A Gross & Fine Geography

gross-and-fine.jpg

New & Selected Poems

Canadian writer Stephen Bett is internationally known as one of the leading poets of his generation. The Gross & Fine Geography: New & Selected Poems draws from thirteen major collections and adds a generous sampling of new work, spanning over four decades. His early work has been critically praised for its sassy, edgy wit as he caustically, often hilariously, satirizes everything from trendy millennialism to soft-core porn to everyday postmodern frivolities, while his more recent work―far more questing, even spiritual, in subject and tone―has been equally acclaimed for honing still further his exquisitely subtle, minimalist language, in books that explore the intensely personal, from desire through to despair and loss, and on to the challenge of personal growth.

Neither mainstream bland nor 'language-centered' fashionista, Bett's fiercely independent voice uniquely carries forward the counter-tradition of the previous generation's independista poets, like Creeley, Dorn, Hollo, and Clark. But above all, Stephen Bett is one of those truly rare poets who catches at the throat with Zukofsky's virtually impossible dictum, "Lower limit speech / Upper limit music"―reaching for a language that sings on the page. And for that, his work has been called an incredible accomplishment.

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    ISBN: 978-1-910669-25-9
    180 pages
  • Cover Art: Marion Llewellyn. Title: The Drone, from solo gallery exhibit Snow Asylum, Vancouver, 2011. Contact: duckm@shaw.ca

Reviews

Review by Antonio D'Alfonso:

The Gross and Fine Geography presents a selection of Stephen Bett's poetry published between 1983 and 2014. Selecting poems from the entire output entails invariably choosing what a poet considers perhaps not his best, but certainly what he believes to be significant for the narrative told by his new chronology. Selected Poems is a camouflaged memoir, and Stephen Bett's chronicle begins with "How true it is that we need to be /close to the brink of language when / we speak now" and ends with "Though we are in- /credibly small / the path just / got shorter / by two breaths."

I do like this type of writing, with its outcome of impropriety: the stumbling, reversals, jesting, equivocality, the wrong beat in the wrong place, the offbeat. As long as the image is diaphanous and the music upright, verbal grandiosity is never needed. The fissure attracts the curious more than the polished stone.

Stephen Bett will here and there reveal his literary idols and dislikes, but he is most elegant when his speech is tactful and civil. His wager against all odds wins him the big lottery, for in the end his intimate intentions as a writer are fulfilled.

From the sidewalk of matter (language) Bett journeys the way to the Divine, and what is divined is immateriality, that which comes betwixt breath and breath. Simply put, Bett is one heaven of a love poet. And a great writer of aphorisms. Sure, the words might be graphically unfamiliar and the verse in the shape of DNA strands. At times, stanzas read like disparate fragments and look like stand-alone blocks of images.

The reader should not be sidetracked by the jazzed voice or torn terms. "I know it's you I want to breathe." Bett's poems are about love, the love of woman, the love of justice, the love of music, poetry, and art. He lifts the sidewalk up to the brink on a platform where few care to stand. He vacillates on the brink of (non)space where "Clear vision... moves in-ward." When Stephen Bett enters the "town called love" he can believe in what he had not believed in.

There is something special, particularly moving, about the narrative that these Selected Poems bring to the reader. In, beneath, and above each single word and space, Stephen Bett recalls the story of his experiences; his poems are diary entries, reworked transience. He sings, he screams, he doubts, he cries, he tears everything apart, and then glues the world back together, one piece at a time.

From "too many maybes" we venture to something where "it's like the world turns in the sky." Matter mutates into Stephen Bett's jive.

Antonio D'Alfonso is a Canadian writer, editor, publisher, and filmmaker, and also the founder of Guernica Editions―review from The Pacific Rim Review of Books


Review by Michael Dennis:

At 180 pages and in the fluorescent coat of many colours - in this corner, author of 20 books and counting - Stephen Bett, linguistic gymnast and parable prognosticator.

This is heavyweight stuff. Bett comes out of his corner swinging. These poems are the onslaught of a simply unrelenting force.

