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Synopsis
Triny Finlay's debut collection of poetry is a meditation on the self's negotiation with the material world. Finlay pushes poetic form and language, creating images of love and loss that are at once playful and profoundly disturbing. The poems in this collection are rife with metaphorical leaps and unexpected associations: the troubled self as conjoined twins or as a flatiron building; the predatory lover as axe-wielding gardener; coming-of-age as a surgical procedure. Blurring the line between subject and object, the voices in these poems explore individual experience from multiple points of view, never privileging any one possibility. These voices fill the book with startling discoveries of conflict and hope, simultaneously stitching and ripping the fabric of female identity.
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About the Author
Triny Finlay was born in Melbourne, Australia and grew up in Toronto. She is the author of Splitting Off (Nightwood, 2004), Histories Haunt Us (Nightwood, 2010), and the chapbook Phobic (Gaspereau, 2006). Her poetry has been anthologized in Breathing Fire 2: Canada's New Poets, Qwerty Decade, and Gaspereau Gloriatur: Book of the Blessed Tenth Year; her writing has also appeared in various Canadian periodicals including ARC, Broken Pencil, Contemporary Verse 2, The Fiddlehead, The Globe and Mail,Grain, Other Voices, and University of Toronto Quarterly. She has studied at Mount Allison University, the University of New Brunswick, and the University of Toronto. She lives with her family in Fredericton, NB, where she teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick.
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Self-Portrait as Ekphrastic Tension
Let's call it what it is: desire,
or hope, or chaos. Something
sublime--a gilded frieze you touched
in Brussels, for love, in the public square;
a vase you carried on your back through
Asia because, though it cracked
along the way, you thought it was sacred.
What you should know about hope
is that it can't be pinned down. Either
you feel it or you don't and don't
mistake it for desperation. The old
stone will shift because of your
fingers; sugar peas snap.
The morning light in your living
room will catch every gap
in the vase if you glue it back together.
Hammer
I was looking for a way into him,
a point like a piano key that could
be struck, or played, followed through with
a finger stroke or the full force heel
of my hand and still transmit its tonal
pulse to the intended string. He found his
way into me as if there were no felt
at all covering my small, embodied
hammers. Maybe, like a harpsichord,
my strings were simply plucked, with a quill
or some incised thorn of leather. Music
was never a direct hit with him: some
days the tune could resonate for hours,
others he lay mute, naked and controlled.
Temple on the Gore Road
We don't have words
for this kind of incongruity,
ancient beauty replicated
on Canadian soil, plunked
at the edge of the subdivision,
postcard ziggurat.
We drive south into the city
on a Thanksgiving Monday
while the cars going north
queue along the Gore Road, idling
as if caught mid-parade. We are going
the wrong way for worship--
a lineup we will never join,
not for the pantheonic rush,
not for the budget homes,
not for the wonder.
But we will stop for fresh corn at the side
of the road, for funeral processions, red lights.
We've chosen our temples, our gods,
and now their resplendence defies us. ― Sample poems
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