Sweet

by Dani Couture

"The bears want not / the honey, but the bees. Carry a swarm / in your pocket to feed the beasts you meet."

Sweet is a gravity-clutched leap into personal emergency and the turbulent landscape surrounding ambivalence, including what lives in that landscape — invited or not. Dani Couture's second collection of poetry takes the traveller from the emerald ash-borer infested trees of Essex County, Ontario, to the frozen lakes of Alaska and to points in-between. Dogged by tree-snapping winds, garbage-hungry bears, global uncertainty and war movie prophecy, the heart bends toward greater and deeper persistence through the intimate and at times anxious metre of Couture's new poems.

"Couture’s . . . poems are precise, taut with meaning, and quietly filled with curiosities of fact and phrase . . ."  - Books in Canada

Genres: Poetry, Canada

75 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2010

About the author

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Reviews

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK, I'm going to level with you here: I knew this author when she was a cute and quiet rosy-cheeked pre-teen, so the chances of my rating this book as anything but excellent are close to zero. This is a pity because it casts doubt on my rating, which I feel is deserved. This is the second volume of poetry from Dani's pen. The first was easier for me to relate to because it pertained to a time closer to the period that I knew her family, so some of the content was familiar to me. This slender volume covers a period after moving out on her own, anxieties and relationships I know nothing about, so I end up asking myself just what the hell she's talking about...just like I do with e.e. cummings. You know you're reading something good, but you don't understand what the hell it is.

I hope Dani keeps cranking them out. In my opinion a heckuva good young Canadian writer.

[Margaryta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I spent the whole day yesterday going to several indie and used bookstores in downtown Toronto with a friend. In one of the stories, a small, cozy indie bookshop, I found this little gem on the overcrowded bookshelf in the poetry section, and it instantly caught my eye. The colours on the title page, and the font of the title, were what right away made me interested in it, and the lowered price proved too impossible to resist. And am I ever glad I brought this home.

Despite being short, the poems sure pack a punch, and delight with their wonderful imagery and strong, focused language. My personal favourites were "Ghost Umbilical", "Inventory", and "Survival Technique No. 7: Pairs", although there were a handful of others that were just wonderful, although there were so many that naming them all would be like naming most of the poem titles. Only a couple of them I wasn't really feeling, but even then I really admired them from a literary perspective.

It was a strange but wonderful collection that I wouldn't have come across if I hadn't felt adventurous yesterday, and I'm glad to be adding it to my personal collection. "Sweet" proves that just because poetry is published by a small press doesn't mean it's any less good than the big names in publishing, and in this case, "Sweet" is even better.

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the other side of the country
you post a letter,
ask me to ask my father
(who lives at the end of your road)
if great blue heron eat ducklings,

even as you observed
spring pond from kitchen window,
watched each yellow and grey
dandelion head seized, choked down
one by one. Tender rosary beads
on sharp tongue.

- Devotion, pg. 17

* * *

Repetition is religion for paranoids -
self-doubters counting raptors
along country roads. Faith is strong
as long as there are birds to count.
Ten red-tailed hawks in a row enough
to send me to the altar.
A farm post - kiss its weathered skin,
pray for one more, one more.
One more.

- Proof, pg. 22

* * *

Find a tree
with rough bark.
Scrape.

- The Port-Wine Stain Removal Technique, pg. 35

* * *

Alaska in March
I am queen of a country
in deep sleep.

- The Winter Monarch, pg. 36

* * *

As a species, we cannot hide.
Our eyes bright
beacons, exclamation pupils.
Look at my bipedal locomotion!
My thumbs are not to be missed!
We are evolutionary celebrities -
our show available
in ever corner of the world.

- Circus, pg. 41

* * *

Like the small silver spoon placed
above the dinner plate

never question the black pellet gun
leaned against the kitchen window,

the round tin of lead shot
open on the breadbox.

Customs are regional -
confined to a single cedar-hedged backyard.

If you were not born knowing
how to pull the trigger, don't.

- Birthright, pg. 55

* * *

Children, here are the crayons you need
to correct stories. Break into
your school and shake loose
the grey metal shelves, the lies
we've been telling you so you'll sleep.
The bears want not
the honey, but the bees. Carry a swarm
in your pocket to feed the beasts you meet.

- Sweet, pg. 67

[Kes · Rating 5 out of 5]

listen, dani is one of my closest friends - i was never gonna give this anything less than a deserved but biased 5 stars.

[Nikki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bitch Magazine’s review of Neko Case’s Fox Confessor Brings the Flood likened that album to Ukrainian folk tales….all dark animal imagery and danger in the woods. The best parts of this book are like that, enticingly foreboding and deliciously dark, with an urban sensibility. Beautifully designed by Pedlar Press.

[THE TORONTO QUARTERLY]

Ms. Couture exposes her own personal landscape to us with this collection, one that is filled with a vast panorama of emotional themes. These poems will speak to anyone who reads them.

[T.]

Given by K. as a gift. We met again today, after seven years. She is as lovely as ever.