A Good Death

The book A Good Death is about opening the unmarked door. Insanity is recognized as the closest thing to death and madness like death is never selective. The book gives hints as to how to make a good death. In many of the poems death is near even if it is the death of love. There is an understanding of the changeability of life, personality and even the planet. The weather, landscape and cityscape are worked up into strong images. Many years of uncertain life in subsidized housing in Chinatown are chronicled. A Good Death reviews life from the not so sane side sometimes with humour. A woman’s perspective is looked at with intense language sensitive to the environment. There is the development of a relationship from beginning to end, the recovery from mental illness and the recovery of a lost child; all of which shape the poet. There is often rage at the poet’s situation and women’s situations. For the poet the Montreal Massacre is still very much alive. Always present is the change of seasons and images from nature; trying to find beauty where possible even in blemishes and the search to find new images for nature and human nature. Many of the poems show how mythology, folklore, and bringing up the unconscious affect the poet even if it is to create a dark odyssey with death in the sidelines. In one section in particular, “Fallen Womb: Womanist Writings”, there is a great deal of word play, imitating the wanderings through birth, sex and death. There is always the need to surface out of the unconscious, out of insanity. There is often a metaphor of birds or flight whether it be Icarus, a panic stricken pigeon in Chinatown, birds returning with the flux of the season, a woodpecker gripping a tree as he knocks, a palm cockatoo, crows calling omens or the mythological bird Loki. The images and language are alternately simple and complex varying from short lyric poems to the more involved. In “In Praise of the Craftsman” love is as simple as the technique of a craft say cooking or carpentry. But in “Loki” the poet puts her own particular twist on the mythological bird and the trickster is turned into her own version of a male muse. Relationships figure highly – the old and the new ones, positive and negative, some like the Dalai Lama, then others with vampiric proportions. Families, both animal and human have their dysfunctions. There is a comparison of human and animal nature, the role of women, the trials of men, and the need for children even if it is in dreams and fantasies. Above all there is the celebration of the diversity of nature, and the sanctity of and gratitude for life even if lived in poverty. Landscapes and still lifes stand out whether they are city parks, fields, flowers, or a zoo. There is camaraderie amongst the tenants and psychiatric patients. There is humour in making love to the numbers of the bingo caller. The description of dreams so uncanny they can only be real and the hopes for a father and grandfather who face death and are in denial. The wish for a dying man: peace and to know his own mind – a good death.