Review in Arc Poetry Magazine

Looking for ways to start again: Jack Hannan’s Some Frames

Tuesday, July 10th, 2012

Jack Hannan. Some Frames. Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2011.
~reviewed by John Herbert Cunningham


Not often does a reviewer review a poet’s first book, particularly when that poet is not an acquaintance or part of the reviewer’s writing community. But when that poet has been publishing their work in Canadian literary magazines since the 1970s and has published a number of small-circulation chapbooks, the reviewer has to wonder whether they have an Emily Dickinson on their hands. So it is with Jack Hannan and his first book Some Frames (there is some dispute about whether this is a first book, as an earlier, sizable ‘chapbook’ with an ISBN had raised controversy). In a note at the start of the work, Hannan informs us of the reasons why he is so late in getting this book out: the first is that he is “not such a prolific writer,” that he “always liked chapbooks” and that he “stopped writing for twenty years in 1984.” Intriguing! Beguiling!
While a guest on Speaking of Poets (CKUW 95.9 FM Winnipeg), he explained that he had stopped hearing his poetic muse, and so began writing fiction. Some Frames opens with “All Those Moons” where, due to lack of periods or capital letters, one poem becomes many, depending on where your reading stops and how often you reread the poem—something you are tempted to do even before you’ve reached the end. Hannan asks “Who put all those moons up there / and then made your foot twitch like that / when you’re bored, sometimes / days are as populous as cities,” to which a group of children respond “that’s not the real moon.” This tendency toward collage is Hannan’s dominant style. In the title poem, one of the longest in the collection, Hannan telegraphs the punch of the impending collage: “There are five frames, negatives, with a bird / in the fourth frame, from the left, the way the eye reads.” The following passage is from the fourth stanza:

Curling slivers of coloured plastic, turning the way worms

turn the earth inside our wordy hearts, friends

will begin again, out into the negative light of morning, slivers,

the skin of an orange in twisty

arcane pieces, looking for ways to start again.

This is Hannan at his best. There are times, however, when you ask yourself whether he’s attempting to mix levels of language or whether he’s just slipped into a prose rhythm inadvertently. The last few lines of “Untitled art advertisement #39,” for example, move from the specific to the meditative and back: “there’s a sculpture by Barnett Newman, called The Broken Obelisk, / anyway, this is another nice place to be alone / if ever you feel you’d like to be alone in Houston, Texas.” This could be viewed as a satire of the pomposity of the world of art connoisseurs or of the art gallery brochure. Oh, about that twenty-year lapse, Hannan has completed his novel and is looking for a publisher. And he’s not an Emily Dickinson, but a Jack Hannan, and that’s good enough.

John Herbert Cunningham, a Winnipeg writer, is host of Speaking of Poets, has  recently had a poem published in Branch and has also had a couple of poems set to the classical guitar of Rizard Tyborowski. He is in the process  of writing two plays and a novel.

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Read Locally / Think Globally

Poetry must be seen as poetry, but that does not mean it is without social, political, or other relevant meaning. In fact, it is the mark of a great culture to be aware intensely of art as art, and at the same time as the vehicle for civilized values and for the manifold energies of life.   –Louis Dudek

MONTREAL— Poetry Quebec and Chapters are teaming up to celebrate National Poetry Month.  From Monday, April 23 to Sunday, April 29, Chapters (1171 Sainte-Catherine Street W.) will prominently display the books of some of Montreal’s finest English-language poets.

The event will culminate in a special “Meet & Greet” from noon to 5 PM on April 28 and 29, where featured poets—  Susan Briscoe, Mary di Michele, Endre Farkas, Jack Hannan, Steve Luxton, Robyn Sarah, Carolyn Marie Souaid and Gillian Sze – will be on hand, in one-hour shifts, to sign books and share their love of poetry with the public.

