Review
LISTENING WITH THE EAR OF THE HEART: WRITERS AT ST. PETER’S
Edited by Dave Margoshes and Shelley Sopher
St. Peter’s Press, 320 pp.
Solitary figures sporting identical black uniforms, taking a vow of poverty and chastity. Am I describing a poetry book launch or a rural monastery? (Well, as far as the poets are concerned, maybe not the vow of chastity.)
Listening with the Ear of the Heart is a weak-kneed collection of works written by writers on retreat at St. Peter’s Benedictine Monastery in Muenster, Saskatchewan. As most writers will attest, the distractions of daily life often detract from their work. How to escape the looming deadlines, constant rejections and requisite lassitude the writing life entails? Get thee to a nunnery, dear writer! The ecclesiastical atmosphere at the abbey is the answer to your ills, according to Listening with the Ear of the Heart’s gushing contributors.
After skimming the 15th set of background notes outlining, in glowing adjectives, the "magic" of the place, I realized just how close shamanism and writing have become in our culture. Sick of such self-indulgent twaddle, I found the urge to throw the book across the room was strong. Instead, I got up from the couch and closed the windows on the noise of my bongo-playing hippie neighbours, the construction crews hammering and the cars careening down my street like they’d just escaped a bank job on 17th Avenue S.W.
Is it really necessary to beat a hasty retreat from life in order to write? Apparently, if you are a Saskatchewan-based poet, you feel the urgent need to get away from it all and just write. The reams of unremarkable writing in this collection attest to the productivity of writers on retreat – but do we really need another anthology of this stuff? Or am I merely thumbing my nose at pretentious poets and short-story writers who liken their work to a prayer and write furiously in their journals before they take a pee in the morning?
There are some gems among the monastic rubble. Sue Goyette’s poetry, David Carpenter’s prose and a terrific short story by Guy Vanderhaeghe save this collection from oblivion, but I would suggest you seek their work out on its own rather than wade through this sentimental collection.
I prefer my writers in the real world instead of tucked away like a madwoman in the attic, or in claustrophobic workshops funded by the Canada Council. How many stories about monks and solitary confinement can one reader endure? I reached my limit at about 30.
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