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Fish Bones
In Fish Bones Gillian Sze takes a random walk through the art museum and finds the drama of life framed in a series precisely rendered and moving artefact poems. Working from Jeanette Winterson’s idea of a 'constant exchange of emotion' between the artist, the painting, and the writer, Sze’s ekphrastic verse is unrelenting in its commitment to action, so that each poem sparked by a picture comes to follow its own impetus, the origin of which is always a deeply felt encounter, whether familial, erotic, or strange. Vacillating deftly between the suspended space-time of a museum exhibit and the charged urgency of the lives she imagines via the art she describes, the result is a collection at once stirring and arresting, tender and coolly true.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
1 person is currently reading
252 people want to read
About the author
Gillian Sze
20 books85 followersGILLIAN SZE is the author of
Panicle
(ECW Press, 2017),
Peeling Rambutan
(Gaspereau Press, 2014) and
Redrafting Winter
(BuschekBooks, 2015), which were shortlisted for the QWF A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry. She is also the author of
The Anatomy of Clay
(ECW Press, 2011) and
Fish Bones
(DC Books, 2009). More recently, she has started writing for children. Her first two picture books are
The Night Is Deep and Wide
(Orca, 2021) and
My Love for You Is Always
(Philomel, 2021). Gillian's work has appeared in a number of national and international journals, and has received awards such as the University of Winnipeg Writers’ Circle Prize and the 3Macs carte blanche Prize. She studied Creative Writing and English Literature and received a Ph.D. in Études anglaises from Université de Montréal. Originally from Winnipeg, she now resides in Montreal.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 22, 2021
In the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I love Gillian Sze. Not in a “we’re romantically involved” kind of way, but yes, we were classmates at Concordia University for our undergraduate degrees in creative writing, and from the first moment I read her work, I knew she was a great writer. So you’ll have to forgive me if I gush over her first book of poetry, Fish Bones, published by Punchy Press (a new poetry imprint by Montreal’s DC Books), because I’ve always had a bit of a girl crush on her.
Hopefully that doesn’t sound totally creepy and stalkeresque. I just mean that I am in love with her words, and have always hoped she would go on to publish and get the larger recognition she deserves. (And yes, she does deserve it.) So obviously, I am biased in favour of liking this book of poetry, even though I’m not exactly poetry’s Biggest Fan.
In a previous Black Heart review of Gillian’s chapbook, This is the Colour I Love You Best, I said that her work “[made] me regret everything negative I’ve ever said about poetry.” I feel very strongly that she’s a people’s poet, or would be if more people were willing to give poetry a chance. She’s great at capturing details and emotions with an artist’s eye. She also doesn’t get melodramatic, or seek to confuse her audience by leaving things out. Instead, she presents unusual images that allow readers to make of them what they will.
When done well, good poetry appears effortless. Sze’s poetry definitely seems as though she has strung words easily together, like the salmon bones threaded on a bracelet from the books’ title piece, “Playing Fish Bones.” Though she may downplay her work’s significance as
My feeble crusted offerings:
striving for sweetness
(as in “Cantaloupe”), each snapshot is actually quite deeply meaningful.
Perhaps my favourite poem in the collection is “fragmented,” which describes a woman who sees herself in bits and pieces throughout the city she calls home. It is at times narcissistic, though mostly in a bittersweet mood, the piece describes the narrator’s lack of identity. The city, she says, has her by the ankles; it has wrestled her self from her. Yet the city has also made her useful, perhaps in ways she never could have dreamt, as when a bird has created a nest from strands of her hair,
so I now live in the trees,
curled beneath the fledglings […]
I particularly like the image of the narrator as “part-statue / part church-top.” Her reflections are everywhere, in everything ordinary and sublime.
Like her poetic persona, Gillian Sze is everywhere at once; the poet whose eyes see right through you, but expose your weaknesses with tenderness.
--
This review originally appeared at Black Heart Magazine, along with two original poems, "Wolf Call" and "Song of the Other": http://blackheartmagazine.com/2009/06...
Hopefully that doesn’t sound totally creepy and stalkeresque. I just mean that I am in love with her words, and have always hoped she would go on to publish and get the larger recognition she deserves. (And yes, she does deserve it.) So obviously, I am biased in favour of liking this book of poetry, even though I’m not exactly poetry’s Biggest Fan.
In a previous Black Heart review of Gillian’s chapbook, This is the Colour I Love You Best, I said that her work “[made] me regret everything negative I’ve ever said about poetry.” I feel very strongly that she’s a people’s poet, or would be if more people were willing to give poetry a chance. She’s great at capturing details and emotions with an artist’s eye. She also doesn’t get melodramatic, or seek to confuse her audience by leaving things out. Instead, she presents unusual images that allow readers to make of them what they will.
