FEEL HAPPIER IN NINE SECONDS

Coach House, 80 pages, $18.95 Reading Montreal poet Linda Besner’s second collection, Feel Happier in Nine Seconds, is an adventure, one that’s sometimes bracing and sometimes bewildering. The poems here are crammed with brilliant wordplay and startling metaphors, such as in the wonderful title poem, inspired by an ad’s glib catchphrase, which puts a subversive spin on the idea of personal happiness: “I learned the secret of serenity/by waterboarding daffodils/My Buddha is landfill. My mantra choked /from a bluebird’s neck.” Her basic style is rapid-fire delivery of inventive imagery and challenging associative leaps.

In the section “Magnetic Variations on One and Six,” the organizing principle is based on linking colours with particular letters of the alphabet. Elsewhere, she writes of “thought experiments/to the whimsical tune/ of the scientific mood.” It’s an apt description of Besner’s own work, except that her idiosyncratic “thought experiments” encompass not only science, but also pop culture, art and current affairs.