Reviewer: Louise Carson

---

I love that the first poem in Lynn Tait’s You Break It You Buy It is “He Wants a Dangerous Poem”. Dedicated to Patrick Lane, it encapsulates what Lane communicated to a group of about ten mostly middle-aged or elderly women during a five-day workshop (or was it six?) about ten or twelve years ago. I should know; I was there. My one and only sleepover workshopping experience, at a wondrous writers’ retreat in Eastern Ontario. Lane gave us permission to write about anything. It was mind-blowing.

Tait begins: “What does he mean? / Confess my sins on paper? / Open a vein? Terrorize the public? / Plant traps between lines? / Throw bombs after each period?” Yup, that’s what he meant. In You Break It You Buy It Tait does her best to bring all of that, rehashing her dangerous youth, the stupid things we all (most of us) do; as well as the future dangers, like losing her loved ones, or her mind, or her money, and people—who can be the most dangerous of all—lost or kept. She humorously concludes “the only real danger: / losing my mind while writing this poem. / And the bugs, the damn bugs.” We read on to find how Tait takes this poetic cue and runs with it.

She writes about being a female poet, measured by looks, sex. About corporal punishment and other abuses as a child. About not knowing her father; her mother wouldn’t discuss him. The poem “Clutter” is especially poignant. In the third person, a child is described as being “dusted off, brought out for show / but never placed well” and “hand-crafted, sanded, varnished with guilt / shame or regret.” She sees herself as a damaged toy:

Hair-line-cracked mosaic everyone points at

with eyes glazed as pottery;

held, examined, set back.

Perhaps now would be a good time to mention the book’s cover image: a white porcelain hand, out-stretched, palm up, is cracked in numerous places and has been partially mended with gold. There are still a few bits missing, unfixable.

At least two of the gaps are explained in the next poem “Frozen” where Tait tries to come to terms with her 29-year-old son’s death. That huge loss inevitably connects itself to her lifetime loss of a father she never knew. Much later in life she hears from long-lost relations that he loved her though they never met. She writes “Imagine – loved in absentia”. As if that ever did any good.

In the poem “Crash Landings” the mother who was the source of much misery is described at her end as “blue-pink, a thin paper kite collapsed, / crushing into herself,” while in her prime “she swooped, /dive-bombed us, blaming the wind / for all horrific crashes / her failure / to remain aloft.” As she “burned through both string and tail.” Ultimately, Tait can’t answer the question: “How did this see-through weightless woman / cause so much damage?”

The poet’s final word on her mother comes in “When Mother Passed”. People were reluctant to attend her funeral, and no one knew what to say. Even God “was in no hurry to receive her.” Ouch.

There is some light in the book; a gentle poem called “Our True Friends” in which Tait compares herself (and us) to moths, “our markings smeared in a lop-sided mess.” Friends “shelter us from jagged-edged gaslights / littered with half-dead, broken butterflies.”

“Measures of Forgiveness” contains a beautiful description of family. Someone’s family. Maybe all of them?

look down the long table,

a yard sale of porcelain hearts,

all cracked,

five cent apologies,

fragile in the hand.

You break it, you buy it,

no longer applies.

The first part of the book is called “Disconnections”; the second “The Enemies We Cannot See”. Tait digs deeper into child abuse, suicide, wife abuse.

An interesting poem is “Confessions of an Alice Munro Character” in which the character speaks her truth—made more interesting by the recent revelations from Munro’s daughter circa spring, 2024, after Tait wrote the poem. “All this shedding light burns holes / in my heart. It is Alice, the omniscient child / with magnifying glass torching a single ant.” Whew! And Tait finishes with this request: “Separate me from narratives I cannot retrace without remorse, / or at least, silence the grinding monotony of trains.” The lonely sound of distant prairie trains was referenced earlier in the poem. This is elegant, insightful and literary writing.

I don’t know what to say about “A Litany of Curses for Everyday Assholes” in which Tait rains down pain and suffering on the assholes, except to describe it as a vicious rant with the marvellous last lines: “May they be wing-slapped by angels, / until they see stars.” Which does, in a strange way, offer them redemption, I suppose. Anyway, I wish I’d written it!

There’s also a bit of a laugh to be had from “An Irrational Fear of Citrus Preserves” where Tait explores the nastiness of marmalade, “this spreadable Buckley’s” being my favourite line.

She gets into language in “MRI: My Photogenic Brain Makes Good.” Tait observes “The magnetic blend of shadow and light / how my icing-piped squiggles twist and turn / like a California highway / how grey/white matter telescopes / then    bursts into kaleidoscopic / dance routines without the help / of sugar plum fairies.” And she ruminates on all the stuff the image doesn’t show: memories, fears, physical suffering.

“The Enemies We Cannot See” is for her son, Stephen Tait (1983-2012), who died from a fentanyl overdose. “His enemies drain my blood, as they murder him slowly.” “His death cuts into me. Out pours ooze, nameless and grey, / but there’s a light his enemies forget to swallow. // I close my eyes. / The thought of his heart blinds me.” These are honest and brave words.

There are a lot of poems of mourning in part three Collision Course. But I’d like to end by commenting on “Just a Note to Say”. It opens with “Thank you. / What a surprise! / How kind and thoughtful.” We sense sarcasm. Yup. A couple of lines on: “It’s the prettiest box of darkness I’ve ever received. // The timing was perfect: delivered / while I danced with sunbeams!” Perhaps a gift from a god or fate, if you believe in those things. She continues:

Wish I could’ve kept such a wonderful gift,

but your shadows begged for release.

Rather than re-gift,

I opened the box,

showed them my night dance.

They turned into moon beams

and skipped     across     the stars.

What a powerful acceptance of harsh occurrences: to process them fully, then release them to scatter as beauty. Dear Lynn Tait, I think Patrick Lane would be proud.

---

Lynn Tait is a Toronto-born poet and photographer residing in Sarnia, Ontario. Her poems have appeared in literary magazines and journals including Literary Review of Canada, FreeFall, Vallum, CV2, Windsor Review and in over 100 North American anthologies. She is a member of the Ontario Poetry Society and The League of Canadian Poets. You Break it You Buy It is her debut collection.

Louise Carson lives in a bungalow surrounded with flowers. She dies every winter, to be resurrected by spring. Her poetry can be found in Best Canadian Poetry 2013, 2021 and 2024, and her books A Clearing, Dog Poems and The Truck Driver Treated for Shock. She also writes mysteries, the latest of which is The Cat Crosses A Line, Signature Editions, 2024.

---