Book Review

Title: Killarnoe

Author: Sonnet L’Abbe

Publisher: McLelland & Stewart

Website: http://www.randomhouse.ca/

Released: April 10^th 2007

# of Pages: 96

ISBN: 978-0-7710-0677-7

$17.99 CDN/$13.50 US 

2 ½ Stars 

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey 

I’m always suspicious of a reviewer writing ‘tour de force’ about a book, unless it’s me saying a book is a ‘tour de force,’ of course. Well despite this being Sonnet L’Abbe’s second book in six years, she seems to have swiftly become a ‘fresh new face of Canadian poetry.’ I was looking forward to L’Abbe’s quirky poetics that seem to have captured people’s minds, but I don’t know whether I was still absorbing the information from the last book I reviewed, Big Babies by Michael Bywater (read the review), but I found the poetry of Sonnet L’Abbe lacking a great deal of lustre and quite geared towards a big baby mentality that Bywater suggests we’ve accumulated.  

A reviewer for The Globe & Mail and teaches writing at the University of Toronto, L’Abbe has managed to accumulate a book that resembles baby talk and gargling noises. With sections of poetry divvyed up like ‘Ahem:Amen,’ and ‘Ten Variations on Ha,’ with poems that are titled ‘Oooh,’ ‘Oh,’ ‘Duh,’ ‘Hmm’ and ‘Ow,’ Killarnoe (as L’Abbe states is ‘a place I just invented right now. I just built it from my head’) is laughable as poetic justice. At times L’Abbe has carefully inserted feminist thoughts, political and socially conscious commentary; but more often then not L’Abbe seems to be using a type of shock tactic tantrum in her poetry. Such as the poem about her Osama Bin Laden T-Shirt; this makes her more valid perceptions take a back seat.  

What resonance does a poem like ‘La’ hold for the reader?:  

La, la, la.

Don’t listen, hon.  

Lullaby lulls. 

La, la, la

little one.

Lullaby unswerves. 

La, la, la

baby.Lullaby cusps. 

La, la, la

my love.

Lullaby realiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigns. 

Many of the poems play on our growing inability to communicate comprehensively. What with spell checks and ‘texting’ and as Bywater emphasizes, the dropping of the ‘g’ (I’m Lovin’ It! – McDonald’s Ad), we have become linguistic fishwives and cowpokes; Killarnoe seems to be a resounding example of how that has seeped into once thought of higher art forms.

Sonnet L’Abbe appears to also show a disdain for the decorum that once was, such as in her poem ‘Tone’: 

Tone  

is an important aspect

of any class text. Ask

your professor if you may

say no way! To object, or

hey! To interject, in any essay

meant to earn respect. 

You can’t say: this dude

knows his shit. Nor can you

say: he’s full of it. To argue

your point, your joint

gotta have vocab game. 

However and nonetheless

Kick butt’s ass. They got

up-in-front-of-the-class.

address to impress.

Your convention hall pass. 

The rules of tone are all

unspoken. One learns

the hard way

how they can be broken. 

I haven’t quite understood yet why Sonnet L’Abbe received the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for most promising writer under 35 when Canada has such delightful poets as Alexis Kienlan (She Dreams in Red) and Sharon Harris (Avatar) whose poetry makes one think and is original.