Whale Years

by Gregory O'Brien

For more than three years, poet and artist Gregory O’Brien followed the migratory routes of whales and seabirds across vast tracts of the South Pacific Ocean, resulting in a collection of poems that stand as a homage to a series of remarkable locations and the natural histories of those places. In three parts, this collection stretches across the Pacific, following whale-roads, weather balloons, and sons at sea, charting historical explorations and other Pacific realisms, such as the Pacific trash vortex, the wavering democracy of Tonga, and the political history of Chile. These poems are an exploration of outlying islands, the ocean that lies between them, and the whale-species and sea birds found there. From Waihi looking east and Valparaiso looking west, O’Brien surveys the cultural heart and health of an ocean in memorable, musical, moving lines.

Genres: Poetry

100 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2015

Reviews

[Boy Blue · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was lured in by the promise of a poetry collection inspired by whale and seabird migratory routes in the South Pacific. Unfortunately, it's more about the locations along the migratory paths than the creatures migrating or the paths they take.

The first book is the weakest and some of the poems feel more like musings from a commonplace book than finished work.

For example.

Isla Negra, Chile

Telescope tree
what do you see?
Hummingbird
what have you heard?

There's also considerable reuse of material across poems. Some of it is the use of certain totems like King Tupou V of Tonga and his death, the Luck Bird, weather balloons, or the Loudspeaker Lizard. I like totemic references in people's work, something like crows in Hughes' work or wells and cats in Murakami's. But O'Brien's totems aren't particularly powerful or well used.

Unfortunately we also get wholesale copy of form and even text. For example a page later from the example above we get.

South-east Pacific

Ocean-sound, what is it
you listen for?

The second (Book of Numbered Days) and third (Memory of a Fish) book are a great improvement.

From

Guitar, Hanga Roa
...Guitar. Sing instead
only of your strings and not
of how this world is strung.

From

The return of Christ to Futuna Chapel
....So it must be, in good time, the tree god is
reclaimed by the ordinary forest, the storm
petrel returned to the storm.

One wonders how much time passed between each book. In the Acknowledgements there's a mention of one of the poems being first read in 2005 and the more recent ones in 2014. That's quite a gap.

There's also a few poems that function more like manuals or summaries of island knowledge. Things like Handbook for the recovery of sea turtles or A crown for the new King of Tonga which aren't great poems but are very interesting little pieces of text. You could probably also read the last book A memory of fish which is a single poem and that would almost sum up the rest of all the work.

The best poems are:

-Luminosity
- The return of Christ to Futuna Chapel
- Mourners of the death of the King of Tonga
- Guitar, Hanga Roa
- A Memory of Fish

Unfortunately one of the best passages comes not from O'Brien but the Christina Rossetti quote at the start of Book Two

What are heavy? sea-sand and sorrow:
What are brief? today and tomorrow:
What are frail? spring blossoms and youth:
What are deep? the ocean and truth.

Lastly, it looks like O'Brien's art may actually be better than his poetry.