Arguments with the Lake

by Tanis Rideout

In 1954, at the age of sixteen, Marilyn Bell became the first person to swim across Lake Ontario. It brought her fame and adulation; her life seemed charmed. Enter Shirley Campbell, another young swimmer whose accomplishments were poised to rival Bell?, but in falling short in her own attempts to cross the Great Lake, she found herself spiraling out of control into a life of addiction, petty crime, and personal tragedies. Tanis Rideout weaves the tales of these two remarkable women together in a series of stunning, lyrical poems. It is a story of courage and triumph, but also one of adversity and redemption. This is an exhilarating book of poetry, at once tender and terrifying; like a cold dip in Lake Ontario, it will engulf you and leave you breathless. Arguments with the Lake confirms Rideout's arrival as a major new talent in Canadian letters.

Genres: Poetry, Canada

72 pages, Paperback

First published April 8, 2013

About the author

Tanis Rideout is a poet and writer living and working in Toronto. In the fall of 2005 she released her first full-length book of poetry Delineation, exploring the lives and loves of comic book super-heroines, which was praised as a “tantalizing, harrowing read.” It has been featured on CBC Radio’s Bandwidth with Alan Neal and Definitely Not the Opera with Sook-Yin Lee.

In the spring of 2005 Rideout joined Sarah Harmer to read a commissioned poem on Harmer’s I Love the Escarpment Tour to draw attention to damage being done to the Niagara Escarpment by ongoing quarrying. Subsequently a performance of the poem appeared on the DVD of the tour - Escarpment Blues. In 2006 she was named the Poet Laureate of Lake Ontario by the Lake Ontario Waterkeeper and toured with the Tragically Hip’s Gord Downie to draw attention to environmental justice issues on the lake.

Her poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous quarterlies and magazines and received grants from local and national arts councils.

An excerpt from her new poems Arguments with the Lake received second prize in the CBC Literary Awards and was called Macewanesque in scope, [it] invokes in the reader a sense of timelessness and breathless wonder. The full collection will be released by Wolsak and Wynn, Spring 2013.

Her first novel, Above All Things will be released in Canada on June 19, 2012. It has already been praised widely – Joseph Boyden called it “simply breathtaking,” and Alison Pick said “Prepare to be dazzled.” Above All Things was named one of the five “Big Buzz” books at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2011 and will be published in the US and UK in early 2013.

Reviews

[Brent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it while taking the Lakeshore East train as part of my commute. Perfect fit.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating, challenging, impressive. After reading Rideout's novel Above All Things I looked her up to see what else she had written. I read a brief synopsis of Arguments with the Lake, which was inspired by a pair of Canadian women in the 50's who attempted to swim Lake Ontario. One succeeded and one failed, twice. By the time the book was published and arrived it either slipped my mind or I never realized it was a book of poems. (I thought it was going to be historical fiction.) So I set it aside for a bit. When I picked it up again, I opened it to random poems as I usually do with poetry collections and was left nonplussed, unable to make sense of what I was reading. Again, set it aside. Finally I opened it up, read the author's note at the beginning and began to read the poems sequentially as they were meant to be read. Aha!! Though my reading of Arguments with the Lake would still benefit from more background knowledge, I found here a fine story, a progression of eerie, at times almost surreal, poems. Water is everywhere in Rideout's reimagining of these women's lives, both their public and inner lives, their lives as swimmers, daughters, mothers, and national spectacles. Water is in them, on them, overwhelms them, leaves its scent, its weight, its deliriums impressed on them. Water beckons, tempts, taunts. Water rages, fouls, coats skin. Water is pressed back by city, waste-filled. And for Marilyn and Shirley, there are the ups and downs of desire, of fame and after-fame. "We are all the same sleek fish." p. 30 "All teeth and territorial" p. 10 And finally, this collection is an environmental cry for the safety of the lakes and watersheds themselves. In poem after poem and in increasing intensity Rideout paints the toll the modern world has put on bodies of water that were once forbidding not in their reduced and poisoned state but in their raw power, their depths, their moods, and their unpredictability and immensity.

