‘Becalmed / flatlined / a cypher / a code’

Encrypted
by Arleen Paré

Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2025 
$20.00 / 9781773861647

Reviewed by Isabella Ranallo

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“You have made of yourself a door,” Arleen Paré addresses her grandson early on in the long poem. It is one of twenty-five mentions of closed doors in the book. Encrypted chronicles Paré’s grandson’s move into her basement bedroom to take a remote Computer Science course during the COVID-19 pandemic and his subsequent depression. The grandson’s mental health decline is marked by closed doors and violent video games. 

In this volume, Paré (Time Out of Time) surveys familiar cultural pressure points—young men’s mental health, the pandemic, the climate crisis—yet has something new to say about each. Paré’s poetic exploration of depression from the perspective of a worried and helpless family member is an alternative narrative that underlines the unfailing human impulse to bridge isolation even in the face of mental illness and a global pandemic.

Encrypted, as a title, represents the poem’s contents on multiple levels. The tech language is an explicit reference to the grandson’s studies, but the title goes deeper than that. It also incorporates the recurring theme of the video game world that the grandson becomes more and more immersed in as his depression progresses. The title also underlines the distance between Victoria resident Paré and her grandson. There is something encrypted within his brain that she can’t understand despite their close connection. The title ultimately encourages readers to realize that there are layers within the long poem to sift through to understand what is truly “encrypted” in both the grandson and grandmother’s psyches.

At 80 pages, Encrypted is one long poem. I didn’t actually realize this until I read the acknowledgements, where the poet refers to it as such. Before that, I’d thought Paré had made the interesting artistic choice to not title any of the individual poems, but no: Encrypted is a long poem. As my experience demonstrates, the genre is not immediately obvious. There is enough of a sense of separation within the long poem for the ebb and flow of different images and themes to wash over the reader. The long poem features both prose poems with no line breaks and poems with more traditional line spacing. Quotes from Romantic poet and opium addict Samuel Taylor Coleridge act as interludes within the long poem. This quality of discreteness between the components of the long poem almost begs the question what constitutes a long poem (compared to a collection of shorter poems). Perhaps it is simply the author’s inclination.

Paré is a knowledgeable and innovative poet, with accolades that include the bpnichol chapbook award and the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Her manipulations of language in Encrypted are distinctive. The delicious alliteration on display in the opening pages (“how life / sublimes sublimates / learning / unlearning / relearning”) establish her expert grasp of language as she plays with words and deconstructs their meanings. Elsewhere, Paré slam-dunks a prose poem opening “In this age of rampant social media worldwide relentless news flash trolls AI the global pandemic public health orders.…” With no punctuation, the author perfectly encapsulates a pandemic / climate crisis / political upheaval / global disaster time capsule with fewer than five years’ perspective from the events she describes. Her control of language is on consistent display throughout the long poem. Frequent allusions to Coleridge as well as a reference to George Orwell’s “newspeak” also demonstrate Paré’s awareness of the poetic time and space that she occupies.

Building on its poetical neighbours, Encrypted is unique in that it shifts a familiar concept to a different perspective. The ‘tortured poet’ is a tried and true theme in poetry. From Sylvia Plath to Dylan Thomas and, yes, even Taylor Swift, poetry written from the perspective of a speaker suffering from depression or other mental health conditions has generations of precedents. Encrypted also focuses on the emotional upheaval of depression, but it is not told from the voice of the sufferer. The poet’s grandson is the tortured soul. This is, to borrow the frequent video game jargon that pops up in the collection, a game-changer. It struck me as a much rarer perspective: that of the concerned loved one of the suffering individual. This narrative flip makes Encrypted a valuable contribution to this poetic trope. 

The lifelong connection between Paré and her grandson is apparent in consistent poignant details. “You were once a child with a belief in small rubber sheep,” Paré reflects. “You stayed out of sight / behind brick-sized nine-hundred-paged books.” The relationship also supports the strong narrative sense of the poem. Readers can trace the grandson’s arrival to Paré’s house (“beautiful / as you have ever been but sweeter”) and initial enthusiasm for his Computer Science course (“there exists x to the power / the boy told me”) and then witness his eventual breakdown (“you lie becalmed on your bed sheets / all day flatlined / as if you’re a cypher / a code”). Paré’s deep concern and own turmoil as she witnesses her grandson’s mental health decline demands an immediate emotional reaction in the reader because of her proximity to the sufferer.

Throughout Encrypted, video games feature as an important device to explore the grandson’s depression. “You live in a fortified / video game / I don’t even know the town’s name,” Paré mourns at one point. That distance establishes the distance between Paré and her grandson, despite the love between them. Because of generational and societal divides, she cannot entirely understand the video games that her grandson plays. Paré’s heavy-lifting line suggests that, by extension, she can’t entirely understand his depression either. It’s a poignant metaphor for the isolation that exists in depression.

At times, the concern with the violent video games can verge into cliché, as when the poet asks “why not read a book” as an alternative. That is hardly an original take or fresh arrangement of words in conversations surrounding the topic. Towards the end of the collection, however, Paré turns inwards with the video game imagery, wondering if it could be a metaphor for her “own making up my own story.” This introspective examination of the poet’s writing was a fascinating switch. The video games allusions have represented and informed the grandson’s depression: what do they now reveal about Paré herself? Perhaps examining the video games in relation to both the grandson and the poet reveal what’s ‘encrypted’ in both figures.

The volume concludes with Paré still tackling with the concept of a “screen where all the / action takes place” and her grandson still in the midst of his depression. The lack of resolution can inspire a lingering sense of tension within the reader: what happens next? Does her grandson, in simplistic but deeply human terms, get better? Perhaps, however, meaning can be found in its dedication to the author’s grandson: “These poems are to him, about him, and for him. And he is not the only one.” The words convey an urgent sense of not only the strength of the love between Paré and her grandson, but also the connectedness of poetry. Poems are written so they can be heard, so that they can resonate with the right people. Even though there is no ‘happy ending’ within the poem itself, Paré offers a reminder that in personal darkness, there is also someone outside, rooting for the light to get through.

At age four, Isabella Ranallo stole a sheet of her mother’s office paper to write the first page of a novel about ten kids stranded on a desert island. This led—with some twists and turns, like any good story—to graduating with a Creative Writing and History BA from VIU, where she was awarded the Barry Broadfoot Award for Journalism/Creative Non-Fiction and the Pat Bevan Scholarship for Poetry. Since graduation, Isabella has worked at the Rossland Museum & Discovery Centre as a research assistant; she currently freelances at Granville Island Publishing. Her work has appeared in the BC Federation of Writers’ WordWorks magazine. [Editor’s note: this review is Isabella’s first for BCR.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and poetry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster