The Banquet of Donny & Ari

By Naomi Guttman

Under the sugar maples of Montreal, family life is given mythic dimensions
in this sweeping novella-in-verse.

If Dionysus and Ariadne lived in Montreal in the late twentieth century, would he serve veal stuffed with apples and paté de fois gras? Coach nubile young singers in a performance of L’Orfeo? Would Ariadne's thread be fashioned into tapestries of furious elegy in the face of environmental catastrophe? Would their marriage survive?

Amid a fictional marriage in a state of malaise and a real world on the edge of environmental disaster, Guttman lays open moments of vexation and tenderness, of grief, guilt, betrayal and love. Sounding through these moments are the harpsichord and the loom, drawing Donny and Ari, their sons Stephan and Onno, their corgie and their parrot, into the long weave of myth, art and human history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brick Books
• Release date: Apr 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781771313520

Naomi Guttman

Naomi Guttman's first book of poems, Reasons for Winter, won the A.M. Klein Award for Poetry. Her second, Wet Apples, White Blood, was co-winner of the Adirondack Center for Writing's Best Book of Poems for 2007. The Banquet of Donny & Ari: Scenes from the Opera is her third poetry collection. Raised in Montreal, she now teaches creative writing at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY.

Book preview

The Banquet of Donny & Ari

The Banquet of

Donny & Ari

Scenes from the Opera

NAOMI GUTTMAN

Brick Books

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Guttman, Naomi, 1960–, author

The banquet of Donny & Ari : scenes from the opera / Naomi Guttman.

Poems.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77131-352-0 (epub)

I. Title II. Title: Banquet of Donny and Ari.

PS8563.U67B36 2015     C811'.54     C2014-907910-9

We acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Ontario Arts Council for their support of our publishing program.

The author photo was taken by Sophie Kandaouroff.

Cover image by Shutterstock.

Print design and layout by Marijke Friesen.

Brick Books

431 Boler Road, Box 20081

London, Ontario N6K 4G6

www.brickbooks.ca

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Under the sugar maples of Montreal, family life is given mythic dimensions in this sweeping novella-in-verse.

If Dionysus and Ariadne lived in Montreal in the late twentieth century, would he serve veal stuffed with apples and paté de fois gras? Coach nubile young singers in a performance of L’Orfeo? Would Ariadne’s thread be fashioned into tapestries of furious elegy in the face of environmental catastrophe? Would their marriage survive?

Amid a fictional marriage in a state of malaise and a real world on the edge of environmental disaster, Guttman lays open moments of vexation and tenderness, of grief, guilt, betrayal and love. Sounding through these moments are the harpsichord and the loom, drawing Donny and Ari, their sons Stephan and Onno, their corgie and their parrot, into the long weave of myth, art and human history.

In Memory

Sharon Cynthia Herman Mead

and

Ron Gottesman

Contents

Prologue

Hochelaga

Early music

Chernobyl wedding, 1986

Act I: Winter

Argonautica

Feast and famine

Orchard and forest

The clay we are made of

Black leather couch

The book of life

Human Footprint Series: Artist’s Statement

Mouths of babes

Domestic dirge

Supermarket blues

Water cycle

Superhero lullaby

By with it

Backhoe

Hospital solitaire

Shiva

In memoriam: Sonata 1014

Fugue

Act II: Spring

Thin wishes

Minatory spring

Sour teeth

Lecture on the origins of music

The male gaze

Montreal limestone

None the wiser

For every lock a key

Perennial

Theories of play

Beautiful beast

Bel canto

Speranza

Thing with feathers

La dolce vita

Recital

Cockshut

Act III: Interludes

Criss-cross

Felt

Burial

Human Footprint Series: Snow

Human Footprint Series: Western Chorus Frog

Human Footprint Series: Horse Latitudes

Rehearsals: Mastery

Rehearsals: Sight-reading

Rehearsals: Reflection in five acts

Act IV: Summer

Table d’hôte

Ultima Thule

The day after

Down at the farm

Putting by

At Grandma’s farm, after fighting with his brother, Onno lies in bed

Halifax

Popcorn

Off-leash

Radio days

Fog

Chez Toutou

Frère Jacques

Boys

Act V: Autumn

Rosh Hashannah

Garage sale

Fulling

In praise of uxoriousness

The long marriage

Notes

Acknowledgments

About the author

Man undertakes no enterprise in vain,