Faceless
- Publisher
- Signature Editions
- Initial publish date
- Apr 2007
- Category
- Canadian
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781897109168
- Publish Date
- Apr 2007
- List Price
- $14.95
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Description
In Faceless, Genni Gunn explores "the impulse for the edge," a magnetic field between the gloss of the topside world and the grit of the world beneath. Both these landscapes are fascinating and treacherous, haunted by faces that are obsessively worn and shed, torn off and replaced, where identity itself is arbitrary. Impersonation, even of oneself, is the rule. In a piano bar, the musician is a chameleon adapting to the faceless men who sit around her piano. The faceless cadavers in the notorious BodyWorlds exhibits stalk the rooms while, in Gunn's title poem, an ordinary French woman finds redemption in the world's first face transplant after being mauled in a strange accident by her pet dog. To be anonymous in today's urban places is to be free yet isolated, to be in a constant flux of longing for and fear of "the dead and beating heart," both in one's own breast and those faltering in the chests of others. The countless faces that Gunn confronts on the streets of the city or behind closed doors make her important new book such a compelling read–as does the "delicious anxiety" she sees hanging in ecstatic, sometimes terrifying suspense in the liminal spaces between.
About the author
Genni Gunn is an author, musician and translator. Born in Trieste, she came to Canada as a child. She has published fourteen books: four novels -- The Cipher, Solitaria (longlisted for the Giller Prize), Tracing Iris (made into a film, The Riverbank), and Thrice Upon a Time (finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize); three short story collections -- Permanent Tourists (finalist for the ReLit Prize), Hungers, and On the Road; three poetry collections -- Accidents (finalist for the Di Cicco Poetry Prize), Faceless, and Mating in Captivity (finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award); and a collection of personal essays, TRACKS: Journeys in Time and Place (finalist for the CNFC Reader's Choice Award). As well, she has translated from Italian three collections of poems by two renowned Italian authors: Text Me by Corrado Calabro, and Traveling in the Gait of a Fox (finalist for the Premio Internazionale Diego Valeri for Literary Translation) and Devour Me Too (finalist for the John Glassco Translation Prize) by Dacia Maraini. Three of Gunn's books have been translated into Italian and Dutch.
As well as books, she has written an opera libretto, Alternate Visions, produced by Chants Libres in 2007 (music by John Oliver), and projected in a simulcast at The Western Front in Vancouver; her poem, "Hot Summer Nights" has been turned into classical vocal music by John Oliver, and performed internationally. Before she turned to writing full-time, Gunn toured Canada extensively with a variety of bands (bass guitar, piano and vocals). Since then, she has performed at hundreds of readings and writers' festivals. Gunn has a B.F.A. and an M.F.A. from the University of British Columbia. She lives in Vancouver.
Excerpt: Faceless (by (author) Genni Gunn)
Like Ruins
Three weeks they prod calibrate x-ray bones muscles gauge seismic signatures
delicate and black like ruins rows of stones radiating from a cairn
When I hear the word I imagine The Tropic of Cancer your body stretched around
the earth your body the earth Mexico Egypt India Saudi Arabia China
the sun in June directly overhead You are cut-away in profile an exotic terrain
faults a sediment of sentiments layers of lovers the youngest lying between
rivers in the high plateau of the Italian Murge the oldest leaning against Vancouver sky
You are landscape a place to point to YOU ARE HERE like the red dot on a mall schematic
boxed in by lines and squares the earth suddenly flat a constellation a crab in the northern hemisphere
clawing the night sky YOU ARE HERE an X ray irradiating fear
you push us away take solace in your solo dance your breast a thermal aureole a tropic
of cancer while we arc low in the sky Druids used stones surgeons a knife
rituals to spur the sun to burn stave off light
FACELESS
1.
In crowds strangers jostle against her arms and legs In lineups people elbow
in front of her In bars men stare past her She spends a quarter of her pay
on cosmetics – eye shadows liners blushes foundations glows – the rainbow captive
in small compacts And still she is
5.
A quarrel rising counterpoint the girls shrill demand to the mother's martyred sobs
bickers pleas pouts banal exchanges all shout ultimtums the girls slam into the night
thirteen fifteen their bodies high-risk machines the mother calls but they don't veer
the dog barks twice then settles on the rug the woman slumps in front of her TV
today she lost her job her husband gone and now her girls she reaches in her purse
draws out the vial of pills she'll sleep tonight no matter what she'll sleep and show them all
6.
Her dog is a loyal creature He ogles her through one slit eye
Dogs are heroic They dive underwater off 80-foot cliffs to save people from drowning
they climb mountains and dig for avalanche victims one dog waited twelve years for his master
in the lobby of a hospital where he had last seen him This woman's dog at first is not perturbed by her
lying on the couch accustomed to her sluggish ruts Reality TV but as the hours lapse
and the woman doesn't stir he licks her hand and face still no response he licks and licks her mouth and nose
his paws now claw her chin he panics nips at her lifeless lips she finally hears the whine struggles a resurrection
He saved her life her daughters say this dog who mauled their mother's face
SINGLE
3. Animations
Not so different from what happens in the middle years you fall in love again
stupidly like the first time only you're afraid to let yourself be drawn in frame by frame
remembering your past imperfect tracings of a lover's pencil how his animation
created static movements your hair a spider's web your mouth a Venus flytrap
and he always the fly and when you said I love you he sketched a hand in farewell
perhaps it's better left to computer morphing less margin for error just key in first meeting
and render the final kiss embrace the random graphics in between
Editorial Reviews
“In the poems in Faceless, Genni Gunn explores the many masks worn and peeled away in attempts at formulating identity, influencing opinion and finding a place in vast, nullifying or unforgiving landscapes. Sometimes it is nature masking itself as benign, when in reality it has the "furious will" of a wrecking ball, smashing things in its path on the predictably unpredictable cycle of birth, growth and death… When a vital part of physical identity is taken away—as in the title poem where a French woman's face has been ripped off by her own dog, or in "Hands" where two Mexican women each lose a hand in successive industrial accidents—there is only emptiness left behind, and an even greater yearning for acceptance by the world.”
—Event