{"id":10803,"date":"2021-01-20T15:47:09","date_gmt":"2021-01-20T10:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/renaissance-normcore-adele-barclay\/"},"modified":"2023-02-14T01:32:26","modified_gmt":"2023-02-13T20:32:26","slug":"renaissance-normcore-adele-barclay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/renaissance-normcore-adele-barclay\/","title":{"rendered":"Transgressionary Norms: Renaissance Normcore<\/em> by Ad\u00e8le Barclay"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s far from the only time in these pages that a man waves his dick around. Recurring as well is Barclay\u2019s encapsulation of power relations in vignettes that combine literary figures with the contemporary. In \u201cBorderlines,\u201d H.D. and Bryher give way to Aeroplan points, Justin Bieber, and then shifting water imagery: \u201cby the ocean I shed my skins \/ and steam with rain and swear \/ I\u2019m going to learn about fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

A focus on astrology becomes more pronounced in the book\u2019s second section, with poems like \u201cOpen Relationship with the Moon\u201d adding bodily imagery: \u201cI don\u2019t want to live under the moon \/ but I\u2019ll stick its sickle and shadow \/ to my right thigh.\u201d The thematic movements of the book, too, work like phases of the moon, not mapped neatly according to numerical divisions but instead shifting and moving around an approximation of more readily comprehensible order. <\/p>\n

The book\u2019s final section is a culmination of previous images. \u201cMoons Can Have Moons and They Are Called Moonmoons\u201d collapses the planetary, astrological, and menstrual into the zanily quotidian:<\/p>\n

like how I track
your menstrual cycle and say
it\u2019ll come on Wednesday
<\/em>because mine was supposed
to come on Monday.<\/p>\n

The moonmoons are part of a dynamic in the book that sees humour approximated by kitsch and camp\u2014as though, in a disorienting reversal, irreverence requires an earnestness that Barclay\u2019s suave, studied knowingness just isn\u2019t interested in committing to.<\/p>\n

The book\u2019s more prosaic third section departs from this compactness. Poems like \u201cHow Old Were You When You Were First Threatened with Libel\u201d tell of traditional gender binaries and allegiances in a way that downplays the collection\u2019s shapeshifting energy. Here a male staff member, addressing the speaker\u2019s circulation of jokes about her teachers, threatens, \u201cIf you were eighteen and male\u2026<\/em>\u201d; the speaker of \u201cI Took the \u2018A\u2019 Train\u201d \u201cwould skip our lessons to trauma bond\u201d with her female piano teacher. There\u2019s a comparative directness, but it comes at the expense of the adept twisting and questioning that characterizes much of Renaissance Normcore<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The final poem, \u201cHow Do You Respond to Conflict,\u201d includes the declaration that \u201clast May in parc Laurier \/ Klara and I made a caffeinated blood pact \/ to dedicate our lives to poetry.\u201d In a sense, this moment\u2014with the located speaker-poet declaring dedication to their artistic practice\u2014illustrates an ethic of work-play that is at the centre of Renaissance Normcore<\/em>. The book splices or personalizes familiar progressive narratives into something momentarily unrecognizable, only to re-reveal them as confident pronouncements in line with the wisdom of the professional-artistic classes. It\u2019s a dynamic of containment that\u2019s indeed normcore, not to mention almost classical in its stylistically masterful command of extra-literary reference\u2014even if its perfection makes one wonder whether Barclay\u2019s fast-moving cultural interrogations could problematize things in some messier, perhaps even more dangerous sense.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Carl Watts<\/strong> holds a PhD in English from Queen\u2019s University and teaches at Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He has published two poetry chapbooks, Reissue (Frog Hollow, 2016) and Originals (Anstruther, 2020), as well as a short monograph, Oblique Identity (Frog Hollow, 2019).<\/p>\n

ARC<\/a> HITS THE HEART HARD.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like the book\u2019s title, the poems of Ad\u00e8le Barclay\u2019s Renaissance Normcore<\/em> move swiftly from unassuming to tightly coiled and somewhat provocative. \u201cYou Don\u2019t Have to Choose But You Do\u201d follows fast from epigraphs by Jenny Lewis and Fiona Apple and into the more traditionally literary, creating a Facebook Messenger conversation between Ana\u00efs Nin and Henry Miller. The deft maneuvering is, by the end of the poem\u2019s twenty-two lines, made comprehensible in the framework of an inequitable exchange: \u201cI read their letters \/ and imagine them both on Facebook Messenger\u2014 \/ all the dick pics he\u2019d send; her, chatting up \/ several men at once and never recycling material.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3275,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"10536,10538,16271","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1373,1463],"tags":[],"genre":[21],"publisher":[202],"issue":[],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3131],"topic":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10803"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10803"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=10803"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=10803"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=10803"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=10803"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=10803"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=10803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}