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Poetry Canadian

Faceless

by (author) Genni Gunn

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.

Genni Gunn's profile page

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

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