Catalogue d'oiseaux

By Aaron Tucker

Catalogue d’oiseaux recounts a year in the life of a couple separated by distance, carefully documenting time spent together and apart. When reunited, they embark on travels across the globe—from Toronto to Berlin, Porto to the Yukon. This expansive poem moves sensually through small, intimate spaces and the larger world alike. Traced through art, architecture, and the cultural life of various cities, this stunning celebration of love lives between geographies and chronologies as a kaleidoscopic gathering of the many fractals that make up a couple's life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bookhug Press
• Release date: Apr 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781771666954

Book preview

Gilt-framed picture of clouds against a green background.

Catalogue d’oiseaux

Catalogue d’oiseaux

Aaron Tucker

Book*hug Press

Toronto 2021

FIRST EDITION

copyright © 2021 by Aaron Tucker

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Catalogue d'oiseaux / Aaron Tucker.

Names: Tucker, Aaron, 1982- author.

Description: First edition.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210114231 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210114258

ISBN

9781771666947 (softcover) |

ISBN 9781771666954

(

EPUB

)

ISBN 9781771666961

(

PDF

) |

ISBN 9781771666978

(Kindle)

Subjects:

LCGFT

: Poetry.

Classification:

LCC PS 8639.U25 C38 2021 | DDC C811/.6—dc23

The production of this book was made possible through the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Book*hug Press also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Book Fund.

Logo: Canada Council for the Arts Logo: Ontario Arts Council

Logo: Government of Canada Logo: Ontario Creates

Book*hug Press acknowledges that the land on which we operate is the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples. We recognize the enduring presence of many diverse First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples and are grateful for the opportunity to meet and work on this territory.

Love for her was a heroic exercise; the pleasure of it was mingled with trials of courage and generosity and dedication and straining of all the faculties of her being. Their world was a world of trees—intricate, garbled and impervious. ‘There!’ she would exclaim, pointing to a fork high in the branches, and they would launch out together to reach it and start between them a competition in acrobatics, culminating in new embraces. They made love suspended in the void, propping themselves or holding on to branches, she throwing herself upon him, almost flying.

—Italo Calvino, The Baron in the Trees

here

and here and

here

and over and

over your mouth

—Phyllis Webb, Naked Poems

on polished cobblestones, we wander past sheer buildings

lightsoff storefronts fragrant with Porto’s famous soap

water lily & lavender in the layers of your dark hair

& your wild-ice eyes, vivid & frontier, a hawk’s double fovea

plucks the view from vertical wind: Mosteiro de São Bento da Vitória

blocks & arcs of granite ornament & dimensions

we enter the thin yet cavernous labyrinth

you, high albedo, linger over the igreja goldwork

fine figures woven in arrangements of dance

around its famous singing monks

point to the foundation stone, its heft, dom

the weight around which all else was built & revolves

beyond, our circumpolar view of the city slopes to the Douro River

then the mismatched orange rooftops staggered upbank

bolide, you watch a slender boat slide downstream

& I think of Pessoa & Harvestwoman’s opening line

But no, she’s abstract, is a bird

& in this harbour city, I’m dependent on

you, the water moving through