"Soft-edged / everything": Review of Nolan Natasha's I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me?
Nolan Natasha, I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me? Invisible Publishing, 2019. $17.95 CAD.
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The overarching mechanism of Nolan Natasha’s I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me? is love. Love expressed in gentle juxtaposition. Of course, hearing and being heard, but also seeing and being seen—by other living entities, by yourself through time, by an inanimate world brought to life, by "what was broken / and what was beginning" (4). In presence and being in the presence of. What could be a violent comparison is made gentle, "soft-edged / everything" (67). The tender touch of this mechanism and of the speaker is exemplified in the poem "Relax, You said":
… Your
voice. The trees. Birds we can’t name.
You said, How are you feeling?
And I told about the flu moving
through my body, but never
answering. How are you
Feeling? Like I’m falling. Perfect (7).
This is a scene of making love contrasted with having the flu, but the speaker makes these diametrically opposed experiences feel as though they belong together, "falling" in love and "falling" as a symptom of the flu merging seamlessly. This merging occurs not only between subjects and objects but across temporality as well, as in “Mirror.”
The hours pass this way.
We say and don’t say.
...
I leap between these moments
as if I’m crossing a river—
wet stones and twisted ankles (13).
The speaker does indeed leap between moments but does not force the macro onto the micro. Instead, the micro is affectionately allowed its own vast expansiveness through repetition of water-based images: rivers, storms, fishing, the sea, erosion, geese, even spiders taking residence in lake docks. Mountains, as shaped by water. Sky, as source of water. In this repetition there is a sense of cleansing. Take this stanza from "Niagara Falls" where the speaker remembers travelling with a new lover:
It is impossible to imagine you then,
in that tacky motel,
not yet my partner, no longer my friend, so newly
my lover. The roar of water—even when you don't hear it,
it pours and pours, erasing the rock underneath (31).
There is a tide-like ebb and flow from past to present. Memory is often questioned, known to be inaccurate, murky and in need of a filter. But of course this cleansing, like all else in the book, is gentle. This is not a book of elbow grease and scrubbing, but of the deep soak. Immersion. Accuracy of recall is not what is valued here, but experience: "I don't remember what I said, / only the way the light fell on your collarbone" (40). There is a resistance to conclusiveness in this collection which allows the reader ample air. Within the immersion there is still room to breathe. The speaker often appears joyful to exist within this compositional space: "I'm looking / at the sky, wonder pooled /under my tongue. Ringing light" (67). This joy comes through clearly and gives the reader permission to relax into the experience of the poems rather than analyze them, which, for me, is a favourite place to be.
All combined, these techniques create a psychic space of acceptance—of fear, of the past, of identity, of loss, of beauty that once existed but has eroded way to make way for a different kind of beauty, even of the tang of regret for lost moments. For me, these techniques culminated in what I feel is the most powerful poem in the collection, "Sisters.”
You already make sense the way you are.
Across the water there was lightning. We stood
and watched iron clouds gather in the still air.
One moment it was all so far away
and the next it turned to face us,
the wind running at us, only us.
The sky was warm, sweet, and held out
as long as it could before wetting the cliffside.
...
The sky that morning paid no attention
to the night's storm.
What's done is done (47).
Conyer Clayton is an Ottawa-based writer, musician, editor, and gymnastics coach. She has six chapbooks, two albums, and won The Capilano Review's 2019 Robin Blaser Poetry Prize. Her debut full-length collection is We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (Guernica Editions, 2020). Stay updated on her endeavours at conyerclayton.com.