Suspended

Kate Hall

Imagine that you're hungry, perhaps scratching your head, half asleep. You have an irresistible craving for chilpote-lime mustard and it's way past midnight. Too many questions are ringing in your head, such as "What are all these Elephants doing in my apartment?"

Kate Hall's Suspended describes a post-something (post-anything, really) existential crisis: "The envelope of pills you sent / arrived the same day as the shipment / of elephants and disembodied /voices. Skeptics do not believe / we can prove we are not dreaming, / but they are very glad for the existence of /anti-psychotics." Using poetry to investigate the natural (and not-so natural) world around us, the speaker of these seemingly confessional poems asks the Big Questions with a lightness and humour that is rare.

Previous poets (Stevens to Tennyson) appear throughout the speaker's mediation, although the old poets don't seem to offer anything but more questions. Just how do we come to terms with existence? Does poetry offer us a convincing solution? Thankfully, in the midst of provoking and exploring such questions, Suspended refuses to condescend an answer. Instead the poems linger, like an insomniac in front of a late night fridge, between pathos and discovery.

 

For a closer look at this book, please visit
Jason's portfolio website.

rob mclennan's review of Suspended.

 

Kate Hall

Kate Hall is a poet based in Paris, France where she is working on her second poetry manuscript and teaching at Quai D'Orsay Language Center. Most recently, her poems have appeared in jubilat, PRISM International, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Open City and Boston Review. With a keen interest in book arts, she was manager and editor for the chapbook publisher Delirium Press from 2000-2007. Kate is a graduate of the M.A. program at Concordia University. She would like to express her thanks to Jason and Aaron for all their work on her chapbook.

   

^back to top