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Matronalia

By A.B. Dillon Published by Thistledown Press $20 ISBN 978-1-77187-153-2 "Life had not taught you that you were a girl yet." " ... my brain crawled with biting ants of recrimination.
book pick

By A.B. Dillon

Published by Thistledown Press

$20  ISBN 978-1-77187-153-2

"Life had not taught you that you were a girl yet."

" ... my brain crawled with biting ants of recrimination."

"I am many diaries, and I know where all my keys are, except a few." "I/always/worry/about/the/horses."

 Rarely does a first book make me question: what is this magic? I need to know the who and how. When done exceptionally well, poetry, especially, can stir a cell-and-bone dance like no other genre. It's just happened.

Calgary poet A.B. Dillon's Matronalia slices into the depths of what it is to mother a daughter, and to be mothered by a woman whose ideologies differ greatly from her own. Dillon illuminates what most keep hidden: the fear, the disasters, the terrible responsibility, the drowning in being overwhelmed, the non-understanding, the guilt (on page 78, "Forgive me" is the sole text).

"You have wandered into my ward/and infected me," she writes of a young daughter. She later admits, "it becomes impossible to breathe." While alternating between poems addressed to "you" (presumably the daughter to whom the book is dedicated) and poems about being quite differently parented herself, Dillon weaves a frequently relatable I-can't-believe-she-said- that story.

Lives unfold chronologically, the plot deepening with each fresh revelation. Ah, a lost baby. Ah, a broken partnership. And so it goes. Connected but not like the generations of women revealed in these pieces, these untitled poems are deeply-affecting and honest. 

Interspersed: atypical advice (from "Be a spear" to "sleep in the middle of/your bed") and confessions from a non-conformist mother ("I never organized a mommys’ group or participated in one. I/never discussed potty training or timeouts or brand names" and "I don't recall what your first word was;/I didn't chronicle your every victory").

Interspersed: words that draw a dictionary near ("exsanguinated," "mendicant"), and creative language making ("fadedly," "heavingly"). Interspersed, cryptic lines ... they just drop off. What daring.

Interspersed: realism, madness, depression, Catholic fall-out ("We had to tell the priests, or risk/being unclean") and great love: "When you were very little, I pulled your hair through my/fingers/to make French braids/as if doing calligraphy.” One gorgeous poem pays homage to simplicity, paying attention to "a single pink/peony in a brown glass jar," while another advises a daughter to "Remember who you are,/especially while standing at the bus stop,/or in a bar, near a church/or in the line up at Walmart.

With extraordinary skill, Dillon spins the prosaic into the profound. As a writer and a mother, I'll savour this thoughtful and intelligent book. It gets the sentiment just right, like this: "Maybe I was looking out/the window in that way that mothers do, wondering how it/was I came to be standing there at all.”

There are so many quotable lines in Matronalia my note-taking hand tired from recording them. This is motherhood, as true and valid as the victories and all the little joys, and this new Thistledown Press title is as welcome to the poetry scene as a much longed-for daughter. If you're a mother: read this. If you're not a mother: read this.

— This book is available at your local bookstore or from www.skbooks.com.