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    Happinesswise: Poems
    Happinesswise: Poems
    Happinesswise: Poems
    Ebook65 pages26 minutes

    Happinesswise: Poems

    By Jonathan Bennett

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    About this ebook

    Bennetts artistry lies in his ability to create poems that shatter complacency with bricks of loaded language. emQuill Quire/em on emCivil and Civic/em/p pHow are you doing, happinesswise? This is the unifying thread, the casual-sounding but slant and penetrating question posed by these poems as they interrogate what we tell ourselves about happiness, about its opposite, and about ourselves in the process./p pemHappinesswise/em is both cacophony and chorus: its the voices of palliative patients and physicians, and the place where the dream state of a young pregnant woman clashes with the online reality of daily life. Its personal too: a suite explores a five-year period of Bennetts autistic sons childhood, charting a journey of love and misunderstandings, of anxiety and celebration as the wonders of neurodiversity unfold./p pThere are elegies too. And confessional poems, like On the Occasion of Her Swearing In, where Bennett witnesses up close his friends remarkable transition from Afghan refugee and grassroots activist to member of parliament and cabinet minister. Other poems demarcate the gaps (literal and less so) found every day in rural Ontario, or consider personal, political, and cultural history within a series of loops and twists./p

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherECW Press
    Release dateApr 10, 2018
    ISBN9781773052007
    Happinesswise: Poems

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      Book preview

      Happinesswise - Jonathan Bennett

      Happinesswise

      Poems

      Jonathan Bennett

      for Haley

      Contents

      Palliative Care Reflective Portfolio

      Patient No. 1

      Patient No. 2

      Patient No. 3

      Concession Lines Signs

      Unassumed Road

      Vegetarians Use the Back Door

      Traffic Calming Ahead

      Fresh Cut Fries

      Free Metal Drop Off

      Third Concession Line

      Neurotypical Sketches

      Now We Are Six and Sure

      They Will Take My Island

      His Charge

      Sunrise with Sea Monsters

      In Relief

      On Occasion

      Notes After Fort Worth

      Notes After Glasgow

      On the Occasion of Her Swearing In

      Audley Elegy

      Let Me Speak Softly of Two Days

      Analogue Analogies

      Loggerheads

      Manual

      Reasonable Assurance

      Comply or Explain

      Swallow the Toad of Disgust

      After St. Ignatius

      Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Bad Government

      Happinesswise

      Notes and Acknowledgments

      About the Author

      Copyright

      Palliative Care Reflective Portfolio

      Patient No. 1

      Do I? Admit to the neighbour I need help?

      She’ll offer impatience, weak Earl Grey.

      So instead I admit myself, impatiently,

      thrown into that time-worn, off-grey ward

      whose Hospitalists chart my chest rattle.

      I suffer no fear. I am the recipient

      of patient-centred, evidence-based care.

      This promise made to me all alone,

      on a wipe-able poster that’s reinforced

      by a tenderly chosen stock photo paired

      with a font inspired by Cézanne’s cursive.

      I curse the machine drone, the urine sting,

      the sour C. diff smell, the pump throb,

      the infection control, latex-free signage.

      Only last March, the lake icy, gin and tonics,

      tinkling wind chimes, your still-beautiful clavicle.

      I presented to the ER with severe pain

      in my lower—well, does it really matter

      where this began? Things have evolved.

      Let’s keep up, I say. But he taps my gut.

      Read the chart, I bark. He does, mumbles

      left flank. I am deemed incapacitated.

      Last summer I was myself. That recently,

      really, independent, with plans in place.

      I golfed. Was a snow bird. I hear this,

      my diminished life as a chart note,

      a biography no one considered worthy—

      is it ever too late for morbid thoughts?

      You dear, are elsewhere, gone in that

      peculiar way—off the wall, in a facility

      with advanced dementia. At the lake

      last summer your dress removed one

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