Book Review

Title: Quick

Author: Anne Simpson

Publisher: McLelland & Stewart

Released: April 10^th, 2007

Pages: 120

ISBN-10: 0771080913

ISBN-13: 978-0771080913

$17.99 CDN

4 Stars

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey

Anne Simpson in her third book of poems simply titled Quick, has managed to discover one of my marked weaknesses; I adore when language is used to its fullest potential. Simpson has an extraordinary adept way of writing where she must take a sentence and ponder its potential for days at a time. After all, I would expect nothing less from an author who seems so deliberate in her verse.

The themes in Quick mostly relate to the human body, nature on a fundamental level, the passage of tragedy and how each one interconnects with the other. Simpson speaks of tragedies as if they are a surreal, almost hypnotic experience. Quick reflects on the physicality of our humanity and our natural environment. She also has a great sense of personalizing nature and an example of this is the poem Bee And Woman: An Anatomy where each passage starts with either Apis mellifera (Worker, 27 Days) or Uxor et mater (Female Caucasian, 43 Years). The poem is a comparison of the two where the reader gets a real sense of connection between our lives and the lives of animals.

The back cover of Quick describes Simpson's style of writing as ‘muscular,' which you get a strong sense of almost immediately with sentences like "he'd thrown himself off the bridge, despair in his pockets," or "I taste the light coming through the window." In fact, you feel exhausted by the end of the book, as if you'd walked around a mountain and although your body ached, it was grateful for the movement. Many of Simpson's poems are disturbing at times, as she doesn't shy away from unsettling subject matter, but her poems are always effective as she describes much of the tragic experiences as if a person were seeing the event through a window looking in and simultaneously in the suffering person's shoes; very abstract, and yet kinetic.

Among many of my favourite poems in Quick to reread and absorb is the poem:

Willow Pattern

"Last night a man said he'd wanted to live inside a patterned plate when he was young. I remembered the blue willow, the stream with its curving bridge and, not so far away, a pagoda. In the evening, people lay by the stream thinking of how grass worked, pushing itself up. The language of that country was complicated. The seven declensions could only be learned by listening to water for hours at a time. Yet when the moon showed itself, gorgeously brocaded, no one spoke."

Quick is a reminder as to why I love poetry so much. Simpson's newest book of poetry Quick reminds me of Emily Dickinson's poetry in many ways; that dichotomy between a detached observation and an unabashed intimacy.