The poetry of uneven transitions

Continuity Errors, by Catriona Wright

Like everyone else, I use trees

As a metaphor for myself

And my dream community

“Species Loneliness”

Continuity Errors

By Catriona Wright

Review by John Crump

In movies, as in life, continuity is important. A continuity error in film is when a character appears in a red sweater and then, in the next scene, the sweater is green.

“The pandemic was a weird continuity error,” says poet and former Glebe resident, Catriona Wright. “So was pregnancy during the pandemic.”

Wright’s third book is aptly named Continuity Errors, and she was back in Ottawa recently to read from her new work at Perfect Books on Elgin Street. The morning after, she relaxed in her parentsʼ garden on First Avenue.

Wright grew up in the Glebe and shadows of the neighbourhood appear here and there among the 33 poems in this small collection. “I was born on a dead-end street” is about living close to the old exhibition grounds but not seeing it.

My bedroom window faced a brick wall.

From my brother’s you could see The carnival, those Ferris wheel spokes Loud with orange lights. I was stuck With the bricks and their boring Secrets. They were terrible best friends.

“Fifteen” is, well, another continuity error – between childhood and something else, as yet undefined.

I smoked pot in a rhododendron cathedral by the canal, pink petals sputtering through thick plumes. I parted branches and entered the afternoon. In the canal’s radioactive waters carp thrashed to the surface. We fed them Pringles and Sour Patch Kids, bright corpses covered in powdery down, the first frost. Sour. Sweet. Gone.

There is a literary story behind her name. When her mother, Jean, was carrying her, a book fell from a shelf. It was Catriona, Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1893 sequel to Kidnapped

“Predestination,” the contemporary Catriona says. She was meant to write. Growing up in a house full of books, with her parents reading to her and then becoming a voracious reader herself, as well as a regular at the

Sunnyside Library, Wright was always making notes and writing. Nevertheless, the former First Avenue student originally wanted to be a veterinarian. And while the family had a small menagerie of cats, geckos and fish – “I wanted a ferret,” she says – Wright credits James Harriot’s Animal Stories for inspiring that scientific dream.

But her high-school journey at Glebe Collegiate and the influence of teacher Joshua Pattison led to a different path, and an undergraduate degree in English Literature from McGill and a master’s in creative writing from the University of Toronto.

When she’s not writing poetry or looking after her young son, Wright teaches communications to engineering students. She also convinced U of T to let her teach a creative writing course, also to engineers. It’s completely voluntary, she explains, an elective for those who want something more than numbers.

Her poetry at times seems very personal. But it’s also creative writing. “People always assume it’s you, even if it’s from the perspective of a sea monster,” she says.

Asked if having her words out in the world makes her feel vulnerable, she replies: “You are vulnerable but it’s a compulsion.” Even without being published, “I’d be doing it anyway.”

But some of it is very personal and very funny. “Keep the channel open” describes her son finding his voice:

Concentrating, concatenating, my infant son splices syllables with white noise, gurgles, word clatter, the endangered bleeps, clicks, and static of dial-up internet, the accelerated grind of an asteroid mine.

While white noise of a baby finding his voice and the transition into parenthood may feel like continuity errors, in her poems about pregnancy, its hope, fears and absurdities, Wright connects to all women who have felt a new being within. From “How to Expect: A Triptych”:

. . . Some days I think you’re a prank

I’m pulling on my past

We

Continuity Errors

Toronto, Coach House Books. Available at Octopus Books, Perfect Books and Amazon.ca.

My birth plan is no pain and the glaciers stop melting I can’t fix the world before you get here.

I hope you like your name Catriona Wright is the author of two other volumes, one of poetry and another of short stories. She will read from Continuity Errors in Vancouver, Waterloo, Montreal and other cities over the next few months.

John Crump is a Glebe resident and former journalist.

Marriage Story (US, 2019)

Directed by Noah Baumbach

Review by Iva Apostolova

With the summer season upon us, the silver screen once again becomes dominated by adventure flicks, action movies or sequels (think the next installments of the Guardians of the Galaxy, The Meg 2, Fast X, Mission Impossible, the list goes on). Don’t get me wrong, I love some hi-fi action with special effects bursting from every corner of the big screen! But while the multi-million-dollar franchises are, by design, for sheer entertainment, my nostalgic craving for something quieter got me clicking through several streaming channels. To my delight, I landed on an original Netflix movie that I intended to watch when it first came out, right before Christmas in 2019, but never actually did. Directed by the indie phenomenon Noah Baumbach (holding writing and directing credits for such indie cult classics as The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Squid and the Whale and, my personal favourite, the screen adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox), Marriage Story stars Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver in the title roles, with the talented Laura Dern and the legend Ray Liotta as the two divorce lawyers. Apart from the delight of seeing the now late (sob!) Ray Liotta on the big screen again, the movie is a hidden gem in its own right.