According to Endre Farkas, one of the organizers: “Montreal English language poets have played an important part in the development of Canadian literature.  Think of  A.M. Klein, F.R. Scott, Louis Dudek, Irving Layton, and Leonard Cohen— to name a few. And the contribution continues with this new generation of writers.”

“Poems have a way of getting to the heart of the matter. And though many would have us believe that it has no relevance, you just have to surf the net to see the thousands of sites and blogs dedicated to poetry. And it is poetry most people turn to when they want to underline the special occasions in their lives,” says co-organizer Carolyn Marie Souaid.

The organizers and co-editors of Poetry Quebec encourage and invite everyone to come out and meet the poets at Chapters, and support them not only because they are local but because they are good.

Saturday

12-1       Endre Farkas

1-2         Steve Luxton

2-3         Richard Sommer (represented by Vicki Tansey)

3-4         Mary di Michele

4-5         Robyn Sarah

Sunday 

12-1       Carolyn Marie Souaid

1-2         Gillian Sze

2-3         Susan Briscoe

3-4         Jack Hannan

Information:    (514) 488-3185

Founded in 2009, Poetry Quebec is an online magazine dedicated to Quebec’s English-language poets and poetry – past and present. Since its inception in 2009, PQ has had over one million hits.

Poetry awards: Established masters and new voices all merit prizes

 

By Harold Heft, Special to The Gazette November 25, 2011

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Poetry+awards+Established+masters+voices+merit+prizes/5767192/story.html#ixzz1eoHyOh8A

This was a review of 4 books by poets, Susan Musgrave, Phil Hall, Garry Thomas Morse, and me. Excerpted out the paragraphs about Some frames.

Montrealer Jack Hannan has been publishing poetry in chapbooks with limited circulation since the 1970s, but his volume Some Frames (Cormorant, 108 pages, $18), which was a finalist for the QWF’s A.M. Klein Prize, is his first full book publication. It compiles many of his poems published previously in chapbooks and journals, as well as unpublished work.
Hannan’s aesthetic revolves around fragments and impressions. At his best, he provides a sequence of details, allowing the reader to discover a narrative, or to accept that the details don’t require narrative. “A poem in the kitchen,” one of Hannan’s more recent poems, provides a fascinating pastiche of fragments and impressions. It begins with the mundane – “Today I bring home chocolate bees \ penne, a baguette, garlic and milk” – and sees the poet compile random scenes on the métro – “people reading \ over your shoulder, the noise \ of a boy bouncing a basketball on the subway platform.” Midway through the poem, Hannan introduces a hint of menace: “today I heard our own daughter say ‘actually \ it’s all dangerous.’ ” The poem meanders through a sequence of more random impressions before a startling ending: “what’s that person over there doing? \ Oh no!” To Hannan, I would give an award for showing us that poetry can exist in the vérité of fractured existence, and for forcing the reader to do the work of discovery.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Poetry+awards+Established+masters+voices+merit+prizes/5767192/story.html#ixzz1eoIBQJ70

 

Poet Jack Hannan’s award nomination was rescinded, but he isn’t complaining

 

 

By Jeff Heinrich, THE GAZETTE November 19, 2011

 

 

• Story
• Photos ( 1 )

 

 

Poet Jack Hannan’s nomination for a Quebec Writers' Federation first-book award was rescinded, but he isn’t complaining