When done well, good poetry appears effortless. Sze’s poetry definitely seems as though she has strung words easily together, like the salmon bones threaded on a bracelet from the books’ title piece, “Playing Fish Bones.” Though she may downplay her work’s significance as
My feeble crusted offerings:
striving for sweetness
(as in “Cantaloupe”), each snapshot is actually quite deeply meaningful.
Perhaps my favourite poem in the collection is “fragmented,” which describes a woman who sees herself in bits and pieces throughout the city she calls home. It is at times narcissistic, though mostly in a bittersweet mood, the piece describes the narrator’s lack of identity. The city, she says, has her by the ankles; it has wrestled her self from her. Yet the city has also made her useful, perhaps in ways she never could have dreamt, as when a bird has created a nest from strands of her hair,
so I now live in the trees,
curled beneath the fledglings […]
I particularly like the image of the narrator as “part-statue / part church-top.” Her reflections are everywhere, in everything ordinary and sublime.
Like her poetic persona, Gillian Sze is everywhere at once; the poet whose eyes see right through you, but expose your weaknesses with tenderness.
--
This review originally appeared at Black Heart Magazine, along with two original poems, "Wolf Call" and "Song of the Other": http://blackheartmagazine.com/2009/06...
July 14, 2017
I discovered Gillian Sze while I was googling my friend Sofia's work and I learned that she made a short film -A Drownful Brilliance of Wings-, based on one of Gillian's poems (Arriving). That was enough. A new path had begun.
I started reading Gillian Sze's poetry in a different order than the one I wanted to follow. So, I haven't started with Fish Bones, her debut collection. The Anatomy of Clay was the first one I got, so it had to be the first one. Redrafting Winter and Peeling Rambutan followed right after. I just finished Fish Bones tonight on my way home.
Gillian has become one of my favourite poets in a very short period of time. sually that takes longer for this picky reader. Only Alejandra Pizarnik and Margerite Duras have had inspired so many feelings and emotions as well as a fascinating sensation of intimacy during the reading.
Each book is a trip to different destinations: love, lovers, the body, the soul; diverse countries, cities where I've been, streets I have walked, art I like, music, other poets, multiple spaces, times and feelings; ghosts, relationships, friendships, sense of belonging and sense of not belonging, the need to stay or leave, from anywhere, from anyone, from yourself.
Sze's voice is so powerful by being so subtle, simple and complex at the same time that you can't stop reading.
The poems are, simply, perfect pieces of art. Now I'm waiting for her newest book. In the meantime, I'm sure I will go back to her frequently.
As a writer and a poet, I have found a new source of inspiration, a fresh approach to poetry, a delicate way of using words. I'm thankful for that.
I highly recommend all of her work.
I started reading Gillian Sze's poetry in a different order than the one I wanted to follow. So, I haven't started with Fish Bones, her debut collection. The Anatomy of Clay was the first one I got, so it had to be the first one. Redrafting Winter and Peeling Rambutan followed right after. I just finished Fish Bones tonight on my way home.
Gillian has become one of my favourite poets in a very short period of time. sually that takes longer for this picky reader. Only Alejandra Pizarnik and Margerite Duras have had inspired so many feelings and emotions as well as a fascinating sensation of intimacy during the reading.
Each book is a trip to different destinations: love, lovers, the body, the soul; diverse countries, cities where I've been, streets I have walked, art I like, music, other poets, multiple spaces, times and feelings; ghosts, relationships, friendships, sense of belonging and sense of not belonging, the need to stay or leave, from anywhere, from anyone, from yourself.
Sze's voice is so powerful by being so subtle, simple and complex at the same time that you can't stop reading.
The poems are, simply, perfect pieces of art. Now I'm waiting for her newest book. In the meantime, I'm sure I will go back to her frequently.
As a writer and a poet, I have found a new source of inspiration, a fresh approach to poetry, a delicate way of using words. I'm thankful for that.
I highly recommend all of her work.
January 19, 2022
The Last Time I Saw You
I
When we were close enough
to confuse ourselves,
I mistook your nether region for hands.
II
Someone once wrote,
The earth moved.
Embracing you,
we rocked a boat
and the waves rushed upwards
past our heads,
reached the sky,
turned our hair into water.
And that clear heat -
even seaweed melted away
and found solace
at the edges of our bodies.
III
I wondered,
Can we make it as innocent as we'd like,
and suddenly we were naked,
pulled together by a trick law,
our bodies abiding by this new set of rules:
my legs forgot their joints,
you became four-fingered, three-toed,
and your hand matched the colour of your eyes,
matched the colour of mine,
our noses,
the shape of our skulls -
all sister copies,
even our lips pointed in the same direction.
