The Unsaid by Phil Hall

  I feel a little guilty for this review. I picked up The Unsaid by Phil Hall at a used book sale last year and just got around to reading it. In a few hours, I was able to read the entire collection. Structurally, there are basically three major sections: “The Unsaid,” “All Mouth,” and “The Stone Vote Translated.” Each is a long poem, comprising a series of other poems, making the distinction between pieces difficult; they blend into one another, sometimes in interesting ways. For instance, “All Mouth” presents a series of poems where a footnote poem seems to span across several pages, both related and not.

I admit this book did not get my full attention, and I feel badly about that. It did not get the attention and care poetry demands, so I am able to offer, really, only broad strokes of commentary.

The first section, “The Unsaid,” appears to be a family saga that explores the dynamics between parents and their children. My favourite piece in the collection is “16.” It’s a piece that explores a disconnect in interests and values between the two generations, recollecting to an extent Seamus Heaney’s poem “Digging”, which has the fabulous conceit that instead of digging like his father, he will dig with his pen. In Phil Hall’s version, he writes of “Father sawing skylights / for me to write of you under.” There’s then a parenthetical comment: “(your love not much for words / Mine not much for hardware)”. There’s a beautiful reciprocity despite a clear disconnect. There’s a quietness to the poem I quite appreciate, with both of them “bowed heads [as they] concentrate.” Hall identifies that they are not paying attention to each other, “but upon skills / seemingly so different?” As the poem progresses, there’s a nice materiality to the work. There are “sawdust motes” that make it onto the speaker’s page and the speaker says, “I stop look up & tell you // what I have just written / prodigal wood meets prodigal wood.” It’s a great image for two forms of the same material. Sawdust and paper like the father and son’s skills: two forms of the same species. Then, “both of us wondering / what we did to interrupt the other,” the poem continues. Hall returns to the idea of light that starts off the poem: “Your bare trunk is framed / by more bad weather // Deeper & beneath you / I am lit & darkened by you // & look down pointedly again / to write as your saw resumes.” The notion of existing in a shadow which simultaneously darkens and lightens the experience is a delightful paradox. The final line of the poem does a great job of adding an irresolvable twist, giving a tenuous sense of connection. There’s an italicized outside (the storm cloud?) that states, as if from beyond: “& they do not recognize each other” (29). The poem is a simple moment that just works as being emblematic of so much more to the characters’ interior worlds.

In fact, several of the poems in the collection are imagistic. In the poem “Shoot,” Hall explores the idea of form and content. I am often engaged by discussion of the relationship between form and content and here Hall attempts to separate the two. The poem begins with a question: “Language, not content?” How do we say something without something to say? He then provides a concrete image to make that philosophical problem more material: “What’s left / after you separate the current / of the rapids from its water & stones? // Not current / not rapids, not fish / not even sound // Only a concept of rapids / a canoe theory.” I really like how that metaphor exists in an aphoristic register. The final part of the poem asks, “Why should we enjoy / watching you shoot the concepts / in your theory?” (48). I appreciate Hall’s sentiment here for two reasons. First, I like that it grounds the abstract; if concepts are too abstract, they cannot possibly be engaging. Second, I appreciate that it is geared towards an appreciatory tone. The idea of “shoot[ing] the concepts”—that is, destroying them—is here spoken of derisively in favour of something more productive.

In another section of “The Unsaid,” Hall once again refers to some naturalistic imagery to help create the experience. He writes, “When I press my thumbs into my eyes / I see uproots in frantic leaf shadow / & rocks full of tiny bones holding sway. // I am entering a fossilization of waiting / & can taste petrified resin” (39). When people say they “don’t get poetry,” I’m empathetic. Sometimes it is unclear unless you find a way onto the same wavelength. I think I’ve done it here. I’m picturing the designs that transpire when you press your eyes—the way you see light shining around your veins; alternatively, Hall offers “uproots in frantic leaf shadow / and rocks full of tiny bones holding sway.” That image feels so appropriate and creates a nice affinity with nature that seems to be supported in the lines that follow. As to the following lines: “I am entering a fossilization of waiting / & can taste the petrified resin,” I can only imagine someone considering the next stage of their life, but your guess is as good as mine (that’s the beauty of poetry).

There are, admittedly, some more surrealist passages in the text, some of which I found really engaging. The poem “Inner Handles” is a standout for the more surreal reflections in the book. It begins with the premise of having a recurring dream “of swallowing the dagger that figures / in one of Borges’ stories” (53). It then describes the blade coming out through the stomach with the handle inside, “opposite of how a blade lodges in combat.” In the next stanza, the speaker falls, “stabbing [his] shadow and its earth” (53). The reflection discusses how “this is a poetic dream of process and intent,” which gives the poem mysterious quality. The following passage explains:

    Each of my poems is a fortress built for a party. How

    entrancing the melodics of opposition to self can be! How

    useful the poems that leave all their handles inside!

It’s a bizarre comparison. I really like it, even if I can’t quite conceptualize it. He continues, “Useful: the lathe inside grinding out hopefully elegant tools.” It then becomes a discussion of the real and the other-worldly. He explains how “Having a grip on the handle inside me allows me to love / the details of this world, each gimcrack/talis-shard” (53). Returning to a motif of “the unsaid,” he follows up that groundedness in the world with the notion of “our enemies lay[ing] their eggs in what we cannot say to each other, or / in what we take too long to say” (54). The penultimate stanza of the poem references the “potentially sexual imagery” of the poem, which might have been left out, but it ends on the idea of how “my poems are a / sifting of tumors from conditioning” and I quite like that. Ultimately, Phil Hall (or at least his speaker) characterize his work as “a scab-picker from way-back” who has “always found power-nodes / Under crusts and camouflage” (53). The disruptiveness of that image is just excellent.

“The Stone Vote Translated” section of the book is a series of shorter poems that are provided with accompanying illustrations, like bpNichol or Leonard Cohen. One small poem in this section offers intriguing metaphors, as well. The poem starts off with some imagery: “From these resolute hills / —their dry knuckles / cracking in flames / ‘til the groves are blue // sand’s sarcastic whisper / shoreward / sweat’s grimacing / thin silver trail” (57). What I like most, though, are the final two lines, which offer a whimsical and deep metaphor: “tenuous little suction-cups / of memory” (57). It’s cute and meaningful all at once.

Ultimately, I appreciate Hall’s tone and approach. While I didn’t feel consistently gripped by the poems, the moments that I found myself on the same wavelength were really striking. To keep my review simple, I would say: I have a generally favourable opinion of The Unsaid.

Happy reading!