let lie\ 
by Elizabeth Rainer and Michael Blouin
above/ground press, 8.5x5.5, 20pp, $4.00 (CAN) 
published, January 2012


Excerpts from Impossible Books:  The Crawdad Cantos
by Stephen Brockwell
above/ground press, 8.5x5.5, 20pp, $4.00 (CAN)
published, February 2012

Sextet: six poems from Songs for little sleep,
by rob mclennan
above/ground press, 8.5x5.5, 20pp, $4.00 (CAN) 
published, January 2012




The quintessential poet's micro-press, above/ground press — founded and published by poet, writer, and editor Rob McLennan out of Ottawa, Ontario — publishes chapbooks by both newly emerging and established poets alike. What makes above/ground press titles stand apart from other micro-press poetry chapbooks (besides their nondescript covers, that is) is that they offer the reader glimpses into collaborations as well as individual works in progress. It's these glimpses which above/ground gives that makes their titles unique, revealing the process of the poet's composition, their collaborations, as each waltz's their muse along the thin razor's edge of creation.

In let lie\, an excerpt from a collaborative work by Elizabeth Rainer and Michael Blouin, we are given  glimpses into pieces which were written over a period of a year and a half and emailed back and forth:

to describe it\ I should not ask you when you touch yourself to think of me as I am there no probably this is the very type of thing I should keep to myself that and this is the failure of poetry to do you any kind of justice at all light tapping of my heart punching holes in the sky.

it would be\ nice for me if you were someone else for a change someone who didn't know me so well my tremors hopes then when we were making love it would all be different once more your ankles up around and there wouldn't be that look on your face him, again.

Here, Rainer and Blouin successfully combine masculine and feminine language and metaphor in an ongoing collaboration which mixes and juxtaposes contrasting identities into a string of textual and contextual and allegorical narratives.

Stephen Brockwell’s Excerpts from Impossible Books: The Crawdad Cantos is the latest installment of Brockwell's ongoing work-in-progress. At times pithy, sometimes brilliant, Brockwell's poems run the entire gamut in this ongoing project. For instance, both this chapbook and the following poem's self-deprecating dark humor reveals Brockwell at his poetic height:

"Brockwell, you're a fool, thrilled by a sunset
'beyond words.' The sunset is beyond; but
beyond words? No. Words for it outpace you.
God bless impala words you'll never speak."
Here's what I posted — you can slag it too:

Watched gorgeous sunset from window on flight
to LAX. Beyond words. Tried anyway.

"from Messages from Imaginary Friends: Karikura and the Inarticulate Sunset" 

Lastly, there is the controlled musicality and the experimental narrative quality in rob mclennan's Sextet: six poems from Songs for little sleep, which draws the reader inside by using repeated phrasings of short sentences and brief staccato rhythms:

1.

The gathering place of something, we. I can't recall. It was I who called, who called, who.

Watch the moon, full, you must. You must, we. We are watching the full moon, full of something. Was full, of only, possibly ourselves. Only full.

We were watching the moon we were.

from "The learning curve that sometimes manages, itself"

All three of these titles offer varying glimpses of excerpts, collaborations, and works-in-progress not found elsewhere by poets just reaching the height of their craft. In these above/ground press chapbooks they practice a high wire literary act. Sometimes failing. More often than not, though, succeeding brilliantly. It takes guts to write without a net, and particularly to publish those early efforts for all to see. Guts, indeed.

***********************************************************************************

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada add $2)
to: 
above/ground press
c/o rob mclennan
402 McLeod St. #3
Ottawa, Ontario K2P 1A6

or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com


For more information, contact rob at:

rob_mclennan@hotmail.com

or

abovegroundpress.blogspot.com


rob mclennan was born in Ottawa, Canada's glorious capital city, and rob currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011), kate street (Moira, 2011), 52 flowers (or, a perth edge) - an essay on Phil Hall - (Obvious Epiphanies Press, 2010) and wild horses (University of Alberta Press, 2010) and a second novel, missing persons (The Mercury Press, 2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review (ottwater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com), and has edited numerous collections for Chaudiere Books, Insomniac Press, Black Moss Press, Broken Jaw Press and Vehicule Press, and, in June 2010, a special "Canadian issue" of the Swiss online pdf poetry journal Dusie. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com. He is currently working to complete another novel or two, a collection of short short stories, and a post-mother creative non-fiction work entitled The Last Good Year.