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Review: “A Nail in the Heart” by Ian Daffern

A NAIL IN THE HEART

by Ian Daffern. Art by Noel Tuazon, Shari Chankhamma, and Frank Fiornetino
28pg
Available at iandaffern.com

Ian Daffern’s work as a comic writer is a favourite here at WRP, and I was excited to pick up A Nail in the Heart, his own ‘short story collection’ of sorts, if only to see how well his penchant for punchy dialogue and pace translates to serious subject matter. Even though the stories here left me wanting more I was not disappointed–by his own admission in the back of A Nail in the Heart, this is Daffern’s first collection. “Not enough tracks yet for an EP–think of it as a single,” and as a single, this three-comic collection packs a modest punch.

Each story is penned by Daffern and illustrated by a different artist, with three vastly differing styles. The first, “Bring Me the Head of Osama Bin Ladin,” [sic] illustrated in scratchy notebook-noir by Noel Tuazon, sets the tone for the collection as heavy and unrelenting. Centered around a CIA agent tasked with, well, literally performing the titular task, Daffern is showing his true colours with narration that seems to dance around direct points while actually delivering heaps of backstory and plot. Tuazon’s loose style limits us from getting to know the character’s emotions enough, and weakens the critical moral-choice-moment for the lead character, but the story itself is twisted and unrelenting.

Centered around a photographer and his producer trying to capture an elusive bird, “Bird of Paradise” follows with much cleaner line work from Shari Chankhamma and a more abstract, though equally dismal look at human connectedness. The only weakness of this collection starts to show here as Daffern’s ideas are too big for the 8-page format. As with the first story there’s a lot of characterization I feel I’m missing out on given the originality of the concept and the depth of the dialogue. It’s not a bad story, I just want more of it. Plus, the payoff on this one is completely unpredictable and, without spoiling anything, is the kind of dark humor I’ve come to expect from the writer.

Concluding the collection is “Eyes in the Sky,” which is a kind of middle ground between the heavily narrated opener and the more sparsely characterized middle story. Centering around a couple lost in the boonies, (featuring excellent shade work by artist Frank Fiornetino), “Eyes in the Sky” offers Daffern at his best, writing dialogue for characters that both realistically annoy and compel the reader. A pitch-perfect back and forth between a condo couple lost in the forest concludes with a predictable amount of narrative insanity for Daffern, but made me feel for them as their story… reached its conclusion.

If the single is this good, I’d definitely buy the EP, but I’d recommend Daffern kick the ball a little farther and shoot for a Long Play on his next effort. He’s proven that he can carve characters out of marble, but I want more pages than A Nail in the Heart can give me. There is something to be said for brevity, as each story is as final, hard-hitting, staggering and painful as I would imagine a nail in the heart would be, but I can’t be faulted for complaining that each of these stories could have been their own 30 page masterpiece. Regardless, with brevity as his nail gun Daffern shoots to kill with these three stunners that push ‘darkly funny’ to the edge of ‘uncomfortable tears,’ and if he misses when he shoots its not for lack of trying.

Book Review: Amphetamine Heart, by Liz Worth.

Amphetamine Heart
By Liz Worth
58 Pages.
http://www.guernicaeditions.com/title.php?id=9781550713435

I don’t know why I feel compelled to look for a narrative in Amphetamine Heart. That isn’t ordinarily my first instinct when I pick a poetry collection. Parhaps because this latest book has so much in common with another book of Worth’s, which I reviewed here, that did have a strong narrative current. Perhaps because the tone of the writing is so uniformly cold, wet and uncomfortable. It seems to have a consistency which begs me to derive a narrative from it. Whatever the reason, I’ve been through this book a half dozen times looking for a single, clear, unified story line. I can’t find it, but I keep looking.

In a way it’s distracting. I can’t approach the poems individually without feeling that I’m missing some critical element of context. But I also can’t approach the work as a whole, because I don’t know whether there is truly a wholeness to approach. The positive thing about this mystery, though, is that it gives Amphetamine Heart a sense of mystery. My interactions with it are active, investigatory, and dynamic. Any good poem will offer a little something extra to the serious and careful reader. Worth, though, seems to be the rare poet who can actually extort, from the casual reader, a little bit of extra:

Attention to Detail

It was the night you said that there’s no such thing
as an accidental overdose.
I was convulsing with downtown sickness,
slavering over your triple lunacy.
The erratic timing of my disoriented middle ear
became audible with the calluses of your hand
             spreading
suicide inhibitors.

