee-prop my Fender, ancient black thing.
Strum it casual, weep;
suck salt in darkness, fingers guessy,
lazing up the sound. Still, something
brusque runs up me: shuddered
wood, that deep flesh shook
that makes string music fuse to you.
The thumbing further breaks the thing in me.
I know what now love is,
know tentative for sure its
incoherence, jelly analog, is mine for life.
The windows stay black and phlegmatic
as the air outside begins to heave with rain.
I hum, thumbing, fashion something of a home,
some succor, pulse quick but steady as I deep dive
to dub. With it comes the baleen
wheeze of mouth organs, plangent blue whoop.
I am dub and dub is water.
Exile, I wish you could have lived in me,
plunging, life spumante. I’d slip my hold
on you like magma shot for islands
every single time you breach.
Weeks diffuse into each other like
they’re sprayed; jetted, they shoot certain:
days, times, doodles, kept appointments,
next is lull, pool, fading, flash-disperse.
I was shook and shocked by death,
chanced upon it on a winter walk,
proof of plod for miles behind me
swept in fog, a wet so thick
it blended with the snow that
settled plenty on the sand. It
was not yet daybreak, and I’d driven
miles to walk and think,
find peace in sweat and sea racket,
that ancient wise asthmatic sound.
The light took its lazy time for lifting.
In the shift I saw a darker shaping
than the gray—at two miles a boat
of some proportion, at quarter mile a whale.
Since then I’ve been lamenting,
moving as if held in gel.
At night I dream it, see it stretched
across the wrack of high tide,
belly to the stars—flung shells and gravel—
throat-part grooved, fins unflappable,
balletic flukes symmetric
in their pointing, how they fused:
all this in half-light, all this in sea dirge,
wet air matte, toned silver,
and I hunched in the hood of my parka,
God-awed before shavasana,
stilled as if the glassy eye that looked to me
had fixed me in a century of tintype.
Ah-gah-pay. I’ve only recently discovered
love of animals—well, Kili, Nan, and Rebus,
three dogs. Now I’ve partly taken leave
of language, have given incoherence due.
I know what it’s like to be mammal
filled with deepest ocean sounds:
oblivion, solitude, stillness
intermitted by quake roar,
tectonic slipping, lava fissures,
ship propellers drilling,
the human croons of whales.
There is slave in me, fat heritage,
no fluke I’m invested with hurt,
echo of the hunted, located, natural
rights redacted, meagered to resource.
All is flux as I’m collapsing
love and distance, moving through the gel,
my life, edging the canals of my city,
clomping up its hills, memory aerosol,
head in self cloud, getting Melville
as I should have, watching at him
contemplate the vista from a landlocked house,
hills becoming pods of transmigrating giants:
Greylock. Berkshire range.
There’s thirst for music in this less than solid
state. Ampless back in my office,
I knee-prop my Fender, ancient black thing.
Strum it casual, weep;
suck salt in darkness, fingers guessy,
lazing up the sound. Still, something
brusque runs up me: shuddered
wood, that deep flesh shook
that makes string music fuse to you.
The thumbing further breaks the thing in me.
I know what now love is,
know tentative for sure its
incoherence, jelly analog, is mine for life.
The windows stay black and phlegmatic
as the air outside begins to heave with rain.
I hum, thumbing, fashion something of a home,
some succor, pulse quick but steady as I deep dive
to dub. With it comes the baleen
wheeze of mouth organs, plangent blue whoop.
I am dub and dub is water.
Exile, I wish you could have lived in me,
plunging, life spumante. I’d slip my hold
on you like magma shot for islands
every single time you breach.
November 26, 2023
i didn't understand many of these poems but there are some fine lines and some incredible pictures of flooding. Here's one poem from this collection - full of love for words and pasta - two of my favorite things!
MONS OF LUKE AL DENTE
Basil from a pot on the veranda, overpriced pinoli and pimientos
pressured into dust, brassy olio
from TJ's rumored virgin, Greek alleged,
Israeli sea salt from Whole Foods
and Parmigiano-Reggiano
from that shoppe in Wayland Square where la señora with the Spanish-speaking
helper and the bum preserved by lunges reaches from her core for briny lemons,
Brie, sausage and taut ficelle flow in from Orly and loose tea.
To pestle proper is a patience.
Squelching herbs and oil without no spillage
stone to stone is zazen for the savage, koan in practice, jag belief.
If you did deh-yah babylove I woulda feed you,
fess up to the slipup with the garlic
as we lapse in chairs out-folded on the pout
projecting from this brick face building where in daytime June-tucked herbs
in earthen gardens get full dandy for the sun.
If you did deh-yah babylove yours would be bow ties pesto-dyed. Bow ties and Torrontés,
Mendocino short of gelid, pampas golden sipped in spate.
That slab table from the TIFF you joked off as "enbuttered with thick books" I am there now,
taking succor in a mons of luke al dente as I doodle and address pink Post-its like postcards.
I mammer to your belly's earhole
as you do your what-you-do there in your way off near-far town.