Photograph by: John Kenney, The Gazette

"Something could be verbed out in a number of ways ..."
A Poem for the Coming Surface, Jack Hannan
MONTREAL - Early prodigy, late bloomer – in his unassuming way, Montreal writer Jack Hannan has been both. His recognition, however, has been blemished by a bit of controversy he didn’t seek.
This is how the story’s arc has gone so far.
In primary school Hannan wrote his first poem, in his early 30s he got published, for 20 years he stopped writing, and now in his early 60s he has come back with a new collection of poetry – and a novel, as yet unpublished.
The poetry collection, Some Frames, got Hannan nominated for two prizes at the upcoming Quebec Writers’ Federation Literary Awards. Unfortunately, it was then un-nominated for one, the Concordia University First Book Prize.
The reason? Some Frames, it turned out, wasn’t Hannan’s first book. He had already published a small collection of poetry in 1978. And therein lies the problem.
Granted, his first book, Peeling Oranges in the Shade, was a modest affair: only about 50 pages long, only 300 copies printed. Hannan considers it a chapbook, a short and limited-edition work.
But it did have an ISBN number – the official seal of a bona fide book.
It was trade-book size, hardcover and published by a reputable independent publisher, Paget Press. And it did sell a few copies outside Canada.
All of the earlier book is included in the new book Hannan submitted for the awards, amounting to 12 of the new collection’s 34 poems, 22 pages of the collection’s 110.
All those factors considered, the QWF decided to withdraw Some Frames from nomination for the first-book prize. (It’s still nominated for the second award from the anglophone group, the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry).
Hannan’s dumping from the shortlist of three first books – all works of poetry – was announced Oct. 11 in a QWF news release. A novel, Spat the Dummy, by Ed Macdonald, was bumped up to take its place.
No one is alleging Hannan or his current publisher, Cormorant Books, did anything wrong.
According to the QWF, they submitted Some Frames as a first book “in good faith on the belief that (Peeling Oranges in the Shade) did not qualify as a ‘book,’ but rather as a chapbook.”
“However, upon learning of the existence of the earlier work ... the QWF determined that its status as a ‘book’ was too ambiguous to allow (Some Frames) to compete for, and potentially win, the first book prize.”
In a separate release two days later (after The Gazette mistakenly reported that Some Frames itself had already been published before), the federation went farther. It emphasized that “there is no suggestion whatever of bad faith or wrongdoing on the part of either the publisher or the author.”
To prevent such “errors” from happening, however, eligibility criteria for next year’s awards “will be made more specific.”
Hannan – who is 62, a devoted husband, father of two grown-up children and has long been a fixture of Montreal’s book world – is rather philosophical about all the kerfuffle over Some Frames.
In fact, he’s already put the incident behind him.
“It was a downer, but we get over these things, you know?” he said in an interview at McGill-Queen’s University Press, where he has been employed for two years as sales manager.
He’d rather talk about his poetry.
“I’m not a person who has a point to make, and I very rarely write with an idea that there’s something I want to say,” he said, explaining his approach.
“Some people call what I do ‘stream of consciousness,’ and in a way I think that’s true. The poems are like journal entries or a log. There’s a kind of rhythm, a flow, a kind of breathing that just kind of grows.”
The second of three children, Hannan was born in Montreal and grew up mostly in St. Laurent and N.D.G. At a very young age, he lived in Buffalo, N.Y., where his mother had gone to receive treatment for breast cancer; she died, and the family moved back to Montreal when Hannan was 6. He wrote his first poem a couple of years later, in Grade 3. “I don’t remember what it was about, but I remember talking about it with my teacher,” he recalled. “She read it, and she was very nice to me.”
His education – formal, at least – ended with high school.
“I didn’t go to university, but I’ve worked in bookstores all my life – that’s my education,” he said. “I’m community educated. You know how people say they’re self-taught? I’m community-taught.” He got his first job at 20, clerking at Browsers Bookshop at Parc Ave. and Milton St. A succession of jobs followed into this century: at Mansfield Book Mart, Classics, Prospero, Coles (now Chapters), McGill University Bookstore, Librarie Raffin.
When he wasn’t working, Hannan was writing – some of the time, anyway. After publishing four chapbooks of poetry between 1978 and 1984, Hannan went into a creative slump. He stopped writing poetry entirely for 20 years, “because I couldn’t hear it anymore,” he explained. “Everything just kind of went ‘thud!’ ” He then embarked on an ambitious series of novels that “grew into this monster” and that he could never bring himself to complete.
Then came the renaissance – spurred, strangely enough, by one of the characters from one of his uncompleted novels. Dwayne was a man like him – a poet. But this fictional character was a bit bolder: he read his poems out loud to people on the subway. Those poems were Hannan’s salvation. “That’s how I got back into writing poetry,” he said. “I couldn’t do it, but Dwayne could.”
The poems became the basis for Some Frames. Under the title Dwayne’s Poems, seven of them appear in the book alongside work from Hannan’s old chapbooks and others that appeared in magazines, as well as some new ones.
Out of Hannan’s aborted series of novels grew a new work of fiction as well. Completed a year and a half ago, it’s a short novel called Raise Your Hands.
Appropriately enough, it’s about the book world. Hannan submitted it recently to a publisher and is awaiting word.
But first, there’s the QWF nomination for poetry. The awards ceremony is Tuesday in Montreal. The other nominees are Asa Boxer for Skullduggery, published by Véhicule Press, and Gabe Foreman’s A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People, published by Coach House; as a debut collection, the latter is also up for the Concordia first-book award. There are also prizes in four other categories: fiction, non-fiction, French-to-English translation, and children’s and young adult literature. Winners take home a $2,000 cheque.
The winners of the Quebec Writers’ Federation Literary Awards will be named Tuesday at 8 p.m. at a gala at the Lion d’Or, 1676 Ontario St. E. Tickets: $15, $10 for full-time students with ID; call 514-933-0878. More details about the shortlisted authors and their books is at the QWF Literary Database, quebecbooks.qwf.org.
jheinrich@montrealgazette.com