You can't pin Bett down because he comes at you from all angles. These poems start on a terrain that might have employed the beautiful ramblings of an Allen Ginsberg but before you blink the carved in stone and coming straight ahead voice of Today's book of poetry hero Saint Raymond of Carver.

Preparation for a Gift

How true it is that we need to be
close to the brink of language when
we speak now. I recall saying to you
at the time I read them
how acute John Ashbery's remarks on
Pollack were. That the 'excitement'

lies with the 'very real possibility'
of the work coming to nothing (the 'random
splashes of a careless housepainter').
I watched on film how he would

tack his unstretched canvas on the ground
and walk around it choosing from various
cans of paint; not systemically, it seemed,
and certainly not according to the fixed laws
of ritual -- or even chance (that being an art
both the body and will surely deny). But simply
because a particular color was at hand

to what he was doing; whereupon the
success or failure must lie right
at the heart of his having chosen
to do it that way at all. It cannot be
done over. And seeing that, he must have had
a tremendous faith in his materials to go a-
long with his own equally determined and supple
contortions. I mean the ability of the paint to
fall where it will find least resistance, and of
the canvas to absorb it there. (I wanted to call
such faith "ambition," and -- if it could be
divested of the vulgarity of systems --
relate it to a program for language.
Then I'd offer it to you
in place of tedious conversation;
difficult to rely on, perhaps,
but significant in its intractable resolve.

Of course Today's book of poetry is working with a limited palette of descriptors. Of course Bett is nothing like Ginsberg or Carver except when he is. "Preparation for a Gift" pretty much says it all about Stephen Bett's intentions. This poem starts off The Gross & Fine Geography: New & Selected Poems, a statement of purpose writ large. Then Bett puts his foot down and steamrolls us through thirty-one years with his gargantuan and generous voice.

Bett is never confined to one particular style or form. His engine runs on whatever fuel is handy.

The Gross & Fine Geography

The gross & fine geography
of our hearts

Big sweep
tight corners

I reach
for you

For you

Geographies
that desire

Bett knows how to be a sweetheart and a lovely jazz rat, his tribute to Bobo Stenson touched our hearts here at Today's book of poetry. We'd like Bett to know that today was a Dexter Gordon day in the Today's book of poetry offices. Any collection of poetry that contains poems about/to Pat Metheny or Bill Frisell is going to win hearts and save lives at Today's book of poetry.

The Gross & Fine Geography is a book worthy of all your attention. Bett has published a zillion books in that under the radar style so many Canadian poets have been forced to embrace but this book should address that. Bett burns with the best.

Back Principles (58):
more than life itself

Your breath like some
kind of long
remembered
wind on his
face

Shake him closer
than ever

The christ love
& buddha love
are one

Get him there

You say to him
I love you more
than life itself

It is miracle
enough

The Divine lives
here, call it
what you will

Though we are in-
credibly small
the path just
got shorter
by two
breaths

...

Grace, music and beauty along with a few moments of quiet desperation, The Gross & Fine Geographychanges gears more than a few times and it is an exciting ride all the way through this rambling taster from Bett's previous 19 books. Today's book of poetry is convinced it is a menu you will enjoy.

Michael Dennis blog (Ottawa)


The Gross & Fine Geography/New & Selected Poems by Stephen Bett reviewed by E. E. Nobbs

Nick Laird in a March 2017 Guardian article reminds us that ...

[r]eading poems, embodying in words a chain of apprehensions, is to know something of a particular writer's way of being in the world. It says, "And there's this." We experience some part - lexically, chemically, electrically, emotionally - of what the writer felt. What knowledge could be more consoling - or more difficult to bear in mind?

And that's how I feel about Stephen Bett's big 178 page collection. It covers many years (starting with poems from 1983), and includes poems from over a dozen of his previous books. It's an impressive showcase of how Bett writes about human conundrums and modern life. The book's title with its multiple puns suggest a broad swath of possibilities --and that's what Bett gives us , using a wide variety of poetic techniques and an ironic, self-aware sense of humour.