Did you think a year would pass
before I got the what of what you wrote
of the lemons? How when fixed in salt they tang the tongue?
Tonight I cleared a spot, annulled my mustache.
Have a bow tie.
Let this salt and sour wince you.
Spring a nib of pee.
MONS OF LUKE AL DENTE
Basil from a pot on the veranda, overpriced pinoli and pimientos
pressured into dust, brassy olio
from TJ's rumored virgin, Greek alleged,
Israeli sea salt from Whole Foods
and Parmigiano-Reggiano
from that shoppe in Wayland Square where la señora with the Spanish-speaking
helper and the bum preserved by lunges reaches from her core for briny lemons,
Brie, sausage and taut ficelle flow in from Orly and loose tea.
To pestle proper is a patience.
Squelching herbs and oil without no spillage
stone to stone is zazen for the savage, koan in practice, jag belief.
If you did deh-yah babylove I woulda feed you,
fess up to the slipup with the garlic
as we lapse in chairs out-folded on the pout
projecting from this brick face building where in daytime June-tucked herbs
in earthen gardens get full dandy for the sun.
If you did deh-yah babylove yours would be bow ties pesto-dyed. Bow ties and Torrontés,
Mendocino short of gelid, pampas golden sipped in spate.
That slab table from the TIFF you joked off as "enbuttered with thick books" I am there now,
taking succor in a mons of luke al dente as I doodle and address pink Post-its like postcards.
I mammer to your belly's earhole
as you do your what-you-do there in your way off near-far town.
Did you think a year would pass
before I got the what of what you wrote
of the lemons? How when fixed in salt they tang the tongue?
Tonight I cleared a spot, annulled my mustache.
Have a bow tie.
Let this salt and sour wince you.
Spring a nib of pee.
March 4, 2023
Thank you so much to NetGalley for this ebook in exchange for an honest review.
I must admit, much of this poetry anthology went over my head. I think part of it may be due to the author’s Jamaican roots and my own ignorance to the meaning of certain words or phrases that come from his culture. Unfortunately that lead to a lack of connection with these poems for me. I enjoyed the playful feeling of some of the poems, but wished I could better understand the meaning. Of course, none of this is to blame on the author and I take full responsibility for my own disconnect. I googled certain phrases to try and better understand, but for me, this took my heart and head out of the poem and into a more analytical space- when I prefer to “feel” poetry and be moved by it. I have no doubt this anthology may resonate more with someone more familiar with the references that I didn’t get.
I must admit, much of this poetry anthology went over my head. I think part of it may be due to the author’s Jamaican roots and my own ignorance to the meaning of certain words or phrases that come from his culture. Unfortunately that lead to a lack of connection with these poems for me. I enjoyed the playful feeling of some of the poems, but wished I could better understand the meaning. Of course, none of this is to blame on the author and I take full responsibility for my own disconnect. I googled certain phrases to try and better understand, but for me, this took my heart and head out of the poem and into a more analytical space- when I prefer to “feel” poetry and be moved by it. I have no doubt this anthology may resonate more with someone more familiar with the references that I didn’t get.
January 18, 2024
This collection of verbal pyrotechnics creates lovely inscrutable constellations of meaning beyond the reach of reason where images explode and fade into a continuum of velvety darkness: the poet’s lair to light, sometimes too dimly. But oh, the jazzy avant-garde improvisations, the Jamaican rhythms of his rhymes, the spicy jerk and blackening of Channer’s lines!
“I woke up broken, slow-came-to
in riled up percale, drained and draining
as war mares lost of riders broke on me,
cavalcade all leathergone, lapis
tumbling on the reef.
Conundrum.”
—from “Barn,” p. 101
Favorite Poems:
“Spumante”
“Lent”
“Mostly Hamburg, 1972”
“Unconsoled”
“Bunch”
“All the Kin-ness in Foil Shrouds”
“New Kingston”
“Farfetching”
“The. Endor of New Hearts”
“In Fuguing Wake”
“I woke up broken, slow-came-to
in riled up percale, drained and draining
as war mares lost of riders broke on me,
cavalcade all leathergone, lapis
tumbling on the reef.
Conundrum.”
—from “Barn,” p. 101
Favorite Poems:
“Spumante”
“Lent”
“Mostly Hamburg, 1972”
“Unconsoled”
“Bunch”
“All the Kin-ness in Foil Shrouds”
“New Kingston”
“Farfetching”
“The. Endor of New Hearts”
“In Fuguing Wake”
January 13, 2024
For me, the strength of this collection of poetry was in the rhythm. I do like it when poetry has a strong rhythm. However, for the most part, the poems just didn't hit me. It's all good, though.
I did really like the poem "Lent." Nice images, nice flow.
I did really like the poem "Lent." Nice images, nice flow.
December 23, 2023
Who am I to question these prophets, men who took the time / to know the names of trees and herbs, which fishes schooled / in what season, air pressure's augury--odd migrating of birds?
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews