Too Bad: Sketches Toward a Self-Portrait by Robert Kroetsch
– available at Polar Peek Books & Treasures in Fernie
– Reviewed by Angie Abdou for The Fernie Fix’s May 2010 Issue

Summer is coming, and that means it’s time for the Fernie Writers’ Conference (along with biking, fishing, cliff-jumping and a few other cool Fernie pastimes). This year the Conference organizers have stepped this annual event up a notch, building a presenter/instructor list that rivals those of the best literary festivals in the country. Watch for workshops and public presentations from the likes of Alison Calder, Steven Heighton, Sid Marty, and W.H. New. Most exciting of all, the keynote reading (July 23) will be given by Robert Kroetsch, “the Father of Canadian Postmodernism.” 

For those keeners who want to do a little pre-conference reading to better enjoy the public presentations, I’d recommend starting with Kroetsch’s novel The Studhorse Man, which won the Governor General’s Award in 1969 and is still taught in university courses around the world. Next, for some hints at the man himself, check out Kroetsch’s brand new poetry collection: Too Bad: Sketches Toward a Self-Portrait. 

We know right from the first poem that this “portrait” is not going to provide an autobiography.  There’s no cohesive and coherent representation of self here, no chronological summary of a life.  Instead, the very concept of self is problematized (or, in Kroetsch’s own words, “the self is unlikely”).  In these poems, the simple question “who are you?” is unanswerable. The cover photo of a man looking down his pants might give you some indication of how seriously Kroetsch takes the question and himself. Self-deprecating wit permeates the collection, and as Kroetsch laughs at himself we learn to laugh at some of our most basic desires – including the need to believe we are more than a fiction.

Several of the poems work towards piecing together this elusive self. We get hints: Kroetsch bit his mother’s nipples; he is the son of a pirate; he wears a bulky red parka that leaks feathers; he’s still waiting for his mother to come find him where he’d hidden near the thrashers with three macaroons and a jam-jam.

Do these details add up to a self? If not, what else do we have?

Self isn’t the only concept that’s hard to get a hold of in this collection. Time is rendered just as slippery. In fact, all of the abstractions that we use to organize (and make sense of) daily life are exposed as illusions. Even “Tuesday” is an illusion: “a name we give to a day/ in a nameless sequence of nameless days.”

This sounds like heavy stuff, but readers who find poetry intimidating can prepare for a treat. I promise that several of these poems will actually make you laugh. Kroetsch blends the mythical with the personal, the sacred with the profane, and the hilarious with the philosophical in a way that is perfectly accessible. Too Bad delivers a precious rarity – poetry without pretension. 

Copyright © 2010 by Angie Abdou, Ph.D.