Faceless

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In Faceless, Genni Gunn explores “the impulse for the edge,” a magnetic field between the gloss of the topside world and the grit of the world beneath. Both these landscapes are fascinating and treacherous, haunted by faces that are obsessively worn and shed, torn off and replaced, where identity itself is arbitrary. Impersonation, even of oneself, is the rule. In a piano bar, the musician is a chameleon adapting to the faceless men who sit around her piano. The faceless cadavers in the notorious BodyWorlds exhibits stalk the rooms while, in Gunn’s title poem, an ordinary French woman finds redemption in the world’s first face transplant after being mauled in a strange accident by her pet dog. To be anonymous in today’s urban places is to be free yet isolated, to be in a constant flux of longing for and fear of “the dead and beating heart,” both in one’s own breast and those faltering in the chests of others. The countless faces that Gunn confronts on the streets of the city or behind closed doors make her important new book such a compelling read–as does the “delicious anxiety” she sees hanging in ecstatic, sometimes terrifying suspense in the liminal spaces between.

AUTHOR

Genni Gunn

Genni Gunn is a writer, musician and translator. Born in Trieste, Italy, she came to Canada when she was eleven. She has published nine books: three novels – Solitaria, Tracing Iris and Thrice Upon a Time, two short story collections – Hungers and On The Road, two poetry collections – Faceless and Mating in Captivity, and translated from the Italian two collections of poems. Two of her books have also been translated into Italian. Her work has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the John Glassco Translation Award and the Gerald Lampert Award, and her novel Tracing Iris is being made into a feature film. Her opera Alternate Visions premiered in Montreal in 2007 and was projected in a simulcast at The Western Front in Vancouver. Before she turned to writing full-time, Genni toured Canada extensively with a variety of bands (bass guitar, piano and vocals). Since then, she has performed at hundreds of readings and writers’ festivals. She lives in Vancouver, where she teaches half-time at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

Reviews

“In the poems in Faceless, Genni Gunn explores the many masks worn and peeled away in attempts at formulating identity, influencing opinion and finding a place in vast, nullifying or unforgiving landscapes. Sometimes it is nature masking itself as benign, when in reality it has the “furious will” of a wrecking ball, smashing things in its path on the predictably unpredictable cycle of birth, growth and death… When a vital part of physical identity is taken away—as in the title poem where a French woman’s face has been ripped off by her own dog, or in “Hands” where two Mexican women each lose a hand in successive industrial accidents—there is only emptiness left behind, and an even greater yearning for acceptance by the world.” —Event

Awards

There are no awards found for this book.

Like Ruins Three weeks they prod calibrate x-ray bones muscles gauge seismic signatures delicate and black like ruins rows of stones radiating from a cairn When I hear the word I imagine The Tropic of Cancer your body stretched around the earth your body the earth Mexico Egypt India Saudi Arabia China the sun in June directly overhead You are cut-away in profile an exotic terrain faults a sediment of sentiments layers of lovers the youngest lying between rivers in the high plateau of the Italian Murge the oldest leaning against Vancouver sky You are landscape a place to point to YOU ARE HERE like the red dot on a mall schematic boxed in by lines and squares the earth suddenly flat a constellation a crab in the northern hemisphere clawing the night sky YOU ARE HERE an X ray irradiating fear you push us away take solace in your solo dance your breast a thermal aureole a tropic of cancer while we arc low in the sky Druids used stones surgeons a knife rituals to spur the sun to burn stave off light FACELESS 1. In crowds strangers jostle against her arms and legs In lineups people elbow in front of her In bars men stare past her She spends a quarter of her pay on cosmetics – eye shadows liners blushes foundations glows – the rainbow captive in small compacts And still she is 5. A quarrel rising counterpoint the girls shrill demand to the mother’s martyred sobs bickers pleas pouts banal exchanges all shout ultimtums the girls slam into the night thirteen fifteen their bodies high-risk machines the mother calls but they don’t veer the dog barks twice then settles on the rug the woman slumps in front of her TV today she lost her job her husband gone and now her girls she reaches in her purse draws out the vial of pills she’ll sleep tonight no matter what she’ll sleep and show them all 6. Her dog is a loyal creature He ogles her through one slit eye Dogs are heroic They dive underwater off 80-foot cliffs to save people from drowning they climb mountains and dig for avalanche victims one dog waited twelve years for his master in the lobby of a hospital where he had last seen him This woman’s dog at first is not perturbed by her lying on the couch accustomed to her sluggish ruts Reality TV but as the hours lapse and the woman doesn’t stir he licks her hand and face still no response he licks and licks her mouth and nose his paws now claw her chin he panics nips at her lifeless lips she finally hears the whine struggles a resurrection He saved her life her daughters say this dog who mauled their mother’s face SINGLE 3. Animations Not so different from what happens in the middle years you fall in love again stupidly like the first time only you’re afraid to let yourself be drawn in frame by frame remembering your past imperfect tracings of a lover’s pencil how his animation created static movements your hair a spider’s web your mouth a Venus flytrap and he always the fly and when you said I love you he sketched a hand in farewell perhaps it’s better left to computer morphing less margin for error just key in first meeting and render the final kiss embrace the random graphics in between