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BOOKS
ELIZABETH BACHINSKY
Elizabeth Bachinsky's Home of Sudden Service
Submitted by Hannah Colville on 02.9.07 at 11:41pm.
The cover blurb of Home of Sudden Service calls attention to the gritty and startling side of Elizabeth Bachinsky’s poems, labelling her work “Valley Gothic” made of “punk rock villanelles and delinquent sonnets.” These descriptions make great cover copy, but they don’t do justice to the depth of understanding and imagination you will find in many of these poems. Bachinsky is not as hard as she might like to appear, though you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise after reading the first poem in the collection.
Home of Sudden Service is a portrait of life in B.C.’s Fraser Valley and the opening poem, “Valley,” introduces the area with a smirk. Bachinsky presents her relationship with the Valley in the form of cheap desire-- a sonnet in white trash. She addresses the Valley landscape as though it were the body of a lover, its “freeways / superb in all their trash and glam.” A longing for home, or nostalgia for home as a place of innocence is replaced here by rough desire:
“Jesus, I long for you each moment
I’m away. I want your legs as far apart
As the poles. Sick, I’m sick with longing for
Some punk midnight vandal, some bleach-blonde hair.”
It’s a coarse opening poem, and it gets your attention. At first I found it a little too stark and deliberately provocative, but after subsequent readings, the poem began to grow on me, and I could appreciate its clever irony.
Nine poems follow in a section called “Valley Girls,” and they vary greatly in tone and subject matter. Bachinsky writes of girls growing up-- the rituals of a Brownie pack, an ideal childhood with horses, teenage pregnancy, early marriage, murder, and pageant girls. My favourite here is called “For the Teen Moms at the Valley Fair Mall.” It addresses the desperation and difficulties of teenage mothers, and seems to get the experience right, with simplicity and empathy.
The title poem, “Home of Sudden Service,” is also worth noting. It tells the story of a young, poor couple with a child who work long hours in service of other people. Bachinsky centers her discussion of her hometown and its problems on the phrase “Home of Sudden Service”— which appears on the sign at an auto body shop where this young husband works. Service replaces feeling and is a barrier between husband and wife. Furthermore, service extends to the tough duties of the two young people at home as parents and partners. Below the surface, they question their roles, their connection, and Bachinsky captures their uncertainty and limitations:
“Sometimes I think he’s still getting used
To the idea of us. When he comes home, he’s filthy,
But I love the smell of him, he smells like my father
Used to when he came home from work.
I don’t know…is that fucked up? I don’t think so.”
Bachinsky’s people are caught and put into confused service at a young age—as mothers, lovers, brownies or pageant competitors.
In “Valley Girls Love Valley Boys,” Bachinsky examines teenage relationships and delinquency. Here, “Wild Grass” juts out as perhaps the most beautiful poem in the collection, and “To A Future Delinquent” is a very well-written and creative warning.
Perhaps the weakest section of the collection is the “Drive” sequence. The speaker drives from B.C. to Quebec with her sister, who is going away to school in Montreal, and the linked poems explore their relationship and the increasing distance between them. It is the most personal and emotional section in the collection, and this comes as a bit of a surprise after Bachinsky’s careful impersonations (she takes on other voices and personalities so well) and sharp sense of irony. The poem is too long and it is not as well written as others in the collection, yet it offers insight into sibling relationships in places. Because many of the poems in the first three sections feature tough, blunt speakers, the soft voice in “Drive” seems sentimental and out of place.
After reading this collection, which handles teenage angst and misspent youth so well, I wished that high school students could be exposed to young poets like Bachinsky. This is exciting and challenging work, and while it would never find its way into the high school English curriculum without a revolution in education, I know it would appeal to young people. Forget public service announcements and personal development classes—I think we could teach kids everything through poetry. O.K., this may be a stretch of the imagination, but Bachinsky’s work is original and exciting enough to get you to imagine the impossible.
Home of Sudden Service is published by Nightwood Editions, Roberts Creek, B.C., 2006 (16.95).
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