tough-guy's one-liners . . .

From Out of Nowhere by John Toone
Reviewed by: Karin Cope
The Dalhousie Review – Spring 2010

Written in a tough-guy's one-liners, John Toone's From Out of Nowhere is a marvelous compendium of wordplay and contemporary business, political, cow¬boy and advertising clichés set to stagger in single broken lines. I like the way Toone lets words run down the page—ragged on the left, but (often) towing the line on the right, neatened up, like a fence. For this book is about the occupation (loss) of the land, its colonization, line by line, its shift from wilderness to farm to suburbia, where temporary profits "revolution eyes / the great wide open" ... "untitled / free and clear / site unseen" (85). The speakers are small-town heroes, ancestors or shysters—now and then, their words run into one another; they contaminate one another's utterances, the way clichés do, staggering in single lines down dusty tracks. The book ends with the forever hope that someone will ride out of the wilderness with the answer—even to questions we've not asked. But the poem knows the hero is just a mirage. He's no more a game changer than any of the speakers, who must admit to themselves: "chances / you will spend your life / looking both ways before / deciding to stay put" (21).

Sometimes, particularly towards the end, the neatened lines of the book are broken up; words slide back and forth, cluster—"this is the church's / secret hand/shakin g/ orders / ... finger pointing" (96)—in the middle. It seems as if a new order will assert itself; what is rotten, exposed, what is hoped for emerging, but this in the end, is too just cliché: "i know what you are thinking /... / i give a way I catch the drift / right before our eyes / remains / a straight shooter / at the crosswalk / appearing / from out of nowhere / the end" (102). The would-be game changers—businessmen, cowboys, developers, farmer ancestors—change no games. Only art can do that, slipping the tongue in sideways, showing how "plain english" never is.

KAREN COPE lives in Nova Scotia. Formerly a Gertrude Stein scholar (Passionate Collaborations: Learning to Live with Gertrude Stein), she chose, as Stein did, the happier risks of a creative life. She is currently at work on a novel about a girl who flies (Signs Taken for Wonders) and a play, as well as a book of very short horror stories (Terrible Tales), and several long illustrated poems.

Post date: 2010-06-15 20:25:39 UTC

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