Now tell me where I've put my foot,
and why the tide has become so high.
IV
The edge of your face,
a sliver of a silver dish.
The mole on the left side of your loins,
a baffling landmark.
V
Tears,
miraculous,
perfect in their fallen arrangement.
Autumn-coloured,
my tears bore the same shade as me,
and for a second,
I knew I was losing my border,
(my strokes once bold, unhesitant)
and you were made of pencil smudges -
unformed and consuming -
a proper place to deny distinction.
VI
How calm it looked behind you,
stormless and temperate.
How foolish of me
to try to define a horizon.
* * *
The Kiss
mouths gulp, gorge in slick struggle,
breathes swallow full,
eyelashes strain to meet.
* * *
fragmented
This city has me by the ankles.
it has dragged me through the streets
in a heated mad dash.
I have found bitefuls of me on the curb,
scraps of me in the gutter.
That is my hair blown across
the glass angles of downtown.
A bird has made a nest with the strands
so I now live in the trees,
curled beneath fledglings,
and I am part-statue,
part church-top.
My eyes, once copper dome,
have since turned green.
My hands worn
by every woman
working at a corner store.
My mouth is on the morning metro man,
and everyone who tastes my thighs
has done it
at least once before.
This city has me by the ankles.
I'm pounding flat and pinned fast,
a pasted broadside on every lamppost.
* * *
Our Heads: A Study
The shape of our crowns,
a figure eight,
a peach split open.
You:
a drop of rain concussed on concrete.
Me:
glancing off when you landed,
fallen alongside,
fallen lucky,
just missing the sidewalk crack.
And today,
yesterday's geometry
is the cast of two eggs -
their absence
barely touching.
* * *
17th Floor
Through the window the city is muted.
Smoke tempers the world listless,
makes it easier to bear.
Even that plane is hardly moving
through the quiet sky.
The birds have lost their voices
in the cold.
* * *
I Sill Think So
I was nine
when I discovered
that I looked prettier
in photographs
when they were turned
upside down.
* * *
Alone on the Other Side of the World
Tonight you feel farther than ever.
Distance is a hard man to blame,
like when one has a bad dream
about the real people around him.
My mind has started playing tricks.
I woke up diagonally in my bed,
my coordinates aligned with yours,
and when the cashier wished me a good day,
I thought he said, You look lonely.
All I want to tell you
is that I miss you.
You would think that I would know
how to use the words
properly.
This night is a scam and my shadow
has sleepwalked ahead of me;
the sound of somebody in the house
is just a moth
hitting against the inside of a lampshade.
* * *
Playing Fish Bone
I
The open mouth of the cup
is a flattened moon.
Tea is poured
and the cup returns
to being an ordinary cup,
small and chaste,
its porcelain exterior decorated
with a woman snuggling a rabbit,
her hand up
in a gesture that declines a man
whose outstretched arm
offers a flower.
II
Talk is polishing the phone lines,
the same news worn down between relatives.
When I visit,
my mother's sister is dressed in thick wool,
her hair ink-black at sixty.
She is still pushing plums on me,
nectarines,
the watermelon she's already sliced into cubes.
A prickled impatience:
I am nine again, tied to a piano,
my fingers working the scales,
hours before my parents return from work.
My aunt's movements fluid,
I forget the muted exchange:
... she only travels to find a doctor overseas ...
... her bowels ... an operation ...
She leaves the kitchen
only to yell after her grandchildren to wear jackets,
the summer sun baking their backs as they petal away
from where she leans against the doorframe.
III
My brown rim has set.
My tea slowly half-finished.
From her pocket,
my aunt reveals a bracelet.
She has collected the round bones of salmon,
plucked and saved from at least eight dinners.
She cleaned them,
picked marrow from the crevices with a toothpick,
dried them in the sun before another wash
then strung them together with red thread
and placed it here beside uneaten fruit.
IV
The tea is cold.
In silence I finish it off,
fake apathy.
The bracelet is a mouth forced open.
I fix my gaze on my cup,
tilting its hollow space towards me.
The same figures, same woman and man,
painted smaller to fit at the bottom,
suddenly look more amiable.
The span between refusal and acceptance
shrinks in an instant,
differ by only a fraction.
I
When we were close enough
to confuse ourselves,
I mistook your nether region for hands.
II
Someone once wrote,
The earth moved.
Embracing you,
we rocked a boat
and the waves rushed upwards
past our heads,
reached the sky,
turned our hair into water.
And that clear heat -
even seaweed melted away
and found solace
at the edges of our bodies.