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

Review in Montreal Review of Books

Some Frames

Reviewed by Bert Almon

Jack Hannan published poems in chapbooks in the 1970s and 1980s, but Some Frames is his first full collection. His work is subtle and elusive. He has been compared to John Ashbery and there is a resemblance if not an influence: the poems mimic the processes of thought or narrative but rarely deliver an idea or a story. One of the poems which does have extractable content imagines Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman on the sidewalks of New York. When Hannan praises Rothko�s �silent, enormous, and beautiful flat panels,� we are being invited to think of Hannan�s poems as a kind of Abstract Expressionism in word. Of Hannan, one can say he does it very well, whatever �it� might be.

Bert Almon teaches a poetry master class with Derek Walcott at the University of Alberta. 

Montreal Review of Books. Fall 2011

Quebec Writers' Federation rescinds poet's nomination

The Gazette October 12, 2011

Correction appended
MONTREAL - The Quebec Writers' Federation has withdrawn a nomination for the book Some Frames, a poetry collection by Jack Hannan, which had made the shortlist for the Concordia University First Book Prize.
Cormorant Books, the work's publisher, had submitted Some Frames for nomination, believing that an earlier collection of poetry by Hannan published in 1978 was a chapbook and did not disqualify Some Frames from contention for the prize. However, it was discovered that Hannan's earlier poetry collection was published in a hardcover version and sold in several countries abroad, rendering it ineligible for the Concordia prize, according to the QWF. (Some Frames will remain in contention for the QWF's A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry.)
Spat the Dummy, a novel by Ed Macdonald, has been awarded the spot on the Concordia prize shortlist that had been previously given to Some Frames.
The Quebec Writers' Federation prizes will be handed out Nov. 22. For more information, visit qwf.org
Correction: Due to a reporting error, an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Jack Hannan's poetry collection Some Frames had earlier been published as a chapbook in 1978. In fact, it was another collection by Hannan that was published as a chapbook in 1978. The Gazette regrets the error.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Quebec+Writers+Federation+rescinds+poet+nomination/5535603/story.html#ixzz1aelPx2aC

Somes frames was chosen as a finalist for the Quebec Writers' Federation awards.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/move-guide/Quebec+Writers+Federation+announces+2011+finalists/5516074/story.html