Blurb I sent to Bookweb.org for IndieNext:
Arguments With the Lake
Tanis Rideout

Wolsak & Wynn
9781894987714
2013








Tanis Rideout's Arguments with the Lake is fascinating, challenging, and impressive. It was inspired by a pair of Canadian women in the 50's who attempted to swim Lake Ontario. One succeeded, and one failed - twice. I found here a fine story, a progression of eerie, at times almost surreal, poems. Water is everywhere in Rideout's reimagining of these women's lives, in their public and inner lives, their lives as swimmers, daughters, mothers, and national spectacles. As the collection progresses it also becomes an environmental cry for the health of our lakes, rivers, and oceans.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Growing up on the shoreline of Lake Ontario, these poems do more than illustrate an imagined relationship between two teenage competitive swimmers. These poems are imagined lifelines, of rivers and waves and tides which pull these two real people into mythical stories. Stories universal to girls, to women of the 1950s, to those who drive across the Credit River and admire at the vastness below their tires. Some imagery in these poems are cliched, while others are totally inspired. The inspiration drawn to elaborate one topic -- swimmers competing in Lake Ontario -- is vast and attainable. While the real women who inspired this book of poems are new to me, many of the references made within it (Marilyn Monroe, Grey Gardens) are not. This melding of old standbys with new-to-me Canadian history creates a soft landing. Rideout's language is simple, and alarmingly fluid. I can't be sure if it's through sheer repetition or subtle, coaxing prose that she is able to guide me from the comfort of a couch and fireside, into the frigid depths of a lake I don't dare dip my toes in. Either way, Rideout has a gift. Much like the ceaseless waves of a shoreline, repetitively lapping at the sand, Rideout has written a cohesive book of poems that will drag you under, surround you, and spit you back out again. I recommend this book to anyone who has #CanLit on the brain, knows of the main characters -- Marilyn Bell and Shirley Campbell -- or simply wants to pick up some worthy poetry.

[Deanna McFadden · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love reading poetry on the subway. There's something about being in motion while the words are in motion that I find comforting. I also like that poetry is "ride-sized" and I can generally finish a book during a day's commute. That said, I slowed down reading Rideout's truly excellent volume of poetry--a fictional exploration of Marilyn Bell and Shirley Campbell--two young women who swam (and attempted to swim) Lake Ontario in the 1950s. I'm not sure if I've enjoyed a book of poetry more in the last couple years. Her work is accessible but delicate, and the underlying story of the two women highlights so many themes--the respect for water, the limitations of the human body, the drive to achieve, and these poems pinpoint a moment in time that feels almost cinematic purely because of the power of Rideout's narrative ability. And these are poems... glorious, wonderful, brilliant poems.

[Steven Buechler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have often said it before but those of us who grew up near the shores of the Great Lakes have often taken for granted the influence Blue Water has had around us. Certainly we know about the feats that people had done traversing the waters and the effects of the weather around us, but do we actually THINK about what having the lakes around us has influenced our lives. That is the beauty of the collection of poems in Arguments with the Lake by Tanis Rideout.

http://pacifictranquility.wordpress.c...

[THE TORONTO QUARTERLY · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hey, Everyone! Please check out my new interview with Toronto-based poet Tanis Rideout as we discuss her latest collection, Arguments With the Lake (Wolsak and Wynn, 2013). Read the interview now on my TTQ Blog.http://thetorontoquarterly.blogspot.c...

[Paula Eisenstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

good hard poems. like another reviewer I sometimes struggled differentiating the two voices, then decided/realized with the themes of success and failure/loss pertaining to both it wasn't such an issue, even part of the coming of age theme seeping through metaphored by water's erosion

[Andrea MacPherson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed much of the book, but the construct {poems by the two women, Marilyn and Shirley} felt a little overdone by the end. I had troubled distinguishing their voices for parts of the collection.