CRAZY BONE STAR OF LONG POEM
Elegant and ephemeral, Friesen’s work observes an unknowable character
Patrick Friesen creates a portrait of aloneness without loneliness, independence without isolation and human feeling without nostalgia in his booklength poem about Crazy Bone, a peripatetic woman of indeterminate age and ethnicity.
While perhaps an aspect of the contemporary discussions on homelessness and mental illness or even the alienations of social media, A Short History of Crazy Bone is at all times an affectionate observance of nature: “she listens to summer rain/among the poplar leaves … morning glories and peonies/along a weathered fence.”
But it is the quirky title character who is the star of this show: “crazy bone likes a drink/and sleeps in a thicket/she spits on her fingers/to clean her face.”
Crazy Bone is the trickster vagrant, philosopher fool, prancing mendicant — a passel of commons and opposites tramping the semi-rural passages of contemporary times. While she is clearly eccentric, it is apparent that Crazy Bone is nonetheless accepted by her fellow man.
Reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy’s lugubrious oddball study in his early novel Child of God, here we have a character as unknowable amid all the evidence, and yet, unlike McCarthy’s mendacious creation, Crazy invariably defaults to the sweetly benevolent side of humanity.
What truly resonates throughout the book is Crazy Bone’s determination to be, both in practice and in spirit, exactly who she is: crazy finds a broom in a shed and sweeps leaves from a grave crazy bone picks a wild rose sucks blood from her finger she sits to gather her thoughts loving how wind moves a river in the grass Part of the attraction of the writing here is the purely poetic elements the author puts in play — there is the aforementioned liberal use of nature imagery — but also a refreshing absence of punctuation. Unadorned words are thus given full responsibility to carry the subtle narrative of Crazy’s interior thoughts and exterior actions, and their sound and contrast portrays both a physical and intrinsic progression toward higher expression.
Known for decades as a writer of plays as well as verse, Patrick Friesen was shortlisted for the 1997 Governor General’s poetry award for his collection The Broken Bowl.
With this new book he explores the possibilities of the long poem. As a discussion of homelessness, aboriginal issues, mental illness, even the resiliency of the human spirit, A Short History of Crazy Bone delivers literary elegance amid the revelations of uncommon character.
Dennis E Bolen’s poetry collection Black Liquor was published by Caitlin Press in 2013.