Winnipeg Free Press enjoys Troubled's genre collage

Toronto writer RM Vaughan's fourth book of poetry, Troubled (Coach House, 80 pages, $17), is subtitled A Memoir in Poems and Fragments, and it's a successful and jarring genre collage.

Troubled is based on the painful story of Vaughan's own unhappy relationship with a psychiatrist, one that began in therapy and turned into a whirlwind sexual affair. The psychiatrist would eventually lose his licence to practice, and then practice again in another province.

Vaughan uses a mixture of free verse, prose, lists and reproductions of official documents from his own legal proceedings. The mixed media probably come naturally to him, since he's also a playwright, novelist and video artist.

The writing is vivid and alert to its own sound: 'My father, mad as a paper kettle,/ as three glass balls in a blender. My mother, her sleepy violence,/ a limbless she-cat, all caterwaul and cant.'

In spite of potentially sentimental material, this book is funny. Vaughan covers a page, for example, with two lists, one titled Harlequin Romance Titles (The Celebrity Doctor's Proposal, etc.) and the other, Porn Titles (Doctor Spank, etc.).

Thanks to his original approach, Vaughan sounds plausible when he says in an author's note that 'I consider this book an act of forgiveness.'