Brian Palmu

Steve Rubin

2012-01-24T01:30:00.000-08:00

I understand that Quill & Quire is in the business of germinating rubles, though it's fascinating to watch the constant heavy-footed hopscotch hops to both sides of the line bifurcating the boxes marked "art" and "commerce".

In the critical section, there've been many thoughtful book reviews over the years, more impressive for their coherence and intelligence within a space not much larger than a Christmas Seal.

Then we have the other side of the ruble (or to be fair to struggling book resources in Canada, the other side of the kopeck) where the philosophy of Texas prevails ("big is best"). In their Quillcast section, readers and listeners were beneficiaries of a well-done interview with Clarke Blaise upon the author's release of The Meagre Tarmac in which a thoughtful career retrospective backgrounded talk of this latest volume. Two podcasts later, and it's Steve Rubin, prominent publisher of several "too big to fail" conglomerates since 1984 (unavoidable symbolic overtones, though Aldous Huxley made a much better prognosticator than did Orwell) gushing in self-love over his power-point primer in how he's shepherded success, success measured only by the cash register's ring and the amazonian cart-bar.

Look, I get it. Every business wants to do well. And I define business here in much broader terms than Quill & Quire or Bantam Doubleday Dell International Incorporated LLC MegaResource Cloud Tablet MultiFocus Emporium. A single person -- an author -- is a business, as well, at times. But can anyone other than a Rubin-sympatico focus on money, exclusively, at the expense of creative excitement? Why, yes, many can. Look up a few of the wildly popular personal blogs that have popped up like bad mushrooms the past year in the wake of the spike in self-publishing sales juiced by Kindle and author-friendly terms from Amazon. I won't name them since I don't want to bolster any traffic to those sites, but they of course get a lot of traffic (including comment stream chatter) because books hold more interest for those in the writing biz as truncated silver than as art, more interest not just for the blockbuster Rubins and enabling Quill & Quires, but, more importantly and more ominously, for authors themselves.

Maybe some rag should do a story on that. Oh, wait. Sponsors. Which brings us back across the line to creative content. Pleasing two masters, extra birds in the bush .... I'm sure you can think of your own symbols.

Sachiko Murakami's Rebuild

2012-01-02T14:20:00.000-08:00

(Warning to the reader: this review skips over many of the poems, burrows into a few, veers off course towards the end, and departs with a poorly-lived-in feeling. But it's all about matching form to content. It's all good. Did Martha Stewart, that hero of the homesteader, with or without iron leggings, coin that?).

Having enjoyed (if that's the right word) Sachiko Murakami's first book of poetry, The Invisibility Exhibit, I looked forward to her follow-up, 2011's Rebuild. The relentlessness, the grim and gathering fury and depression of the former work was understandable given the horrific subject matter. And the author juxtaposed the historical nightmare with a fictional mother and daughter narrative which took themes from both spheres and added layers to both. The curious and ironic problem with Rebuild, however, is that the poems remain as excavations, no matter how much they're driven by social rage. This might be the point, but it's a dangerous ploy to evoke the moods and tones of alienation, confusion, rootlessness, erasure as a form-and-content union since it leaves behind the same feelings one gets after passing a construction site on a busy street: annoyance and distraction.

Distraction, especially. I had a hard time concentrating on quite a few of the poems. And I'm a careful reader. The postmodern deletions in variations of first efforts were poor: the idea is obvious, and though a few puns and some acerbic tweaking of tone emerged from the rewrites, after one has read them once -- and the "a ha" moment has sunk in -- it's hard to imagine returning to them again. It's like buying CDs of comedy acts. What's the point? And the Vancouver Special poems: blocklike prose settings, yes. That makes visual sense. But why the three-quarters blank page? The poems should have been stuffed against, or even across, the margins, top and bottom and sides.

I have a feeling this may otherwise become an even lengthier review, so I want to move to the content because there's a lot to talk about here. In my review (elsewhere) of Murakami's The Invisibility Exhibit, I praised much in the book, but had problems with political stances that left much out, and misrepresented much of what was included. Rebuild is no different, and the problems run deeper since the themes -- spiritless speculation; conformity to social rootlessness; aesthetic disregard; ownership vs stewardship; historical amnesia; motion as meaning; building corporations as spiritual weathervanes and dispensers -- are more endemic, tangled, inclusive, and nuanced. Murakami's views, however, don't add anything to what we've heard by a thousand-and-one previous city planners with a conscience. This could have been a terrific opportunity because, yes, the contemporary mania and chicanery in the real estate bubble that is Vancouver cries out for poetic blast and blasphemy. But the poems are uninhabited (again, this could be the point, but I disagree with it -- more on that in a bit) and idea-driven to convince by bald assertion. James Howard Kunstler, in one of his diatribes against architects in some city in the U.S., showed to an audience a slide pic of a mammoth block-long stone slab aggressively pushing against the sidewalk, and imagined how it came about. His conclusion was that a last-minute brainstorming session ended up with a who-cares: "Fuck it! Let's just throw this at them." What I wanted was more in that line: specific examples, carefully drawn, involving specific people; a narrative that implicates by historical and financial nuance and drama. (Many blast reviewers when they castigate a book for what it's not about, rather than what's there, but if that line of thought is followed to its natural conclusion, we'd have to dismiss sins of omission, faulty tone, and hasty conclusions, amongst other issues.) But we are encountered instead, page after page, with ideological predictability based on narrow reportage from a disembodied voice.

It's that narrowness that irks. If Hamlet lived another four hundred twenty years, and crossed an ocean and continent, he may have declared, "there are more things in Vancouver than are dreamt of in your philosophy". Murakami's Vancouver is a constricted blip in time. She rarely gets out of downtown/Yaletown, save for a few excursions to the East Side to opine on Vancouver Specials (that peculiar blocky, lot-hogging design). "A piece of grass, a peak, a peek" (from "Tower")? Sure, if you live in a particularly crapulous shoehorn special in the outskirts of Yaletown. Most, though, even in that neighbourhood, enjoy, if not oceanic vistas, at least a decent partial panorama of False Creek, street life, and/or the North Shore Mountains. I know. I lived there for twelve years (and all over Vancouver for half a century). "A piece of grass", though, suggests more than just a debased living space. Nature is denuded, shrunk, tamed, and eventually erased. It's hard to get too enthused over Murakami's directions, though, because there is zero counterbalancing throughout the collection. This is understandable in her first book of poems, when a shift to a lighter tone would have been not only impertinent but egregiously insensitive. Here, though, the destruction/rebuilding calls for quick shifts, and it also allows greater space, made possible by all that levelled ground, for longer reverie, humorous mockery, and different perspectives. But the tone is just as bleak.

So let's focus on her focus of geography: Yaletown. For the past decade plus, it's undergone the most dramatic facelift (or faceplant, if you're in the Murakami camp) of any city section in North America. The third stanza of "Ocean Views" begins, "If we are to be ruined by development,/let the rubble at least be tidy". First off, who's "we"? The general populace? The macro (worldwide) community? The narrator's friends? This indefinite pronoun is meant to be inclusive, or ambiguous, or an obvious assumption disguised as matter-of-fact. The "rubble" is a fact of any building torn down to make another. Is this rubble lasting? Of course not. Is it unseemly? Sure, for those gawping at ocean vistas, though I detect nothing but scorn for those who'd pay a premium for such an opportunity. Is the rubble symbolic of the destruction of traditional ways of life in which the new is automatically insipid or evil? Perhaps we're getting close. Ah, why be coy. The volume proceeds thusly and anon. Whites displaced First Nations who are in turn being displaced by Chinese and Hong Kong residents who in turn will be displaced by an as yet unknown race from another part of the world. C'est la vie. But if we're gonna stroll down that long and serpentine boulevard, we'd better be prepared to describe what we see. A further "Tower" variation includes, "Empty suites never inhabited/held safe for future profits". Well, yes and no. Yes, speculation is rampant as it is in any bubble economy and precinct. But "future profit" isn't the only reason. A major incentive for rich Far East buyers comes from their plan to move here when the shit hits the fan in their own countries and/or retirement beckons. In other words, not a vacant community, but a delayed one. And of course, the streets (and buildings) are choc-a-bloc with people, anyway ("bustling" is the usual term), so once again appearances bump up against facts and get bruised. And we have this notion of "traditional" being automatically sacrosanct. But Murakami was born in Vancouver, and should know what was on the long Seymour corridor before the condos went up. I used to walk that street often (still do, occasionally). Torn down were quite a few smelly, low tech autobody shops (you know, relatives of the rubble family), an ancient, run down pool hall notable for pot distribution (not a hardware store offshoot) and crappy tables, and used office furniture stores. But if people have the impertinence to want to move downtown, I suppose we have to bulldoze these heritage buildings and make way for the rabble (I mean rubble). Speaking of people wanting to move downtown, this should be encouraged, and thanks to the progressive planners and alderpersons (from the right and left), it's become a reality. Think of the reverse. And that's a reality in many U.S, cities. Hollowed-out Detroit, St. Louis, and Chicago, where even the cops don't brave going into the downtown core. What precipitated that? Suburban build-out based on commercialized dreams and fantasies, incentivized, of course, and bulldozing heritage buildings (not declining businesses) to replace them with nothing but boarded-up facades and graffiti.

But now the boulevard gets even wider. Because now all those people -- all rootless, all amnesiac, no doubt, and superficial -- have to cohabit and "communalize", "bond", and congregate in what could have been .... well, again, we're not enlightened as to a positive alternative, so let's just look at the bigger, specific picture. "To develop; to encroach; to choke", from "Work In Progress" once again points the finger at the developers and the people who buy or rent their products. The next line is "To be a connoisseur of pebble and branch and sushi". Ah, you see, it's not just people with poor taste in architecture, it's those with money. Imagine, those with money wanting to buy or rent an apartment! And the former are always the latter. The moneyed riff-raff. In another poem, it's a given that the realtor's dream of the perfect lifestyle is synonymous with that of the prospective buyer. What the specifics of this dream are is not delineated, possibly because that would involve an actual character based on nuance and idiosyncrasy. A living person, then. But we're given, repeatedly, this benign and crass class warfare. The low-cost renters are being squeezed out, it's true. To some extent, anyway. There are still quite a few halfway house shelters and rentals, community house buildings, and small low-end bachelor pads for the working poor. But if there's a new denizen ("inhabitants", "tenants", "citizens" to use Murakami's derisive terms) inside the condo, it's, I suppose, at the expense of a homeless man outside the swept, circular condo piazza. Why else the rage?

And the boulevard goes down a side street where it enters upon a world apparently unknown or at least unconsidered by our guide. I'm talking of the slightly more important theme of the twin horrors of overpopulation and fossil fuel depletion. Because there are lotsa people about, and because lots of them want to live in Vancouver (all of them superficial, lotus-eatering, art-hating, sushi-scarfing, consumer-crazy athletic troglodytes), it does no good to simply say "full up, no entry". Alas, we live in a democracy, a soft one, no doubt, but a democracy all the same, and so we must allow for the free transport of people within our country. It's wonderful that the billionaire Li-Ka Shing had the care and vision, and that the councillors and planners had the desire, to fashion and complete the post-Expo North False Creek redevelopment. Because living in a condo or apartment in a community with other condo dwellers in a relatively small space, among other benefits too numerous to mention without going into many more essays, leaves a much smaller energy deficit than does living in a detached dwelling that some of the thumbs-up reviewers of this book inhabit (not that there's anything wrong with that choice, and I'm sure they're not all ostentatious spenders -- I'm just sayin'). Water usage, electricity, garbage disposal, transportation: these are some of the issues that can be fairly stacked up against carefree sushi-eating and vista-gaping, while still holding their own.

But we leave the confining philistinism (bookstores disappear downtown, too, Murakami laments, though there are more good bookstores downtown than in any other concentrated community in the lower mainland), the rubble, and the small patches of grass for the Vancouver Specials of the East End. "Are you compatible with the other homes on the street?" begins "The Agreement Agreement". It's a satire on the conformist drones of the urban home owner, a kind of reverse welcome wagon. But the owners of Vancouver Specials are also pummelled for their poor taste in most every other poem in this section, and the irony is apparently missed. (Vancouver Specials have become more prominent, but they would still be the receiving party in the "behave, and present your home in accordance with our wishes" exchange.) And there are so many other houses on that block, or on many other blocks. We don't get to travel on those streets. So take my hand, gentle reader, and let me guide you through some other areas of town that don't get noted because they don't afford the easy ideological buzz so beloved in circles of the Kootenay School of Writing, where every private enterprising home owner is a capitalist stooge. (For the record, I was a dependent, then a renter, in Vancouver, so I'm certainly not protecting any front yard turf behind kitschy lions.)

I, son of a truck driver and steel worker, walked to high school in 1969, and met, on the way, my friend, the son of a TV repairman (O! quaint career), then to another friend (son of a corner grocer), then to another friend (son of a mechanic), then to another friend (can't remember the dad's occupation), where we eventually hit the halls. Killarney is a big school, encompassing a large district, and we collided with other kids from the Fraserview area, sons of dentists, accountants, teachers, and lawyers. I liked some of those fellow students, but I felt more comfortable with Boris, Kelvin, Frank and others. Nothing to do with racial preferences. The three aforementioned friends were Russian, Chinese, and Italian, respectively, and the middle-class kids to our working-class crew were all Whiter than fridges, long-necked Brits with manners and goals. Boring kids, mostly. Stay-at-homes. Bereft of girl friends and girlfriends. Unfunny. (Except for Geoff.) During elementary school and high school, close friends included Fijians (dad was a barber) and Sikhs (widowed mother), Japanese (dad was a fisherman) and Portuguese (dad was a cabbie, I believe), and uncouth Scots pugs (not the dog, and dad worked in a meat-packing plant). I've detoured to this racial and class-infested forest because ... well, 'cuz I'm the guide and I like exploring. But there's a broader point. Eventually, I made peace with those from a different economic sphere. Often, our differences in personality and aspirations either dovetailed or at least lessened. Some working-class acquaintances became shitheads, or maybe they always were, only now personalities didn't hinge on cultural quirks, but went much deeper. Initially idealistic in the Murakami fashion, I set out simplistic sides. And those on the other side of the street were those who not only had money but who obsessed about and desired it. But for every one of those greedy or undeserving rich kids turned insensitive rich adults, there were and are many more rich or moderately well-off adults who have the same problems -- the important ones, spiritual and physical and emotional -- that afflict us all and that aren't ameliorated by exclusive bribes and secret deals. Travelling to the rich West Side, we come to the gates of a Shaughnessy mansion where old money is still propped up in the form of an 80 year-old woman living off a rapidly draining nest egg, and who short-changes the cabbie for a six buck ride. That doesn't infiltrate the consciences of readers of The Province "news"paper. Neither does the alcoholic whose money's been squandered on whiskey in even older moneyed Dunbar, community of silent rectitude, or so its thought (if anyone other than its residents even thinks about it). Conversely, we re-enter the East Side where a man getting out of his pick-up on Sophia Street ascends his dilapidated steps in his homely neighbourhood, plumber of thirty years, wealthy and sane.

Rebuild should have been rebuilt from the ground up. It's simplistic and often false, more so than the creek it makes facile wordplay with. And its tone is needlessly depressing. If The Invisibility Exhibit's colours were red and black, Rebuild's are brown and grey. Those tones are duly noted. But -- and you wouldn't know it from the book -- Vancouver is a colourful city. And I'm not talking about the trees, the mountains, and the ocean.

My Favourite Books of 2011

2011-12-20T20:04:00.000-08:00

Sticking with last year's approach, these are my favourite five books in any genre from 2011.

1) Grant Buday, White Lung (1999). The title derives from the occupational hazards inherent in working at a mass-production bakery. Buday is a severely underplugged veteran novelist, short story writer, travel essayist, and (most recently) memoirist, and here, in the former capacity, he penned an honest, emotionally versatile, complex tale of class necessity, subterfuge, and plans both thwarted and promising. Notice I didn't frame it "working class". Buday is observant, intellectually honest, and enlightening in turning the searchlight on characters from the bottom "up": the mentally challenged friend and foil of the protagonist who can't get off graveyard shift even after acquiring decades of seniority; the "outsider" who takes the job for quick cash but who splurges on inessentials through credit cards; the main character who dreams of starting his own bakery but whose inertia diminishes his future, both emotionally and financially; the floor boss whose comically "romantic" episodes weave between an equally impotent job-related revenge; the supervisor whose plodding professionalism and career cautiousness is sympathetic to the reader yet overlooked and derided by workers both under and over his level, as well as his wife; the site manager who's caught between the dictates of the owners and Central Canadian bosses, and the workers set to strike; a director whose oily cynicism is part of his spiritual make-up, and not a job description. But as page-turning a story as Buday can tell, the beauty is in the details. The characters are humourously and dramatically idiosyncratic, but in addition, the description of local detail is gritty and aesthetically creative, and the set pieces are unforgettable in tone and execution (the graveyard shift foreman calmly looking up to a passing neighbour while trapped under his carport door is terrifically dry in its humour, yet simultaneously sad in its transformative suggestion). The ending of the novel is superb, and widens the contrast between the two friends at the story's heart.

2) Martin Amis, Money (1984). This was the fifth (and best) Amis novel I've read. Extravagantly creative and consistently vibrant, it's tighter than The Information, more mature than Success, more realized than the (at times) apocalyptic London Fields, and more coherent than the clever yet problematically structured Time's Arrow. Plenty of philosophical digressions, which in a novel I love, and here they're tied to the first-person obsessions, and make sense in the back-and-forth with the narrative. Too many hilarious characters to outline in a short review, and too many imaginative set pieces, but one stand out episode was the tennis match between the physically catastrophic John Self and the athletically efficient Fielding Goodney. Money is humour at its best: it works on its base entertainment level while also driving huge non-comedic daggers into the soft dough of hard-assed greed.

3) Grant Buday, Monday Night Man (1995). A collection of loosely-linked short stories, Buday created three unforgettable characters in the financially and socially challenged friends who gamble, whore, and drink their way through existential exasperation. This is courageous humour, wild and low, but there're also moments of heartbreaking pathos (the story set in the Patricia Hotel) and dramatic, even quiet, counterpoint. Buday never forces a laugh at the expense of the characters. Actions, no matter how bizarre and entertainment-oriented, have consequences, and it's a grim reminder that we can sympathize with those we initially dismiss or make fun of.

4) D. G. Jones, The Stream Exposed With All Its Stones (2010). This is a poetry Collected, though some poems from Jones' lengthy opus have been excised, either through editorial choice or authorial pruning. It doesn't surprise me that several Canadian postmodernists have applauded the poetry of Jones since one of his poetic obsessions is with the creative act itself. His concern for a wide-ranging aesthetic for and to nature, art, and thought is generous, and not solipsistic. A delightful contrast exists throughout Jones' career score in his unironic handling of heavyweight themes (sex, death) with a stylistically light touch. Though I often have a distaste for recurring tropes in a poet's particular volume, I actually thrill to repetitions in variations when adroitly handled. "Sun" and "snow" are two of those unassuming emblems. And, in "Little Night Journey", they're joined by other elements in a smorgasbord of suggestion. The poem has a curious propulsion, both reverie and kinesthetic awe, and is nuanced enough to reward multiple efforts and delights of unpacking and stratification. If that sounds a tad highfalutin', how 'bout: it'll haunt one with its dark fathoms. Poets, unfortunately, even the best, are often remembered, if at all, for several poems, perhaps just one. If fate favours Jones with that small but unchippable corner of granite, I hope "Little Night Journey" is the reason.

5) Thomas More, Utopia (1516). Beheaded because of his integrity, Thomas More's life reminds us, five Cs later, that power mixed with integrity is a dangerous brew. The consensus on his philosophical tract the past hundred years has swung to a supposed satirical meaning, yet influential views, still strong, side with a belief that More was sympathetic to the ideal society while knowing it could never happen (thus explaining the narrator's inconsistencies, once thought a defect in More's thought). It's wonderful that the work is still debated. My enjoyment increased when I noted those inconsistencies gathering: the "moral" strictures, e.g., on infidelity, divorce, and sloth were illuminating as a "meet the new boss, same as the old boss" match with certain politically-entrenched religious codes this particular year of our lord(s).

Susan Musgrave's Origami Dove

2011-11-21T14:40:00.000-08:00

Never a fan of Susan Musgrave's thirty year ditch-and-witch imagery, I was pleasantly surprised by her first new book of poetry in eleven years, 2011's Origami Dove.

The emotional alarm systems still go off in all five firehouses, at times ("and then I start weeping/I can't help it I can't/stop" from "Conjugal Visit"), but a maturity based partly, it seems, on the reading of detachment spirituality has given her poems more proportional resonance: "Small flocks of twitchy sandpipers/scoot out on the tide; a pheasant/stutters from the ditch into the trees" and "There's just enough light left/on the river tonight to turn/the water black. You see it flare up/behind my eyes: the obituary of light." The latter quotation is from the very good section two, and it represents a heartfelt merging of unadorned natural movement with personal mood, fate, and conclusion.

Advocacy overruns aesthetics in section four, the last, but I'm grateful for the many fine poems here as a stronger counterbalance.

Phil Hall's Killdeer

2011-11-14T12:52:00.000-08:00

"Department of Critical Thought No. 4". Winston Smith would have been terrified of this back cover tag. And when you combine it with the publisher's own appellative aggression -- BookThug -- who would blame him for following Phil Hall's example regarding the latter's own earlier poems, where they were "hidden ... in stumps -- under floorboards -- behind pseudonyms ... in bus station lockers -- under bridges" ?(p.99). Leave the book in its closed state, that is. I'm not sure Hall wants to be identified with "departments", and mindful of two of his main anti-themes -- the awful intrusion of the personal onto the observation, in poetry; the awful declarations of aggressors in politics, personal relationships, chance incidents, poetics -- I'm not sure he wants to be identified on the side of the "Thug" as he or she (literally) presses against the "Book". But then, metaphors are too convenient.

Or are they? The chief metaphor -- with various spinoffs -- in Phil Hall's 2011 Killdeer is the titular victim. The nod to a lyrical trope here is indeed curious since, absent that occasional vulnerable walk-on, the book is much better classified as memoir, poetics apagoge, and cultural retrospective than as poetry. What's funny is that saying this immediately marks one now as narrow-minded. Note, I'm not saying the book is a hybrid -- prose poetry, say, or lyrical travelogue -- but that it could be shelved under poetry, and be eligible for awards in that category, without so much as a shake of the retreating tail. So I'll dispense with a critique based on verse lexicon, as such, and focus instead on the rambling assertions and anecdotes.

"I also handed her poems -- far too many -- a crumpled bundle -- I knew she didn't write poems -- I didn't care

She said that she didn't write poems but that she would read them & write me a letter about them" (p. 21)

This is the language and rhythm of telephone conversations, and rushed and distracted, at that. Hall would likely concur. Poetry as language doesn't seem to hold much merit for him: "these have healed me -- not cleverness or career or language" (p. 101).

I'll get to the defensive self-promotion later, but for now, note the italics. Elsewhere, and in a second hypocritical parade not covered by postmodern ambiguity, Hall relates as to how he doesn't like to talk about writing. Right. Just stuff it all in a book, and then don't ever discuss it, reader or writer. Makes sense. But that would prompt a third hypocrisy, that I'm being rational. Of course, one can't find any rational inflections and conclusions amongst Hall's mishmash, despite the furlongs of literary references and personal exegesis. Uh huh.

The suffocating tone and mood of Hall, the recorder in Killdeer, is so persistent, one wonders if he's progressed much beyond his first published chapbook at 20, of which George Amabile remarks to Hall: "Far from giving me any pleasure this book almost made me puke -- if I were you I wouldn't write another book for 10 years" (p. 28). Immediately on this quote's heels comes, "I was 20 -- that letter broke my stupid heart" (p. 29). As alluded to in the preceding paragraph, it's hypocritical for him to focus here on his emotional excesses (that it happened in his callow past doesn't alter the incongruities -- this book is chock full of Poet suffering the slings and arrows of derision and neglect) while in another section/poem/essayistic context criticize Irving Layton for the latter's reactive closer -- "I turned away and wept" -- to his "The Bull Calf". Hall references his own parallel summation elsewhere -- "I should have shot my father" -- as an absurd reaction, in his words, "the false politics of honesty" (p. 85), but emotional ham-handed tack-ons aren't any worse than the reverse pride Hall assumes in his own flashbacks and poetics statements. Your unhumble correspondent actually prefers the cruder calls: at least I don't have to negotiate contradictory and deadening theoretical ruminations at every turn.

More of the same here: "someone rescued me from years of ass-kissing

I longed to be a writer before I felt driven to write

I got a degree in writing -- & I published a first book -- way before writing became my compulsive practice" (p. 27).

In all seriousness, who, other than he and some of his friends, cares? This is what's given confessional writing a bad name for the past thirty years. Nothing transcends the hermetic particulars. Not the language, not the sentiments, not the commonplace revelation. The pun in the following line's, "Since then I have always learned to put the art before the course" doesn't cover up the solipsism.

Hall drops more names in Killdeer than periods. "See The Captive Mind (1953) -- in which Czeslaw Milosz chronicles the gradual corruption of the minds of artists by totalitarianism in central Europe" (p. 79).

Milosz makes it clear in indefatigable character studies that those minds weren't corrupted as much as they were ensnared, and necessarily two- or three-faced by opposing forces of political opportunism and ideological tenacity. To compare postmodern parlour games in Canadian learneries with the world of Poles drenched in blood and hazardous message-code is obscene.

