Clare Goulet, Graphis scripta / writing lichen

 

Normandina pulchella / elf-ear

Tender translation,
pulchella whispers
diminutives in dutch,
in finnish, friesian,
little shell, tiny bowl,
hamster, elfin, as if,
in secret, wet bark
on a fallen branch
had sprouted for a prank
a hundred pairs of ears
cut from green felt. Official
status: vulnerable.Crouch.
You must reshape yourself
in miniature to see
this rare thing: a conference
of listeners. Each anopen
invitation to kneel,
place your giant’s ear
on its tiny lobes: itsays
ssshhh, it says: be
smaller.

I’mfascinated by Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Nova Scotia poet Clare Goulet’s full-lengthpoetry debut, Graphis scripta / writing lichen (Kentville NS: GaspereauPress, 2024), a collection of poems approaching language as the means throughwhich to articulate a detailed study. “So pretty it shocks: pink smarties / shakenout of the box,” she writes, to open the poem “Icmadophilia ericetorum /candy,” “picked on a whim / for the green-room rider, pleasure spreading / itsplush blue blanket every which way / over moss.” There is a curious way that Goulet’slanguage propels, composed as field guide, scripting a detail through language thatsuggests hers is a somewhat slippery subject matter: is this a collectionaround the collection and study of lichen, or a means through which to discusssomething else entirely? Possibly both, honestly. Goulet’s poems provide a kindof layering, of waves and sweeps, writing around and through the subject oflichen, multifaceted enough to ply meaning upon meaning. “Lichen as armour istruth inverted: / a bullet-hole flowers,” she writes, as part of “Parmelia sulcata/ hammered shield,” “cancer / takes root, a wound is blessé.”

Thereis something comparable, obviously, to Goulet’s explorations through theminutae of plants, language and Latin to the work of Saskatchewan poet Sylvia Legris [see my review of her latest here], although Goulet seems to offer herexplorations not as an end but as a means through it, such as the poem “Zaubreyussupralittoralis / dreaming,” that offers: “I have not been honest, not toldyou / years collecting lichen made a river of forgetting / which meant notthinking / about him.” Akin to Lorine Niedecker’s “Lake Superior,” or MontyReid’s The Alternate Guide (Red Deer AB: Red Deer Press, 1985), the poemsemerge out of the prompt of the original study of lichen, but instead wrap thatresearch around other considerations, other functions, across the length andbreadth of her lyric. She writes of the Greeks, intelligence reports, ShirleyJackson, Mae West, Plato, Mad Men, cartoon gestures and other touchstones,utilizing her research as both core and writing prompt, offering a solid lineof meaning thick with context. Listen, for example, to the poem “minim,” thatends:

Empty bars of music arewhere you rest,
this white sheet filledwith smallness
as if the whole orchestrahad assembled
for a lone note.
                           OPedicularis
Linnaeus has written
without a word.