And by “Like” I mean “Like” as in feel great affection or affinity for, as opposed to “Like” as in click an up-turned thumb on a Facebook page.
1. The titles. Many of McGimpsey’s “chubby sonnets” should not be read without first pausing to savour the title. For example: “Song for Cardigans and Assholes.” Or “Death be not proud but, really, who could blame you? I mean, c’mon, you’re Death!” Or “Jesus loves you, but doesn’t love-love you; I mean He thinks you’re okay but He’s going through some things now and is not interested in something more meaningful.”
2. Canadians with gluten allergies (who have mourned their inability to drink beer during hockey games) can find solace in McGimpsey’s tender verse:
Certain despairs, like gluten allergies,
Should only (suspiciously) affect white
Middle class women or Canadians.
3. McGimpsey understands the cultural importance of Barnaby Jones like few poets speaking for our generation.
4. Novel titles. McGimpsey could have written a novel called “The English Patient Vs. Predator.” Sadly, he didn’t, but it would have made a great movie.
5. Cellphones and Facebook figure importantly in McGimpsey’s poems (although not as importantly as Barnaby Jones). “I paw my cellphone like a rosary” and “Before the iPhone arrived, we lived like pigs” or the confessional: “All those times I was ”Maybe Attending,” / I admit I wasn’t going to attend.” After I read those lines, I was seized by a fit of guilt and had to stop reading until I poured myself a drink.
6. His poems can be mined for writing advice. And why not? After all, David McGimpsey has a Ph.D. in English Literature and teaches at Concordia University. So, for example, in “Putting the ”ah” in ”adjunct.””, he offers us some shtick from Wayne C. Booth’s Rhetoric of Fiction:
I wasn’t a full-time professor
But I still worked for the university.
I was a departmental mascot —
”Skewy” the Creative Writing Bee!In that warm, itchy outfit for Skewy
I buzzed about the halls at big events.
I’d wave my arms and say, ”Show, don’t tell,”
And, ”Your craft will set the world abuzzzzzzzzzz!”
7. His poems can also be mined for aphorisms, although not the sort of aphorisms Zarathustra would cite from his cave on the mountain, more the sort of aphorisms that qualify as ”gas-station wisdom”. “Like all fine cuisine, airport celery soup / achieves balance.” “Hell is other people’s taste in music.” “Those who think you can’t run / away from your problems just haven’t tried.” “You can’t buy Wrangler jeans at Versailles.”
8. McGimpsey shows you what it’s like to be a middle-aged man on the run from the things middle-aged men are usually on the run from. Except that running has become acutely disappointing since every place looks like the place before. They all have box stores and cheap motels and tacos and Pepsi.
9. The cover, designed by Evan Munday, features what appears to be the rare and exotic Jackalope.
10. If you are ever wondering what McGimpsey is up to in this book, a hint is only a click away. See, for example, this interview from Maisonneuve which includes the following statement:
My affection for American pop culture is, I think, unambiguous and, I assume, has been enjoyable for my best readers. A few times I’ve seen how this accounts for a misreading of my poetry which I’m sure will trail me to the grave: that is, when a critic takes contemptuous displeasure in an American culture reference and imagines I must hate what they have been conditioned to hate and therefore assume my goal is satire (I couldn’t possibly be saying I watch Family Matters, could I? I couldn’t really prefer Celine Dion to The Tragically Hip, could I?) and then wonder why my satires don’t seem to go far enough. I have no interest in apologizing for that or defending that as governing poetic conceit in the face of the myriad weepy grievances Canadian intellectuals have against the United States. After all, I do not write about American popular culture: I write about my life and American popular culture is the metaphoric vehicle through which the tenor of my life is moderated.
I admit, sometimes I get a burr stuck up my ass and rant about how the American elephant is going to roll over and smush my cultural mouse. Reading Li’l Bastard is like taking a laxative, unsticking my burr, reminding me to loosen up a little bit. Have some fun.
Follow @DaveMcGimpsey on twitter.
Buy the book from @coachhousebooks.