Decline of the Animal Kingdom Laura Clarke Books
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A debut collection with a fresh approach
Decline of the Animal Kingdom investigates modern constructs of domesticity, freedom, wilderness, and artificiality to paint a portrait of what it means to be human, animal, or both in a society saturated with dog boutiques, trophy hunting, retro taxidermy, and eco-tourism. With brief forays into Algonquin Park and the heart of the 1980s jungle, the book largely draws its energy from the urban landscape, where the animals that interact with the environment have permanent effects on the land and human psyche. A wild deer wanders into the downtown core; the Galapagos and the ethics of conservation invade our Xbox; a mule grows weary of his unrewarding office job and unfulfilling relationships. Exploring the victories and defeats of an urban existence complete with 9-to-5 office angst, the claustrophobia of domestic partnerships in bachelor apartments, and party-and-pick-up culture, Decline of the Animal Kingdom is Laura Clarke’s love letter to the city of Toronto, and to extinct animals and office misfits alike.
Decline of the Animal Kingdom Laura Clarke Books
Poetry collections are usually for me a mixed bag, and so I go into them less hoping for an across-the-board strength (which is rare for me outside the well-known poets) as a few memorable poems, some striking images, and a few lines that linger in the head for some time after reading. Even if that only happens a minority of the time I spend with a collection, I’m more than happy with those few instances. To be honest, it was a close class if Laura Clarke’s Decline of the Animal Kingdom would meet even those not-so-stringent standards. By the time I reached the end of the collection, the playfulness of language and concept had won me over just enough times to make the answer a somewhat tentative yes.In some ways, I enjoyed the overall, holistic sense of the collection—particularly through the prism of its anthropomorphism—more than the individual poems themselves, and the arch absurdist voice more than the particular language, though I did find several poems and lines that stood out amongst the others. And I would say as well that I think more than many collections, Clarke’s does better read aloud, both for its sound quality and for the sharpness of those personas, many of them from the vantage point of the mules that weave in and out of the collection. Reading it silently left me often more than a little detached, while reading aloud gave me a bit more to pin my enjoyment on—the cadence, the sound quality, even just the rush of words and images to carry me along even if I was a bit at sea as to meaning.
For instance, here is the end of “Attention! All Ye Beasts of Miraculous Origins”
You always were a fatherless beast
Pulsing with joke chromosomes—
Amphibious, more toad than horse,
More frog than donkey. The flies knew
And liked to hover, just out of reach
One can hear those similar “o”s and near rhymes in “joke chromosome” “more toad than horse,” “More frog than donkey,” as well as the “f’ sounds that run throughout “fatherless, amphibious, frog, flies” with the “v” in “hover” sliding just nearby.
The sound linkages are ratcheted up even more in “Materials for a Memoir on Animal Location” in lines such as “paper the proper barometer for human behavior” and “Like you the leopard’s lists”
I particularly enjoyed the poems that had fun with the monotony of bureaucracy and office work, as in “Half Hours with Natural History: Animals Natural and Domestic”
Cross-Departmental Memo, Lion Recreational Department to
Leopard Recreational Department
WE RAN OUT OF PAPER STOP
PLEASE SEND PAPER AND TOILET PAPER STOP . . .
PLEASE SEND APPROVAL . . .
Employees request condoms be purchased somewhere
Other than Dolloarama during next order
My brother will not be pursuing any legal action in the
Recent mauling case . . .
This was only of several out loud laughs Clarke provoked, though she is capable as well of provoking moments of thought, as in “In Defence of My Lawsuit Against Lubbock Museum”:
Are we rendered more or less ourselves by an
Arrangement of skin?
The difference between hair and fur, between sleekness
And drudgery,
Between practicality and a dead mule, contained in
Multitudes of shaved
Bone flakes on a hardwood floor.
I wished at the end that I had felt provoked more often, and moved more often as well. I appreciated the playfulness, but my personal bent is for a bit more than that. Which isn’t to say there isn’t more here; my not finding it is perhaps more my problem than Clarke’s. This is also why I tend to get my poetry books from the library rather than purchase them. I do buy the ones that strike me strongly enough times, and while Decline of the Animal Kingdom didn’t meet my “would I buy it” after reading it test, I do think it’s worth checking out.
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Decline of the Animal Kingdom Laura Clarke Books Reviews
Poetry collections are usually for me a mixed bag, and so I go into them less hoping for an across-the-board strength (which is rare for me outside the well-known poets) as a few memorable poems, some striking images, and a few lines that linger in the head for some time after reading. Even if that only happens a minority of the time I spend with a collection, I’m more than happy with those few instances. To be honest, it was a close class if Laura Clarke’s Decline of the Animal Kingdom would meet even those not-so-stringent standards. By the time I reached the end of the collection, the playfulness of language and concept had won me over just enough times to make the answer a somewhat tentative yes.
In some ways, I enjoyed the overall, holistic sense of the collection—particularly through the prism of its anthropomorphism—more than the individual poems themselves, and the arch absurdist voice more than the particular language, though I did find several poems and lines that stood out amongst the others. And I would say as well that I think more than many collections, Clarke’s does better read aloud, both for its sound quality and for the sharpness of those personas, many of them from the vantage point of the mules that weave in and out of the collection. Reading it silently left me often more than a little detached, while reading aloud gave me a bit more to pin my enjoyment on—the cadence, the sound quality, even just the rush of words and images to carry me along even if I was a bit at sea as to meaning.
For instance, here is the end of “Attention! All Ye Beasts of Miraculous Origins”
You always were a fatherless beast
Pulsing with joke chromosomes—
Amphibious, more toad than horse,
More frog than donkey. The flies knew
And liked to hover, just out of reach
One can hear those similar “o”s and near rhymes in “joke chromosome” “more toad than horse,” “More frog than donkey,” as well as the “f’ sounds that run throughout “fatherless, amphibious, frog, flies” with the “v” in “hover” sliding just nearby.
The sound linkages are ratcheted up even more in “Materials for a Memoir on Animal Location” in lines such as “paper the proper barometer for human behavior” and “Like you the leopard’s lists”
I particularly enjoyed the poems that had fun with the monotony of bureaucracy and office work, as in “Half Hours with Natural History Animals Natural and Domestic”
Cross-Departmental Memo, Lion Recreational Department to
Leopard Recreational Department
WE RAN OUT OF PAPER STOP
PLEASE SEND PAPER AND TOILET PAPER STOP . . .
PLEASE SEND APPROVAL . . .
Employees request condoms be purchased somewhere
Other than Dolloarama during next order
My brother will not be pursuing any legal action in the
Recent mauling case . . .
This was only of several out loud laughs Clarke provoked, though she is capable as well of provoking moments of thought, as in “In Defence of My Lawsuit Against Lubbock Museum”
Are we rendered more or less ourselves by an
Arrangement of skin?
The difference between hair and fur, between sleekness
And drudgery,
Between practicality and a dead mule, contained in
Multitudes of shaved
Bone flakes on a hardwood floor.
I wished at the end that I had felt provoked more often, and moved more often as well. I appreciated the playfulness, but my personal bent is for a bit more than that. Which isn’t to say there isn’t more here; my not finding it is perhaps more my problem than Clarke’s. This is also why I tend to get my poetry books from the library rather than purchase them. I do buy the ones that strike me strongly enough times, and while Decline of the Animal Kingdom didn’t meet my “would I buy it” after reading it test, I do think it’s worth checking out.
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