Poet Fortner Anderson pads about the city burning with hope, crying into his notebook and laughing out the side of his sidewalks. His new collection — a daybook titled Solitary Pleasures — takes twin form as both an intricately printed book and a CD featuring recorded recitations of 35 poems on a bed of musical nails. Fingernails bitten, painted, cracked, searching. The sound and echo of the city and its solitary pleasures, as painted by this sweet-singing adventurer of the everyday.
Read, first — each page, each word, each letter carefully handcrafted and pressed by designer Fabrizio Gilardino — the melodic honesty of these blunt and blushing snapshot poems delights, invites, launching tiny fireworks with words of fire. Compassionate. Carnivalesque. Curious.
Listened to, later — Fortner’s rasp supported by the lucid musical dreams of Alex St-Onge (bass), Sam Shalabi (electric guitar) and Michel F Coté (drums and microphones), these same poems turn bleak, amidst liminal harmonic musings they hector and hurt. Contemptuous. Coruscating. Cutting.
The city wrestles with hard feeling. The poet strolls into scene after scene licking up scattered personal truths like hits of acid. We share his trips via the ear, the eye, transforming solitary pleasures into momentary mutual metamorphoses.
It helps.
blogue@press-4638
press@4638

blogue@press-4640
press@4640
Diary of a year in verse / Spring and summer months over-represented / Anderson’s declarative voice backed by minimalist noise trio / Shalabi, guitar / St-Onge, sensitive bass and electronics / Côté, drums and eerie microphone feedback / Daily mundane observations / Bodily functions, scenes on sidewalks, cats in the park / Alternate with metaphysical ramblings / Friend’s experience with chemotherapy / Very Montreal / Weather references / Drive to the country / Talk of the Casa, Pharmaprix and drinking. 8/10
blogue@press-4635
press@4635
[Translation] A nice recording made at Studio 270 with poet Fortner Anderson reciting and inhabiting his poems (presented as excerpts from a diary), backed by improvisers Michel F Côté, Alexandre St-Onge, and San Shalabi — almost Klaxon Gueule. Dark texts and creaking music.
blogue@press-4605
press@4605
Some entirely different is the music of Fortner Anderson, although its better to say the poetry and a bit of music of the person in question. We have reviewed his work before. Here a work of thirty-five short pieces, like a diary. Each piece starts with a date introduction and something about that date, along with improvised music of Michel F Côté, Sam Shalabi and Alexandre St-Onge on drums, guitar and electronics. Unlike Six Silk Purses: The Poems Of Fortner Anderson, this has however less variation in the execution. The voice is the same throughout and the music is all highly freely improvised. Some of these poems are quite nice, or even funny and sometimes sad (about a friend on chemo) but I wonder if I rather read the book (which is apparently also available, but I didn’t see it) and hear the music separately, but perhaps I am just not that much a poetry kind of guy. Or a CD single would be more in place and not one that lasts forty-eight minutes.
blogue@press-4600
press@4600
Intrigante proposition que celle-là. Du spoken-word, très proche de la poésie du quotidien, petites vignettes supportées par une orchestration simple de musique électronique et acoustique. La voix est juste, posée, pénétrante, la musique post-industrielle, rêche… très bon!
blogue@press-4588
press@4588