The plot is as simple as it is multi-layered. Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) are both domestic and professional partners. Charlie is a theatre direc- tor and co-owner of a small theatre company off Broadway, and his wife Nicole, once a Hollywood child star, is the main actress in all Charlie’s stage productions. Until one day when Nicole decides that she has had enough and files for divorce. It is not immediately clear what has brought this change of heart, especially given that there is a child in the mix. What may add to the puzzlement is that the movie opens with Charlie and Nicole narrating what they love the most about the other.

From this point on, the story follows with enviable realism the psychological ebbs and flows of the process of dissolving a marriage: from the original betrayal, real or imaginary, through the snowballing practical difficulties, to the persistent heartache so deep and unexpected that it threatens to dissolve one’s own sense of personal identity. While one may fool oneself that there is always a villain and a victim, Marriage Story convinces that in every partnership, it indeed takes two to tango.

Romantic drama with an edge

Punch-Drunk Love (US, 2002)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Review by Angus Luff

Punch-Drunk Love is a 2002 romantic drama written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a lonely, frustrated, self-loathing man who lives by himself. When he meets the mysterious Lena (Emily Watson), he falls in love with her, but while he starts to open up his complex feelings and emotional problems to those around him, he must deal with a scam phone-sex line led by Dean Trumbell (Phillip Seymor Hoffman) as they harass Barry and attempt to rob him.

A bizarre turn from Anderson at the time of its release, Punch-Drunk Love is a uniquely stylized romance that seems to deviate from Anderson’s previous longer, denser and slightly more prestigious films. Punch-Drunk Love is

What was really interesting to me was that at one point, Marriage Story makes a reference to another cinematic masterpiece, the classic Scenes from a Marriage: while visiting Nicole in Los Angeles, Charlie looks through the framed pictures on the wall in her house and sees a newspaper clipping of when presumably their own theatre company staged Scenes from a Marriage in New York. My theory is that this scene was Baumbach’s subtle nod to the inspiration for his own movie – Scenes from a Marriage explores the journey of a couple through marriage, divorce and then a re-coupling of sorts.

The original, semi-autobiographical Swedish mini-series from 1973 (six episodes in total) was written and directed by the legendary Ingmar Bergman. Following the success of the mini-series, Bergman turned it into a theatrical play and later into a long movie which received many accolades, including a Golden Globe. In 2021, Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain reprised the roles of the a film built around feeling and atmosphere rather than plot, which will put off some and entice others. I find the film endlessly fascinating, captivating and exceptional. Anderson weaves together a tone through beautiful cinematography, haunting music and creative choices that feel so singular yet also so broad. The film constantly feels like it’s hitting an emotional experience that is unique and unexplainable but also universal. The film feels so alive with its emotions of frustration, confusion, anger and pure, unapologetic love and caring for another. The blue and red lens flares spilling into the frame help emphasize and complement scenes of romance and passion, as Jon Brion’s endlessly enchanting score perfectly reflects the ideas and themes the film presents. The film has such a lush, deep emotional texture that you can cut it with a knife. I love films that capture such a unique and profound image or tone in their storytelling; it’s no surprise this film hits me the way it does.

The film can also change tone on a whim, becoming romantic and whimsical, then anxiety inducing. This tone shift feels reflective of the main character Barry Egan, who runs the gamut original Johan and Marianne (in the American version, Jonathan and Mira). Although I always preach going back to the original source, I have to admit that the 2021 adaptation of Bergman’s masterpiece was nothing short of brilliant – it haunted me for weeks. But where Bergman is relentless in his dissection, episode after painful episode, of the human heart, leaving his viewers as raw and aching as his protagonists, Baumbach has opted for a more heartwarming and at times even humorous depiction of the evolution of romantic love. Where Scenes from a Marriage leaves both characters desperate, vulnerable and longing for something else, Marriage Story ends with a glimmer of hope for the poor battered human heart.

Running time: 2h 17m

Rated 14A

A Netflix original movie of emotions – happiness, confusion, anger, sadness – in a short amount of time. Barry feels so alive and relatable because there’ve been times when we’ve all felt confused and radical in similar stressful situations; in Barry’s case, it’s a run-in with his belittling older sisters or a scam phone-call company stealing his money. He represents the point when we just break away from rational thought and start running through every possible bad scenario that can happen at a given moment. Adam Sandler plays this role amazingly, as he nails the characteristics of a man who is uncomfortable with who he is and how he acts. He changes his walk and manner, it seems, around different people, he fumbles his words and butchers his thoughts. Sandler, along with Anderson, makes great strides in making this unique and unconventional lead character feel sympathetic, relatable and real. The film has incredible aesthetics that help drive the compelling character and romance, but without a strong performance from Sandler to sell his insecurities, freakouts and alienation, the film would not be as successful as it is.

Iva Apostolova is a professor of philosophy at Dominican University College.