An exciting new publication put out by the Ottawa poet maven Rob McLennan. It’s great to see a new lit-zine come out that is provocative, clear in its goals and not wasting time with lengthy introductions and promises of what it will be doing one day when people start showing real interest in reading blah blah blah…Missing Jacket is essentially celebratory, it revels in the art that Ottawa and Ontario residents still, miraculously, somehow produce art. In fact it seems so providential and serious, you hate to wonder if the title came from Thomas Carlyle’s semi-novel Sartor Resartus (Clothes Unclothed). But even while wanting to resist this kind of art-as-the- only-hope writing, you can feel the wind swooping into the lungs of a poet like David O’Meara as he gets set to again dive into the cold water of his words — a plain spoken poet using language to signify the chill and darkness, check out Spain, Blackout and Before A Journey. More familiar Ottawa names weigh in like Tamara Fairchild (whose interview with the Russian Canadian poet and translator Daniel Nadezhdin was a bit much for me) and James Spyker (whose urban satires are getting shorter and tighter and more horrifying than running a gamut of perfume spritzer ladies at the Bay). The lengthy interview with Toronto poet David McFadden was sad enough to put all the content of Missing Jacket in perspective: “Thing about Canada,” he says, “was that it was different from the U.S.A. That difference is fading fast. This rat wants out. I was thinking of moving to Quebec and joining the separatist campaign but Quebec will be going down the same drain as Canada I’m sure.” When Canada does go down the drain, a few scraps of paper will clog up the plumbing, maybe one of McFadden’s 26 books of poetry, maybe this first desperate homage to the drowning muse, issue one of Missing Jacket.
lit-zine / #1, winter 96, 38 pages / main creator: Rob McLennan (editor) / $3, $10 for 3 / above/ground press, RR#1, Maxville, ON, K0C 1T0 email: [email protected]