Review
Strength of former MLA Jocelyn Burgener's poetry lies in glimpses of her life
Naked Under My Coat: Writing Under the Influence of Parkinson's reviewed by Catherine Ford in the Calgary Herald
Saturday, January 04, 2014 
I am no poet. I still cringe thinking of the truly awful poetry I wrote as a teenager.
Despite being raised with a father who loved poetry - car trips were punctuated with recitations of so-called "story poems" and I can still ream off most of the 96 turgid lines of The Ballad of East and West, by Rudyard Kipling - I remain unqualified to be a critic of poetry. That said, Jocelyn Burgener's poetry, which constitutes the bulk of Naked Under My Coat: Writing Under the Influence of Parkinson's, is decidedly not turgid. Much of it is insightful, some poignant enough to make a reader pause - Hips ends with these lines: "Who will hold me/When I cannot move" - and some are beautiful, as The Same Day, a tribute to her children's shared birthday, two years apart on March 23. Many of her poems are visually appealing, the words forming the shape of her subject. Yet the strength of this work is not in the poetry, but in the sometimes tantalizing glimpses of her life, occasionally downright amusing. (Her vivid prose in Hole In One, a description of somehow managing to hit herself in the mouth with her own golf ball is laugh-out-loud funny.) Too bad she didn't expand on those themes and left some of the poetry in her Delete file. She uses only first names when she names people at all. Calgarians who have been here long enough to remember her stint as a municipal and provincial politician - she was an MLA from 1993 to 2001 - will try to fit names to real people. We know her politics are decidedly conservative, her family grown (she's the mother of four children, one of whom is the well-known singer/songwriter Matt Masters), her marriage to architect Peter Burgener dissolved many years ago. None of these facts are in her writing. They are readily available elsewhere. (And, full disclosure, it helps that I've known her for years, although we've never been close friends.) She is Roman Catholic and her writing about growing up under that influence will be recognized by the rest of us who were raised in the same fashion, including the punishment meted out by the "spare the rod; spoil the child" kind of parents. "My father loved order; my mother thrived on chaos," she writes. Burgener was kicked out of the house at 19 and I want more of that story. When she writes she "never questioned my parents' love" there seems a distinct divide between what happened and what she feels. There are accusations of infidelity and painful attempts to "fix" a relationship post-affair. More of that, too, please. More details, more intimacy and more of the who, what, where and how variety would have made this a much more popular book. Poetry might be songs without music and appeal to a literary crowd, but it's the juicy details of a diverse life that makes a memoir, albeit Burgener doesn't call her book that. Yet the ring of truth in her revelations would make any reader, not just me, long for more detail and more insight. Burgener calls her diagnosis of Parkinson's "a gift." Most of us would question such a statement, given the devastation of that cruel disease. |
Testimonials
Naked Under My Coat is brimming with life: It has energy, rhythms, eccentricities, happiness, sadness and beauty! In one of her stories in this collection, Jocelyn Burgener writes: "Each encounter revealed a familiarity that was eerie…Perhaps need and fear have an aura of familiarity because they are so tangible." The two sentences are the writer's fingertips pressing the inside of the reader's wrist; the felt-meaning of the words that fill the book. Jocelyn creates an aura of intimacy in her writing. The reader is invited into the conversation, even as she is picking up the pieces of her life. Naked Under My Coat reveals the author’s keen powers of observation, and a voice that speaks with clarity whether posing questions, or exposing a painful truth. “Jocelyn Burgener’s book of ideas, insights, stories and poetry kept me reading even as my daily newspaper press deadlines closed in on me. That’s a good sign. “Naked Under My Coat: Writing Under the Influence of Parkinson’s” holds many pleasant and thought-provoking surprises. As a self-described DLHPAC (Dyslectic, Left-Handed, Parkinson’s Afflicted Crocheter) there is something for everyone in Jocelyn’s collection of naked exploration of the human condition and autobiography.” The beauty of Jocelyn Burgener's writing lies in its vulnerability. Her words - in prose or in poetry - are poignant in their description of truth. |
She does write that this book arose from the fact that her handwriting was becoming increasingly illegible, so she turned to a keyboard, which, she writes, "provided a clarity to my writing that had eluded me in my handwritten journals."
(A counterpoint to Burgener's seemingly blithe statements about a serious degenerative disease of the central nervous system can be found in Dave Pommer's blog, The Parkinsons Papers (www.parkinsonsinalberta.blogspot.ca) an ongoing frank and sometimes funny look at what my friend and former colleague is enduring as he too, lives with the reality of disease. He writes in the first posting on his blog: "My task in the theatre of life is to play the role I've been given as best I can. This deal doesn't come with do-overs.") Burgener was diagnosed - showing God's sense of humour she writes - at a low point in her life. She had just been divorced, just sold the house and believed the worst was over. God had other plans. She writes: "A future of dependency is now on the horizon. Unlike heart disease or cancer my diagnosis was life altering but not life threatening." One thing is for certain: Jocelyn Burgener, like Dave Pommer, is not going gently into Dylan Thomas's "that good night."
Catherine Ford is a retired Herald columnist.
(A counterpoint to Burgener's seemingly blithe statements about a serious degenerative disease of the central nervous system can be found in Dave Pommer's blog, The Parkinsons Papers (www.parkinsonsinalberta.blogspot.ca) an ongoing frank and sometimes funny look at what my friend and former colleague is enduring as he too, lives with the reality of disease. He writes in the first posting on his blog: "My task in the theatre of life is to play the role I've been given as best I can. This deal doesn't come with do-overs.") Burgener was diagnosed - showing God's sense of humour she writes - at a low point in her life. She had just been divorced, just sold the house and believed the worst was over. God had other plans. She writes: "A future of dependency is now on the horizon. Unlike heart disease or cancer my diagnosis was life altering but not life threatening." One thing is for certain: Jocelyn Burgener, like Dave Pommer, is not going gently into Dylan Thomas's "that good night."
Catherine Ford is a retired Herald columnist.