Six poems in, nearing the end of the first cycle, and the subject matter is relatable, literal, and dramatic. The “I” suffers a drug overdose. Certainly something one could imagine the “I” of all of these poems experiencing. The next piece should be about a hospital room, or death, or recovery, but instead:

Beginner’s Guide

The demolition of her atonement
has you salivating;
it could be a viral reaction, or your glands
flexing practiced analysis.

. . .

A bead of salt slides down your sternum,
reaches her chin.
Her lips bend to accommodate the moisture,
bend away from resistance.
Beneath you, she divides in two, opens wide.

Similar tone, language, and detached perspective. It definitely could be part of the same story. But is the “you,” of this poem the same person as the “you” of the previous? And who is “she?” Is she a new character, or simply the “I” re-branded?

“Beginner’s Guide,” like much of this collection, is erotic, vivid and amusing, if not all together pleasant. Throughout Amphetamine Heart, lurid and arousing nouns like “moisture,” and “breath,” are paired with the troublesome adjectives like ”hoarse,” and “viral.” It’s a simple technique, but it’s contextually appropriate and carefully applied. The effect is visceral and unsettling. It adds a guttural sensation, which makes the experience feel very complete. Amphetamine Heart engages the reader physically, emotionally, and intellectually. Frankly, I always feel a little bit sick when I read Worth’s poetry. Given that her bio proclaims, the “poems are linked by discomfort and decay. . . urgency and self harm,” I hope she will take this as a compliment.

by Michael Scott

* all quotations from Amphetamine Heart by Liz Worth.

Book Review: Boris Robot of Leisure, Vol. 3 & 4. By Katharine Miller

ROL Vol. 3: Boris Gets A Visitor
ROL Vol. 4: Boris Takes A Nap
By Katharine Miller
Vol. 3 – 101 pages, Vol. 4- 98 pages.
http://www.robotofleisure.com

Well, it’s been almost a year since I read a Bot’ O’ Leisure book and, since author Katharine Miller officially became Canada’s Own Katharine Miller yesterday, I thought I’d celebrate with a quick review the latest of Boris’ offerings. I’ve writen quite a bit about my admiration of Miller’s work already. I gush about her styalistic ellegence here, and spend a lot of time trying to make myself sound smart in phylosophy here. But you clicked this link looking for a short book review, and probably don’t want to ramble over an extra thousand words of my writing, so let me summarize thusly: Boris is sort of a newspaper strip about about The Jetsons as re-imagined by Samuel Beckett. I think that’s a fair discription of the little robot with whom the early twentieth century, Irish nihilist in me first fell in love, and the latest volumes of Miller’s text-less, cartoon series continue in this same, excellent philosophical vein; exploring simply, and usefully the profound joys and sadnesses associated with mundane activity.

In Boris Gets A Visitor, our hero tries, rather unsuccessfully, to impart some of his accumulated wisdom to another of his kind. The story shares the moral of Herman Hess’ Siddhartha, that while many things can be explained, nothing can ever be taught. In Boris Takes A Nap,  our robot has grown board with the common endeavors that once thrilled him, and expands his conscious experience into the realm of impossible dreams. Miller is once again using the perfect absurdity of her adorable robot to explore a fundamental truth of the human condition; in this case, that it is impossible for the normal mind to remain joyfully focused on its true circumstance.

“All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing.”

-Yoda, Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back.

Thankfully, Miller also realises, in these newer works, that she has already been leaning on her cute cartoons and philosophical dexterity for two hundred pages. While ROL 1 and 2 were both deeply enjoyable experiences, she wasn’t going to get much more mileage (actually, given that she’s a citizen now, let’s say Kilometerage) out of the character without introducing a more exciting, and perhaps more literary, external conflict. She’s solved this problem beautifully, by introducing an element that my aforementioned hero Beckett spent his entire career deliberately avoiding, back-story.

The absence of all senescent life in the Boris universe was something I had been taking for granted. I was passively curious about it. I made a few casual guesses about what might have happened to all the people, but I’d seen Endgame, I knew that it didn’t mater. The end of the world, I thought, was not the story, simply a necessary stage for the performance of it. It seem, however, that I was wrong. I am shocked, awed and sincerely excited (as I suppose Boris must be) discover some clues. Not only clues to the mystery of Boris’ existence, but possibly clues to the mystery the ghost town where he resides. I’m all a tingle to think that Boris, the robot with human drives and yearnings, may be about to uncover an answer to one of the most fundamental human questions: Where Do I Come From?

Please read all of Miller’s books, and join me, in hot anticipation of the upcoming ROL. 5: Boris Meets His Maker.