First

Arleen Paré

• Publisher: Brick Books
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781771315432
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Poetry
• Index: Literature

Governor General's Award–winning poet Arleen Paré combines the story of two first best friends with questions of the mystery of cosmic first cause.

The poems in First, Arleen Paré's seventh collection, search for a long-lost first friend. They conjure the subtle layers of meaning in that early friendship to riff on to a search for how we might possibly understand the primal First: the beginnings of the cosmos that contains our own particular lives, beginnings and longings.

This layered evocation of the past—of childhood in 1950s Dorval, "a green mesh of girls friendships and fights"—and the intensity of the desire to know, give First its haunting beauty. "[T]he word though old fashioned," Paré writes, "is whence . . . unconditioned origins" when "no worthy question is ever answered on the same plane that it was asked; how to frame the question not knowing the plane on which I must ask it."

"Arleen Paré's First is an intriguing Gertrude Stein as Nancy Drew mystery. Using prose poem narrative and an intense syntactic poetics, Paré discovers the cracks in memory as she documents the search for her first best friend. The cracks in this lyrical puzzle are heightened by a very active and assertive poetic language that compels as it decodes the investigation of childhood memory and desire. The writing in First demonstrates a powerful juxtaposition of the continuous present with the continuous past." —Fred Wah

"This brilliant collection revolves around firsts, especially a first friend, 'the impress of her never gone.' So too with these poems—tough, sweet and poignant, so surely rendered and musically rich—the impress of these poems never gone." —Lorna Crozier

Girls: The Green Time

write down what you can

in whatever notation you have,

and pass it on

—Len Anderson

•

Pat Hurdle

Arleen McCart

Susan Hurdle

Donna McCart

Miriam Bartleman

Judy McTavish

Judy Palmer

Barbara Palmer

Susan McTavish

Peggy Townsend

Patsy Smith

Pammy Thomson

Lynn McTavish

Lizzy Hurdle

Marnie Mustard

Leslie Oldacre

Mary Jane Tatlock

Mary Jane Norris

Antje Grope

Sylvie Gagné

Games

suppose a rope suppose linear a trope is not always not

necessarily round not a birthday a cake hiding ten shining dimes

not a celebration a rope might be plastic it could be red

or it could be made of brown hemp long enough and an occasion to jump

an occasional recourse to hold something or someone or lasso

there is always an end to hold sometimes two if there are two ends

two girls must hold one at each end of the span

if there is chalk there might be a game hopping into squares or accidentally

not into squares the squares are numbered

then they are hopped over or into sequentially hope always hovers a friend

is always hopeful at the top under a curved line

the word HOME

and a smooth stone if there is a phone

there is assonance and a party line

a party line is not always a party or political the phone

is Bakelite necessarily at that time black chalk is white

or it might be yellow cylindrical chalk is to sock

as thistle is to ditch or whistle stitch is to knot as clot is to cream

which is not the case here

suppose the sock is navy blue paired it could be a white sock

with a short cuff the sort of sock that can be worn into a classroom

the game might be considered friendly if apple if thistle

if thistle in spring it might include fairies if unfriendly

there will be repercussions a customary sadness spoons too

can be friendly an indication of alphabet soup

and marbles glass zero round blues

cat’s eyes and zero round translucent greens

more than five friends takes a great deal of time

more than five marbles makes a respectable game

no one played jacks

Firsthand

In the inside there is deluge, on the outside there is missing. Somewhere is refuge. Quickening. Listen. Let is-ness then be the business, let mothers into story if only for a few more years. If quickening, there may be answers, wind, chance literation, chance marriages, misfits, chance the first chance, do not reprove the child asking questions. Let blue angora mittens, a black cat, second fiddle. There is a second layer, liar, liar, pants on fire. Never mind, there is always porridge with a sift of salt and garbage bins under the sink whispering misery in an off-key pitch. Cinch your belts, no one here is as rich as you may wish. Hey diddle, diddle, kit and kaboodle, cows, spoons, a cat in a fix. In the inside there are two. In the outside, there is one and one sitting, unseeing what will be missing. Heaven whistles by in its finite fevered way, tin whistle stops and lingerie, saxifrage and lingering, and tips. Q-tips. Second storey is higher than first, pinch me if I’m wrong, never mind, the second story is typically too blue, too long.

Circle as ellipsis

Green was the Circle’s true name

half-ellipsis was the circle’s true shape

orbiting the bungalowed brick spawning girls

all the girls wore jackets of green fairy lore

woven leaves mosses and pale fescue grasses

a green mesh of girls friendships and fights

some wished for flight every birthday

when they blew out their candles they wanted to fly

I make half of this up some wished for kindness

a new dress a good mark their average number was twice

their combined average age half-flying

half-fairies half-launching from the small mound of a hill

beyond the street’s elliptical orbit

behind the ring of northside houses their hair spuming

spinning milkweed in spring sometimes burred

a world within worlds in their mouths

were thin greenstick twigs

pussy willows sumac marbles pink bubble gum

their teeth were small and imperfect

their shoulder blades wing bones unfeathered

their feet rubber-soled

True or false

13. Do fairies have wings?
14. Magical, spacious as sky?
15. Imaginary?
16. Governed by Queens?
17. Before humans or elves?
18. Silver coins for bloodied first teeth?
19. Changelings for children?
20. Green jackets or red? Fiction or fashion?
21. Gay speculation?
22. If you don’t see them, are they still in the green woods?

•

In the dream I drive along Church Avenue, past Martin Avenue, and over the small bridge onto Green Circle. Circling back. A friend in the passenger seat, short hair, wearing a silk scarf. This is where I grew up, I tell her. These bungalows are so old, she says. But the brick walls look fresh to me in their angled tangled green gardens, and some houses have been recently reno’d.

I wonder if I’ll be able to locate Pat Hurdle’s old house, and yes, I know it by its place in the row of houses as I drive slowly by, one down from my old red brick house, and also by the white birch, taller now than the roof, and by the old Ponderosa in the front yard. The house doesn’t look like its old self. Completely refurbished, I decide. Past the Shums’. Then we stop in front of my old bungalow, which doesn’t resemble its former self either. Immediately an aged couple in the back seat, who have bee...

Table of contents

• Before the First, Before the Time
• A Brief History of Childhood
• Girls: The Green Time
• Cosmos
• Then Let Me Ask
• Black Holes
• The Curve of Time
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author