III
I wondered,
Can we make it as innocent as we'd like,
and suddenly we were naked,
pulled together by a trick law,
our bodies abiding by this new set of rules:
my legs forgot their joints,
you became four-fingered, three-toed,
and your hand matched the colour of your eyes,
matched the colour of mine,
our noses,
the shape of our skulls -
all sister copies,
even our lips pointed in the same direction.
Now tell me where I've put my foot,
and why the tide has become so high.
IV
The edge of your face,
a sliver of a silver dish.
The mole on the left side of your loins,
a baffling landmark.
V
Tears,
miraculous,
perfect in their fallen arrangement.
Autumn-coloured,
my tears bore the same shade as me,
and for a second,
I knew I was losing my border,
(my strokes once bold, unhesitant)
and you were made of pencil smudges -
unformed and consuming -
a proper place to deny distinction.
VI
How calm it looked behind you,
stormless and temperate.
How foolish of me
to try to define a horizon.
* * *
The Kiss
mouths gulp, gorge in slick struggle,
breathes swallow full,
eyelashes strain to meet.
* * *
fragmented
This city has me by the ankles.
it has dragged me through the streets
in a heated mad dash.
I have found bitefuls of me on the curb,
scraps of me in the gutter.
That is my hair blown across
the glass angles of downtown.
A bird has made a nest with the strands
so I now live in the trees,
curled beneath fledglings,
and I am part-statue,
part church-top.
My eyes, once copper dome,
have since turned green.
My hands worn
by every woman
working at a corner store.
My mouth is on the morning metro man,
and everyone who tastes my thighs
has done it
at least once before.
This city has me by the ankles.
I'm pounding flat and pinned fast,
a pasted broadside on every lamppost.
* * *
Our Heads: A Study
The shape of our crowns,
a figure eight,
a peach split open.
You:
a drop of rain concussed on concrete.
Me:
glancing off when you landed,
fallen alongside,
fallen lucky,
just missing the sidewalk crack.
And today,
yesterday's geometry
is the cast of two eggs -
their absence
barely touching.
* * *
17th Floor
Through the window the city is muted.
Smoke tempers the world listless,
makes it easier to bear.
Even that plane is hardly moving
through the quiet sky.
The birds have lost their voices
in the cold.
* * *
I Sill Think So
I was nine
when I discovered
that I looked prettier
in photographs
when they were turned
upside down.
* * *
Alone on the Other Side of the World
Tonight you feel farther than ever.
Distance is a hard man to blame,
like when one has a bad dream
about the real people around him.
My mind has started playing tricks.
I woke up diagonally in my bed,
my coordinates aligned with yours,
and when the cashier wished me a good day,
I thought he said, You look lonely.
All I want to tell you
is that I miss you.
You would think that I would know
how to use the words
properly.
This night is a scam and my shadow
has sleepwalked ahead of me;
the sound of somebody in the house
is just a moth
hitting against the inside of a lampshade.
* * *
Playing Fish Bone
I
The open mouth of the cup
is a flattened moon.
Tea is poured
and the cup returns
to being an ordinary cup,
small and chaste,
its porcelain exterior decorated
with a woman snuggling a rabbit,
her hand up
in a gesture that declines a man
whose outstretched arm
offers a flower.
II
Talk is polishing the phone lines,
the same news worn down between relatives.
When I visit,
my mother's sister is dressed in thick wool,
her hair ink-black at sixty.
She is still pushing plums on me,
nectarines,
the watermelon she's already sliced into cubes.
A prickled impatience:
I am nine again, tied to a piano,
my fingers working the scales,
hours before my parents return from work.
My aunt's movements fluid,
I forget the muted exchange:
... she only travels to find a doctor overseas ...
... her bowels ... an operation ...
She leaves the kitchen
only to yell after her grandchildren to wear jackets,
the summer sun baking their backs as they petal away
from where she leans against the doorframe.
III
My brown rim has set.
My tea slowly half-finished.
From her pocket,
my aunt reveals a bracelet.
She has collected the round bones of salmon,
plucked and saved from at least eight dinners.
She cleaned them,
picked marrow from the crevices with a toothpick,
dried them in the sun before another wash
then strung them together with red thread
and placed it here beside uneaten fruit.
IV
The tea is cold.
In silence I finish it off,
fake apathy.
The bracelet is a mouth forced open.
I fix my gaze on my cup,
tilting its hollow space towards me.
The same figures, same woman and man,
painted smaller to fit at the bottom,
suddenly look more amiable.
The span between refusal and acceptance
shrinks in an instant,
differ by only a fraction.
July 13, 2014
A life through poetry is completely described in detail by Gillian Sze. This book can be said as a masterpiece of Poetry. I was really happy that i got this book in goodreads draw.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews