The Banquet of Donny & Ari
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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.
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.
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The Banquet of Donny & Ari - Naomi Guttman
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,