Mark Callanan’s second collection of poetry opens with an examination of life after near-death, an experience the poet knows first-hand. The book was written after a “near-fatal medical emergency,” and many of the early poems portray nightmarish hospital stays, as well as anxiety about the passage of time.

The opener, “Butchering Crab,” sets the tone, and is in many ways a declaration of both the poet’s frame of reference and his approach to poetic discourse. Its plain-talking directness and matter-of-fact vernacular animate the brutal depiction of crab slaughter, which quickly segues into the author’s own complaint “of being halved by forces / bigger than” himself.  It’s impossible not to notice that the poem begins, “No art in this…” and ends with the lines, “None of this / is quite what I meant to say.”

Callanan’s poetry is not fussy, nor is it driven by ego; it is humble, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It is, for the most part, blessedly free of sentimentality and filler. There is an exactitude to his art, displayed in the efficiency of his diction and his tightly organized stanzas. There is also the recognition that there are forces bigger than ourselves leading the way through life: “I kick my hooves and stare / past the faces of my family, / toward the future, that uncertainty.”

Callanan, a native of St. John’s (and a regular Q&Q contributor), should also be applauded for his pitch-perfect rhythm, and his unforced use of metre and rhyme. In “Devotional,” a letter to a lady love, the repetition and rhyme lure the reader in hook, line, and sinker: “this box of kindling, these eyes of cinder, / this pot-belly heart that burns (you wonder?) / for you.” 

The few missteps are minor. “The Mourning Dove,” which starts out strong with a world-weary, weeping dove, “its eyes red rimmed,” falters when the poem switches its focus to a lowly pigeon that “wishes it could scream” as it “trudges” through the park, addled by the corpses it must count. The overly melodramatic tone is rare among the more understated, thoughtful observations Callanan provides elsewhere.