Check out Bett's home page where you will find out more about him and his many books. He's a West Coast Canadian who has "read and written poetry for over 50 years". He was also a college English teacher for over 30 years. Here's an interesting 2015 interview with him about influences, methods, likes & dislikes and opinions on the poetry world.

The speaker(s) in Bett's poems often feel like the voice of the poet himself - they are strong, candid and frank in sharing their views on our society's weird techno-times and their place in it.

A lot of the poems are first person, personal and close to home. There are family poems which address children. A daughter. A son. These are heartfelt, with a parent's concerns, and the situational irony of life

Many poems are about love and marriage situations - (mis)communications, frustrations, the breaking down of a long-term relationship, and the building of a new one. Bett uses long sequences effectively - the method acts a metaphor for life, life as a journey, a car trip, a journal, how life and relationships never stay the same and how we need to keep our eyes on the road! There is lots of wry humour and "sass", (a term that Bett likes to use), but also genuine emotional investment. The speaker uses his ability to laugh at himself, and situations as a way to help him get through them. But he doesn't sugar-coat. In the poems that involve the breakdown of a long term but relationship, the speaker makes no bones about his anger.

But then, the wonder of a new love, how it develops into a new marriage is presented as a kind of miracle which the speaker eventually accepts as reality. And as a reader, I shared in the surprise, relief and the happiness. There are some extremely minimalist poems.

You

You

-- just

you

just

there

Do

Such a poem is a bit odd to look at if considered by itself, but gains significance, as a part of sequence. It is preceded by the not quite as minimalist, stand-out titular poem of the collection:

The Gross & Fine Geography

The gross & fine geography
of our hearts

Big sweep
tight corners

I reach
for you

For you

Geographies
that desire

As another example of how a poet can share his world - what's important to him -Bett writes about his passion for jazz with a series of poems in homage to jazz musicians - who are presumably well known for those who are in the know (I am not one, but now he's got me wondering what I am missing). Again - it shows Bett's versatility and I liked the way he used quotes and other source material, and formatted the poems to suggest the riffs and improvisation of the music. And I smiled at the repeated use of "gorgeous". I got the happy mood even without being an aficionado.

I admire Bett's use of minimalist poems in sequences, but the piece in this book that I keep coming back to and re-reading, has more conventional rhythms & form, and was the single piece with which he started the book. It feels like an offering.

My reading of it is that -- life is strange, but doing the work, making the effort, living as fully as possible in this world -- is what life is "about".

The first poem in full:

Preparation for a Gift

How true it is that we need to be
close to the brink of language when
we speak now. I recall saying to you
at the time I read them
how acute John Ashbery's remarks on
Pollack were. That the 'excitement'

lies with the 'very real possibility'
of the work coming to nothing (the 'random
splashes of a careless housepainter').
I watched on film how he would

tack his unstretched canvas on the ground
and walk around it choosing from various
cans of paint; not systemically, it seemed,
and certainly not according to the fixed laws
of ritual -- or even chance (that being an art
both the body and will surely deny). But simply
because a particular color was at hand

to what he was doing; whereupon the
success or failure must lie right
at the heart of his having chosen
to do it that way at all. It cannot be
done over. And seeing that, he must have had
a tremendous faith in his materials to go a-
long with his own equally determined and supple
contortions. I mean the ability of the paint to
fall where it will find least resistance, and of
the canvas to absorb it there. (I wanted to call
such faith "ambition," and -- if it could be
divested of the vulgarity of systems --
relate it to a program for language.
Then I'd offer it to you
in place of tedious conversation;
difficult to rely on, perhaps,
but significant in its intractable resolve.

Stephen Bett is a mature, experienced poet, who uses language in a wide variety of ways. He has serious things to say, but says them with a sharp wit. His poems deal with the contemporary. They are pertinent to the lives we live, and have much to offer. I am glad for the chance to review this collection and be introduced to his work.