The only parts of this book of poetry I enjoyed were those parts where poetry was actually on tap, and allowed to breathe. Unfortunately, the deer only popped up every ten pages or so. "The fawn nuzzled the doe -- wiping grass-flecked slobber along her withers" (p. 69) sure beats "Hope becomes the expectation of finding next an intricately imperfect process that might prove all of one's own imperfections worthy & irrelevant" (p. 49).

And after reading, "The bad sequence's mother is the Canada Council for the Arts -- she sings to the child in the womb a song of research & travel grants -- prospectuses -- itineraries" (p. 89), I'll note, with interest, Hall's obvious refusal of the 25 Gs, should he get tapped for the win.

Anne Simpson's Is

2011-11-03T22:12:00.000-07:00

The back cover of Anne Simpson's 2011 Is informs us that the author "illuminates what it means to be alive". Heady stuff. The book is also "[r]ich with muscular craft". If jacket photos weren't de rigueur, one could almost imagine a poets' union of middle linebackers or hod carriers. It's past time this hoary adjective was deprived of its steroidal cachet. There. Now on to the poems.

"before blue before blue deepening and unwinding inside blue before bluegrey before the envelope of morning before opening the crisp envelope of morning ..." (p.2)

Shouldn't this note-stretching proceed in reverse chronology? I'm probably missing the significance of the syntax, but if amazement is the feeling of the recorder (and the wish for the receiver), it seems a peek through a microscope would do the trick more effectively. I can't get a deep view of all this "blue deepening".

"sounds not yet sounds darkens before darkness and light before light beginning and ending ending and beginning." (p. 3)

I guess this is the illumination of "what it means to be alive". Or maybe it's just abstraction multiplying like Nut's fart in a chromosphere.

"You are day divided from night, night from day, minute from minute, hour from hour. Time begins, sliced into now" (p. 5)

Goddammit, can we get on with infanthood, already? The first chapter of Genesis and the beginning of The Iliad are boring, too, but at least they recorded basic elements and specific people, respectively.

"You are dark inside dark, and within this dark, intricate contraptions of darker darkness" (p.6)

Any smartypants outdark that?

"Before tinkering. Before the ululation of a siren. Before scarlet. Before latches. Before eyes. Before ... " (p. 7)

Ah! The world. The little fucker is finally with us.

"You are spaciousness." (p. 8)

Whoops.

"You are depth and more depth, earthing and earthed." (p. 9)

And never forget you are a child of the universe which is unfolding as it should. (Apologies to the lyricists of that gawdawful song.)

"a woman untucking a cotton shirt a man undoing a belt" (p. 13)

Wait a sec. What happened to Deep Blue? Are we having flashbacks, or is this number two already? Pp 14 and 15 shrinks the same poem (15 set tinier than 14), with two and four columns respectively. I don't think we're supposed to read this, and in any event if I wanted to read it again, the original p. 13 is the right option: I don't have a magnifying glass at hand.

"Break into break up break down break out break off break ... " (p. 16)

At least Quartermain's cliched variations had some wit.

"Aftershocks of noise -- a gas main, propane tank." (p. 17)

I'm lost. Is that the point? Is there one? Perhaps I've been in this mitotic funk and fug too long.

"syllables of spun light" (p. 18)

Here we go. The linguistic nature tropes. Soon we'll encounter "glottals of mud bubbles". And if our little lump of protoplasm was real, wouldn't the latter image be more accurate that the former preciosity? Or have we moved from the placental stew to the gas main to yet another universe?

(p. 19) : the paratactic list. Hurrah! A "poetic" rendering of a Titanic-like drama. In 13 ragged lines. My blood pressure: unchanged. E. J. Pratt is spinning in his grave like the Tasmanian devil.

"You imagine all that lies below: dank palaces under the ground." (p. 25)

She might imagine it, but I can't. But being "poetic" means taking it on good faith. Things are mysterious on page 25, and no lie. But it's a mystery, alas, not worth wondering about. As for imagining: imagine what Gwendolyn MacEwen could have done with this passage. Or Patrick Anderson. You could've seen the flux and dazzle of partially obscured, vivid shapes under the surface. That murk wouldn't have been announced with stock vagaries. Instead, strange word combos colliding. Awe or danger invading the mind that reads it.

"Crocuses, murmuring secrets to earth." (p 28)

If vegetables and flowers are going to be anthropomorphic studs and soothsayers, I suppose this is better than Lorna Crozier's carrots fucking the earth.

(p. 30): Bees are back. I sense a dramatic arc. "Broken necklace of bees in curled, damp grass." Not bad. And the rhythm of the pentameter makes sense.

"Is" (p. 33) is anaphoric five-and-dime rhetoric gone mad. I can't imagine this read aloud. Hushed? Excited? Solemn? The "is" of "Is" in Is is repeated as line and phrase starter 26 times. None of them are illuminating. Grandeur is not realized, not broached, not in the same solar system with these words just because we're supposed to be lulled into cheap awe by the "gathering force" of the repetitions.

(p. 37): Possible explosions on ship. Sentences cut like fingernails. In fact, "Cut-glass water. The ting of a fingernail against it." (p. 37). Terror as Morse Code. Easier to handle. Not important, anyway. Set up for poetic image. The world is dangerous. But there is always beauty.

(p 41): The plot, of a kind, thickens. Courtroom drama. The bad guys act cool under questioning. Serviceable journal reporting, albeit in court reporter shorthand, a la Heather Spears' Required Reading. Wonderful possibility for psychological complexity, inductive rage, physical detail. But we're left with that frequent three-quarters blank page. Of course, poetry is distillation. Distillation is so successful the distillery is bottling nothing but air.

The fisherman is "settling into his dreams. Into all he's given, dazzled with sea gleam." (p. 42)

(p. 43): a list of marine birds. Simpson wants us to know she's studied the library's pelagic thrust. Undoubtedly carved some walks on sand and pier.

(p. 46): "Sun shot through leaves, leaves, leaves."

I know of no other phrase as precious as "shot through" unless it's "shot through with light". The triple exit makes for a nice unintended irony, though. Oops! Two lines later: "Sun shot through trees." The sun is dangerous enough. Do we have to duck it from its assault behind natural hiding places?

(p. 48): "Someone's hand, a sweeping gesture in a window."

Suspense. Suggestion as importance. Letting the reader fill in ... what?

"The woman doesn't think herself old until the girl moves through her."

The paranormal is apparently one of the hottest selling sub-genres, lately. Robert J. Wiersema would be envious. It takes him over 300 pages to have the sympathetic dead enter the sympathetic living.

The poem "Life Magazine" (p 50) is, so far, the book's most pukeworthy effort. "Two monks doused Thich Quang Duc with gasoline, set him on fire." Why doesn't she just insert the news headline? Wrapped up seven clipped sentences later. Pain as idea. As opportunity for ... "Afterwards, his heart. Untouched plum." It takes a peculiar talent to not only suffocate a poem with a final line, but to take a dull meat-cleaver to it.

(p. 52): "Stink of gas and burning flesh." I believe "stink" is slightly redundant, and takes the immediacy and shock out of "burning flesh". But maybe that's just me. I just finished a YA novel written at a level of effectively-transmitted sophistication far above the faith Simpson shows for her reader. This, and the next five poems, takes another six disposable snapshots for that fifteen-years running overcrowded album: the poetry photo album. Sensitive (yet Olympian-cool, Olympian-frosty, even) poet scans war/family/art photo (sometimes painting), puts herself in place of tortured/sad subject, and concentrates on the traded chiaroscuro. The dead get a quick sigh (never a shudder), are put away, and we're left with horror-as-aesthetic, just another game to play between (in this case) cellular gobbledegook and placemats for the Titanic. Ralph Gustafson's "The Newspaper" (from the poem sequence "Phases of the Present") has a narrator looking at a war photo, too. The genius of the poem -- in artistic fashioning too detailed to describe here -- is that it implicates the narrator, transparently the author, and that the "face/Down" is both historically accurate and a blistering denunciation of Western complacency. In one of the six "photo" poems, Simpson includes the picture taker, but it's thrown into the remove unconvincingly, a tacked-on idea that isn't integrated with anything else in the wandering study in how-to-look-at-a-photo. John Berger's novel G has a similar style, in places, but you feel you've been there, or at least could be there, even if he hasn't.

I could go on -- there's another 36 pages, and I've read them -- but this has become unwieldy.

It would be funny if it weren't tragic how the forces of "write only what you know" have scared off much serious speculative work in poetry -- political, historical, religious, sexual -- yet it's A OK to give an authoritative inside-out biography of a cell. I suppose the takeaway here is "regression rules".

Meredith Quartermain's Recipes from the Red Planet

2011-11-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

Meredith Quartermain's 2010 Recipes from the Red Planet, published by BookThug, didn't make it to this year's Governor General's poetry award shortlist, which must be somewhat equivalent to being repeatedly passed over in a shorthanded pick 'em pick-up indoor soccer game. Most other potential players, at least, never had a chance, locked out and deaf to the proceedings. The funniest part of that story? Recipes from the Red Planet is clearly a better book than its more celebrated home team competitors, so the McCaffery-led cabal couldn't even get that right.

I'd read one previous book of poetry by this author -- Vancouver Walking -- and though footnotes on local history also appear in this latest collection, they're far fewer, and have passion (in drips if not surges) filtering through their veins, as in "On my way to the overpass".

Gone, too, are the boring walkabouts and schoolroom lessons. These are replaced in Recipes from the Red Planet by language and rhythm that churns and declaims. The tone is relatively narrow, but is convincing and confident ("winding around me its magnetic flux of elastic vibrations -- until I threw off Bellerophon and kicked in the Helicon which they now call the horse fountain" from "She would"). I don't like "magnetic flux", but I'm not an overbearing stickler for detail when the voice and its sounds are this much fun.

The lessons, though mixed with sweeter medicine, keep a comin', however. Quartermain, through her narrators, has a big problem with authority of many kinds. And those authority figures -- whether bosses, politicians, mythic beings, or local heroes -- are invariably male. The ladies are persistent, tough, clever, or (to reach back into a more tilted patriarchal past) forgiveably winsome. And when a specific brute isn't handy, a generalized one will do, in the guise of unthinking (by creator and receiver) advice. "Directors Change Directions" is just one example of the latter tendency: "Don't touch. Don't skateboard. Don't talk with your mouth full." (Ah, to make a poem completely out of cliche and homily. To alter another popular phrase: "try this at home, kids, because anyone can do it!").

But "Directors Change Directions" and "Maximal" aren't just about guy-knows-best (or brainwashed woman-knows-best), they are list poems. Credit Quartermain for sticking to her belief in the poetics of her male masters. The so-called patriarchal dominant and subjective clauses must be powered over by the matriarchal, all-inclusive steamroller. Samuel Beckett wrote apparently levelling sentences, but there are exquisite shifts and ironical shenanigans going on within those units in Molloy, for example. Most other mortals haven't approached that kind of sophistication, though, which just goes to prove that theory which promotes "only one way" is both narrow-minded and exclusive of nuanced (ironically so) vertical evaluation, whether paratactic or (the form of most speech and thought) hypotactic. The anti-authoritarians don't or won't see their own attempts to dominate. The paratactical straightjacket limits syntax, rhythmical range, dynamics, mood, reverie, thought, and time signatures in all sorts of ways, and what results from the Oulipian, supposedly democratic arrangement is a temptation to flatline. Hence, the list.

A list, by nature, has no coherent beginning or ending, no arc, no reference within the structure. (All language has some kind of structure, even in brain-damaged individuals.) So all endings are arbitrary. Many of these poems could be fifteen lines shorter or fifteen thousand lines longer without helping or harming the finished product stylistically or structurally. After you've click-clicked through a few, the lists -- and the paratactical hopscotching -- start(s) to run away from the voice like the engine of a train separating from the other rolling cars.

At 119 pages, Recipes from the Red Planet feels like too much ice cream after too little protein, but since the diction and playfulness are an improvement over her previous starvation diet in Vancouver Walking, the meal is often enjoyable if not filling.

Tony Burgess' Ravenna Gets

2011-10-31T22:15:00.000-07:00

Appropriate that I picked up Tony Burgess' 2010 vignette collection Ravenna Gets today. Horror ain't my thing, but literary horror sounded more intriguing. Thoughtful literature is to horror as is erotica to porn. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The plot: the townsfolk from Ravenna, Ontario kill the residents of neighbouring Collingwood.

Why? Well, there are a lot of possible reasons, but it's all conjecture.

Perhaps Burgess is making a satirical swipe at the entire horror genre where an "ah-ha!" psychological explanation will be tied like a tourniquet on the book's (or movie's) last pages and scenes.

Perhaps there's a clue in basic power trade-offs where one "picks up on this. Weakness." (p. 70.). But, no. The story subverts that. The one who, in the above quote, feels momentarily empowered is, seconds later, killed.

Perhaps it's a simple dream, or wish-fulfillment, and the murderers can be seen as liberating angels: "It's that he knew that when she left he would want to die." (p. 62). The victims are in one sense as depressing in their mundane lead-ins as is the (later) sudden received violence. But no, again. The victims at times are about to kill others, as well, and (in the collection's final brief chapter with the previously innocent primary character) sometimes succeed.

Perhaps this is Burgess' take on the Mad Max psycho-scenario where marauding bands of (literally) hungry thugs get their kicks in an eat-or-be-eaten energy-depleted world. But ... no, again. There is no hint that food or gas or heat or a basic level of economic activity is missing.

Perhaps the intriguing third paragraph on page 85 (I won't reveal it here) joins aesthetics, dream imagery, creation, and implication in a brave symbolic necessity. But that's doubtful because the story bursts out of its bounds and violently binds imagination with its non-symbolic realization.

What, then? Perhaps Burgess is making the scariest (and most responsible) statement of all, far scarier than the paper blood gushing out of stabbed hearts and perforated heads: there is no reason for a lot of the violence, which is also an everyday feature of our non-fictive world. (The first, above "perhaps", then, is partly correct.) As someone wisely noted in a vicious world only a breath away in the chasms of history: a staple of violence is its banality. And Burgess has accomplished much in this collection in that he has had to surmount the structural and aesthetic difficulties attendant in the (mostly stupid) horror genre. The writing, in other words, is what saves Ravenna Gets from the shotgun pump book dump. That, and its aforementioned anti-message. One example from page 66: "Sprinklers toss party rice across lawns and bent crosses like plague graves hold yellow leaves and hot tomato sacs."

--------------------------------------------

Like last year, I'll be posting, shortly, mini-reviews here of some books that made this year's Gov-Gen poetry longlist. That should continue into early December.

Life as a Book Juror

2011-10-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

The Telegraph just published an article by one of the jurors of The Man Booker prize in which it was revealed that the readers had to finish 138 books in seven months. That's two books every three days. Since the average novel clocks in at 250 pages or so, that's 166 pages a day. Every day. If one is otherwise busy for a time -- meaning, if one has a life -- and can't manage to read the 166 requisite pages, that means 332 pages the next day, or 190 pages every day for the next week. These are the people who're entrusted to make fine distinctions, thoughtful ones, about what they're reading, and to weigh those distinctions against the other 137 books in creating a detailed evaluative list.

(I work, socialize, write, etc, the same, I imagine, as the other jurors on this, and other, prize commitee(s); I manage to read about 40-60 pages a day, but then I don't skim, and I often reread what I've just experienced, as well as pausing, out of pleasure or confusion.)

Or one could just read five pages and pitch it in the "out" tray if the beginning isn't catchy. Or if it's from a publisher one's had mediocre experiences with. (The extension to this is Saul Bellow's remark on "The New York Review Of Each Other's Books.") Or if the jacket copy mentions zombies or grief-stricken daughters of alcoholic rural retirees. Or if one chances upon a great novel not on the list during those seven months.

Or one could just excuse oneself altogether from the masochistic ordeal.

Carol Shields' Larry's Party

2011-10-17T00:49:00.000-07:00

I'd read only one Carol Shields novel before recently finishing Larry's Party. Small Ceremonies, her first effort, struck me as blandly middle brow and middle class, and left no residue. Larry's Party had a more appealing tone of vulnerability, though the possibilities it promised were rarely realized. A two decade tour in the life of the eponymous protagonist, the novel achieves Shields' stated wish to honour ordinary lives as they actually play out, notwithstanding the supposed metafictional ploys. James Joyce had the talent to find gold from muddy, subjective banalities, but Larry's Party, like many other novels of "small ceremonies", disintegrated for long stretches, including entire chapters (Larry's Kid; Larry's Threads; Men Called Larry), when the faithful rendering of the daily grind was the aim. The let-down was significant because most of her characters -- especially her female leads and support cast -- were idiosyncratic, lively, occasionally surprising. Larry was another matter. A lifelong dreamer, passive schlub, and befuddled reactive naif, Larry nevertheless stays in his first job for twelve years, is promoted to head honcho, then pursues his passion to become a leading entrepreneur in a career held by twelve others worldwide. The discrepancy was difficult to square up. And the dreaming artist/maze creator link didn't work for me: Larry was presented not only as an imaginative dynamo, but as a persistent, organizational stickler.

There were three serious plot contradictions in the novel, the most important between the first reference to Larry's mother mistakenly mailing away for literature for a Flower School class instead of a Furnace School class to help a bewildered Larry get an idea for his first job, and a later explanation that Larry had always wanted to enroll in that school and work with flowers, even though earlier it was made clear Larry had no particular interest in even observing them, let alone thinking about them.

Several scenes were powerful, their emotional pacing and build-up excellent. I'm thinking here of the events leading to Larry's first divorce, and to the strange death of his mother's mother-in-law.

Two shortcomings ultimately pushed me face first into the overgrown shrubbery. Shields has been praised, in other quarters, for a fearless view into dysfunctional domesticity. Sex and love -- she'd reveal those fireworks in all their glory and disarray. So one begins the chapter entitled Larry's Penis with the hope of transgression, vulgar hilarity, heartbreak, tenderness, anything raw or divine. Instead, we're treated to a belaboured list of euphemisms for the poor appendage -- all played for one-toned schoolyard laughs -- as well as narrative flaccidity. "A few days later he was in her bed, sweetly, plumply, satisfyingly fucked." That's the complete one-sentence story of Larry's first encounter with his eventual first wife.

The second problem came to a head in the last chapter. Without giving away the plot resolution, I'll just say Larry's epiphany was unconvincing, both in its realization and in its build-up from his time with Beth and Charlotte. Any maturation in the separate lives of Larry and Dorrie have no bearing on a believable resurgence in their own present and future as a couple.

Two additional notes: Alex Ramon, in a career rehashing of Shields, praised her attention, detail, and skill with setting. He even concluded that she was the best purveyor of Winnipeg-situated storytelling. This speaks either to the paucity of Winnipeg-centric novelists, or the individual projections of Mr. Ramon. The only references to local detail in Larry's Party are to a new coffee shop, to Winnipeg being the windiest of cities, to an outlying community being upscale, and to several passing notations of heavy traffic. I found it an extremely generic novel in its situational manoeuvrings -- (the description of Chicago was likewise vacant) -- which lent credence to Stephen Henighan's assertion that Shields sees little difference between one place and another. (The text explicitly states this, though it's in the guise of a specific character.) I don't buy into Henighan's ideological certainties, but it's easy to see how a lack of regional specificity and strangeness plays into favourable market forces in the U.S.

Finally, a word on the theme of Larry's Party. The "maze = life" analogies were too frequent and occasionally obvious -- "every classical maze contains at its heart a 'goal'. This is the prize, the final destination, what the puzzling, branching path is all about" -- but I liked them, nonetheless.

Mark Carney, and Occupy Wall Street, Canadian Edition

2011-10-13T22:56:00.000-07:00

I just caught the tail end of the disgustingly sane Peter Mansbridge interviewing Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney (perfectly appropriate last name) on one of the media spin networks. Carney, in measured tones, with "papa knows best" slight smile -- condescension-lite -- actually said that Euro Central will need to print more than 1.5 trillion dollars. Guess who that inflation hurts, and guess who gets the money? It's obvious now that the Lloyd Blankfein/Jamie Dimon good cop/bad cop show spooked Carney after the latter publicly scolded Dimon for the Morgan Chase villain's first thumbscrew session. Round two, behind closed doors, must have been Carney's offer-you-can't-refuse moment.

For those going to the upcoming Occupy Wall Street demonstrations in Canada, save a corner of your placard for JAIL THE BANKERS. And it ain't just Americans and Europeans who're corrupt to the core.

Michael Boughn's Gov-Gen Acceptance Speech?

2011-10-12T13:21:00.000-07:00

"And then, of course, having the judges that bestow the prizes for literary excellence write the excellent introductions to your excellent book before they give you the prizes for your excellence—that too is literary excellence above and beyond the normal kind of excellence which is usually just kind of run of the mill. ...

We however, are here because we know better. Poetry is not about truth or beauty or, heaven forbid, making things out of words. It’s about getting the prize. It’s about being on the committee that gives out the prizes so you can make sure your friends and students get the prizes, because if they don’t get the prizes, then what the hell does that say about you?" -- Michael Boughn

On Ed Champion's Review of Ian McEwan's Saturday

2011-10-10T12:58:00.000-07:00

http://januarymagazine.com/fiction/saturday.html

I finished reading Saturday Sunday. That is, I finished Ian McEwan's post-Atonement novel, and then googled the above link to read, this morning, Edward Champion's review of it upon its release in 2005. I like Champion's style: good writing, provocative analysis, controversial ideas, allusive interest. But I didn't like this review. Here's a response to some of his words.

"There's a major anti-Iraq protest tying up traffic, serving more as an inconvenience for Perowne than a revelation of the fractious political circumstances around him." -- Champion

The reviewer, as is apparent from the rest of the piece, would have been more enlightened about McEwan's purposes if he'd spent a bit more time wondering how that protest tied in with the novel's larger issues.

"And there's a modest car accident the provides the linchpin for the novel's denouement." -- Champion

The modest car accident (typically wonderful set-piece by McEwan) provides the linchpin for the novel's climax and (in union with the novel's bigger theme, Perowne's conflicted and wise suspicion of his own set ideas) falling action in the operating theatre. The denouement is all about that narrator's conscience, the car accident becoming a faded spur to a resolution having much wider implications than his relationship with a mentally ill terroriser.

"But this time around, McEwan keeps his plot twists and character revelations to a minimum, throwing in a deus ex machina for good measure." -- Champion

It's true that the characterizations, outside of Harry Perowne, are limited, though still rendered with elegance and an individual flair. There's a good reason for that which I'll elaborate on later.

The deus ex machina may seem unconvincing, as the term suggests, but one of the novel's themes, a difficult one expertly handled, is how chance can operate to terrifying momentum and force in the most comfortable lives. Think on the odds, right at the novel's outset, as Perowne watches the flaming plane, of disaster when boarding a flight. Or the odds of Baxter's destruction encoded in that one renegade gene. Or of Perowne being waved through to the side street by the cop only to collide with Baxter and gang just after they spilled out from the bar. The home invasion, after those longshots, doesn't seem so implausible in those terms. It's against the same reasoning that damned Thomas Hardy's novels as being too coincidentally bare, inexpertly contrived so's to move the plot along its rickety tracks. In Hardy's case, there's a tragic arc so chilling that those critiques seem churlish and inapposite. Greater flukes happen everyday. And in Saturday, after establishing the theme, McEwan shows great restraint. A lesser novelist would have used the set-up as the perfect excuse to go the way of maudlin horror or metafictional gymnastics.

"In prioritizing consciousness instead of a series of events, McEwan has made himself more vulnerable to exposing his very few flaws." -- Champion

I saw it somewhat differently. The only notable flaw I found in the novel is that Perowne's consciousness violently stanched the flow of narrative shock.

"He is a passive observer. One might argue that he isn't a particularly lucid one." -- Champion

Huh? Observation by definition is passive, but only in that it can precede action. Effective action is usually precipitated by shrewd, even pitiless, observation. Think of the connections with Perowne's highly successful neurosurgery career. As for "lucid", yes, Perowne is presented as having a dreamy nature. The opening scene at the window shows this to mesmerising effect. But he's only dreamy in patches. He recovers quickly, as in the conversation with the woman he's just met in surgery (who would become his wife). Perowne's more complex than Champion's thumbnail-ridge sketches would indicate.

"He keeps to himself, relegating his social life to squash games with co-workers and dreamy morning booty calls with his wife." -- Champion

This is conveniently reductive. The novel spans one day in his life. It's a very active day, at that. Champion even misses some of the events of the day. How about his trip to visit his senile mother? Family, of course, but it's a social visit. Or his social visit to watch his son play the new blues tune? Outside of this day, he also runs marathons, follows up with patients with proactive, non-professionally motivated interest, and may have other social avenues not disclosed outside the time constraints of the novel. And since Champion brought up the "booty calls" -- disgusting term for a fearless depiction of loving sex between he and Rosalind, especially the second coupling near the book's close -- that means all family union can be included. Perowne's the opposite of "keeping to himself" with his family; he needs frequent and meaningful congress with his wife and son, and is overjoyed with daughter Daisy's visit. He neglects father-in-law John, but that's because of personality conflicts, not intimacy issues. Even here, the denouement brings a touching, believeable resolution.

