Letters I Didn't Write

Letters I Didn't Write is a contemplative collection of poems imbued with a sense of longing for opportunities lost and lives unfulfilled. Acclaimed poet John Mackenzie explores a sweeping range of subjects, from the tragedies of war to the musings of a discouraged physics major to the violent end of Spanish poet Federico Garc�a Lorca. At the centre of MacKenzie's collection is a series of poems inspired by country singer Hank Williams, "an angel from Montgomery/who has written himself like a virus into music."

Ultimately, MacKenzie's finest skill is his ability to transport readers to a greater context of human relationships, community, and our search for home and a sense of belonging. His questioning brings us all closer to "the fragments found scrawled/in the margins of silence, disaster, epiphany."
 
John MacKenzie is another poet I've been reading for years, and he keeps getting better and better.... His new book invokes Hank Williams and Federico Garcia Lorca with equal aplomb (among other things), demonstrating not only his technical skills, but also his chameleon-like command over a poem's voice.
--Paul Vermeersch, author of The Reinvention of the Human Hand and Between the Walls
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For anyone with an interest in poetry, here is a book worth the read. John MacKenzie's Letters I Didn't Write immediately grabs the reader with its conciseness and its poignancy. MacKenzie seems to derive much of his creative power from his solid use of peculiar yet striking similes, a strong sense of rhythm (most noticeably in his dedicatory "Hank" poems at the beginning of the collection), as well as his use of repetition and consistency of tone.

MacKenzie was born in P.E.I., and after years of writing poetry and traveling across the nation he has settled down in Charlottetown, which is his home base for writing and publishing poetry. Writing since he was 19 years old, and crediting his intuitive grasp of verse and rhythm to his devout Christian upbringing with the King James Bible, MacKenzie has created a unique poetic persona which is all his own. However troublesome the idea of reading a conservatively educated poet may seem to a largely liberal student body, don't let your preconceptions taint your interest in this talented Canadian poet. From what I have read there is no evangelical motive to his verse and, although his poetry is very inward-looking, there appear to be few or no religious projections. Instead MacKenzie is exploring a much more deeply-rooted human anxiety.

The title alone speaks to something I think we all share. Letters I Didn't Write focuses on plans unfulfilled, anxieties that lie fixed in the past, and, at the heart of the collection, the tragedy of a life cut short in the middle of its creative youth. MacKenzie draws inspiration from the Spanish poet/matador Federico Garcia Lorca who died an untimely death from fatal injury in his last bullfight.

MacKenzie's collection is also influenced by the tumultuous life and mysterious death of singer/songwriter and country music legend Hank Williams. Williams, at 29 years old, having won several prestigious music awards, achieved countless chart-topping singles, and after having defeated a long addiction to alcohol, died in the back of a limousine on the way to a performance. Although background knowledge of the lives of these people is not necessary for the enjoyment of MacKenzie's poetry, it certainly allows the reader to catch the many allusions MacKenzie includes in his "Hank" poems, which evokes certain emotions, images, or tones important in interpreting the deeper meanings within the verse.

When asked about his thoughts on Canadian literature and its creators, MacKenzie writes, "I suppose my only complaint about "Canlit-makers" would be - and this is a gross generalization - that the ongoing arguments between writers about regionalism, provincialism etc, ignore the fact that an inward-looking literature - by which I mean something which can be described as "Canlit" and held up as a goal to be striven towards - is in itself a regional and provincial literature. Limiting oneself as a writer or as a reader to what is produced in one's own country is, in my opinion, stupid, arrogant, cowardly, and, worst of all, counter-productive to writing [...]"

From this perspective on Canadian literature, one can see that MacKenzie is striving to write something that resonates beyond Canada, and is looking for a deeper, and more global truth. I'm not sure what the final conclusion is in this collection, or if indeed the poetry actually goes beyond reflection, but I will say that MacKenzie does hold merit in the field of poetry. He has set his goals high and strives for deep meaning in his writing. His variety of imagery and simile present the reader with a familiar world and re-creates it in a beautiful way. He evokes the youthful spirits of life cut short and celebrates their colorful legacies with rhythmic verse and a dark, mournful tone.

Regret in things lost, forgotten, or simply put aside is something we have all experienced, it is something we are constantly re-living in our minds; we frequently find ourselves wishing for a chance to do something over again. MacKenzie calls on us to realize that this is not something isolated in ourselves, and that it is something we are each still able to change. After all, the collection itself is a testament that, although there may be things you have left undone; papers you didn't write, things you didn't say; there is yet time to reanimate these hopes and goals and see them through to the end.
--Justin Kerr, The Argosy, Vol. 138, Issue 9
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The economy of simple words is used to great effect, capturing the emotional weight of the moment, a moment we are encouraged to hold and treasure because the sad beauty it possesses is ephemeral.
--Paul W. Harland, Journal of Canadian Poetry
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Nightwood Editions
ISBN: 9780889712379
Paperback / softback
5.25 in x 7.5 in - 96 pp
Publication Date: 17/10/2008
BISAC Subject(s): POE011000-POETRY / Canadian / General 
Thema Subject(s): DC-Poetry