E.E. Nobbs, The Poetry Shed


Review by James Deahl:

Over half a century has gone by since I walked into The Book Stall near the campus of the University of Pittsburgh to buy Donald M. Allen's The New American Poetry. Today I see I have been forced to tape the anthology together -- ditto Allen's companion volume The Poetics of The New American Poetry -- they have been consulted so many times. The direction I have taken in poetry for several decades has been shaped by these books. Before I bought my first Don Allen anthology I knew nothing of the poetry of Kenneth Koch, Edward Dorn, Robert Creeley, and Charles Olson.

I mention Don Allen because Stephen Bett cites the Allen anthology in his bio note at the back of The Gross & Fine Geography. And he also mentions Koch, Dorn, Creeley, and Olson as mentors. Of these four American poets, the inspiration of Creeley is the most notable. But there was another poet I discovered in The New American Poetry: Larry Eigner. Indeed, the more recent work of Bett reminds me of Eigner's "A Gone" and "B" in the Allen anthology. And, in my view, Bett's latest poetry is much like Eigner's work in books like The World and Its Streets, Places, one of my best-loved books.

In addition to Koch, Dorn, Olson, and Creeley, Bett also tips his hat to a brace of older masters, Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. In Creeley's 1965 interview with Linda Wagner he refers to Pound as a "great innovator" and states: "I think that these modes -- coming both from such men as Pound and Williams and from more contemporary figures like Charles Olson -- are evident and that now their particular use is really up to the qualification of each person who attempts to make use of them." So, how does Stephen Bett make use of these modern and postmodern modes?

The Gross & Fine Geography, which starts with poems taken from Lucy Kent & other poems (1983), shows that his work has improved over the years. By the time the reader gets to the poems taken from Un/Wired (BlazeVOX Books, 2016) Bett has come a long way. His sureness with the modes of the older poets who have inspired him is deft. It is this deftness that impresses. Bett's wit and playfulness with language stand out. I was often reminded of not just Kenneth Koch, but of Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery, too. Those poets used longer lines than Bett does in his later work. His short line -- quite minimal, really -- reminds me more of both Creeley and Larry Eigner. Every word must be the truly correct word in a form that highlights each individual word.

While all poets who come out of Modernist poetics follow Pound to some extent, their allegiance varies. We remember that Old Ezra said over a century ago (in 1912) that the poet should "use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation" of the poem's subject.6 For his part, William Carlos Williams also forces us to attend to the word. Words, after all, are what a poem is made from. In his introduction to his poetry collection The Wedge,7 Williams states: "When a man makes a poem, makes it, mind you, he takes words as he finds them interrelated about him and composes them -- without distortion which would mar their exact significances -- into an intense expression of his perceptions and ardors that they may constitute a revelation in the speech that he uses." The key here is the focus on the "exact significances" of the words chosen for the poem. Most modern poetry is founded on the ideas of Pound and Williams, as noted above by Robert Creeley.

I do not wish the reader to think that Bett only reads American writers. He also admires Canadians like Louis Dudek, Ken Norris, and Phyllis Webb. Nonetheless, Bett's finest work seems to extend from the American poetic developments of the late 20th century. And I thought the finest poems in this "selected" were reprinted from Sound Off: a book of jazz (Thistledown, 2013). Bett really nails it in "Pat Metheny", capturing the "feel" of the guitarist's music. So too with another guitarist: Bill Frisell.

The deep richness of a poetic tradition always seems wonderful. While Bett and I share many of the same literary roots -- Pound, Williams, Olson, etc. -- our writing is quite different. This is because each poet takes a tradition and makes it his or her own. An example: the late, great Raymond Souster had his roots in the Pound-Williams-Olson tradition. So did Louis Dudek. But Souster, Dudek, and Bett are quite different poets. Perhaps the signal aspect of The Gross & Fine Geography is that Bett's book shows how one poet -- in this case a poet in British Columbia -- has extended modern and postmodern concepts into the 21st century.