\s mYevtew KALEIDOSCOPE - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWpresented with the negative image of aphotograph. The quiet harmonies of"Japanese Music," for instance, whereinart and nature coalesce in the "Refrainof all things that / return : flower, season,wind, tree," are harshly jarred by Americandiscord : "Turn up the Tom Jones /Max! Those waves are loud," shouts oneof the American faithful on a pilgrimageto Daytona Beach.For Oughton, violence is the inevitableoutcome of this distortion of the natural.In "Espresso Bar on Harbord Street," thepoet half-listens to the violence of aspaghetti western (a palpable instance ofartifice, indeed) and half-listens to theverbal abuse going on at the table nextto him. More unsettling in Oughton'spoems, however, is the association of violenceand the feminine. In "AnimaDream," the speaker describes a dreamin which he murders and dismembers awoman, telling his father later that he"only wanted to see what / made hertalk." Thus, we witness the dismemberingand destruction of the verbal, creative"woman" in man. Similarly, thepoem "Zoology," which describes thehatred that moves two lovers to rip "outeach other's stitched-up / stuffing, layingbare the mythic bones," is accompaniedby the photograph of a laughing girl, astuffed leopard draped over her shoulders.The parallel is extremely disconcerting,especially when one considersthat the photographic symbol of theancient Japanese reverence for nature isthe male Buddha.Oughton's use of photography, however,deserves a more searching study, forhe has chosen in the photograph theideal symbol for the merging of natureand the machine. Oughton's own photographicstyle has been strongly influencedby Edward Weston and Ansel Adams (ashis photo for "Gape Travers, P. E. I."reveals). Weston's philosophy of photography(now in sharp disfavour withphotographers) is that photography revealsthe hidden essence of nature.Weston's photos of sand dunes, likeOughton's photo of rippling water, revealan order inherent in nature, independentof man. Or, as Oughton himself expressesit, "Who needs a nurtured rose / whereeven the great silent birds wait / andeven the weeds sing?" The greatest travestyoccurs when man attempts to harnessnature, hence Oughton's final poemson nuclear weapons. "Cruise Missile," arewriting of Pratt's "The Shark" for thenuclear age, is sadly disappointing;Oughton is better able to visualize thepresent horrors of American society thanthis potential disaster. What should bethe strongest poem in the collection unfortunatelyfalls into cliché : "it's smarterthan your car or stereo." How does oneimagine the unimaginable?Suniti Namjoshi's From the BedsideBook of Nightmares provides an implicitresponse to this, as well as to other questionsraised by Oughton's collection.Namjoshi's feminist poems are not blatant"social cause" poems, but witty rewritingsof Western mythologies. In herlively imagination, Caliban as well as"Baby Frankenstein" become female figures,leading the reader to muse uponthe sexual dynamics of these myths.In Namjoshi, the female is associatedwith creativity in a more positive waythan in Oughton. In fact, the female isclosely allied with nature ; Baby Frankensteindreams that she is a green shrub,uprooting herself and prancing about,much to the disgruntlement of hermother. When slightly older, she becomesa creative liar, telling her brother that hehas green hair; she is "enchanted" bythis heady "power of the lie." Namjoshisignificantly links this lying with the creativeact itself, by inserting a quotationfrom Mary Shelley: "The fabrication oflife is not a matter that may be under-