Art Metropole

#13322

Hummzinger

Artist

Maryse Larivière

Date

2017

Publisher

Galerie Division

Format

Artists' Books

Size

9.5 × 15 × 0.2 cm

Length

38 pp

Genre

Poetry

Description

Sometimes we get tired of longing before we remember the sadness that takes its place. Movement is a place to take up longing again. While it moves, a hummingbird is an absurd and bewitching animal. Maryse Larivière allows desire all its dignity in Hummzinger, a torch song in flight. “let me love you”, the poems open, a generous proposal that never becomes the love me-plea. Her accompanying line drawings of hummingbirds are empty but closed, bringing us to that euphoric paradox where hope and certainty come together. To know that the line drawings are tracings of stuffed specimens from the Royal Ontario Museum is to think what it is to document so much pleasure. While Hummzinger retains its optimism in every moment “Like an ice cream sandwich/in black velour”, it is to be held and read repeatedly, in memory. The poems were composed from the words of travelling letter-writers, a collection of expectation. The object binds further than the feeling, but we return to the feeling that caused it there. Loving, the stuffing of longing, is here even where the line drawings ask what that would contain. Sex and knowledge is the answer, wherever you move. To witness this is more work than feeling it. The book remains light.

- Lena Suksi

Perfect-bound, softcover, b/w

Second edition of 100

2016

1.