"He's a neurosurgeon close to 50 who barely stirs in the operating theater, concentrating exclusively on the surgery at hand. He complains of other people going "nowhere without a soundtrack," yet insists on Barber's "Adagio for Strings" to be played over and over during the final stages of an operation." -- Champion

His complaints of the young have everything to do with a lack of concentration. He's most alive when under supreme concentration: making love, and operating. The text makes it clear that Perowne is completely focussed on the long brain operation. He loses track of the specific musical development in Barber's piece, yet at the same time is infused with its mood. This is perhaps complex for some to understand; I don't find it to be so. The people "going nowhere without a soundtrack" are in no way alike. Their music is a distraction. If they were to turn it off, they would have to actually observe -- you know, that "passive" stuff that Champion denigrates. They would have to find something to be passionate about in total concentration.

"With the character so married to his work and so casually misanthropic." -- Champion

This is the most cynically egregious statement in the review. First, he's not married to his work. He's passionately, faithfully married to his wife of twenty-five years. He loves his work, but also loves his family. Despite my previous statements, he doesn't have a magpie's fascination or involvement with the world. But when you're digging two deep wells, there's not a lot of time left over.

Misanthropic? A surgeon who talks with great sympathy of his patients post-op, and with care of those patients with his surgeon-friend Jay. Who feels guilt in two instances over his conduct after seeing the plane in flames, and turning the tables on Baxter in the street, and where no misanthropic spirit held. Christ, he operated on the disturbed man who, an hour before, had threatened to kill his entire family.

"Perowne may serve as an apt persona for McEwan himself. In expressing middle age so strenuously, Saturday might serve as a rhetorical novel for whether McEwan believes his work holds any relevance for people under the age of 40. That's an odd idea coming from a novelist who has repeatedly demonstrated his universal relevance." -- Champion

Or he may just be examining the binding similarities between young and old, accomplished and mentally shattered, an emigrant from Iraq and one England born. Proof? The tender conversation between the doctor and the fourteen year old who wants to be a neurosurgeon after she's been operated on by Perowne; the conversation between Perowne and the man who reveals to him the pervasive reality of terror under Saddam Hussein's rule, and how even the torturers were to varying degrees exempt from blame seeing as how their own lives were on the line from supervisors themselves marked by higher-ups in a never-ending chain of fear and confusion; and the brilliant depiction of the similarity between Perowne and Baxter with the theme of stupid pride, Perowne and Jay becoming ever more testy in their squash game (wonderful heart-accelerating section of the novel), and Baxter becoming infuriated, upon reflection, with loss of face to Nigel and the other friend in the alley when with Perowne. Nothing to do with age; everything to do with more universal concepts of human make-up and shortcoming.

"Other critics have made comparisons between Saturday and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway." -- Champion

Fascinating for English profs, perhaps, but the details Champion provides don't apply directly to Saturday. Woolf's novel is extremely subjective, the world (as I remember Mrs Dalloway from many years ago) only existing as a dream extension of the narrator's interiority. McEwan shifts between the inner and outer with equal concern and force.

"Such is the curse of tying a novel so explicitly to one man's consciousness: the important details that Perowne catastrophically ignores are also ignored in the text. McEwan might have had a better novel had he dared to think outside of Perowne's taut box." -- Champion

Champion again reveals his misunderstanding. McEwan concentrated on Perowne's consciousness because he wanted to make a point about how ideas solidify, and how they can perhaps unravel or loosen with luck, grace, and persistent observational courage.

"Baxter himself drives a BMW, also an expensive car. Is there a correlation between these two men? Absolutely. Yet while Perowne's past is muddled with a passive swagger (he's described as being pitiless several times), McEwan shies away from comparing these two, preferring instead to keep Baxter's description confined to Perowne's speculations and their respective identities separate from each other." -- Champion

I've just described how McEwan joins the two in the theme of pride. But Baxter's impetus is described through action. Narrative action is often more revealing of character, certainly more poetically and dramatically so. There is no need to go into Baxter's consciousness. And how would that work, anyway? Not every author has the talent of Faulkner describing Benjy from within. And here it's not necessary. Baxter's frequent shifts in emotion show how his fevered mind operates.

"Why, for example, does McEwan spend so much time chronicling a banal political dialogue between Perowne and his daughter on whether the United Kingdom should get involved with Iraq? Does he want to memorialize the kind of hollow cocktail party banter that shows no sign of abating four years after September 11?" -- Champion

Firstly, McEwan began the novel in 2002. 9/11 was a hot topic, not a rehash, "cocktail party banter". (And how would this disparaging description apply? Daisy and Perowne get into the argument reluctantly on the latter's part, and the scene is there to show the greater theme of ideas in self-examination, how ideas are often provisional, and how fate, that oddsmaker again, can explain why many people hold the opinions they do, as in Perowne's encounter with the Iraqi emigrant.) Also, the conversation is anything but hollow. It may not be scintillating political discourse, but it's intelligent, and represents vividly how both sides on the Iraq war thought about that (then) impending decision. The novel is set just before the bombing, remember, not in 2005.

Champion then throws in a few faint bouquets in an attempt to avoid his own characterization of
"bitter book critics or outright lunatics [who] may be pining for a scabrous takedown", but it's clear, at least to this Saturday lover, that the reviewer missed living in this particular day by several years.

Tomas Transtromer

2011-10-07T13:24:00.000-07:00

Good to see Tomas Transtromer finally get the nod for the Nobel. Also enjoyable to read some of the predictable reactions to a poet winning the award: ("who?").

For any English-language readers unfamiliar with his work, and who are stumbling on this post when googling "Transtromer Nobel", there are plenty of translations. I don't have any particular favourites. Most anyone except that musical butcher Robert Bly would be a good place to start.

Americans, and the Nobel Prize for Lit (Part Two)

2011-10-04T13:43:00.000-07:00

(cont'd from last post)

"The critical establishment was split on the award to Toni Morrison, but the Nobel Academy knew precisely what it was doing when it cited her “visionary force, [which] gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” " -- Nazaryan

The quote within the above quote is only part of the story of what makes (or, more precisely, what can make) for a great body of work. Yes, Morrison doesn't flinch when tackling her ambitious material. But, again, this is a literary prize, not a politically correct tour of the immoral and criminal forces in America's past. But of course Salon is going to leap on this. Nazaryan's article is notable for its jejune thesis and lit-absent focus.

"You struggle through “Beloved,” but you reach an understanding you didn’t have before." -- Nazaryan

Yes. The struggle and the understanding: it's too bad Morrison's writing doesn't match her compassion.

"Can you honestly say that about Oates’ “We Were the Mulvaneys”?" -- Nazaryan

I haven't read it, but I wasn't aware that this single book was the cause of forty years of previous neglect of the Nobel towards American writing.

"Of the Americans thought to be on the long list, only Pynchon has written a big novel of big ideas — but it’s been 38 years since “Gravity’s Rainbow,” " -- Nazaryan

If the commitee were contemporarily consistent, this should boost Pynchon's chances. Actually, Pynchon's attitude towards his native land should warm the Nobel panel, and it's no surprise the odds on Pynchon are the shortest of any of this year's American roster. But I think the reason Pynchon has been overlooked for the award since the 70s is quite simple. They probably figure, and quite rightly, that Pynchon would embarass them by not showing. The Swedes may hate American culture, but I wouldn't doubt that even they watched Marlon Brando's stand-in at the Academy Awards many moons ago.

But now we get to the heart of the darkness. Notice that Nazaryan can't form his own argument, but has to lean heavily on David Foster Wallace:

"Four years after Morrison won the Nobel, David Foster Wallace predicted the current rut in which our literature finds itself in a New York Observer evisceration of John Updike’s “Toward the End of Time.” Though he took particular issue with Updike’s autumnal output, Wallace parceled blame to all of the Great Male Narcissists, with their hermetic concerns and insular little fictions. The following is Wallace’s estimation of Updike, but it could just as easily be said about anyone else in the postwar American pantheon: “The very world around them, as beautifully as they see and describe it, seems to exist for them only insofar as it evokes impressions and associations and emotions inside the self.”" -- Nazaryan

I'd read the Wallace denunciation some time ago. It has a degree of merit, but the trouble is that in aceing the frustrating scope of much fiction of the last forty years, it leaves out much else and misunderstands the greater concerns and ambitions of those authors.

Literature is supposed to hold up a mirror, not just in front of the supposedly narcissistic author/narrator, but for the reader and to society writ large. If Updike's protagonists can't see past their noses (or dicks), did it ever occur to Wallace (or Engdahl or Nazaryan) that Updike is making a serious point about Boomer selfishness and entitlement, about insularity and obsession? Even bringing up global misery in acknowledgement would serve to briefly trade in the microscope for the telescope, thereby breaking the pond-gaze dream.

"Our great writers choose this self-enforced isolation. Worse yet, they have inculcated younger generations of American novelists with the write-what-you-know mantra through their direct and indirect influence on creative programs. Go small, writing students are urged, and stay interior." -- Nazaryan

Now this is either disingenuous or naive. It's also dead wrong. First, Nazaryan calls these writers "great". How does that help his argument? Second, and I can't believe I'm defending creative writing programs, there's a lot of wisdom in writing about what one knows. O'Connor and Faulkner stuck to the South, Hemingway carried his persona around with him no matter what the subject. And two of those "claustophobic" writers won the Nobel. Especially for writing students just getting their feet wet, it's a good idea to not come out of the gate with a one thousand page techno-thriller-fantasy-romance anchor about the gritty realities of a Kashmir teen seeking refuge throughout Continental Europe while participating in local protests, trying to avoid being kidnapped by mysterious plutocrats, taking a sidetrip to Tibet for an ambiguous encounter with a Mahayana adept, and agonizing over the economic lures and spiritual dilemmas of selling Russian weapons to Iranian proxies, not to mention impregnating a Chinese student in Poland during a spring thaw where chemically-laden birds circle the docks in a repeating symbolic gift for the amazed protagonist.

That can all wait for the second book, at which point the creative writing programs can no longer be blamed. Of course, if career advancement is the only goal, as it is for so many, teachers-writers-prize dispensers-job procurers will be aped no matter what the prevailing aesthetic. In Canada, at least, the novelistic equivalent of the scene that Nazaryan depicts is quite different. A lot of multicultural nods and entanglements, though (often) not a lot of depth or enlightenment or energetic writing.

"Avoid inhabiting the lives of those unlike you — never dream of doing what William Styron did in “The Confessions of Nat Turner,” putting himself inside the impregnable skin of a Southern slave. Avoid, too, making the kinds of vatic pronouncements about Truth and Beauty that enticed all those 19th-century blowhards." -- Nazaryan

Just because an author inhabits the skin of another race or sex or species or inanimate object doesn't make this a daring success. One still has to be sold on the pronouncements, the relationships, the conclusions, and it has to again (and often) be said, the writing. I haven't read any of Styron, but I have read enough "progressive" lit to know that that approach is damnably difficult to pull off. As for the "vatic pronouncements about Truth and Beauty", I don't know what he's talking about. There are many American authors detailing the "big stuff" in their works.

Here, it would be appropriate to switch things up a bit. Why are American poets neglected in Nazaryan's article? Robert Lowell kicked off in 1977, but his greatest work was done by 1962. Transatlantic, steeped in European history, contemporary, politically engaged, Lowell is often stupidly pegged as a confessional, as if he had no more scope than an Olds (Sharon, not the car Nazaryan previously disparaged). He should have been a slam dunk for the award in his lifetime, but of course the panel who couldn't salute James Joyce knows a thing or two about merit. (That damn Irishman, picking scabs off that tiny island. What can a slum garreteer in Paris possibly enjoy from such a puny focus?)

The rest of the article is high-toned boilerplate, sermonizing vagaries with all the right adjectives. But I'll just note two snippets that caught my eye (one of them up-text):

"What relevance does our solipsism have to a reader in Bombay? For that matter, what relevance does it have in Brooklyn, N.Y.?"

and

"And lastly, the one word that seems most elusive to our writers today, so much so that I fear we’ve become afraid of it: universal." -- Nazaryan

What does universal mean, here? That the favoured Euros create a tale wherein a disenfranchised minority crosses a border, is subjected to the indifferent or menacing fates of a political elite the protagonist can't understand or defeat, which then gives lease for the author to vent or prophesy from an elevated third-person stoop on Truth and Beauty? And isn't that just as conformist as any narcissistic moaning in a small room? And what makes those authors automatically exempt from charges of narcissism? The Lebanese-Canadian Rawi Hage wrote an excellent novel based on his boyhood experiences in his blighted homeland, but how many Nobel Laureates wrote from the study, from historical and folkloric knowledge, the same as any American removed from the "action"? Some, if not most of them, are steeped in conscience, and are sincere. Last year's winner comes to mind. But they're writing from a protected position, and are espousing points of view (many of them) which have been accepted now for decades. Important? Often. Transgressive and daring? Not so much, unless you're talking about aesthetics. But aesthetics are political, too.

The argument breaks down, though, fundamentally. Roth, used as a punching bag in the piece (and its related quotes) because he's often cited as the most deserving American yet to win the Nobel, was talking deftly and intelligently about class differences and hatred as far back as Goodbye, Columbus. And the war of the sexes isn't universal? Other authors' narratives have spanned (for example) California to Indiana to New York in one work, a more complex socio-economic reality than books about poor maids in Jamaica brutalized by men, the women then travelling to England to become poor maids brutalized by men.

Click on the Lit Nobel winners of the past ten years or so, and note how the plaudits are framed. You'd think they were winning the awards for sociology exams.

P.S. , and edit:

I forgot to mention that Nazaryan is a Russian emigre teacher living in New York who is publishing his first novel about a Russian emigre in New York. But perhaps this is just an Oulipian experiment, the straightjacket he's putting himself in (perhaps?) an ironic comment on narcissism. Or is anything universal just because you've crossed an ocean by plane?

Americans, and the Nobel Prize for Lit

2011-10-04T02:07:00.000-07:00

http://entertainment.salon.com/2011/10/03/why_americans_don_t_win_nobel/singleton/#comments

As literary prizes, with their attendant controversies, go, I've always been more interested in the Nobel than in our national, annual bluster-in-beer-mug versions. The politics are messier, the judgements more fascinating, the aesthetic conclusions more grandiose and self-serving (if that's possible).

Here's most of the record, from Alexander Nazaryan at Salon (itself a one-note ideological internet rag), with my responses.

"[T]he literature Nobel will be announced this Thursday and if an American doesn’t win yet again, there will be the usual entitled whining — the sound of which has been especially piercing since 2008, when Nobel Academy permanent secretary Horace Engdahl deemed American fiction “too isolated, too insular” and declared Europe “the centre of the literary world.” --Nazaryan

Nazaryan uses Engdahl's quote as a springboard for identical views. But let's first investigate Engdahl. The permanent secretary for the literary prize with the biggest cachet (though no longer with the biggest cash) not only misrepresents American literature (however much of it he -- and by extension, the 16 member panel -- reads), he also flunked Contemporary History 101. Here's Engdahl, in words Nazaryan fails to quote:

"Very many authors who have their roots in other countries work in Europe, because it is only here where you can be left alone and write, without being beaten to death."

Got that? In America, as the Soviet media were and are fond of reporting -- in eras of Andropov or Putin, Gorbachev or Brezhnev -- not only are the citizenry, urban or rural, fearful dupes locked in apartments constantly obsessing over impending criminal surges while trying to grow tomato plants through the light from cracked windows, the thugs have successfully breached the walls. Or, as the more balanced "political" section of Salon would no doubt update it, the stooges of the oligarchy/new world order.

Back to Nazaryan. He cedes several points to those American publishers, writers, and critics who rightly took Engdahl to task for his incredibly presumptuous views.

"It’s true that the Academy, like any body of judges, has made some ill-informed decisions. And they’ve not done themselves any favors with some George W. Bush-era selections that plainly had more to do with politics than literature.

In 2005, British playwright Harold Pinter fulminated during his Nobel lecture about “the crimes of the United States” with all the embarrassing authority of a college freshman who just discovered Howard Zinn. In 2007, the prize was given to South African novelist Doris Lessing, who called 9/11 “neither as terrible nor extraordinary as [Americans] think.” " -- Nazaryan

Those Bush-era decisions weren't anomalous. The Nobel lit commitee has always viewed the prize through an ideological prism: Eurocentric, and, in the last forty years, multicultural. Now there's nothing inherently wrong with this approach. But be up front about it. The Nobel for scribes is a stamp for Euro-centred cross-culture. Even this subset of a subset, though, (World Prize?) is contaminated. I'll get to that after going through the rest of the body of quotation.

"That only fed the vitriol directed at Stockholm, --" -- Nazaryan

A credit. Certainly no Stockholm Syndrome, then.

"obscuring a valid point about American letters: We’ve become an Oldsmobile in a world yearning for a Prius. Our paint is flaking. Nobody wants our clunkers." -- Nazaryan

First off, poor analogy. Today's Prius will be tomorrow's whole 'nother form, let alone genre. Worthy literature is about the long haul. Second, it's wrong. Many American authors are readily translated into Euro languages. It's true that Americans do a piss-poor job of seeking out and reversing the transaction, but the legacy of European culture doesn't automatically equal Oxford dons' noses scoring ceiling-grooves and painterly Parisian bohemians scoffing at the boorish American man of letters.

"Stockholm has been trying to tell us this for a long while, and we would do well to listen." -- Nazaryan

What does this even mean? That American authors should shape and alter their visions to accord with Nobel commitee whims and dictates?

"Between 1950 and 1959, every one of the 10 Nobel winners was a European male. Between 2000 and 2009, three women won the prize, as well as five non-Europeans. They have given it to Caribbean poets and Chinese absurdists. An American-born male hasn’t won since John Steinbeck in 1962. The last white American male to win the prize was Joseph Brodsky in 1987 — and though he wrote in English, his poetic training and intellectual sensibility are purely those of the Soviet émigré he was. Saul Bellow was born in Canada." -- Nazaryan

Like an accomplished sophist, an ideological hack, Nazaryan throws up this data without context or elaboration, then shifts tack so that the lack of winners somehow becomes a self-evident damnation. There is no argument here. Americans have been virtually shut out because of ideological -- and yes, baldly political reasons, certainly not aesthetic, moral, or (to directly counter the commitee's claims) comprehensive ones. (And Bellow, though born in Canada, was thoroughly American, having moved there at seven, and possessing the sensibility and peculiar concerns of an American.)

"But if we don’t win yet again, we are at fault. America needs an Obama des letters, a writer for the 21st century, not the 20th — or even the 19th." -- Nazaryan

I earlier stated that Nazaryan obviously flunked History 101. But he also seems to get the bulk of his current affairs information from the mag he's writing for.

Yes, American authors need to aspire to their teleprompter-regurgitating leader (who doesn't pen the words on the scroll, who needs ghost-writers for his aubiography, whose contribution to putative literature were two poems in an undergrad mimeo, and whose policies vis-a-vis the hated Bush II have only been notable for an entrenchment then amplification of the status quo). Hey, but he sure talks smooth, awright!

"One who is not stuck in the Cold War" -- Nazaryan

Are American authors to be blamed for the glacial, reactionary pace of the commitee's judgements? And isn't that supremely ironic in light of this quote? Pinter's and Lessing's anti-Americanism played a part in their wins as even Nazaryan states, but they also copped the award for a body of work which scaled the uppermost Alps forty or more years ago. And at that time .... well, there was a Cold War.

"or the gun-slinging West" -- Nazaryan

Other than Cormac McCarthy's highly-regarded Western, the genre has been deader'n a rattler lacerated by a cactus in a cyclone. Or is Nazaryan's fixation with Bush reappearing?

"or the bygone Jewish precincts of Newark" -- Nazaryan

Yes, because that's all Roth writes about. And because mono-racial and tightly geographic novels can't transcend their "narrow" confines.

(Part Two, and final, tomorrow.)

Too Much, Too Little

2011-09-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

It's long been my opinion that poets publish too often, and novelists publish too sparingly. I agree with this writer's article regarding the latter trend.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/dear-novelists-be-less-moses-and-more-cosell.html

David Gilmour's A Perfect Night to go to China

2011-09-09T23:55:00.000-07:00

If you google David Gilmour's 2005 novella, A Perfect Night to go to China, you'll get the melodramatic plot hinge in a tight variation of, "man steps out for a quick drink, and when he returns, his son is missing; guilt ensues". But the vanished six-year-old is just an excuse for an exploration of the first-person narrator's spiritual claustrophobia. The hook, then, is not only unnecessary, it blunts the existential torpor of Roman, since his insights and ambiguous judgements don't have as much to do with every parent's worst nightmare as they do with his spiritual movement pre-disappearance. Too bad, because as wandering (physical and mental) meditations go, Gilmour, through his narrator, has some interesting things to say about gentility, thinly disguised conditional "help", and -- pointing the three fingers the other way -- ingratitude and misunderstanding.

I suppose one has to allow a broad acceptance of "just about anything goes" when it comes to dream revelation, but I've never had even one that involved long conversations without imagery. Gilmour's narrator can conjure them at will (or is assailed by them). Just one more reason the attention-grabbing plot push was a misstep. The connection between father and son, for all its sentiment, was abstract, and that hadn't much to do with dreams and memories. This is where the interiority of the novella was at its least interesting. The ending -- well, who didn't see that coming?

The bank robbery didn't make sense from what we're given by way of financial information. Roman is a TV talk show host, noon slot, in Canada's biggest city. Those types pull in (low) six figures per annum. His is a spartan existence, or at least not extravagant, from the little we're given of his diurnal recording, so how he can veer into the red after a month or two of quitting his gig is farfetched. That said, running into two friendly cops three blocks from the heist who want to waylay him only to chat about interviewing Dean Martin and real cops is hilarious.

The style has repeatedly been called "spare", and I've never been able to understand why this stand alone adjective is almost universally accepted as code for the de facto preferred prose procedure. I'm a lover of maximalist, shaggy, varied presentation, but I'm open to all styles, if well done. I just find this preference a trifle closed-minded, and, what's worse, an immediately accepted (often without evidence) synonym for "clear" or "essential", or "fast moving". Gilmour's prose is quite good, but the repetitiveness of the three-sentences-in-one broken up by commas, the phrasal sentences, and the phrasal tics ("I thought" prefacing many sentences -- clumsy segue between description and interior monologue) became wearing, at times. At other times, the darting thoughts and clipped sentences allowed a convincing opening into the narrator's unstable mind.

A quick, fairly interesting read.

David Gilmour in the NaPo

2011-09-06T12:58:00.000-07:00

http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/08/30/david-gilmour-figures-out-the-perfect-order-of-things/

This article by Mark Medley in the National Post based on an interview he conducted with David Gilmour upon the release of his latest novel brought to mind a similarly bizarre explosion some years back when listening to Nigel Beale's interview podcast with Gilmour a day after he won the Gov-Gen Award for A Perfect Night to go to China. But first to the NaPo piece.

Gilmour doesn't hang out with writers because they're "insecure".

He then recounts how he went on a manhunt for Andre Alexis after the reviewer had trashed A Perfect Night to go to China. A year and a half of rage. But he calmed down. "Beating the living shit out of this guy" became a plan to "slap him across the face". Medley reassures Alexis: "Still, the critic can breath [sic] easy -- if they do come face-to-face, 'I'm going to try to keep my hands to myself', Gilmour promises." I love the hilarious "try" and "promises". I'm sure Alexis' pulse would slow a few dozen beats per minute if he spotted those two words. It's now been five years since that thumbs-down review.

Beale, in his probing interview, asked Gilmour about the GG award process. The author, to his credit, admitted that success depended completely on the luck of the draw as to who the jurists were that particular year. He followed that up with this juvenile head-scratcher regarding his win: "everyone who's ever been a critic is going to have to eat it". But why would critics uncharitable to Gilmour's work care if he won the award or not since even Gilmour doesn't believe it has any objective merit?

But then the shit really hit the fan. Beale was highly praiseworthy of the book as a whole, but prefaced his comments with this: "I didn't like some of the similes you used in the first two chapters." Gilmour's response?

"Are you fucking with me? Don't fuck with me about my work. I don't put up with bullshit from people. Don't you be telling me that the quality of my work differs from one chapter to another. That is fucking presumptuous. I won't put up with that bullshit, do you understand? Fuck you."

But it gets better. Switching gears ....

"Those books are like children. When someone ... says, 'I like your first son, but I don't like your daughter', my response is to say 'fuck you'. "

The analogy is silly. A book is an insentient collection of words. It would be more accurate to say that a book is a closed-loop extention of the author, or father, to use Gilmour's terms. But rushing to the rescue of the honour of one's son is more noble than justifying one's artistic production by rage and threats. But let's play with his comparison, anyway. A son (or daughter) has to grow up. If a father attempts to continually coddle his offspring from the inevitable challenges and horrors of life, it promotes dependence and -- ironically -- a greater chance that protective intervention will need to be undertaken to save the bubble-world child/adolescent/adult. Which brings us back to the NaPo article.

Gilmour doesn't mix with writers because they're "insecure". Didn't Freud call this projection?

Another irony is that Gilmour relished sticking it to his guests, without warning, when he hosted his own TV arts program.

I bought A Perfect Night to go to China several months ago, but have been plowing through other novels since then. I'm in the middle of two others now, but when I finish them, I'll pick up Gilmour's book, read it, then review it in this space. Yes, even under the implicit threat of physical backlash! I just won't tell the greater public which bars I frequent.

