Brent MacLaine. Athena Becomes a Swallow.

Boxer, Asa

Brent MacLaine. Athena Becomes a Swallow. Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2009.

Athena Becomes a Swallow, Brent MacLaine's fourth book of poetry, is a classic in terms of psychological depth, creativity, style, angle, and theme. Through a series of 27 original monologues, soliloquies, and diary entries in the voices of peripheral characters from Homer's Odyssey, MacLaine manages to get a new, more relevant handle on epic heroism. Though the poet proceeds with formal diction, lines, and stanzas, and though his subject is antique, the book under review reflects upon present day tensions regarding our relationship with heroism. Certainly, politics, war and conquest are not subjects of song and celebration to us, and, arguably, celebrity and other forms of self-glorification are greeted with some measure of suspicion. But at the same time, we sing national anthems, honour our war heroes and celebrities. Keeping these contradictions in mind, MacLaine makes it new. Rather than raise common experiences to heroic proportions as Modernists such as James Joyce, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and their endless imitators have done, MacLaine deals with the problem of one's relative insignificance on the world stage. "Still, life is a story larger than any mortal can be hero of," Prince Peisistratos states with some resentment, or out of a need to bolster his ego after spending several days with Odysseus's son, Telemakhos. He concludes that "if [his] spears fly well and strike their mark/amid the little wars of life, then [he] should be content/as any man who sailed a roily sea, or murdered beauty's thief/or dreamt a wooden horse, or scaled a Trojan wall." What Peisistratos fails to understand is that heroes are never content. As Teiresias, Prince of Thebes, explains, speaking of Odysseus, "He craves eventfulness the way my shadow/thirsts for its embodiment. After such adventuring,/he should be mumbling mad for peace"--should be, but isn't, implying that the hero is an unusually restless type. The book's main theme is ordinary life in the shadow of the extraordinary. MacLaine's vision is clear and comprehensive in the sense that while he acknowledges the human impulse to take comfort in one's own universe of accomplishments, he is aware too of the reflex to compare oneself to one's betters and the desire to be counted among the greats. Thus while Demodokos, a singer of epic tales, embraces his blindness as a power that "makes the wine much more like wine," and that "amplifies the crowing of the cock at dawn," he is also painfully aware of his handicap and his humble social standing--a difficulty that drives him to compensate by making of his "silver-studded chair [...] a throne." My reservations regarding this work are few but pointed. (1) The title is weak and this volume deserves a memorable title. (2) The worst poems of this collection are those that read like "What-Am-I?" exercises. And (3) In all but one poem employing refrain, the repetition is unwarranted and self-conscious. Alternatively, "The Barley Grinder's Complaint" employs a modulated form of repetition that suits the circularity of the labour described. Written in tercets, each third line alternates between "I greet the dawn and then I grind again" and "Day in, day out, I work the mill and grind the grain." As a result of the convergence between subject and form, it is all a beautiful poem should be. It seems almost petty to get picky with this masterpiece of a book. It's rare that one reads a 90-page collection of poems filled with so much craft, wit, and brilliance.

Asa Boxer *Arc Rave*