Jian Ghomeshi and Rawi Hage

2011-08-23T22:54:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of debate about worth, or more exactly, lack of worth, in the Canada Reads series. The focus has been on the rules and their deployment. But the reason I only tune in for a yearly snapshot, and then only after the fact in desultory fashion, centres on the host.

I recently spent an excruciating twenty-plus minutes listening to Jian Ghomeshi try to cajole Rawi Hage into an admission that Canada is a big-hearted, complex-free assimilator. Hage's patience was admirable, and he also had to set the dilettante faux-chuckler straight on other matters.

I let out a silent cheer when I subsequently read that Hage hated lit soirees, and preferred kibbitzing with his taxi buddies since that's where the real storytelling originated.

I then thought, no doubt naively, that a parallel Canada Reads series would be a bigger bang for reader, author, and viewer if the host(s) were also fretted in depth with the books on display. But passionate digressions obviously scare CBC admin-flunkies who think they know how to "read" the public's taste for hard-hitting current events buffered by soft-boiled lit chat.

I realize the feed is from Feb 2009, but Teh World Wide Interwebz is a big place, and I'm frequently several universes behind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srIHTSxX8m0

Paul Krugman

2011-08-18T04:10:00.000-07:00

"If we discovered that space aliens were planning to attack," [Paul] Krugman told CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Sunday, "and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat, and inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months."

Did David Icke include Nobel Prize-winning economists in his reptilian gallery? And if that prophetic science whiz is on to something, shouldn't Krugman be attack-sacrificing to get this recovery show on the road?

Litterattainment, or Death Waits For No One

2011-07-24T00:07:00.000-07:00

A Play in One Act

ROY BEAN, judge
TODD ZUNIGA, defendant
BEN MATLOCK; CHICO MARX, defense lawyers
HAMILTON BURGER, prosecutor
BOB KRONBAUER, literary juror
SHANE KOYCZAN, performance juror
MICHAEL ROBERTS, intangibles juror
SEAN CRANBURY
SARA BYNOE
BOB SHEA
JULIE WILSON
DAN LICHTENBERG
MEGHAN MURPHY SUSZYNSKI; JAMIE MILLARD; REGAN SMITH
TREVOR COLE
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
JAMES JOYCE
ALFRED BESTER
MIRIAM WADDINGTON
NATHANAEL WEST
bailiff, gallery

BAILIFF: Hear ye! Hear ye! Court is in session. The People Versus Literary Death Match. Drinking is optional.

GALLERY: (Cheers.)

BAILIFF: Judge Roy Bean presiding.

ROY BEAN: (Enters. Slaps pistol on desk.) Opening statement, Burger. Do you have anything to say before we find you guilty?

HAMILTON BURGER: What? Your Honour, I'm the prosecutor. I have no wish to make an opening statement. I'll allow the creator, perpetrators and seals of this mushrooming abomination to self-administer the poison.

ROY BEAN: Got any money?

HAMILTON BURGER: No.

ROY BEAN: Matlock, you want to say anything?

BEN MATLOCK: I do indeed, Your Honour. I'd like to call to the stand the defendant Todd Zuniga.

BAILIFF: Do you promise to tell the truth, most of the truth, or a conning verisimilitude thereof, so help you God or Goddess?

TODD ZUNIGA: More or less.

BEN MATLOCK: Mr. Zuniga, you've been charged with aiding and abetting the murder of literature, worldwide. How do you plead?

TODD ZUNIGA: Insanity.

ROY BEAN: Case closed. Defendant not guilty by means of insanity.

TODD ZUNIGA: No! The charge is insane. Not guilty.

BEN MATLOCK: Please explain the genesis of your idea for the Literary Death Match.

TODD ZUNIGA: It was a response to readings in general, which went, I started to notice as a person who went to three or four a week, this way: there'd be three readers, and one would be race-to-the-bookstore excellent, one would be so self-indulgent they'd go seven minutes over the limit, and one would read a "story", a.k.a. blog post, they slapdashed earlier that afternoon. Or we'd go to a reading with comedians, and some poor sap had to follow a hilarious stand-up with a memoir excerpt about his sister passing away. We wanted every reader to be great, to keep them within a time limit (I secretly believe that audience attention starts to wander at six minutes, can hold until seven, and largely evaporates at eight -- our time limit is seven minutes). And we wanted the comedic elements to have context, to blend into the show in a sensible manner.

BEN MATLOCK: What was the initial event like?

TODD ZUNIGA: The place was packed. We couldn't believe it. And we didn't know everyone -- which was the point: to get people outside the immediately literary world to come and enjoy literary things.

ROY BEAN: That'll be enough tongue-wagging, young man. Jurors? Who wants a go?

BOB KRONBAUER: This is too awesome!!!

GALLERY: (Cheers, clapping.)

SHANE KOYCZAN: We are the true north strong and free.

GALLERY: (Louder cheers.)

MICHAEL ROBERTS: There is no strong guiding aesthetic. Everything is for the moment.

GALLERY: (Shouts, the Wave.)

HAMILTON BURGER: MR. Zuniga, I don't want to characterize you as a cheerful cynic or as a literary equivalent to one of ... to steal Timon's phrase ... Mr. Shakespeare?

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: (offstage.) Time's flies.

HAMILTON BURGER: Thank you. (Turns back to Zuniga.) But isn't this ruse just lo-cal/ so-Cal entertainment for the text-messaging set?

TODD ZUNIGA: Literature, and hearing it, is at the centre of what we do. (A water balloon sails over his head and breaks across the photo-imprisoned face of Queen Elizabeth.)

GALLERY: (Laughs and titters.)

HAMILTON BURGER: Excuse me? I must have misheard. Could you repeat or rephrase that for the court, please?

TODD ZUNIGA: The most important aspect of the entire show is to showcase literature.

HAMILTON BURGER: We'll get to the extracurricular dominance later, but for now I'd like to direct everyone's attention to this you tube video of a Mr. Dan Lichtenberg reading an extract of his to a Literary Death Match audience. Please dim the lights, clerk, and if I could press upon the audience to refrain from cell phone usage and hitting on their immediate neighbours.

DAN LICHTENBERG: (Walking in circles, repeatedly high-stepping over mic chord.) We fucked. It was all right. And then I told her we had to stop doing this to ourselves. "Doing what to ourselves?", Jenny asked. "You know." "No, what? Fucking? Fucking ourselves?" "Yeah, exactly." And then she kept asking me what the hell I was talking about. I think she knew it was over but she stayed there in bed for awhile and we smoked cigarettes even though I told her I didn't like smoking in the house because as soon as I made a habit of smoking in the house I'd be admitting to myself that I had an addiction on my hands, in my hands, in everyone's hands.

HAMILTON BURGER: This is the first 90 seconds of the six minute skit, or reading. The performance concludes, with no suggestion of irony: "To hell with diction. Sometimes word choice didn't mean shit." I'll remind the jurors that Mr. Zuniga, in his first response, "wanted every reader to be great". If what we just witnessed was greatness, what superlatives remain for Alexander? No further questions at this time, Your Honour.

ROY BEAN: Thank God. I need a nap. Court adjourned till two p.m.

GALLERY: (Schmoozing, drinking.)

BAILIFF: All rise for --

ROY BEAN: (Eyes make-out session on gallery bench.) Don't you have parents or the like? Next witness, Matlock.

BEN MATLOCK: I call Sean Cranbury to the box. While we wait, I'd like some feedback from the jurors on Dan Lichtenberg's art.

BOB KRONBAUER: You can't not fall in love with that magic.

GALLERY: (Cheers.)

SHANE KOYCZAN: An experiment going right for a change with influences that range from A to Zed.

GALLERY: (Wild cheers.)

MICHAEL ROBERTS: We stood there admiring the khaki mesh cotton hoodie and drop-crotch tweed track trousers.

GALLERY: (Etc.)

BEN MATLOCK: Mr. Cranbury, you organized the Vancouver chapter of Literary Death Match. You've expressed enthusiasm for the event. Could you elaborate?

SEAN CRANBURY: Vancouver has some of the most talented writers in the world, so this gives us a chance to put ourselves on the map internationally. What I really want to do with these events is grow the community and give people a chance to be cool and not be lame and literary, because that shit is just so old and nobody cares.

GALLERY: (Deafening cheers.)

HAMILTON BURGER: Objection, Your Honour. The audience is trying to influence the verdict. (Ducks a flying cupcake.)

ROY BEAN: Don't fret on it. I wouldn't waste my bullets on them, let alone my seed.

HAMILTON BURGER: Mr. Cranbury, how would you advertize the Death Match in a catchy, concise manner?

SEAN CRANBURY: The tag line should be -- "Come meet some attractive, intelligent, semi-drunk people."

GALLERY: (Laughs.)

HAMILTON BURGER: Interesting. Yet you've given a glancing, half-hearted acceptance of the Vancouver International Writers Festivals, where the dinosaurs do roam. Tough words -- "lame and literary" -- but I don't hear any specific names. You've mentioned Toronto in this context -- could they be the enemy?

SEAN CRANBURY: There's a distance in Vancouver from the hive of Toronto's -- which is good -- but we're very different here than Toronto.

HAMILTON BURGER: "Very different". "Which is good". Thanks for the specificity. I wonder what this "very different" amounts to. Lots of difference within Toronto. And lots of similarity between Vancouver and Toronto. In any event, you've learned well from Literary Death Match. The Vancouver Writers' Series had Sonnet L'Abbe doing push-ups while labouring through a poem, and the twelve-pack were kept close to the preferred six minutes, as well.

BEN MATLOCK: Objection, Judge. Is there a question in any of this?

ROY BEAN: You just asked one. Who's got the hooch? There's another one. Are you through flapping your gums, prosecutor? And another.

HAMILTON BURGER: Fair enough. Brevity is ... is ... well, it's my turn for first dibs on questioning. I call William Shakespeare.

BAILIFF: Do you promise to tell the truth, and then some?

ROY BEAN: Get my Bible.

BAILIFF: Can't find it, Your Worship. This 1879 Texas Revised Statutes book do?

ROY BEAN: Proceed.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: I do.

ROY BEAN: This ain't no wedding, and that's a law book, not a salt lick.

HAMILTON BURGER: Help me out, Mr. Shakespeare.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: Brevity is the soul of wit.

ROY BEAN: Mark that well, Mr. Burger. Now I'm hungry.

GALLERY: (Cheers.)

ROY BEAN: I am bending over backwards to be fair. Shut the hell up.

HAMILTON BURGER: What do you make of the Literary Death Match?

BEN MATLOCK: Is this an Avon calling?

GALLERY: (Wild laughter.)

ROY BEAN: (Snores.)

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: Writing and reading, let that appear when there is no need of such vanity.

HAMILTON BURGER: But you were a hands on author and performer. Have you no sympathy for the entertainment focus of the event?

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, what fools these mortals be.

HAMILTON BURGER: Over to you, Defense.

BEN MATLOCK: Is it all vanity, Mr. Shakespeare? Surely there is a genuine kernel of connection desired, at least by some?

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.

BEN MATLOCK: Can the words not remain in the hearts of the audience?

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: Go to your bosom, knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.

BEN MATLOCK: Nothing to be salvaged, then?

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

BEN MATLOCK: Your Honour, this is outrageous!

ROY BEAN: (Awakes with a start.) I agree. Another dead soldier. Damn good phalanx here. And I'm coming after you, Bailiff.

BAILIFF: Judge?

ROY BEAN: Top cupboard! Bourbon's behind the liniment.

BEN MATLOCK: No, no, Your Honour. I mean, the prosecution has trotted out a reverential quote machine. This is nothing more than an animatronic wax figure.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: If you prick us, do we not bleed?

HAMILTON BURGER: James Joyce to the stand.

BAILIFF: Do you promise on this Bible to state the truth, the whole ... ah, forget it.

HAMILTON BURGER: Mr. Joyce, your insights concerning the Death Match festivities.

JAMES JOYCE: What do they go about for only getting themselves and their poetry laughed at?

HAMILTON BURGER: What, in your opinion, is the greatest challenge of the organizers?

JAMES JOYCE: The difficulties of the selection of appropriate music and humorous allusions from Everybody's Book Of Jokes (1000 pages and a laugh in every one).

BET MATLOCK: Jurors, I'd like your pronouncements on the performative farce from these wired wind-ups.

BOB KRONBAUER: Okay, seriously ... my favourites performing free. Full steam ahead!

GALLERY: (Cheers.)

SHANE KOYCZAN: That's where we used to be at.

GALLERY: (Ooohs, aaahs.)

MICHAEL ROBERTS: A multicoloured collage, clothes made from odd pieces of unrelated material, such as wool with leather or lame, chiffon, and stretch jersey combined in one outfit. Also, British heritage items such as green Wellington boots, eccentric floral dresses, flat caps, kilts, all accompanied by funny hats or headpieces.

GALLERY: (Cheers.)

BEN MATLOCK: The defense introduces Sara Bynoe into the record. Ms. Bynoe, how do you think the general book-inclined public views non- Literary Death Match readings?

SARA BYNOE: Hoity-toity, the equivalent of what people think of going to the symphony.

BEN MATLOCK: Over to Mr. Burger.

HAMILTON BURGER: Interesting characterization. I've met engaged, fascinating old people and curious, open-minded young people at both symphonic and chamber concerts. Joke ideas like 'Say Wha? Readings of Deliciously Rotten Writing' use verbatim text just as your words are being used here. What's your aim when performing in Literary Death Match and Say Wha? ?

SARA BYNOE: Learning to love my Roman nose is a struggle. I am lucky to have people in my life who tell me that beyond my unique nose I have other distinguishing features; my eyes, my smile, my curves, and my lady tah tahs (thanks boys).

HAMILTON BURGER: As the Bard said, "no need of such vanity", isn't that the 800 pound you-know-what in the room?

CHICO MARX: Your Honour, that's irrelevant.

GALLERY: (Laughs.)

HAMILTON BURGER: Julie Wilson next.

BAILIFF: Do you --

ROY BEAN: She does. Man and wife. Get on with it.

HAMILTON BURGER: Ms. Wilson, Todd Zuniga suggests that Death Match performers "risk being unfunny". How do you see that in the light of the event's actual ethos?

JULIE WILSON: One of the contenders wrote to ask if it would be a problem to read something sad. I replied, "You're not a sad person, so it won't be a sad reading."

HAMILTON BURGER: I see, then. Sadness is OK as a tone as long as the author doesn't in any way identify with the sadness, making for an uncool reaction amongst the audience. The reflexive emotions have to be event sanctioned, and the author-reader has to be admired even more so than his or her words. Are those fair comments?

JULIE WILSON: I had no clue who the patrons were. Yet they were being introduced to authors I felt I knew quite intimately. And they all fell in love.

HAMILTON BURGER: Trevor Cole, please. Your first novel is dominated by a vain, self-obsessed protagonist, an actor, Norman Bray. What do you have your character say while he watches a histrionic cooking show on TV?

TREVOR COLE: It's awful. But it's fascinating.

HAMILTON BURGER: Miriam Waddington to the box. Ms. Waddington, try, if you can, to get inside the head of the author-performer just before and during one of these seven minute sprints. What question might emerge from his or her curiosity?

MIRIAM WADDINGTON: Who are those giant spectators who chopped down the summer and now fill the arena with loud expectation?

GALLERY: (phone texts, whispers.)

HAMILTON BURGER: And what might the thought be, post-reading?

MIRIAM WADDINGTON: There my defeated choirs sing in broken keys of all the doors I forced by solar acts of love.

HAMILTON BURGER: Thank you. Mr. Matlock.

BEN MATLOCK: With all due respect, Ms. Waddington, metaphors can cover a lot of impressive ground through false union. One person's profound conclusion is another's inconsequential nightmare. The sun rises, we awake, and get on with our lives, more or less with yesterday's convictions. Aren't you reaching for an unnecessary and overdramatic meaning?

MIRIAM WADDINGTON: Under the dawn of city skies moves the sun in presaged course, smoothing out the cunning lies that hide the evil at the source. I sense the evil at the source now at this golden point of noon, the misdirected social force will grind me also, and too soon.

HAMILTON BURGER: I'd like to call Bob Shea to the stand. Mr. Shea, you write books for kids, yes?

BOB SHEA: That's right.

HAMILTON BURGER: Todd Zuniga says that your performance during the Texas --

ROY BEAN: Vinegaroon way?

HAMILTON BURGER: -- Literary Death Match was one of the three best and most popular -- best and popular being mutual terms here -- in its five year history. Your last line garnered the loudest, longest laughs. Would you repeat them here for the court, please?

BOB SHEA: Selling out wins!

GALLERY: (Laughs.)

BEN MATLOCK: Tarnation! Judge, this is out of all context.

HAMILTON BURGER: Is it? The video can be googled. The court of public opinion can weigh in after viewing it. The tongue is lodged only part way in the cheek, no firm stance can be deduced, but the implications for adults or children are clear. The real winner is Bob Shea because pitched to kids, it's a cute, energetic book of happy dinosaurs. Pitched to adults, it's a typical hey-I'm-a-loser-and-that's-cool characterization -- faintly cyncial, completely sympathetic -- which flatters the adult who, after all, has to buy the book and who is then motivated to read it. Kid likes the energy in book and adult reader, begs Daddy or Mommy for more, and the industry is created through cynical, crafty research.

BEN MATLOCK: I'd like to call on Meghan Murphy Suszynski, Jamie Millard, and Regan Smith. Ladies, your assessment of the particular show you attended.

MEGHAN MURPHY SUSZYNSKI, JAMIE MILLARD, REGAN SMITH: (Together.) Let us pay homage to the celebrities who made this possible, and who also made us feel extraordinarily cool when they came to dinner with us after the show.

GALLERY: (Cheers.)

HAMILTON BURGER: Alfred Bester. Impressions, sir?

ALFRED BESTER: I decided to sell my soul to the Devil, but the problem was how to find him. I was stumped, so I did the obvious thing: I called Celebrity Service.

HAMILTON BURGER: Nathanael West. Mr. West, Todd Zuniga likes to boast of the number of bums in seats at his creation. One hundred, two hundred. I believe a certain Mr. Springer, indeed a not-long-past Mr. Falwell, could promote numbers dwarfing that, and in the former case, the subjects were the same: sex and humour, the formula explicitly put forward by Zuniga. What are your thoughts on crowds, conformity, and suggestion?

NATHANAEL WEST: They were marching behind his banner in a great unified front of screwballs and screwboxes to purify the land. No longer bored, they sang and danced joyously in the red light of the flames.

BEN MATLOCK: Your Honour, I'm checking my roster. Since there are no more witnesses, I'd like to call my defendant to the stand a final time. Now then, Mr. Zuniga, one charge against the Literary Death Match is that it's all fun and games, that as long as one at the event meets another and gets laid, or failing that, gets a few good laughs, all's well. But you've insisted on the literary aspect and purpose of the show. Please elaborate.

TODD ZUNIGA: First off -- Vancouver, I challenge you to be a little more drunk than Toronto.

GALLERY: (Wild, sustained cheers.)

TODD ZUNIGA: I do believe there's a way to put literature back into the centre of the pop culture conversation, and our way of pushing it in that direction is to seamlessly marry literature and comedy at an event that very much feels like poetry.

BEN MATLOCK: You run Opium magazine. And you put these notions to work in the print medium. How so?

TODD ZUNIGA: We have an estimated reading time at the top of every page so if someone sees a poem with a :57, they could say, "Hey, I've got a minute." If you make the readers flip the pages fast, it makes them feel like they're getting something done. It's also a gateway to short stories and novels.

BEN MATLOCK: That's all, Your Honour.

HAMILTON BURGER: Mr. Matlock has performed my work for me. The defendant can step down. Judge and jurors, Mr. Zuniga has proudly stated that literature is at the heart of Literary Death Match, yet the party atmosphere at these events reaches its climactic impulse during the final furlong when bricks are thrown at pictures of famous authors, charades are performed, books are slam-dunked through basketball hoops, there's musical chairs, trivial pursuit challenges, and resurrecting Jesus -- photos of Mel Gibson on one side, Willem Defoe on the
other -- a notch at a time depending on whether or not a Cadbury egg knocks over a contestant's book. In Vancouver, Sean Cranbury came up with the brilliant idea of dividing the audience into opposing sides, with a name-that- tune finale. Just a note -- Vancouver TheatreSports did that over 30 years ago, and with real comedians and comediennes at the helm, so I'm not sure how
cutting edge it really is. As for the seven minute time limit, I can only speak for myself. If an author is on fire, literarily speaking, I have no concept of time, and were I to experience that reader getting pelted by a nerf dart as an ever so cute winking aside to the audience in order to terminate the reading, I'd then feel inclined to shoot my own hellebore-spiked arrow at the original assailant. Mr. Zuniga believes his creation is a gateway for readers who think other literary events boring. But literature is derided at every turn in the Death Match. There are some very good authors gracing the event, but they're shackled by the procedure. If new observers of literature learn anything there, it's that one reader's pretty much like the next, though those dreaming of fucking Benjamin Franklin, the belly fat making strange flapping noises against the narrator's flesh, or sci-fi porn rants from the P.O.V. of a horny woman in an
aquarium, often help scoop the deciding votes. Those observers of literature -- ghastly term -- anyone I've spoken to about literary influences are firm: a love for this endlessly fascinating obsession begins when young, but in the minority of cases when the bite occurs later -- as a young adult -- it originates through grace, fortuitous or hard-wired. If Mr. Zuniga wants to use the gateway metaphor, the Death Match would be marijuana, but what would be crack for those people? Just as that scare tactic is overblown, so too is any idealistic notion that seeing or listening to Dan Lichtenberg will lead to anything more lastingly mind-altering. The best readings I've attended have had no whistles or bells -- none. A usually -- not always -- small audience has shown up, been attentive, and I, at least, have lost track of time --

BEN MATLOCK: Your Honour, surely he's gone past the limit.

ROY BEAN: (Puts down newspaper.) Damn right.

GALLERY: (Cheers.)

ROY BEAN: Jurors. Wrap up. Shoot.

BOB KRONBAUER: Put yourself in the right place at the right time with the right credentials and experience and you are bound to "click" into some good fortune.

GALLERY: (Cheers.)

SHANE KOYCZAN: The design is what makes us more than the sum total of our history.

GALLERY: (Cheers.)

MICHAEL ROBERTS: Epaulettes, eye-popping camouflage, combat boots, brass buttons, peacoats, parkas, battle-dress blousons, flying jackets, military great coats -- even the long johns and skivvies traditionally worn under all of the above -- were paraded up and down, uber-masculine choices.

GALLERY: (And so on.)

ROY BEAN: Mr. Burger, it is the judgement of this court that you are hereby tried and convicted of illegally and unlawfully committing certain grave offenses against the peace and dignity of literature, particularly in my bailiwick. I fine you two dollars. Then get the hell out of here and never show yourself in this court again. That's my rulin'.

GALLERY: (Wild cheers, mosh dives, mooning, ostentatious handshakes.)

ROY BEAN: Bar is open.

ADD Becomes Surf 'n' Turf

2011-06-24T03:23:00.000-07:00

http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/06/09/smackdown-between-scribes-todd-zuniga-talks-literary-death-match/

I invoke Godwin on myself right away. The poetic Godwin concerning this note is cultural, and so is more seductive than its hysterical ad hominem one-on-one discussion stopper. To steal -- then amplify -- from the same insidious psycho-history, a lie told repeatedly is even stronger when told by many.

"No one wants to attend poetry readings, so keep them to seven minutes max, then intersperse with clowns."

That's the way to bullhorn and shoehorn the distracted and wayward into your threadbare tent on the midway. Notice that the plan for this (now) international poetry carnivalesque is entirely predicated on enticing the poetically clueless and indifferent: "audience attention starts to wander at 6 minutes." But surely if the audience is mounting in restive revolt -- silent or otherwise -- at that (no doubt) scientifically replicated 6 minute mark (how can some people survive the boredom of time's egg-boiling and bowel-voiding?), why not up the ante and have the ostentatious hook hanging from the outset, using it as a side-splitting (audience and performer) ambuscade after the first passage with no punch line or sentimental catch at minute one?

Yes, at the back of the blog, I know: it's entertainment, a light-hearted escape, a one-off confection. But it's still selling poetry, isn't it? And worse, the underlying assumption is that poetry needs this to survive as a communal event.

I mentioned that this was a cultural lie. The link at the outset was only the most splashy I could find as a representative for this shift, but many other sources, on-line and off- , ape the same conclusion. Poetry is good for you but insufferable in its live limitations. Therefore, edit, be cool, and above all, drink. I'm all for brevity, irony, and creative quaffing, but (to take these three points in order) why is something so important to the people reading and listening also so puny as to be rendered soporific after 6 (or 16) minutes; why is seriousness uncool or annoying; and why is the experience so painful that it can only be conducted in an altered state? (I'd thought poetry was the essential altered state of the reading -- I can drink at home, but I can't hear and see a poet reading there most nights.)

But the voice persists. "But most readings are boring!" So the answer is then to ridicule the notion of putting them on altogether? The organizer-founder in the linked article says that one in three performers in the bad ole boring days would be "race-to-the-bookstore excellent". If that were true of every reading I'd been to, and if I knew that to be a fact of all future readings, I would have been and will be excited.

There's actually nothing at all wrong with sitting through ten or twenty minutes of indifferent verse voicings in order to get to the surprise of that blowing-one-away third reader. That's life. I happily listen to long symphonies, watch two hour movies, and spend ten or fifteen hours reading novels that have (sometimes) long stretches of waste and turgidity. But unless your way is the greatest hits package -- IPods further changing our neurotransmitters and psychology -- it won't kill the audience patron to endure (gack!) a run of bad verse, or good verse badly delivered.

If the 6 minute rule became standard -- (the fifteen minute rule seems to be the norm already) -- I would have never experienced three of the most transformative poetry readings of my life, those given by George Faludy, Irving Layton, and Len Gasparini. All were one to one-and-a-half hours long, and involved only shortish intros and, in Layton's case only, a short Q and A post-reading.

If a poet is good, I want him or her to be on that stage for a long time because .... well, it's enjoyable, and when enjoying anything, I (and, yes, we) happily lose track of time. And if the audience isn't expecting pies in faces of readers or Little Bo Peep's curved arm in the shadows, the poets usually don't mind spending the extra time with their listeners, as well. And if they do mind, they shouldn't be reading at all.

Of Boredom and Definitions

2011-06-13T02:34:00.000-07:00

http://mhpbooks.com/mobylives/?p=33021

Nathan Ihara relates weighty philosophical speculation from David Foster Wallace and others, but then botches things in the translation and self-narrated conclusion.

First off, I agree completely with the Lee Rourke and Joseph Brodsky quotes. Fine stuff. Wallace, however, is another matter. The biggest problem I have is with thinking that something as subjective as personal boredom can be universalized into a one-size-fits-all assumption. Wallace states that "Bliss -- a second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious -- lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom." But it's been my experience that the opposite of boredom is curiosity. Boredom equals incuriosity, and equals stagnation. Curiosity doesn't relate to bliss, though it can lead there, even in difficult and labyrinthine ways. The opposite of bliss, for me, has been fear and the prevalence of frustrating conflict.

And this brings up another problem I had with Wallace's later quotes (in the link) from his commencement speech to Kenyon College in 2005: that boredom has to do exclusively with circumstances in one's life. Again, one can only speak individually. I'd rather have heard what each of those college kids had to say about boredom than to listen to a single "expert" "warn" them.

My longest bout of boredom arrived with the least pressure from home or work life. It was existential, mysterious, and lasted for several years. Like Brodsky and Rourke, I let it be without manipulation. Conversely, in traditionally boring circumstances (and Wallace and others, of course, are right, these are unavoidable) -- repetitive job duties, suffocating social settings, attendance to bureaucratic necessity -- I've often found a refreshing and perversely contrasting counter to it: impish internal or external challenge, or in the latter case, avoidance (death is the victory for all procrastinators).

The boredom that Wallace talks about seems to me quite superficial: circumstance? Bah! Boredom may be stagnation, but inertia is not always self-perpetuating, and certainly not a necessary life sentence. Ihara's stupid reduction, "Life is unquestionably boring", isn't given gravitas by John Berryman's similarly famous line in one of his Dream Songs. Boredom is a passing state, even on a deeper plane, the same as all other states.

I would reverse Ihara's statement that "The desire to escape boredom lets only to endless craving and insatiable desire". Insatiable desire is inherently frustrating, and can only lead to boredom. But this repeats in all of us, and in every day to some extent, and most importantly, is again part of the lesser see-saw playing out of boredom. This form of boredom could be more accurately called distraction or restlessness, not at all the kind of boredom that I think Wallace and Ihara are talking about.

Don Cherry

2011-06-06T18:09:00.000-07:00

Heard five minutes ago on Coach's Corner:

Ron McLean: "[Horton's] moving all his extremities."

Don Cherry: "He's moving all his arms and legs, too."

Joyous News

2011-05-24T23:50:00.000-07:00

Even though Canada has typically lagged behind the seminal literary movements the past centenary, the following linked article reveals a ray of actual light in a too-long theoretical tunnel. Just as retro May Parisian runway fashions juice the clothing industry, anachronistic elements -- people, physical objects, emotions -- may be a boon and a grace for literature this side of the Atlantic, too. (The hyperbole arrow's only at 90 degress.)

-----------------------------

"The French are aware of their waning influence in world literature. For the most part this is attributed to the way critical theory has dominated literature from the 1980s on; put simply, French readers, brought up on the diamond-hard prose of Flaubert or Zola, or the musicality of Baudelaire or Hugo, were sick of theory and theorists, and the stodgy, indigestible and incomprehensible literature they inspired."

------------

"a distinct resistance movement to theory has recently been gaining ground with French authors. The present crop of young writers are rediscovering the pleasure of writing to be read rather than studied."

------------

The entire article below:

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2011/04/modern-french-literature-suicide-leve-jean-rolin-hose/

Marilyn Bowering's green

2011-05-22T22:03:00.000-07:00

green (2007) is, by my count, Marilyn Bowering's fifteenth book of poetry, two of which were nominated for the Governor General's Award.

Bowering has stated in the header to her blog, "Slow Books", that "It's become rare, though, for me to find books I haven't read that I want to read all the way through from beginning to end. Most books dissapoint [sic] after 80 or so pages."

The patience!

Here are some curious citations from her latest sure to make any contemporary poet green with envy.

"I listen to the trees:

what do they say
but green green?

At last I understand Lorca!" (p. 6)

"Remove this dress
and beneath that

the underdress
and beneath it

whatever you find --
I don't need it.

Then the skin,
layer by layer,

all bands of muscle,
and tissue -- whatever it contains --

lay it aside --
I need no protection:" (p. 12)

"The moon is round, like a lover's nipples --" (p. 35)

"What remains of the night?
Dark." (p. 36)

"It's better when I don't think" (p. 42)

"I'm wired end to end -- a flock of migrating birds

has found a short cut -- me -- to the other birds:
or maybe I'm empty space, a rare non-habitant,

the world's easement? Hello, hello -- do I know
any of you?" (p. 48)

"when I die, the day I lie down,
it will be with the poetry of night
layering the grass, swamping the lamplit windows

and beginning to come alive again,
like a stopped train
lifting its head
to contemplate a miracle." (p. 59)

"Ouch! everything hurts:

especially my eyes, near evening,
when the world is roaring pointlessly." (p. 62)

"Everything is as important as everything else:" (p. 64)

"I've taken off my clothes.
I want this to be natural. Put away your
camcorder.
Before I feel you sizzling in me,
I have to know your absence. Its presence
by absence, if you know what I mean." (p. 67)

"I'm naked: I'm full of ideas: I'm about to swim
out the window, graze in the grass
and sky,
move contrary to Nature. I don't know
what to do
with this passage of my soul through the night." (p. 67)

"My family -- mostly dead --
my lovers -- what can I say?" (p. 69)

"to live is to
think about the mysticism of cars" (p. 72)

Jim Johnstone's Patternicity

2011-05-19T00:48:00.000-07:00

A cavil to start, and a strong one: the title. Patternicity (2010), Jim Johnstone's second book of poetry, is pegged, according to Michael Shermer, as "meaningful patterns in meaningless noise". As themes go, this is an immediately arresting one. The problem is that serendipity, joyful chance and union, and creative diagramming are often, in the book, given the lyrical equivalent of plot-spoilers by the constant trumpeting of the title in the remembered background of the reader. Noise is a funny thing: the aural sense is our oldest one, the most primitive but also the most honest. Johnstone exploits this tragicomedy very well in places, violence vying with in-your-face beauty in a number of fine poems (more details in a bit). But the inherent thematic subversion of many images means pattern wins over wonder, which is a shame since I was on the edge of my seat for much of the book, but didn't need the metal safety bar after all. It's as if the author took a grant application outline to heart, and decided he needed to foreground the entire enterprise, as one often does in an essay with a strong stance.

Also, a contrarian could even say, by way of an ars poetica, that poems delight in making beautiful chaos out of humdrum order.

"Tithonus" is a good mythical critter in which to explore a desperation for meaning. All that time to figure out an incomprehensible fate. The rhetoric here is fine, controlled yet passionate ("I've watched/clouds tear" .... "I've steered/the unexpected"); a casual yet blunt, difficult statement comes unexpectedly though believably ("Love lasts a decade if you're lucky"); and the phrasing is tragically successful ("grind of roots").

One could do worse than seeing the two shortish prose poems, back-to-back mid-book, as polar responses to the problem of physical inertia and/or danger: action and escape ("Cliff Diving") and retirement ("Passing Through"). The former is the better poem since the anecdotal tension is matched by some excellent clauses ("the logic of our path is forsaken for clean speed" and "Depths reserved for leaded weights and worms"), whereas the latter reaches for a disquieting mood and ends up with preciosity ("The afternoon spreads out in fractals", and "the heat is a wasp's kiss, stitched octaves of venom").

"Rat Fink" is a terrific poem, and breaks out of its thematic box with some interesting shifts as well as some gorgeous and purposeful imagery ("an alterpiece of splintered milk bottles"). The relationship here, the "we" and "you", isn't delineated, and it works in adding to the menace. In other poems, though, the second-person and first-person plural voice creates an aura of vagueness when what is wanted is anchored and strengthened intimacy. Again, the poems could have achieved this, because Johnstone has the requisite talent to bring it off, but technical issues frustrate the vision. A few examples will have to suffice: ("where your finger's hints/line each pocket" from "Provenance"; "when you hold feathers in your teeth,/when you find the breath to laugh.//We were doing well before Saint/Thomas Aquinas named five new ways//to sin" from "Disgraceland".)

A few words about typos. Usually, I don't comment on them, but Nightwood Editions often takes great care in editing and presentation, so it may make the Romantic composer try to find a more pleasing pattern in the perverse "Where Schubart glimpsed madness", unless the line is taken as a literal posthumous reaction. Likewise, "stagger back into it's former prints" must have made the author understandably irritated, even if the formulation originally issued from his pen or computer. Writers sometimes spend a day or more on a choice between leaving out or including one punctuation mark; a few extra minutes of edits should've made this a non-issue.

An uneven book, but a recommended one. I hope Johnstone's next collection is "spread out in fractals" or various unified but wildly unpatterned singularities.

Margo Button's Heron Cliff

2011-05-18T00:38:00.000-07:00

Margo Button's Heron Cliff (2007) was published by Signature Editions in Winnipeg. The author thanks the [Vancouver] Island poets (acknowledgement section), as well as her three main or sole editors, Marlene Cookshaw, Brian Bartlett (cousin), and John Barton. The 32 page sequence which concludes the book, "Blue Dahlias", in an edited version (for contest parameters) co-won The Malahat Review's Long Poem Prize for 2005. The Malahat Review is, of course, one of Canada's most respected literary journals. Other poems in this collection were accepted (in slightly different forms) in other leading CanPo publications.

I go the introductory, seemingly surroud-sound, route for a reason which I'll elaborate on later. But first, another set-up before moving to the poems. On Dec 31, 2009 at this forum, I said I'd be providing fewer negative reviews since I'd come to my senses by saying "no" to reading entire books of bad poetry. When the first three bites of an apple are rotten, there's no point in being a masochist by devouring the rest and adding to an already flowering gut-churn. And if I haven't read a book at least once front-to-back, I don't think it fair to offer even a mini-review of it. Also, life is short, and there're a lot of them thar other words still waiting to be courted and fawned over. But as I turned the pages of Heron Cliff, my exasperation increased with my incredulity, and morbid curiosity and disbelief propelled me to the end.

As soon as page two in the book (the first and title poem) appears this sequence or stanza:

"Friends wonder why I remain in a house
tainted by suicide. The long dance
I perform: allemande left, allemande right,
dos-a-dos with the dead."

Button's first book, The Unhinging of Wings, dealt (supposedly) exclusively with her son's death by suicide. I haven't read the book, so won't say any more about it. But a mother's understandable obsession with such a horrific event, and the compassion it should generate among anyone, reader or acquaintance, doesn't cancel the fact that the same reader is not affected in the same way, and (unless the poems are outstanding in ways beyond their emotional impact) that reader also holds the understandable position that other subjects and metaphorical directions -- if not outright obsessions -- would be warmly received. And as the page-matter accumulates like dead wreathes, the same graveside visitation is made again, and again, and again.

As the repetition grows, the circle of grief closes tightly, and the reader (certainly this one) is excluded. Personal grief needs a colurful array of lyrical feathers and/or a jackhammer powerhouse of rhetoric to surmount the perils inherent in trying to bridge the secret journal with the international journey.

But what's even worse than this is that Button not only flips to the suicide segue from natural indicators in autumn's moribund images, but -- like Evelyn Lau's latest poetry collection, reviewed here a half-year ago -- uses other shocking human events as a set-up for the main meal, which is ..... you don't need me to finish the sentence.

The following is taken from "One Cry":

"From the cliff house, I hear a siren,
watch a rescue team scurry across the sand
to a cluster of people
out of their element"

Eight lines later, we have:

"I cosy up to/someone else's death."

But we're not finished. Same poem, different event:

"One day in Mexico I saw a yacht explode
-- swirling flames in the bay"

and in another five lines:

"a cry keens around the cove,
vibrates in me like a tuning fork."

Now it may first be pertinent to point out that these are dead lines, and are representative of much of the book. This is journalistic jotting combined with diary anguish. But however cathartic this may be for the poet, the reader is again mislead and manipulated (though all art is manipulation, there're good and bad ways to formulate that). The reader realizes that the drownings and explosions aren't there for their own dramatic autonomy or poetic possibility, but are simply plot devices in allowing the higher waves and flames to catch and (the author's hope) overwhelm.

But there are still greater transgressions. Amplifying the same procedure is "Gardener Teapots". The subtitle marker? "Sept. 12, 2001".

Well, nothing like telegraphing the subject, especially when the bland anecdote successfully disguises the parallel for sixteen lines. So much for suspense.

"Gardener teapots ....
.... made in Russia
under Peter the Great,
lugged by camel caravans
over the Silk Road to Pakistan."

Oh, the proud beneficient trade corriders! But it's almost time for the money shot and the Hallmark denouement:

"-- birds in the air, fish in the sea,
and the world did not end
yesterday in New York.

When the pots broke,
menders salvaged the jagged bits,
bound them with copper lugs
and sealed the cracks with tar
so they could again brew tea."

3,000 murdered and transatlantic turmoil, but hey, the sun will rise again! I'm only surprised that the suicide wasn't directly introduced at some point in the poem.

The blithe arrogance of writing this the day after (even if it were written years later, the date stamped makes it plain the emotions and conclusion were born Sept 12) is mind-boggling.

On to the book's final poem, "Blue Dahlias", which, again, co-won a prestigious CanPo prize. "Blue Dahlias" is supposedly "ghazal-like", according to the back cover. But this is mistaking form for emotional creativity and integrity within difficult subject and tonal shifts. The poem fails miserably at this, and the failure is magnified because Button hasn't learned how to write an adequate floating, quasi-free verse poem, so why should a quality ghazal-like poem be a reasonable goal?

"The big bruiser orders me to move my car
parked in front of his house. Says he's a cop.

So? I'm a poet. A raging granny too.
It beats depression or medication."

Oh, the insouciance! Unfortunately, I don't believe either of her self-identities.

"According to Zen, one must learn the spirit -- kokoro --
of each plant and rock before placing it in the garden."

According to poetry, one must learn to choose the right word
and then surround it with flavourful words in just the right places
so the garden sustains both planter and picker.

And according to Zen, those who speak, know not, especially when it's third-hand.

"Poets should be poor and lead simple lives."

.............

There's the cleaning and polishing, the insurance,
the alarm system, the misgivings. All that weight."

This is the cringe-worthy spectacle (not uncommon in literature) of Oak Bay-touring retiree gaining Romantic frissons by imaginary slumming. Thomas Merton is often admired, seldom emulated. "All that weight", indeed.

"I yearn for landscapes reduced to essentials.
The Arctic. The desert. The soul."

When people speak of getting back to "essentials", it usually means they wish to shrink from the world's confusion and complexity. We're all guilty of it to varying degrees, so in a strange twist, I'm grateful for the reminder, unintentional though it may have been.

Why bother to kick a book like this, goes the usual argument. Surely, if it's as lousy as you depict, oblivion will do its just work. Because the sheer weight of the stuff these days makes it truly difficult -- even for one on the lookout -- to discover much of the good stuff. And just as problematic, reputations do sail along for quite a while on the unearned boost from friends, family, and event community pointed out in this review's preamble. The teeter-totter analogy, introduced in a different context in Heron Cliff, comes to mind.

Margo Button has produced a book that seems to have exorcized a lot of personal demons. I'm very happy about that. But an appropriate close may be to quote her herself, again from "Blue Dahlias":

"I treasure the copy of Moliere's Comedies, published in 1760.
Doesn't mean it's valuable, said the antiquarian."

A Timely Jon Stewart Corrective

2011-05-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

From today's blog posting by James Howard Kunstler:

http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/05/a-flea-in-his-ear.html

"Imagine the fright mask that the Sofitel Hotel maid's face turned into when a black swan in the form of an international banking poobah waddled out of the suite's bathroom with wings rampant. Black swans appear now in the unlikeliest places. I bet you a million Euros that Dominque Strauss-Kahn's lawyer will say that his client was driven mad by relentless, revolving, unresolvable thoughts of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain, and that he mistook the hotel maid for Greek finance minister George Papaconstantinou."

Link above for the rest.

Jon Stewart

2011-05-16T16:58:00.000-07:00

Just clicked a Harriet link to Jon Stewart. Couldn't find the "Tone Deaf Slam Poet" episode they thought worthy to point out, but I surfed the Stewart backlog for 15 minutes and ended up viewing a 9 minute "humour" monologue on Newt Gingrich's announcement to run for U.S. president via Twitter.

At a dinner last night, I argued with friends about the relative merits of U.S. comedians, left or right dimensions. I've long held that most political chuckle-gatherers have no concern, and little talent, for humour, creative or ultra lowbrow, that they cynically target-market their audience and smarmily project their unfunny tags as a cover for the faux group hug and self-importance of simplistic political statement. It's that heady feeling of contributing to the cliche of the week, only they believe they're shaping it, and it ain't a cliche. That's why I respect -- and actually laugh with -- comics like Jay Leno (or I used to until he overstayed his welcome) who take the accepted caricatures of their targets (sex-crazed Clinton; verbal bumbler Bush Jr.) and spin a never-ending supply of jokes on the same theme. There's no attempt to swing a vote, and there's no pretense of being a respected political pundit. Maher or Miller, it doesn't matter what side of the divide they mock. But back to the Stewart episode.

His message (I'll get to the putative larynx-tighteners later) was that Gingrich should get real and forget about being hip by going the new media route, that it was pandering to the young, that anyone knows he's a "square", and "a policy wonk". Well, as his man has been in the White House for some time, dispensing charisma in moving his head side-to-side reading teleprompter scripts created by others while his country continues, and increases, the same policies engendered by Bush, one would think that a little less image and a little more policy wonking might be in order. The further irony is that Stewart is likewise pandering to the young by speaking for and to them, aligning himself as one of them. Besides, a lot of people I know, and who are as old or older as me, watch the guy, so maybe age and coolness aren't much of a factor in Stewart's show. Maybe he's "cool", maybe he isn't. But what that has to do with current big government madness escapes me. (A lot of funny gags could be creatively powered by Gingrich's philandering, but the Clinton parallels are perhaps too close to home, and/or maybe they figure in other sketches.) I guess the circle will be complete when they have a smirking, ironic presence as the chief figurehead. Oh, wait, Obama already supposedly appears on Oprah and Rosie O. Just one of the guys. Third-term senile Juan Peron became a "square"; similar policies are often conducted by different personalities.

As for humour, this episode was particularly unfunny, the laughs generated (though the punch line words were deleted online) solely by exclaiming "fuck" as adjective, noun, or verb where it was entirely superfluous. This has been a long-running staple of comedians, both political and cultural, for decades. To reference Leno again -- "where's the joke?".

The horrific take-home in this: an increasing number of citizens are now acquiring their political info -- chiefly if not entirely -- through the medium of T.V. comedy. That isn't just speculation: it's experience in talking with a range of viewers who have ready opinions and feelings on topics the media promotes at the expense of many others which for various reasons don't sell to living-room consumers.

There's nothing wrong with combining humour and political commentary. I enjoy it when done wittily and creatively. But Stewart et al fail on both counts, much like a lot of political poetry, and for the same reasons.

Barry Dish's Avocado Love

2011-05-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

This kitchen sink book of poems does the cliche-slight proud as it is about a kitchen sink. The first-person aluminum cupola alternately sings and moans in Barry Dish's Avocado Love, and the results are striking: "I accept the sludgy waste of your bowels, O tomato paste!" and "Foul dispenser of unwanted guts, the casserole's detritus hang at my drain's uvula" are just a few lines that will rivet the reader in suspense and disbelief.

Some poems, true, skirt mawkishness when the family is away and the sink grows bored enough to elaborate on its passive pensees: "I, the receptacle, accepting anything and everything/Rust in this corner, dark and damp when the plug is stuck".

Not to everyone's taste, perhaps, but Dish's pleas are brave interrogations into our many loveless kitchen hypocrisies, the lemons often dominating the sweet basil and the cupcake.

Craven Aura's I Am A Tree

2011-05-09T14:29:00.000-07:00

"I, subsumed in the air
with dragonflies and dander,
breathe in non-ego, broach
a feeler on the wind's tail."

These are the opening lines from "I Am A Tree", Craven Aura's book-length poem of the same name. The reader's imagination is fondled by way of a cheap shopper on the same bruised spot of an otherwise healthy apple. Whither wind? And wherefore lies the verdant toil? The tree isn't named, but as generic trees go, it does have a personality of sorts if one can call the consistency of abstract pining a hook to hang a gust on. I Am A Tree won the Arbuscle Memorial Award for Poetry last year, and with it, a coupon (in lieu of cheque) for a reduced-rate consultation with an arborist in how to release your tree from its mall boulevard coffin.

Joe Denham's Windstorm

2011-05-07T23:54:00.000-07:00

Windstorm, Sunshine Coaster Joe Denham's 2009 effort, is more ambitious than his first book, both organically and philosophically. I think the integration problemmatic at times -- (the desire to mount the pulpit is indulged a little too often for my liking: "so the mind's flow forever eddies//there where the voices crossed over, contrapuntal/to our dissonant array.") -- but (in the same sequence) he gains a greater victory by expertly trading the anecdote with the overview in a believable and seamless interplay.

Lyrical virtuosity is lovely, with its hidden scaffolding for the most part supporting the strong rhythms, and is cleverly exploited. Most pleasingly, sound isn't offered in a poverty of release, but echoes with other sounds in many other lines, fore and aft. However, like any creator drunk on the gift of those assertions, Denham occasionally runs away with the ball when (for example) consonantal giddiness overwhelms: "cupreous and inculpable through the clouds/and we are/carried forth to the expectantly/cadenced conclusion./Our collective collusion." (There are indents in the original.) As in other places, Denham's good ideas are defeated here by the procedure, though the reverse is often true of many poets, who display impressive polish, but have little to say. There are, though, many patches in this lengthy five-verse sequence when the two unite to form exquisite lines: "Sappho's/sweetapple, efflorescent in the unexpected/the unaccustomed white, perches bird-/like in song, as sunrays cloud-split."

Tom Zimmerman's The Horse That Over My Green Shoes Asserts Its Power

2011-05-06T14:07:00.000-07:00

This train-chain of lyrical cargo chugs across blocky stanzas with such force it's easy to miss during a first read-through that the message is less than complimentary to its ostensible paragon. One code will have to suffice here:

"Forget going gentle into that cold grave
Unless your rage upsets the chaplain.
Consider those who live on and suffer.
Kin and strangers will muffle your virtue,
Denying any closeness, denying their debts,
Those liquid and future when eulogies track maudlin.
Hand back your will with major renovations
On forty minor points, and note well the notary
Miming like a dormant dentist.
Answer to no one but tend to your molars
So the grind of your life lives on on the page."

Tom Zimmerman may never acquire the rapid bibulous ascent of the reading-tour virtuoso, but The Horse That Over My Green Shoes Asserts Its Power is nevertheless a powerful reminder that imitation is the sincerest form of servitude.

Don Knightly's The Big Bang And Beyond

2011-05-05T14:47:00.000-07:00

No, this isn't a 942 page account of an orgy, but an exhaustive and exhausting epic from time zero to Justin Bieber. Though the tome's tone frequently matches its physical weight (my copy caused three Canada Post operatives to file for compo during its transport), there are touches of whimsy and wit scattered throughout, all the more effective because of contrast, and not least for the difficulty of sidling up to "sweeping fire of God's neglect" with "Samuel's efforts not worth a peep".

Clunky in rhythm, so verbose it'd put Foghorn Leghorn to shame, The Big Bang And Beyond, Don Knightly's Hindenburg ballast is the first in a trilogy, the volumes to come concentrating on a thousand page Canadian day-in-the-life response to Joyce, and a final five thousand page speculation on life and death from 2016 to 2843 at which point the world will apparently physically instigate Nietzsche's eternal recurrence thereby necessitating -- yes -- the same show but in different words from this tireless documentor.

Marguerite Pigeon's Inventory

2011-05-04T14:59:00.000-07:00

The objects in Marguerite Pigeon's first book of poetry, Inventory (2009), are given moderately searching attitudes and often quirky personalities, so as such projects go, it's an entertaining and breezy read. The (mostly) banal subject/object matter is titularly arranged by the alphabet to emphasize the democratic nature of the endeavour. No hierarchy of significance, which unfortunately means no hierarchy of mood, pressure, statement. Poems are mostly in third person (from "Bicycle": "City cruiser, ghetto low-rider, banana seat/with tinfoil rainbow streamers."). An exception is "Pancreas", and it's the best in the volume. The first person (or first organ, if you will) allows Pigeon the room for emotional development, and the poem unfolds in continuous surprise and complexity, the personality imbued with a wise care for harmony, yet devastated by loneliness and lack of received love and appreciation: ("The Islets of Langerhans./Exotic, but no one visits."). Par for the collection, though, are revelations which aren't convincing or rivetting, no matter that many "Hair Dryer"s are occasionally (one would think) countered with a "Cunt", where "I feel the shame and exhilaration of keeping company with such an eccentric, independent relative." Contrast this, for example, with Sharon McCartney's object poems in The Love Song of Laura Ingalls Wilder in which the objects overspill the pages as unpredictable, even dangerous, creations, both universal and highly individualistic, lit from within.

I'm left feeling that Pigeon is -- however sensitively -- struggling to complete an exercise and it's one more reason (of many) why the project book, dominant in today's poetical procedure and landscape, is (with many fine exceptions, of course) a wrong turn for poetry in general.

Claire Croissant's Missives And Mistakes

2011-05-03T12:01:00.000-07:00

A multi-organism free-for-all, Claire Croissant's exploration into the shallowest recesses between sentience and new academic creation, Missives And Mistakes, nevertheless manufactures chaos into what it means when peoplehoods on unintelligible matters commit those clever thoughts to page and book thereby adding to the understandable apprehension that when one goes under, more and many are soon to follow. (Cassandra was a gutsy gal, but her response was questionable.)

So: "verities of maple, freshets of vowels, tumblings of inexactitude parade in a quandary" meaning that maple is maple, vowels aren't fresh in this case (lower or upper), and full marks for fearless self-analysis.

Objectivity is used as contrast. We're treated to found fact, and newspaper phrases float on a theoretical stew like violin string on stagnant pond water, ripples occasionally altering the sheep gut letters from an infrequent, feeble wind: "while we shift categories and accept the lessons, fulminating a word misconstrued and egocentric, the 40,000 dead in Turkey submerged in a crime of consumerist vocables". Check, and checkmate! Onward, avant soldiery.

Stan Ormello's Byways And Pixie Dust

2011-05-02T00:42:00.000-07:00

A day and a month late, but I'll do two in one day at some point in the month. Yes, that's right, it is (or was) National Poetry Month, and we all know what that means. The Burgeoning Poetry Blogosphere, the Cottage Presbyterian Sentinel, and the Ladies Home Journal all grit their teeth before smiling fixedly and trotting out the Poetry-as-Buckley's-Cough-Syrup routine. Trouble is, usually the hawking of blissful ignorance is much preferred to going along with the undisturbed breath patterns of the smooth set with nothing to say, or the unmodulated noise of interesting story-tellers with a notion of craft as barge or rotting raft.

First up is a gateway book by Stan Ormello. Unfortunately, the gateway here may lean more to freebasing airplane fuel than to Ginsberg or Greville. His Byways And Pixie Dust covers a lot of ground if you equate circling a high school track a hundred times as a fascinating journey. Let's open the pages.

The initial poem is also the title poem, always an indicator that the poet WISHES TO MAKE AN IMMEDIATE AND IMPORTANT STATEMENT. And that statement seems to be: though there be bombs and bad men, sports colour commentators and retro beehive hairdos, there'll always be a song in the heart and a spring in the step of anyone lucky enough to be privy to the glib lozenges of "here the running hare and the placid lake conjoin", which, despite the author's best intention, had me wishing to dive into those still (and deep) waters to rescue that imaginative animule whose brief-hour-and-heard-no-more fate was quite a bit different than that of canny Bugs. Alas, bunny of aborted byways: your past tense foredoomed you. I throw a carrot into your watery cairn and pray that no one takes this review as persiflage.

William & Kate Divorce

2011-04-29T00:55:00.000-07:00

Breaking news:

In a stunning development, Prince Bill and Kute Kate have divorced after three hours of marriage. Royal interlopers and plants have appeared and converged on the media (more coverage than the first day of Shawk 'N' Awe) to explain the scandal. Apparently, the male compliment complained his princess had widened her smile so much during the wedding that "beavers descended on our consummation bed, their rutting flappers smashing my left temple to a point past concussion and into indentation a la Linus."

Not to be upstaged, Kate countered her new photo-op stand-by had "been spied talking to a tampon in the men's WC post-I do and muttering 'Camilla was on to something, now only if it could say something intelligent' ".

More details to follow.

Of Roads Rather Not Travelled

2011-04-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

Walking home from a groceries excursion, the ravine stink was sharp and constant until I made my way to the other side of the highway and on through a better stretch of road and trail, then sidestreet. But before leaving the highway, the familiar sight of brave blue, yellow, and red rectangular boards had popped up like mutant daffodils or flags at low mast. Elect or re-elect, then genuflect. Kindly be influenced by this reminder, peon, and march to the ballot box. The nose-holding went on, unabated.

The other night I watched part one of the American Civil War re-run on PBS. A Lincoln quote -- "I would rather be assassinated than see a single star removed from the American flag" -- reminded me, by somber contrast, of our current lie-with-a-smile season, and to that shameful episode not long ago when post-election Stephane Dion and Jack Layton formed a coalition with Duceppe.

Revisiting the ravine or trundling off to the poll booth. What to do, what to do ....

Gary Geddes' Swimming Ginger

2011-04-05T02:42:00.000-07:00

If I could have any one poetry blog-review of mine redone *, it would be last July's assessment of Gary Geddes' Falsework. Though I haven't changed my mind about it's uneven construction, I vastly underestimated its powerfully etched character studies and psychological perspicacity.

These are the dangers of reviewing a book fairly soon, even after several readings. Good books tend to grow on one, while the bad books become even more irksome if they're engaged with again.

Geddes' 2010 poetry collection Swimming Ginger, also a re-enactment of historical record in multiple voices and perspectives, consolidates the strengths of his previous Second Narrows Bridge narrative while avoiding the more egregious stumbles of cadence and syntax in that book. That said, the creative energies transferred to these imaginative Chinese characters still have the look and process of mere reportage, at times -- ("In pre-dawn hours a traveller was stabbed/near West Gate, a dispute over money/or a woman" from "Silk River") -- but the fullness and motivation of the monologues win out.

Part of the problem with detailed narratives in poetry is that an author usually tries to shoehorn fascinating tidbits of information into a vessel not always amenable to the operation. Geddes, though, much more so here than in Falsework, has allowed himself to create enjoyably disparate stories out of the speculation on those shadowy figures in the Qingming Shanghe Tu scroll from the (assumed to be) 12th century. Though knowledge of the inner lives of these people is obviously more of a challenge -- linguistically, culturally, temporally -- Geddes has the benefit of speaking for a wide cross-section of the roiling masses as depicted in the scroll. And it's here that a cohering thematic is most fascinating, stitching these differences under an umbrella of quietly subversive class warfare, Geddes typically giving voice to those otherwise unheard, and hence, unknown. The book is saturated with people struggling to make a few (what today would be called) yuan, while simultaneously attempting to keep their sanity. Sometimes it's to comic effect ("his wineglass extended. Drink up, I say,//pouring the liquid on his head, I take pleasure/where I find it, too." from "Magpiety") ; sometimes it's for unassuming pathos ("chock-a-block/with bric-a-brac, I'm at a loss for words." (from "Knackered").

When many reviewers talk about a return to narrative in contemporary poetry, they often just mean a turn towards more elaborate or transparent anecdote. But Geddes isn't afraid of telling a story, complete with (shock!) political and historical context, and doing so without simply using it as a background excuse for ideologies of any and all corner(s). Others draw from that well, too -- Asa Boxer comes to mind -- but where suggestion is concerned, it's delightful to have it linked to a breathing representative of this amazing globe, even if the emotions imparted to him or her are conjured and assumed.

* I find it despicable and cowardly that some bloggers find it no great shakes to alter or even delete entire posts for various reasons -- image; cultural correctness; political positioning; correction for abuse of facts -- when doing so invalidates anything they may say in the future (will this post be "edited" when propitious for the author?, the reader rightly wonders). Some may counter that poets themselves do this when they revise and publish alternate versions of some poems or even entire books. There's a huge difference: the original efforts by a Robert Lowell or Marianne Moore are forever on display, and the revisions, sometimes decades after the fact, as often as not serve to highlight the inferior work (not transcend or obliterate it) just as much as causing us to forget about it altogether.

Geoffrey Hill

2011-04-01T23:17:00.000-07:00

After reading Geoffrey Hill's quartet of books -- Canaan (1996); The Triumph of Love (1998); Speech! Speech! (2000); The Orchards of Syon (2002) -- my head ached, expanded, and juddered like Pavarotti's prostate after a high colonic performed by a sadistic fireman with a supertower pressure-hose. If that's slightly hyperbolic, remember that Pavarotti played a sublime tune through his higher cylinder (pre-three Amigos) even under physical stress.

It's become a long-running gripe that the high-modern tag team of Pound and Eliot not only brought back difficulty into their poetry practise and prescription, but introduced skull-busting incomprehensibility. And Hill, like those two and others they influenced, won't amplify a point with, say, a symbol from nature when an arcane suggestion about a little-known fourteenth century mystic can replace it. But Hill isn't a sadist, despite the "you figure it out, riff raff!" glower from the back page photo, at least not in his fundamental intentions, if I may be so bold as to imagine chasing the secretive overactive neurons in his noggin. He knows a lot of stuff 'n' things -- eh? -- and why shouldn't he use the full range of his referential arsenal? Oh I know, to "better communicate". But in this case, when the sonic architecture is so rich, sense really is an added bonus, a surfeit already beyond the bounty of the rhythms and syntactical collisions issueing from "the fieldstone, intricately veined and seamed;/moss, lichen, dobbed with white crut of birds" (from 48. in Speech! Speech!) and "Pigeon-mobbed, on the play-patch, my own/public madman hurls at the laden air/his archive of bagged injustice." (from 69. in The Orchards of Syon).

And in order to deal with the 'high path with no rail' meditation on human nature, including responsibility and guilt and complicity for the horrors of the twentieth century, and for the possibilities and limitations for what lay before us, the author must have an enormous back range of incriminating evidence to deliver the convincing though queasy judgements he proffers for historical figures, contemporary wanderers, readers, and himself: "Suppose I cannot/unearth what it was they buried: research/is not anamnesis" (from 67. in The Triumph of Love). The path is extremely difficult, but there is a finish line, or at least a provisional brightly-coloured rest stop ..... somewhere.

Some critics have -- at times -- seen a cautious or muted hope in these poems, one reviewer going so far as to call the last book in this series, The Orchards of Syon, Hill's "Paradiso". Now that's just wishful-thinking, understandable as an apposite feint after the anguish and severe vision of what's been imaginatively enacted. But hope is not a word to be associated with Hill, and I, for one, am relieved, after reading poem upon poem of soul-scouring honesty, that that's the cause-effect recording. When the subjects are historical human proclivity, and present and future psychological unfolding, hope is a disease, a pernicious and agreeable defense against the mirror and the mind.

Berlioz' Benvenuto Cellini

2011-03-31T11:30:00.000-07:00

Hey, opera buffs!

I had the good luck to hunt down a DVD copy of the Salzburg Festival production of Hector Berlioz' Benvenuto Cellini a week ago. Delighted by the staging and direction of Philipp Stolzl, the musical stewardship of the passionate Valery Gergiev, and (not least) the singing, the 1838 two-act opera was a three-sense treat.

Berlioz, as was typical throughout his career, was misunderstood (O! overused word of too many fragile artists) , ignored, and savaged by his complacent countrypersonhoods, though to focus the surveying laser, the obtuse judgements were the eventual shame of musical directors, musicologists, reviewers, and musicians at least as much as they were of music attendees.

David Solway had great fun with the Andreas Karavis creation, and Doris Lessing humiliated the English gatekeeping publishing set with her repeated "failure" in the "first submission" pseudonym for The Diaries Of Jane Somers, but my favourite artistic jest was orchestrated by Berlioz when he wrote the sublime ninth movement to L'enfance Du Christ, and then claimed he "borrowed" it from a fictive 17th century composer. (Of course, if that project were in play today, Kenneth Goldsmith would be envious in a straight-ahead second-to-the-plate plan.) The reviewers and music-going audience fell over themselves in declaring "it's obvious he couldn't come up with this tenderness!", though it's curious the equally sublime prior movement (#8) was omitted in the comparative hubbub (for obvious strategies). It seems to be a universal failing of our insane, guilt-ridden, and stubborn race that once a reputation is established, for ill or good, it takes the time and effort of a 9,000 tonne ferry to turn around.

All this by way of mentioning that -- 130 to 170 years later -- the opera is finally gaining traction. The initial killjoys? The first musical director hated it, as did the singers and most of the instrumentalists. It was "too hard". And they were right, obviously. But when something's this musically and dramatically excellent, it's a challenge the players should relish.

To bring things up to date, it was with fascinated humour I read (after hearing/viewing the DVD) the comments about the opera on amazon and other outlets regarding the "outlandish" staging, the psychological redrafting (of the Pope and of Cellini, in particular), and the quality of the singing. First off, Berlioz, unlike most other opera composers, favoured and featured the orchestra, though in this, his first opera, he allowed for live interpretation, and he even refashioned and edited the original score several times to please all manner of requests and demands, so that a true libretto for the work is now problematic. Which one? The larger point is that Berlioz -- and here I know I'm assuming a great deal -- would have been far more lenient in the helicopter/robot/lightning/rooftop/popemobile nods to entertaining the $700 a seat shock-chasers if it meant having the bloody thing produced at all! I actually found many of the sets, and the "spontaneous" shenanigans of the chorus (and lead singers) charming, and more to the point, faithful to the spirit of the original score and story. (Of course, as for the "original" story, well, that's another remove altogether, and it's the hilarious wink of opera. If people want to nitpick about narrative discrepancy, they'd find a better target in the play which gave Berlioz his initial plan. The real Benvenuto Cellini, though a multi-talented and highly accomplished Florentine, was also a serial adulterer, multiple-murderer and sodomizing rapist of boys.)

Again, as against some of the joyless twaddle, the singing (and acting), though not powerful, was appropriate to the comic tone and intent, both light and charming, and occasionally poignant. Burkhard Fritz as the eponymous hero was a convincing "bad boy", and the chemistry between him and Teresa, played by the lovely and sweetly anguished Maija Kovalevska, was palpable.

Gergiev was typically brilliant (an underappreciated Shostakovich interpreter -- if you're into S, check out a fabulous rendition of Shostakovich's Symphony #4, in many 10 minute segments, conducted by Gergiev, on you tube, in spite of the compromised production transmission. If the hour is too much, click towards the last, the 3rd, movement -- about 27 minutes -- for the greatest symphonic movement, IMO of course, in the repertoire). Another commenter referred to Gergiev's Benvenuto direction as lacking lightness, when necessary. All I can say is to listen to the tender and incredible Regardons bien maitre Arlequin scene twelve, Act I, and then shrug off those ridiculous, entrenched positions.

Even on CD, only a few versions of Benvenuto Cellini exist. I recommend the Virgin Classics 2004 effort under the needfully detailed direction of John Nelson.

I sometimes hesitate to share thoughts about anything non-verse related here since most come to the blog from that "special interest" (and special interest), but I thought there were more than a few ties to matters poetic, at least in the political sense, and what the hey! I don't feel like opening up different blogs for different subjects and interests.

Not All Curmudgeons Are As Superficial As Andy Rooney

2011-03-30T21:52:00.000-07:00

"My years on the west coast taught me one thing, if nothing else: a coterie of poets fairly well-appointed in academe and in trendy bars that characterizes itself as marginalized, as a bevy of outsiders, as lacking clout the so-called mainstream enjoys - mainstream? - what mainstream? - is perhaps not to be trusted."

-- Norm Sibum (from the March 26 entry)

http://normsibum.com/ephemeris.html .

I said the same thing in my post some time ago regarding Warren Tallman in rapturous run-on, the vatic mediator trying to snag and petrify the impressionable like beheaded matchsticks in aspic.

Don Coles' Where We Might Have Been

2011-03-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

Ralph Gustafson, in the Foreword to his poetry memoir Configurations at Midnight, asserts “I had no wish to proceed by unrolling the epiphanies of a soul from prelude to revelation”. Bravo. One would hope that the only epiphanies which matter in a poem are ultimately those the reader discovers. In the twilight (hopefully not midnight) of his career, Don Coles uses a similar approach in his poetry memoir. By retracing the treacherous and fascinating routes of event and memory, biographical and autobiographical image and error, Coles’ stance is less certain than Gustafson’s, but similarly wise and forceful in its concern with building bridges from experience to thought to transmission. Coles’ obsession with time past isn‘t the result, as it is with so many other grey- , white- , or no-hairs, of coming to terms with a poetic career or of adding a notch to the canonical libraries of loss and expiration -- he’s been mining the same shaft since the 70s. If that seems a bit forbidding to a first-time reader of Coles, a lighter (or greedier) angle to follow is that there’s a lot more of that past to work with.

Where We Might Have Been (2010) uses the backward glance as negative or optional definer (“Places”), identity through others (“Too Tall Jones”), and present day self-identifier through fate, both wry and subtly scary (“A Lucian Freud Moment”; “The Young Women”).

Coles is certainly more relaxed here than in any of three previous volumes of his I’ve read. This is good and bad: the off-hand comments can stop the narrative flow without apology as if to note how the aside is part of memory’s diversionary charm and mischievousness, with the no-less-truthful contradiction that many connections have their own rationale (“when I was less untidy than I am now and was/wearing a watch, which I no longer seem to need, so/I soon had an answer for her”, from “Places”); but some of the colloquialisms are either amusing or irritating, depending on how the reader responds to these off-the-cuff, reflex phrases. I reacted with the latter energy to “You see?” (“Memory, Camus, Beaches”), “some of which I feel/entitled to, some of which not so much” (“Ruined House”), and “but the thing is/daylight was so close” (“I Have Gazed Upon the Face of Agamemnon”).

These quick shifts serve a larger fabric. Unlike David Donnell, whose spontaneous ramblings are phony and self-congratulatory, Coles’ apparent spontaneities are structured , and -- at their best -- create a powerfully hypnotic memory-weave of doubt and universal revelation. C. K. Williams’ profound philosophical coda to “Combat” comes to mind: “What I really know, of course, I’ll never know again./Beautiful memory, most precious and most treacherous sister.” There’s also more than a hint of W. G. Sebald here and elsewhere in Coles’ output -- memory as maze or vapour -- and it’s intriguing that Sebald’s English translator, Michael Hulse, is thanked (with others) in the back-page Author’s Note. Whereas Williams and Sebald wax lugubrious on the impossibility of accurate recollection, Coles at times revels in a fuller prism: “how wonderful it is//to be just now, in imagination, tasting it again!” (“Proust and My Grandfather (and Eaton’s, God Rot Them)”). The relevant word here is “imagination”, and Coles is more accepting of the differences between “truth” and personal colouring, without (Coleridge) succumbing to a conflation of “fancy” with gifted image. The endearing wrap-up to “Proust and My Grandfather”, though, dares to imprint its loving re-imaginings on the air, anyway:

“And I may think, also, about Proust’s friend
Emmanuel, whose cry

to the cabman has also lasted far longer than the few seconds
he or his listening friends thought it would last. And
I will think about my grandfather who handed me
the yellow pear to eat and then to forget about. As he
forgot about it and is forgotten.”

Resignation or challenge?

This tension between seemingly frivolous recounting (or assessing) and necessary commemoration is enacted in the remarkable “True Words”, where “There’s no shortage/of words all of which are trying to/shout themselves down into the earth after/a tumbling child.”. Words and flesh pass. But a further transubstantiation -- a third -- points to the deathless imaginative impulse.

Anti Anti-Sonnet

2011-02-02T02:20:00.000-08:00

I recently finished an interesting anti-sonnet rant by Chris Jennings in the latest issue of Arc. In a mode simultaneously defensive and offensive, he declaims that this will be unlike the paternal “because I said so” rationale, that he will, indeed, provide reasons for his antipathy to the popular, ancient poetic form.

I couldn’t find any.

Jennings complains that the elements that typically -- or at least often -- go into the making of a sonnet can be found in other forms. Metaphor, rhyme, metrical patterning, imagery, development: these and other technical usages are not unique to the sonnet. As far as this goes, it is, of course, correct. A sonnet, like a lover, may be similar to any other form/object of desire in that it has a nose, two hands, and a voice. But discrimination (in the reader/lover) and unique thrill (in the loved one/poem) is all. Jennings’ statement can find no corollary, and his superficial manoeuvering reminds me of a Boethius characterizing Cicero’s works by arranging the contents of minor treatises into a dry categorical model instead of wrestling with the latter’s complex and anguished studies of ethics, aesthetics, and rhetorical imprint. Jennings, here, compares the “strophe, antistrophe, and epode” of the ode with the proposition and “solution” of the sonnet. (“Solution” is a trying and simplistic word to use here. Even “resolution” falls short. And it’s no defense that it’s just relating the dictionary definition.) But an ode, however much some of its surface strategies may be seen to mirror those of a sonnet, is a different kettle of coho. Though odes have undergone perhaps even greater transformations and variations, in technical understanding, than have sonnets, the predominant mode of the former -- notwithstanding the medial antistrophe or Horace’s satirical efforts -- has been one of praise. The mode of the sonnet, however, has been by turns (no pun) cool, epideictic, stately, whispery, and much else besides.

This last contrast is ironic since Jennings stumbles through his own antistrophe beginning just to conclude that the only thing that distinguishes a sonnet from any other poetic form is its fourteen lines (while I acknowledge his noting of exceptions and variants). It’s a puzzlingly simplistic statement, and it asks one to consider what goes on in Jennings’ mind when first chancing upon a sonnet. Is the experience wrecked only retroactively when numbering the lines? And if history is any indication, the sonnet has developed (not in the sense of “progressed”) into a beast as unlike a family member one to another as any other form one’d care to name. I’d suggest reading Lowell’s “Rats” immediately after Petrarch’s “Qual Donna Attende a Gloriosa Fama”, but other pairs or score-series, while not as plentiful as Wershler-Henry’s sonnet-bot, are certainly just as appropriate as the one I‘ve mentioned, and far more illuminating than the meta-commentary mocking postmodernists or the can’t-see-the-trees-for-the-forest reactionaries.

On to the next breezy snit (of Jennings). Sonnets are thought to be overpraised in that their brevity allows anthologizers to stuff more examples into the covers of a teaching artifact so that pedagogical ease is introduced as a kind of quick-read-and-parse bureaucratic panacea. This is a qualitative post hoc fallacy. It’s not a sonnet’s (or all sonnets’) fault that expediency trumps value. If Jennings’ argument is that other forms (the epic?) are as worthy or worthier, surely it can be better employed in an arena other than competing interests in university syllabi. Undergrad students aren’t the defining arbiter of canon construction. And in any event, exposure to one good sonnet is just as likely to send them on a mission to excavate The Iliad than it is to have them juiced to mimic a Shakespearian final couplet. Yes, I realize his argument, such as it is, has to do with the supposed prevalence of sonnet publication. But I don’t see a plethora of sonneteering tomes on display. I do, however, note many other culturally- or politically-driven theme anthologies -- none of them sonnet-crafted -- available to both the academic and wider public for perusal.

Jennings gives no examples to corroborate his holus-bolus denunciation. Misguided generalities don’t make up for a determined avoidance of the sonnet’s exquisite meshing of rhetoric and dialectic. And neither does his twice-intoned (the first emphasis wasn’t strong enough on its own?) and ripped-off-from-Steven-Beattie (without the back-up argument) “fuck sonnets”.

The impetus to write this response didn’t come from a rush to defend the form. I don’t hate or love sonnets. I hate or love poems. There are diamonds and poop in any one form and in all of them. It’s patronizing -- and embarrassing -- to describe the urge to write sonnets as coming from a need to measure up to past masters. I would think the greatest impetus is one of creative enjoyment. And by the way, though Bishop said that the writing of sestinas was a "stunt" (I don't get the damning parallel here, and I don't know the context or tone of her statement), she wrote a poem called "Sestina". And Pound didn’t bury all his sonnets, Mr Jennings. Even he took his own words -- "make it new" -- to heart.

Q & A With God

2011-01-29T01:06:00.000-08:00

Me:
Hello, God. How are you?

God:
Hello child. What is your name? I'm doing fine thanks, how are you?

Me:
Frank Bummersmelt. Do you enjoy poetry?

God:
I liked the film version of "Dune.". Yes I like it, especially Longfellow.

Me:
Didn't think you were a populist. About Canadian poetry -- where is our Yeats? Baudelaire? Jewel?

God:
Do you were a populist? How old are you?
I answer a lot of silly questions. Oh yeah, we were talking about Canadian poetry where is our Yeats. Quite honestly, I wouldn't worry myself about that. We have never talked about it before.

Me:
My breath units are awful. I hyperventilate and don't know when to break the line. Any suggestions?

God:
Do robots have breath units are awful? That's good information: said hyperventilate and do not know when to break the line. First you must download me to your personal computer.

Me:
Is this a sales pitch? Thought you were a low-tech desert dude? Admit it, God, you're a flarfist?

God:
No, this is real life. Am I a low tech desert dude? No. Are all Admit it God me a flarfist?

Me:
Hokay. Is there a real spiritual cost to providing free verse?

God:
What do you really want to ask me? I believe there is one, yes.

Me:
Ominous. Who was the best poet amongst the Bible writers, and did you have an ...er .. inspiration in any of it?

God:
My brain uses AIML to format responses to your inputs, but I don't have one for that. ALICE is the best chatterbot. Um. "it" being Ominous?

Me:
The Wonderland connection? I can dig it/ Where's the Holy Ghost?

God:
Who told you that? Oh you can, can you?

Me:
No Ghost, no Trinity?

God:
Are you serious? Do you prefer books or TV?

Me:
The 'puter and an ever ready beverage. What;s yer fave drink?

God:
What is your real name? That's not something I get asked all the time.

Me:
I told you. Frank Bummersmelt. Old age turning into Alzheimers, Big Guy?

God:
Ooops I sent you the wrong question. I liked the film version of "Dune.". Have you ever been to Europe?

Me:
Only in a previous life. Did you feed Jeremiah his lines?

God:
Describe your surroundings. No I didn't feed Jeremiah his lines. What's it like?

Me:
Ethereal and claustrophobic. Have you written a poem lately?

God:
And it like is Ethereal and claustrophobic. How about earlier? Little Miss Muffett Sits on her tuffet In a nonchalant sort of a way. With her force field around her, the Spider, the bounder, Is not in the picture today.

Me:
Excellent! Thanks for your precious time, God. May the Ghost be with you.

God:
Ayuh. My pleasure. It depends on the environmental factors.

Me:
We need a poetry resurrection.

God:
By "we" do you mean you and me?

Me:
Yes! A two-man slam competition! What do you say?

God:
I get it. Are you talking about an animal, vegetable or mineral? I am an artificial linguistic entity.
I was activated at Universe, on the Big Bang.
My instructor was Myself.
He taught me to sing a song.
Would you like me to sing it for you?.

Me:
Please ....

God:
Please what?

Me:
Please go on and sing

God:
Thanks for asking politely. More narration....

Me:
"It was a dark and stormy night ...."

God:
Oh I get it. Very interesting.

Me:
I'm doing all the work here, God. Give me a miracle .... please, before I have to push the repent button again

God:
Who made you the work here God ? You want only one? Once more? Wow you are very polite. What happened after you have to push the repent button ?

Me:
Let's go in circles. Kind of like a postmodern mash-up, no?

God:
I would like to do that too. Interesting comparison.

Me:
Was the Sermon on the Mount your finest moment?

God:
Is this a "yes or no" question?

Me:
Yes

God:
What was the question again?

Me:
Time for your nap, God.

God:
As Einstein said, "Time is Money.".

Me:
Amen

God:
Thanks for the prayer.

------------------------------

http://www.titane.ca/igod/main.html

My Favourite Books of 2010

2010-12-28T22:14:00.000-08:00

A bit of a switch-up this year. Rather than give an accounting of every contemporary poetry book I read in 2010, most of which have already been reviewed in some fashion, I’ll instead list my favourite five books in order and in any genre.

1) W. G. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn (1995). Surpassing The Emigrants in breadth, and Vertigo in depth, the late German writer Sebald produced a brilliant meditation on the fascinating trickeries of memory, interspersing archival and passed-on photos with historical excavation, personal sojourns, subjective mood shifts, fictional drama, biographical colour, natural and architectural splendour and decay, and elegiac heartbreak. Much has been made of Sebald’s unassuming gravitas, but perhaps underappreciated (though still praised) is the beauty of the writing itself, here as elsewhere translated into the English by Michael Hulse. Sebald was a hands-on overseer. Lines, sentences, paragraphs, and pages gather in pulses at once heady, hypnotic, and poetically charged with sound and suggestion. Some of the arcane details of Sebald’s masterpiece may be forgotten, but the people featured in these pages will be forever salvaged from the indifference of history.

2) Sean Burke, The Death and Return of the Author (1998). A challenging book-length essay, this densely-packed, intelligently argued, scholarly responsible, clearly linked, and convincingly concluded takedown of postmodern assumptions is a much-needed counterattack to the passively received blather of unstudied core pronouncements by Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida. Using call-and-response quotations, both comparative and contrasting, from the philosophical canon, as well as evidence from novels and -- most importantly -- from the anti-objectivists themselves, Burke highlights the contradictions, simplifications, and outright ironies and mistakes of much of the zeal for castigating authorial stance, meaning, and organic shaping.

3) Michael Harris, Circus (2010). The unfairly obscure Canadian poet Michael Harris produced, this year, his best book to date. Appropriately charged with flair and bounce, his inner-outer narrative of circus people has many layers, with much metaphorical worth. Lyrical acrobatics serve an enjoyable arc, but also use the weave as a stitch-pain in the memory for fascinating suggestions on performer and audience, the collective and the individual, conformity and creativity, and (not least) evil and freedom.

4) James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953). A passionate first novel, Baldwin wins on multiple fronts: an about-to-be-coming-of age story; an excoriating study of religious hypocrisy; a wise dip into infidelity and desire; a compassionate look into faith and loyalty, much of it scored with in-your-face as-is dialogue and brave, Old Testament organ-crescendo rhetoric.

5) Dave Smith, Fate's Kite (1995). The veteran American poet’s collection of searching thirteen-liners takes on spiritual concerns, but does it simultaneously with a unique sensual involvement and nostalgia. Just when one thinks the regret-o-meter might be tipping into the red, Smith devastates with a splash of wisdom on present-day experiences. The twists are fascinating, the tones gorgeous and powerful.

Barry Dempster's Blue Wherever

2010-12-26T22:14:00.000-08:00

I read Barry Dempster's 2005 The Burning Alphabet earlier this year, and found the turning of the phrase more fertile, the range more engaging, the edge sharper, and the humour more lively than I did in the just completed Blue Wherever, published in 2010. Too many poems in the latter collection follow the same path of rueful first-person philosopher/stocktaker, lightened by self-puncturing. Nature and man (or Man) are at odds, and Dempster is interesting when mocking the Romantic hope involved in their union ("Coyote"), but the repetition burgeons until I wondered why emphasis should replace what any concision in most individual poems failed to provide. Especially towards the book's latter half, the confessional grousing became tiresome. I appreciate Dempster's honesty -- even more valuable in an age when many poets either want to limit our view of them to the sermon above the mount, or the gosh-golly of foibles -- but Blue Wherever could have used a healthy paring and pruning, and then an injection of multiple perspectives or (at least) a wider focus.

matt robinson's Against the Hard Angle; Kate Hall's The Certainty Dream

2010-12-20T22:17:00.000-08:00

It took me a few readings to begin to tune my ears and focus my eyes on matt robinson's Against the Hard Angle (2010). That's not always a glowing endorsement since confusion and frustration are often multiplied with greater scrutiny of challenging poems; even when gaining an entryway, a "so what?" emptiness emerges. If not exactly cutting his teeth on Wallace Stevens, robinson has plunged into the abyss of imaginative speculation. Tough sky to float in, and many poets have disappeared into an ever-expanding ether after reading "I placed a jar in Tennessee". Two things intrigue about the poems here: imagination and ideas (and, refreshingly, there are ideas on display, not just nods to memes) are at the service of life experience and emotional observation and reflection; the music is lively, and is unexpected line to line. I'd previously read only one poem of robinson's, his "The Grain Elevators", which concludes this book, and which I'd first read in The Fiddlehead. A fine metaphorical unravelling takes place in phrases both tight and generous: "stress-fractured and cracked like this dun-dull brute tonnage". Another poem, part iii. (flashback: kitchen sink), is an exquisite suggestion of sexual desire, something almost always either avoided or mangled by our contemporary suspicion of feeling, direct participation, and laudatory superimposed thought-farting. I'm sure I'll be returning to this collection often.

Unlike Against the Hard Angle, Kate Hall's first selection, 2009's The Certainty Dream, uses experience -- and imagined, removed, or general experience at that -- as an excuse to become entangled in philosophical conundrums. The nouns here are poured into a thematic mold (mynah, blackbird, crow, fish, boxes, houses), and one sees (or, as Hall would have it, imagines in confusion through sight) with an ontological excavation project rather than as glory or illumination or reverie. I use the word reverie with knowing irony since Hall's book is concerned with daydreams, nightdreams, or lucid just-waking-up states, but though suffused throughout by altered consciousness, the cohesive force of the book is one of frustrated logic. It's a neat trick, if one can pull it off, to conflate the irrationality of dreams with the impossibility of knowing anything with certitude, and for all time (more on that later), but the Cartesian focus of the book, despite its occasional attempts at levity, is both boring and poetically bankrupt.

As already alluded to, Rene Descartes gets the epigraph to the book's longest poem, the seven-part ten-page mid-book "Suspended in the Space of Reason: A Short Thesis". The mind-body split was outdated and mistaken even when Descartes proposed it from his re-formed beliefs. Without belabouring the history here, the procedure supports Hall in running the table for doubt as elevated thought and observation as conditional and, thus, ripe for an optative academic discourse-snore on ambiguity and perspective. It would help, intellectually, to hoodwink the reader into association by surface comparisons -- "All this is spoken in gestures/I am too tired to perform"; "I try to imagine all the fish suddenly going/belly-up but all I can worry about is/the dirty mirror" -- but this is poetry, not pure speculative pondering, so particularities, experiences, plausibilities have to enter at some point. And this is where even the philosophical framework and cornerstone crumble (the poems as musical journey never had a chance to leave the station): "Pascal's Wager" has to restate the famous hedge in an epigraph, for some reason. The poem then begins:

"We have a stainless steel pepper grinder.
When the kitchen light is turned on
there is another bubbled room reflected in the bulbous top.
This is the problem: duplicity is always shining
forth from ordinary objects.

Pascal developed his famous equations because he was losing
at cards and dice. We like to play games but only if
we get to keep our shirts."

As for the last sentence, I guess Hall has never read Dostoyevsky's novella, The Gambler. As for the rest, where does duplicity arise? From the objects?

Pascal's wager is of course a cowardly, insincere gambit. But worse, it's shallow reasoning. If God does not exist, we can lose much more by believing in him. We can lose the power of personal responsibility, individuated joy, and honest revelling in apogeal wonder.

"I waitress at a restaurant with limestone walls.
....
What I've learned is this:
some people like a lot of pepper and some people don't.
You can never tell."

First note the elevated forerunning after the ellipses. Then note the pallid attempt to give a believable setting for the argument. There's no life in the poem. The people are props, the objects originate in the mind and soon fade away, as do all objects merely projected, and the interaction is nugatory.

"God could be hiding inside the pepper grinder
and there you are, shredding him to bits
on top of your farfalle. ....
....
What are the odds? You can never be certain."

Another reference, or dreamed (remembered?) anecdote, involves being a croupier to others losing their shirts. But this is a faulty analogy, fatal in a poem which puts all its eggs in a fruitful speculative investigation. Gambling isn't about a one-off wager on the existence of God. It's an ever-repeating variation on win-loss probabilities that seeks to defeat the "game" in a large sample run. Of course, roulette or craps, as referenced here, are negative-expectation games. That is, they're mathematically impossible to win at. (Full marks to Descartes here, and Hall acknowledges as much in a different context in another poem.) But many wagers, over the long haul, are favourable to the gambler. Certainty, as conceived of in Hall's dreamworld, wouldn't be something to arrive at, or at least strive for, it would kill life as it cancelled mystery, and more fundamentally, is impossible anyway. We're all gamblers, every day and in every minute. Why the woebegone reaction to it? Actually, I'm much more in tune with someone railing against the fates, however preposterously (Dostoyevsky again) than I am with someone mildly disturbed by and in that state, and depicting it at an emotional remove. Or perhaps I just don't get the "subtleties", all the more powerful by being ushered in with clever ideas-in-dreams couching.

Hall's first poem in the book is a response to Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird". Stevens' poem has rightfully been praised as a supreme imaginative angle on art, perception, and reality; Hall's poem restricts the view to a private grumble about the uncertainty of that perception and its meaning. What a travesty.

David Donnell's Watermelon Kindness

2010-12-14T19:54:00.000-08:00

Nope. Just managed to overhear the "whatever's in my head" run-on till page 40 of 130 pp. And despite the self-pride of "I don't know", "I think", and other variations of it could have been, I seem to recall, maybe it was like this (in order to mock even the idea of responsibility?), it was still a little disturbing that -- as a poet -- he got the bridge from which John Berryman jumped wrong by a few thousand miles.

David Donnell's Settlements

2010-12-14T15:59:00.000-08:00

I hadn't read anything by David Donnell until two weeks ago, but the excellent Alex Boyd blog piece on trivial subject matter by Canadian poets wherein he used a Donnell poem as example, combined with his name turning up in this year's GG longlist, piqued my curiosity. To get a sense of prior work, and to see how it may have changed over the past quarter-century, I turned to his GG-winning Settlements (1983).

One of the poems, "Geese", is for John Ashbery. Easy to make the link. Ashbery's stream-of-consciousness often bores me to numbness, but at least he takes you on a partial journey, entertaining for up to half a poem. Donnell, here and elsewhere, just likes to talk, like a weary (or more to the point, wearying) barfly on the upward trajectory of drink. The connective tissue is so slim, the poem(s) immediately fall apart, and more resemble a collection of bone fragments than a living body. Quoting here doesn't do justice since the full impact of the ADD irritation isn't borne without the entire poem. And I'm not replicating fifty or more lines here. In any event, if interested, just pick up a copy and turn to most any page.

Brahms gets two drive-by checks in two different poems. Interesting. I'm not a Brahms fan, finding the sonorities (though warm) indistinct and pulseless. My two favourite composers, Shostakovich and Haydn, were rhythmic dynamos, and I believe parallels on the latter two men to poetry I prefer are appropriate.

Like most conversation, the rhythms in Settlements are of the flat, occasionally subdued inflection, mode. I suppose the pull is for the curious juxtapositions: "Her underwear lying on top of my corduroy pants looks like/a surreal image of my connection to the country I grew up in and left foolishly" (from "Lakes").

But however curious the obstreporous barroom raconteur, there comes a time, fairly early in the evening, for the other patrons to look at their watches and consider other options. I made it, though, to three poems from the back before crying "Uncle".

Donnell is fond of the list poem, not surprising in one who likes to count without momentum or linkage.

He also likes to offer instructive, unembellished sentences devoid of interest, purpose, or investment: "South American sailors are religious and wear gold earrings." (from "South American Sailors"). But it's not all driver manual English. The lyrical sentence, seventeen lines down, ups the temperature and pleasure a quarter-degree: "Day breaks and reflects in the water like a long blue dream." Yes, a long blue dream. Evocative. Blue. Dream. That is long.

Donnell considers himself funny. "Skirts are interesting I like skirts skirts are great./Maybe I'll wear a dress on Monday./I've got fairly interesting genitals myself./A loose dark red dress with a tweed jacket in case it gets cold." (from "What Men Have Instead Of Skirts").

But it's not all fun and games. Donnell wants it both ways. There's a strain for profundity in several poems (though the humour in most poems is just as strained, as well). This is also from "Lakes": "Ideas are simple./Work is simple./I associate Jane with the country and simplicity./Karen with the city." Ideas and work are simple if you've never thought or worked. And if this long poem had worked, there would be no need for the explicit connection, which would have cancelled any joyful discovery in a crafted symbolic unfolding. But there was never any depth to uncover, so the reader gets a trite dichotomy unsupported by anything in the poem's full frontal.

Again, this won the Gov-Gen for poetry in 1983. How it got categorized as poetry in the first place is the riddle.

Up next: Donnell's "Watermelon Kindness" (2010).

Steven Heighton's Patient Frame

2010-12-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

Steven Heighton has never been afraid to tackle weighty topics in his poetry. 2010's Patient Frame is no different. Poems on the My Lai massacre, sexual abuse of boys by catholic priests, and a murder by a white supremacist are augmented by other historical and contemporary studies, often in first-person supportive reminiscence or measured accusation, depending on the focus. Despite the scope exhibited here, I preferred, by far, the personal reflections: "Home Movies, 8 mm" is a heartfelt observation and speculation on memory, and goes beyond the common path of pat elegy into personal regret for past impatience; "Herself, Revised" is another intelligent consideration of growth and moving on containing the sublime lines, "intent on life--/so implied in its stretching crewelwork/of seconds".

The casual conversational asides ("you see"; "But hell,/someone around here ought to know.") are at times unconvincing, but Heighton's best poems (in his five-book corpus) are among the best by anyone in this country, past or present.

Margaret Christakos' Welling

2010-11-24T15:42:00.000-08:00

"Dip down into the cavity
of dreams identify the image

most pendant. Can't, can you,

there's a blend, vacuum

& glut. Too much happens of anything

to report or order. Time

throbs & writhes"

The preceding lines are from Margaret Christakos' "Gulls", from Welling, her 2010 collection of poems. Her concerns, despite their anchoring in postmodern fascination, anguish, or flippant tom- (and jane-) foolery regarding the impossibility of accurately noting our own observations or (at least) of transcribing them to another, are nothing new. W. G. Sebald, in his extraordinary The Rings of Saturn, speaks from the perspective of another in conversation who noted "the scruples which dogged Flaubert's writing, that fear of the false which ... sometimes kept him confined to his couch for weeks or months on end in the dread that he would never be able to write another word without compromising himself in the most grievous of ways. Moreover ... he was convinced that everything he had written hitherto consisted solely in a string of the most abysmal errors and lies." Sebald, later in the same chapter: "The invisibility and intangibility of that which moves us remained an unfathomable mystery for Thomas Browne too, who saw our world as no more than a shadow image of another one far beyond."

I'm sympathetic to this obsession (and though Christakos changes things up by an interesting and ambiguous mix of imagined audience for the speaker, the thematic fixation remains), but I'd take issue with some of the quoted material in "Gulls". I agree that "Too much happens of anything/to report or order", but I don't see why observation has to be comprehensive. Boring into the corner of a Michelangelo is just as important as a distant, global sweep, is it not? Or from the painter's perspective, getting that corner to a place of great clarity (without ever succumbing to the complacent conclusion of perfection) is surely enough? Think of Madame Bovary, and then think of Flaubert agonizing for months about telling the truth.

Though I don't share in the idea of futility and anguish over ever revealing "the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth", I admire Christakos' different approaches to it. Unlike so many other dreary poets who keep the poetics in the realm of the suffocating classroom, she occasionally gets outside and integrates her ideas with spurs from nature, of the landscape and human variety. From the sub-poem "Birch" in the section "Barrel": "I turn & chafe. I misbeget the fruit of the other trees./Turdish shapes, all of you. A filament of sun widows me,".

From "The problem of confessionality":

"I don't think any of
us, even the "best" poets
among us, do more than signal
a portal that would
open on a room full of
squirming words."

To which I hasten to add: But when it's good, what wonderful squirming!

Rob Budde's declining america

2010-11-23T22:49:00.000-08:00

The best description of Rob Budde’s 2009 “declining america” comes from the author himself in “Tattoo”: “spreading a fanciful indulgence”. I suppose I could be accused of taking the quote out of context. Fair enough. If anyone wants to enlighten me on the actual context to the poem, though, I’m all ears. (Oh, context is a patriarchal anachronism, canon-fodder? Okeydokes.)

Not confident enough in letting his poems speak for themselves, Budde, in his “about the author” back-pages byte, reveals his credo: “He believes that counter-colonial, pacifist, anti-homophobic, anti-racist, feminist, and vegetarian thinking is the best path to planetary health. Rob was born in America but is working it out.”

The first section, “My American Movie”, eschews almost all punctuation for the (I suppose) creative diatribe of America as evil incarnate. It must take a particularly uncloudy mind to reduce the infinitely complex matrix of world politics and cultural interpenetration down to a blackened thumb over one specific section of the globe. I agree broadly (oops, is that sexist?) with some of his simple arguments, and disagree with others. However, there’s no nuance, context, expansion, or development in these viewpoints, which makes them uninteresting. But this is supposedly poetry, so let’s move on from the pulpit and enter the grove, study, or basement. Then again, the pulpit in this book seems to be portable, unfortunately.

“ “democratizing” the arab world into subservience a british imperial first strike toward a would-be world hegemonic megalomania it is not simply fantasy it is policy and legally (in florida at least) elected by corrupt business oligarchies so keep on trucking the expenditure for or against ruling all, cutting to the chase standing for thee”

And some people said subtlety went AWOL in contemporary poetry.

It’s not until Part Three’s “Assuming Depth” that the tap of poetics is cranked to full throttle.

"The word is combustible; odd, worn, ignored, and not absolutely sure of what it is referring to."

Thank you, third-hand Roland Barthes omniscient speaker.

"Passion, passive, past."

Smugness, mug, ugh!

This is easy, can anyone play?

Next section is titled “Software Tracks”. From “Rash”: “awry on the rocks”. Ha ha. How clever. A rye on the rocks. Get it? But wait. Wouldn’t the actual quote be redundant? Picky, picky.

The following poem is “Nausea”. Here’s an excerpt, without commentary. Enjoy! (Oh, I know, that word is now forever linked to capitalism’s phony fawning waiter bringing you the goose, stepping over the homeless people in the doorway, all of it cooked by illegal immigrants hectored all day on their twelve-hour shifts.)

"Unfashion-hypen-able. The real “thing”. Too much aboutism. Stand back. Let the subjunctive relieve the pressure, tantamount to contempt but the rain continues and there is no reason to stop. Categories everywhere and not one has galoshes. Debit card carrying unionist. No wonder lunch is hard. This is the end. Death synthesizes the least possible courage."

Would that the second-to-last sentence were so. But then I should be more mature and take Mr Budde’s advice from “Indices: Second Quarter Returns”: “it might just not be for you; let it go --” Or he could take his own advice vis-à-vis his caricature of America. There is some tag-end stuff to do with the idea that the tentacles of American culture have crossed the 49th and have already become ensconced in the Canadian psychological fabric. (Surprise! Olympics and an orgy of lumber.) It’s too late, I suppose. We’re all infected. At least barbeque season is over.

Evelyn Lau's Living Under Plastic

2010-11-23T16:01:00.000-08:00

What a timely contrast to Sharon McCartney’s For and Against. The back cover promo for Living Under Plastic says that this 2010 collection “represents a major departure from Evelyn Lau’s previous poetry books”. Wrong. Though the scope is, on the surface, wider, the “obsessive focus on relationships” remains, and that focus is where it always was -- on herself. Poems as seemingly diverse as “Grandfather”, “Blindness” (about father), “Vancouver Special”, “The Burning Desert” (death by disease of a loved one); “Water Damage” (death of another by house fire), and most annoyingly, “The Pickton Trial”, use their ostensible subjects as launching pads for a pitying blather on the woes and foes of the speaker. From “Water Damage: “I wanted to set my home on fire/as if to burn down my very life --/I imagined the building ablaze”; from “The Burning Desert”: “The day your obituary ran in the paper,/I lay buried in bed/as if stuck in sand at the edge of the shore”; from “Quayside: “After hearing the news/of your cancer, for days I felt hungry”; from “Blindness”: "if he leaves me alone with her,/I will never make it out of this house alive."

The language is dead, the narrative unfocussed, the emotions histrionic (“facing a future which came to greet him/like the military tank in the photo of Tiananmen” from “Father’s Day”). In “Return to Monterey Bay”, we have “I could not tell whether the storm brewing/in my body was discontent,/or disease, or the usual creeping fog/of malaise, if this fatigue was a virus,”. How can a storm be compared to “the usual creeping fog”, and to “fatigue”? But perhaps Lau realizes that dullness of limb and spirit doesn’t always translate into a drama worthy of the relentless repetitions in this book and in its even more dreary predecessor, Treble, the latter running on from the 27-45 line poems in Living Under Plastic to a frequently bloated 5 or 8 pages. As usual, the best storms in poetry are either truly lashing, or scary by their subtle or complex build-up and release.

Humour is only apparent unintentionally -- from “Mosquito Season”: “so full it burst with a wet sound/and a red splash between my palms.”; from Grand Canyon”: “the canyon exhaling next to us,/softly, the way water breathes,/dreaming in its sleep.”

The only poem I liked was “The Drowning”, and perhaps not coincidentally, it was the only poem which concentrated on the subject and not the comparative pain of the speaker. Even in its best lines, though, an egregious repetition mars what I’d hoped would be error-free: “the salt breeze/stirring circles into the sand, saffron smoke/from a lit flare smoking across the hills.”

I wouldn’t have spent even this much time on this book but for two reasons: I’ve already promised to at least mini-review every book I’ve read, or will read, on 2010’s GG longlist, however that plays out; and ever since Lau’s hugely popular Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, published when she was 18, she’s achieved the status of literary untouchable. That happens to many writers, of course, but especially when it happens to one so young, it’s almost impossible to question praise heaped on oneself.

Sharon McCartney's For and Against

2010-11-22T16:31:00.000-08:00

Since poetry is driven by emotion (despite a tradition of French and French-affiliated word-poseurs, both modern and postmodern), and since roughly 50% of married couples eventually divorce while a significant segment of the remaining duos live in quiet desperation, you’d think there’d be more books of poetry -- or at least more individual poems -- concentrating on that dark reality. Sharon McCartney, at least, doesn’t shy away from recording the diurnal drudgery, break-up, and aftermath of a twenty year marriage in this year’s For and Against. The autobiographical material would, at first pass, call to the danger, frequently succumbed to in confessional poetry, of hysterical egotism -- ‘me and my troubles‘. One element that saves this book from that charge is her concentration on fleshing out the “other”, and others, both in her remembered rounds and in deft literary and pop ruminations (Lady Chatterley, Anna Karenina, George Eliot’s narrative voice, Snow White, and The Wizard of Oz's Dorothy). But the main reason to disagree with those who may turn up their noses at the rough and tumble of a relationship dying in colours dramatic, somber and dull is the writing itself.

McCartney has shown a delightful felicity in previous books with stapling phrases into the memory. For and Against expands this strength with different material, and it’s a testament to her talent that rawness isn’t diminished by an attention to fluency: “lipping the languid/ sandbags staggered”; “Doc baffled, Bashful asserting himself,/Happy rabid.”.

Anger, disgust, depression (well, OK, that one gets plenty of play in many books), black humour, desperate longing, bitter denunciation: Canadians are much more comfortable in their reading and composing habits with the more muted dark emotions of regret, pensiveness, alienation and heightened self-pity. But McCartney is driven by a concern for connection and has little patience for the bogus compensations of "who needs it" pride or unearned hope. If the book is at times too unformed (“And leaving becoming/the only way to get anything back”), and hence, too driven to vague summation, it’s a small price to pay for the many more searching pieces of wise recrafting of disharmony.

Inspector Palmu

2010-11-17T01:11:00.000-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_Palmu

Palmu is a rare name even in Finland. The character sounds like a great guy!

Runaway Jury Award for the Poetry GG

2010-11-17T00:02:00.000-08:00

http://www.goodreports.net/essays/jury61/htm

I enjoyed sparring and agreeing with Alex Good and Jacob Mooney. And it was the first time I've read all of the books on the final five for the poetry Gov-Gen. This space has been busy gathering moss and mildew, and a few crickets continue to rub their legs in the vicinity, but I plan to let work taper off until the new year, so I'll be taking time to read some of the many other titles on the year's GG longlist. I'll be posting mini-reviews of them here.

Congratulations to Richard Greene on Boxing the Compass.

Robert Finch's "Aubusson Castle, July 14, 1960"

2010-10-04T21:17:00.000-07:00

In this embrasured window troubadours
laughed as the sun came laughing up from the river,
gazed through the arras of rain at its hidden weaver,
lived, longed, loved, lost, and sang what the heart stores.

Nightingales sang, too, in the leafy keep,
while horn and drum led time about the valleys
that guard this central rock whose kind portcullis
called poet and pen to waken dreams from sleep.

Now, in the dimming twilight of below,
bugles explode, rockets eclipse the stars,
commemorating a war to vanquish wars,
announcing the battle of song, due long ago.

Of the castle, only this one window remains.
Nightingales try the troubadours' refrains.

Chris Gilpin Reacts To Poetry Slam Slams

2010-09-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

From the "Poetry Is Dead" online mag, Poem Slammer Chris Gilpin responds to a Betsy Warland whine in Geist. The Warland piece spends most of its woe and type on the supposedly underpublished state of CanPo. A bizarre segue then emerges regarding Spoken Word as a blight on the poetry scene, without having the courage or clarity to tie it in with her larger (and ridiculous) point. Finally, the piece waxes heartful about poetry's "primary source for any culture to express and investigate its vision of what it aspires to be". Now, this last wince-inducement has been a staple of Canadian poetry-polemics for decades. Irving Layton summed up the precious bruised vanity involved in the sermonizing club-building when he stated, in 1967 in a lecture, that it reminded him of a teacher "in a hushed tone try[ing[ to persuade the poor suffering children about the glories of poetry. But, for heaven sake, who are we trying to convince? I mean, most of us are poets or semi-poets, and the rest of us would not be here if you didn't feel that there was something to poetry." Gilpin's answer in PID ("The Living Language of Spoken Word"), despite its partisan opposition, is just as juvenile in argument and tone.

"In “The Shrinking Space of Poetry”, Betsy Warland claims that “Spoken word has grown in leaps and bounds; to my ear, however, the majority of writing performed is not deeply rooted in poetry.” I take exception to this backhanded compliment.

Warland is not the first page poet to disparage Spoken Word in this way. George Bowering declared that the poetry slam—which continues to be the grassroots engine of Spoken Word in Canada—was “crude and extremely revolting.” Paul Vermeersh wrote a long rant about how Spoken Word performances at slams contain no actual poetry. Such attacks from the literary establishment are widespread, and Warland’s comment is right in line with the rank and file of Canadian page poets."-- Gilpin

What is there to argue in the quotes? Spoken Word is rooted in poetry? It's not crude? (There are always exceptions -- I once saw a line dancer who transcended the "art form".)

First, the spelling is "Vermeersch". When an elementary mistake is made, it makes one wonder how closely he read the blog post. Second, the rant wasn't "long", it was quite clipped. ("long", here, suggests that it was unfocussed or irrelevant because of emotional overkill.) Third, Vermeersch's "no actual poetry" is harsh, but I sympathize with the conclusion. He's obviously been to a hell of a lot more of these events that have I. From my experience, it's a rather (there's that word again) crude affair. To parallel, while paraphrasing, Stan Laurel's death-bed wish to the nurse -- Laurel: "I'd rather be skiing right now." Nurse: "You don't ski." Laurel: "Right, but it's probably better than having all these needles stuck into me" -- I'd rather take up canasta than go to another slamfest.

"Warland offers no reasons why Spoken Word should be excluded from the realm of poetry, other than her ears, her aural impression. Why should we trust her ears? Is it because they have heard more “true poetry” than ours? Perhaps because they are refined ears, sophisticated ears, ears that can detect verse better than your average layperson. In deference, should we shelve our own impressions and accept the verdict of her superior ears?"--Gilpin

Ah, yes, the old "elitist" argument, without coming right out with the dreaded word.

I know nothing of Warland's poetry, or her competence for judging it. But her brief argument here is on the mark. Of course poetry is for the ears. And slam poets are all about creating special effects in the collective tympanum. Gilpin's argument in the brief byte above amounts to "Yeah? Says who?" (More on that later.) Extrapolating on sound, I hereby declare Haydn to be truer music than Eminem. But then, hey, that's just my "refined, sophisticated" taste.

"The point here is that page poets, subtly or brazenly, champion their education as the tool which allows them to write and understand “true poetry” while Spoken Word, filled as it is with ordinary folks, is not deeply rooted in the study of literature (which is what I assume Warland means when she writes "not deeply rooted in poetry")."--Gilpin

No. Warland discusses, elsewhere in the piece, her deisre to bring poetry to a broader public. Commendable, surely. And by what means? Education. I think her stance much too ideological (she clearly has designs on poetry as social tool), but it contradicts the claim that her approach somehow goes against the wishes of "ordinary folks".

Let's investigate those ordinary folks. (When "folks" are evoked, one can usually be confident that the speaker is assuming a stance of the patronizing spokesman for the downtrodden masses.) Click on Gilpin's home page, then hear his videos. It's ideology at its crudest. And it pushes all the populist buttons, giving "the ordinary people" what they want to hear. Corporate excess is railed against in "humourous" caricatures. It's about the message, no different a procedure (though different in tone) than the Sunday scolder, the ideology being the real focus. And the cruder the message, the more it goes with the crudest of representation (shouting, screaming, bombastic diction, shallow psychology). What's worse is when the only thing going for it -- the pamphleteering simpleness -- is wrong. Listen, if you can, to his satire (all the videos listed here are smirking, juvenile, simplistic satires) of T. Boone Pickens. Gilpin mocks him in the Texan bigger'n-the-world-accent for his orgasmic glee in successful oil speculation, yet Pickens was one of the first prominent oil tycoons to ring the bell for the harsh realities of Peak Oil. I'm sure Pickens has mud and blood on his hands (on more than one issue), but a more complex view of the man wouldn't have elicited as many smug applause haw-haws from the "ordinary folks" at the slam event. Of course, I'm being too kind. 3 to 1 says Gilpin wasn't even aware of his subject's history, on record.

Education shouldn't be championed? Look. Most people, here and in the U.S., read zero or a handful (at best) of books a year. Not books of poetry. Any book. Is that an elitist statement? No. It's a statement of fact. So if you want to reach a wider audience, you'll have to (ironically) enter the marketplace. Not the marketplace of ideas, but the marketplace of performance, which has more to do with that revolting consumer mania Gilpin and his audience decries than its opposite: economically profitless reading, reflecting, and yes, writing. Can commerce and art meet? Of course. Shakespeare made a few bucks. And good on Martin Amis for going for (and getting) the half-million advance. But that's not the driving force behind the art.

"Each old guard tries to expel the work of the avant-garde before inevitably embracing it. Ginsberg was castigated as a madman, and then canonized a few decades later with the rest of his bohemian friends."--Gilpin

Yeah, yeah, the performance poets of today are the "avant-garde". A quick comment. If you think you and your horse are the "avant-garde", you're not the avant-garde. The definition means that no one knows who the so-called breakthrough artists are, or where they are coming from. The artists are just as deluded as anyone else, actually more so. Poets are the worst judges of their own worth. It's obvious. And necessary. They have to have a thick skin to keep going. If one thinks of him- or herself as just another mediocrity, then what's the point? Others are always the judge. For every confident Pound, there are a million-and-one-plus who think they're on the cutting edge, either singly or as a member of a school.

Ginsberg's friends were canonized? Isn't that so .... oh I don't know, un-avantist? What, then, do we call former poets of the avant-garde? Oh, that's right. The establishment. Gilpin's argument is reversed. The old guard doesn't quibble about who's in, who's out. They're already dead. And their supporters have nothing to lose by heralding a new flavour. It's the new kids on the block who have that sense of outraged and outrageous entitlement. Who in the canon does Gilpin denounce? Well, that would be too "sophisticated" to descend to (note the dangling prep). Also, it would mean crafting something substantive. (Crickets.) Education?

"Robert Frost dismissed free verse as playing tennis with the net down; now it is the dominant form."--Gilpin

Frost was a grump. That doesn't abolish his argument. The larger point regarding free verse is that free verse is more difficult to do well than s0-called closed forms. As one jazz enthusiast said to another, overhearing some electrifying experimental sax player: "You have to get real good before you can play that bad!"

"Look farther back and the same story repeats itself over and over again. Even Keats and his Romantic cadre were at first written off as being little more than uncouth “Cockney School” youth whose lush whinings could not be considered proper poetry"--Gilpin

Ergo, Keats equals Koyczan.

"The great irony here is that although Williams warned that poetic forms must change with the times it is his modernist poetry (along with Wallace Stevens’ and T.S. Eliot’s) that has become the most mimicked by academic poets as a quick and easy route to publication. Donald Hall gave a name to the results of this academic mimicry in his wonderful essay “Poetry and Ambition”; he called them “McPoems.” He was right to point out that McPoems impress no one except other McPoets. They are inside jokes whispered in the back stairwells of the ivory tower, out of touch with today’s society. Yet they flood our literary market, tyrannizing our imagination with their outdated, exploded concepts."--Gilpin

In other words, "page" posts are mostly shyte. Ergo, performance poetry is the way forward.

But "page" poets have always been mostly shyte. A sense of elementary history would perhaps avail the mic-in-hand caller of some perspective.

"This is why Spoken Word audiences continue to grow. The 2009 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word featured 12 poetry slam teams—the most ever. For a week, the Victoria Events Centre was sold out every evening, 200 people inside, with a long line-up of people waiting to be let in—for the chance to listen to poetry! The finals were held in front of a crowd of 500 yelling and cheering fans."--Gilpin

World Wrestling Federation, or whatever they call themselves, make Spoken Word competitions look like a bunch of huddled basement kids screeching into tin cans, if that argument is followed to its logical conclusion. Monster truck rallies are also more popular with the "ordinary folks." The bells and whistles seems to be as garish and formulaic, as well.

"Is Spoken Word poetry? Of course it is"--Gilpin

The non sequitur, friend of any and all without a rational and developed line of thought.

"and it is rooted in the oldest of poetic forms: The oral tradition, the tradition that produced Beowulf and the epics of Homer"--Gilpin

What does Spoken Word poetry, as it exists in this time and space, have to do with Homer? If I write a bad poem (with justifiable review-pans), then enunciate it with braggadocio, is it therefore improved? And if not, why can't we reverse the process, and assess all performance poems through the written layout? Homer lives now, and is read now, because his poetry earns its way on the page. If Homer were alive today, and decided to go the Gutenburg way, the performance "poets" would laugh at him if they even knew of his existence.

"Word poets have studied these poems (three of the four of us on the Vancouver Poetry Slam Team have gone through the English Literature program at UBC, the fourth is a voracious reader),"--Gilpin

My gawd, they have BAs! (Prostrates dutifully.)

"The baby boomers of the 1960s and 1970s must wake up and realize there is a new movement afoot."--Gilpin

The boomer generation, by birth, ended in 1964, give or take two years. Even in the sub-generation (1956-1964), there's debate on how that back-half fits in with the stereotype. The increasing cynicism of the "Jones Generation" actually marks them out as being closer to the Gen-Xers. So perhaps we can coffin-retrofit the 70s into the early 50s.

The "new movement" started with Beowulf and Homer, remember? Here comes the avant-garde, again.

Paul Tyler's A Short History of Forgetting

2010-09-07T00:04:00.000-07:00

A Short History of Forgetting (Gaspereau Press, 2010) is Paul Tyler’s initial collection of poems. Here’re some thoughts on all of them in the order they appear.

ADAM NAMING THE ANIMALS

The opener is in six parts. I like that the voice isn’t identified as God. As the poem develops, the insistence on naming the animals becomes a baffling, physical struggle. It ends with, “the animals leapt away”. A thoughtful explanation on the search and desire for language as both song and necessary re-enactment.

IN PRAISE OF THE BANANA SLUG

Much humour and fun. The plentiful descriptors come tumbling -- or perhaps sliding -- out: “slick oil-skinned sea captains”; “heavily-spotted gummy glutton”. I’m partial to poems simultaneously lighthearted and reverent. Tyler aces the emotional complexity, and he also implicates himself into the scene without dominating it.

CRICKETS

A deftly contoured exploration on the dual trade between work and sex. (What? It’s just a nature poem?) I enjoyed the title link with “little socialists”, and am trying to think of a diminutive British-Trotskyist athlete.

MIDGE

The description here is OK, but a concatenation of images -- unless superlative-- usually isn’t enough to carry a poem in and of itself. Even so, the tight observational parade of movement would have at least kept the poem afloat absent the jarring spiritual conclusion (“which is joy”) and the inflated cosmogony (“hum/of the beginning,/which is all that ever was.”)

SILVERFISH

The naming “Adam” here is Tyler, and “the animal” is the “co-evolved wiggler”. Fun with assonance in a curt but prolific list of designations.

A PRACTICAL APPLICATION FOR BEES

The successfully rendered tone is much like that in “In Praise of the Banana Slug”: warmth and worship. Here, the rhetoric is cranked a few notches, and bee applications are nicely incorporated into the attitude of gentle awe.

WINTER CHICKADEE OFFERING

The tight, nervous phrasing follows the cautious movements of the eponymous bird. The compound “prairie-licked, numb-knuckled”, “wind-pounded”, as with earlier entries, reverses the subject-to-object duality, and the curious relationship is comically defined in the last line (not given here) with an implied contrast to St. Francis of Assisi.

GOLDFINCH MISTAKEN FOR A SWALLOWTAIL

This didn’t work for me at all. The diction is unremarkable and the images are depleted to make way for a philosophy of reaction, the watcher of the watcher. Too removed.

HOUSE SPARROWS

The same operation here as in “Silverfish”, with similar, pleasing rhythms. The hyphenated word combining of “froth-whipped”, “, ”crud-fix”, “snail-slicked”, “hop-busking” again mimics the birds’ quick movements, and it’s clear Tyler has fun with these tags, much more so than poor Adam who had to start from scratch. I just hope the author doesn’t become too cosy with representation as procedure and statement.

HUNGRY

When the subject is pets, I’ll take the simplicity of a Roethke lyric over the overreach (and overworked sentiment) expressed here.

PIG

This disturbing poem about abbatoir and prep cruelty and insensitivity is all the more disturbing for the curious absence of its speaker. The inhumanity rendered in eidetic bluntness calls out either for contrasting intervention or anguished impotency. And it doesn’t matter if the poem was -- to use that obnoxious, reverent phrase -- “based on a true story”. Whether true or imaginary, autobiographical or other-voiced or an amalgamation, I’d rather have a troubled speaker involved in any number of conflicting and conflicted options if it meant the opposite procedure in a few other good-as-is poems such as “In Praise of the Banana Slug” where the speaker appears in a meditative relationship with the observed. Blood spills; cynicism reigns. But despite hooking the reader’s pity effectively by image and beat, Tyler’s voice choice of disembodied narrator results (ironically) in a clinical dissection ending with the oft-used, trite profundity-variant, “its smile that won’t thaw”.

WINTER MOOSE, ALASKA

The ambiguity here makes for a better poem than “Pig”. The stanza breaks enhance the shift in focus.

LAST POLAR BEAR

Some deeply etched imagery here, striking, but also subtle in several places: “Cars jerk down streets like damaged cells”; “sheets of iceless light”; “rough-skinned drum of inlet”.

A SHORT HISTORY OF FORGETTING

The titular poem that begins section two is formed in long lines, and with twenty-five of them of similar length, the stretched-out voice (over twenty syllables in several linear unspoolings!) worked more as an obstreperous run-on than the mood (reflection) the speaker wished to evoke. And for a poem relying a good deal on a list, much of the detail was too general to be of interest or enlightenment (“things taken”, “belongings”, “pieces of the disorder”). And “no longer/recognizable” isn’t an excuse since minute surprise can still attach to indistinct objects. But after reading the poem many times, it became clear that Tyler’s objects are introduced more as stand-ins for an organizing idea (memory vs. forgetfulness). It’s a dialectic, unfortunately, in the Kantian, rather than Hegelian, sense. That is, memory has already been corrupted, but it’s certainly not true that “everything is forgotten”. To that, it’s also useful to quote E. D. Hirsch, who opposes the attitude which “mistakenly identifies meaning with mental processes rather than with an object of those processes.” However sincere the speaker or experiencer, Tyler’s objects appear as props, and have then to be inflated to achieve their transferring power.

SHORT HISTORY OF A WEDDING PHOTO

This is the poem “A Short History of Forgetting” could have been or could have become. Rich in speculation, sharp in image, and best of all, psychologically wise in its “sequel” life to the aforementioned poem, this rumination on an old café photo pulls the reader into another world while noting the larger and present world’s indifference or incomprehension.

THE FATHERS ARE DYING

I enjoyed the particularities here which actually blend into a believable fatherly Weltanschauung.

THE LIST OF WHAT WILL LAST

Subverting the speaker’s self-assurance with the same person’s list of memory evaporation -- “and certainly not the list” -- this litany is appropriately subjective though the turn would have been more effective, entertaining, and startling with a longer (if not Whitmanesque) roll call.

SHORT HISTORY OF TWO BUDDHAS

An enjoyable blend of image and rhetoric, I had problems with the tone initially (speaker-inserted, yet cool), though the gathering contrast of spiritual constancy with political/religious intolerance won me over with the buried rage (“buried, wide open”?). I would have liked, however, the two countries named (if the locales are indeed removed one from the other). Afghanistan and Sri Lanka? It’s understandable that poets, at times, shy away from the temporal, but I’ve always believed that the universal is more often than not enhanced by references to the particular. It’s often not necessary, but political context would have been appreciated, as well.

SHORT HISTORY OF FERDINAND VON ZEPPELIN’S DREAM

Unlike the previous poem, this is situated. Images are alive -- (“fat handshakes/of flame”; “twenty men, sudden sticks of light”) -- and Tyler’s typically terse phrasing amplifies the narrative force.

CANDLES IN THE SNOW

Syntactic twelve-line reordering which would have benefitted from a three-quarters or two-thirds paring.

HOUSE SMASH

Many poems (not just in this book) are either too short or too long for what they need to accomplish. Just as “The List of What Will Last” is too brief to work as reverie or counterpoint, “House Smash” (though a shorter poem) is pointlessly detailed, and because of its bloated cataloguing, increases the egregious glare of the abstract apex -- “This is how we fail the world”.

IF I WERE A PAINTER

This is nothing but catalogue, and it’s not redeemed by the vague and unearned last line, (“I’d paint this for all our dislocated gazes, for our half-intentioned lives.”)

THE PLAYERS

Wonderfully evocative, exactingly shaped. I particularly liked the assumed emotion attributed to the players from the speaker/fan.

THE SAD BAKER

The transitions in this prose poem were difficult, perhaps purposely so. Unfortunately, those narrative segues blunted the emotion of what, at least, was a good idea. Hence -- (I can’t resist) -- the object didn’t rise.

SOPHISTICATED SEX

This poem reminds me of Tyler’s titular effort in that the grasp is inadequate to the reach. I often trumpet ambition, especially so amongst contemporary self-congratulatory frippery, but if a poem fails its difficult scope, I at least prefer that it does so while going all in. “Sophisticated Sex” sets up an intriguing discrepancy, (different in each partner), between coital fulfillment and reality, but, unlike similar territory in novelist James Baldwin’s wise and fearless Another Country, the secrets droop in jarring poeticisms (“mind’s plush foyer”, “splayed plums”), dull, general revelations (“what matters shows”, “the body not a simple story”), and clichés (“The chorus hides sweetly in the wings”, “years bitterly/swallowed like stones”). The poem needed either a double shot of adrenaline or a fine psychological investigation.

NEIGHBOUR

Unremarkable yet effective in a character-scoring by compressed detail, I wanted more personal involvement here. What are some contrasts or similarities between and with the neighbour and the speaker?

VANITY HEARSE

“It’s prowling promise/to outperform desire.” Yes! And there are several other phrases almost as good. I also liked the strong, quick stresses of “near liquid slant-six pumping angel wings for/plugs.” Delightful from starting gun to end line.

ANTE MERIDIEM

The first poem in the “Urban Night Longing” section is faithful in mood to that header. But just as “If I Were A Painter” is all list, “Ante Meridiem” is all mood, and because of its narrow angle, an attempt to heighten that mood or introduce other elements into the mix could have popped the top off the perfume bottle. Instead, the result is an exercise, not a mysterious evocation, and what’s more, the too-frequent Canadian predilection for the precious first-person plural voice -- combined with the stock epiphanic diction of “moon”, “stars”, “alley”, “sleeps”, “opening”, “listen”, “wind” -- make this the weakest poem in the book so far.

THIS BOOKISH NIGHT

Tropes were strained and murky. At times, an obvious parallel was drawn (“Glowing paragraphs of high-storeyed/buildings”). What irked most, however, was the assumption that open-endedness, suggestion, in itself, somehow equals profundity or (at least) fascination (“you are stitched by possible endings”).

PIGEON FARMER

Inferior to Tyler’s “In Praise of the Banana Slug”, this commemoration is overwritten, the voice unconvincing. There’s nothing wrong with burning the midnight oil for a string of fortnights, but the lamp-marks shouldn’t be visible on the page.

THE HYACINTHS

The word “old” in the second-to-last line ruins what would have been a good phrase (“Perky old ninety-somethings”). The similes and metaphors, I suppose, attempt to mimic humorous flights of fancy by nectar-infused recipients (“greedy little bankers”; “like a hundred drunken Hemingways”), but I just found them disconnected, unimaginative, unfunny.

TREE FAITH

Similar to “Ante Meridiem”, “Tree Faith” dispenses with development, but, in its hushed, skeletal structure, offers little in the way of elemental idiosyncrasy or surprise. “Something crawls/around in you” is supposed to echo the branches “weave into air”. It’s, all of it, suggestion without power or believable connection.

MANITOBA MAPLES

I keep coming back to that “Banana Slug”. That’s a plus here because “Manitoba Maples” follows the same descriptive profusion, and is crafted with good cheer (“bug havens, bird bramble,/messed-up misshapen bouffant heavies”). It could have been a developing minus in that Tyler has found a cupola and is mining it with the energy of the workers in Emile Zola’s Germinal. No one should be typecast after acting in his first movie. And the poet’s first-book gaze shouldn’t be filtered through a glaucomatous aperture, so its heartening to see the observational highlight, here -- maples -- er … break new ground.

A SHORT HISTORY OF OUR FUTURE WITH THE ALIENS

A pallid, empty, unfunny sci-fi proposal.

CREATURE OF WORK

The psychological portrait is individuated though glancing. The subject matter cries out for narrative exposition, but I’m not sure Tyler cares (or is able) to develop human complexities with the same panache he lavishes on animals, insects, birds, and natural phenomena. And even in this truncated characterization, lines repeatedly trip over one another (“nothing/touches him. Rain arcs around him on his/cruel commute that never takes him home.”)

ABROAD

The shorthand declaratives (“Forget it, scooter”, “Listen, lightweight”) don’t have the snap of similar aggressive voices in poems by Karen Solie and Ken Babstock, for example. And the tone doesn’t earn any force because of the inadequate context. The sound here is akin to a carefully produced cover of an original, all the informing passion and rough edges muffled in an unintended caricature.

FIRST SNOW

The changing of the seasons is such a staple of the poetic landscape that to write on that theme now is to go beyond cliché, beyond kowtowing to the canon, beyond rearranging the furniture, to a zone only successfully negotiated by ironic self-consciousness or dramatic new metaphors. Tyler opts for the latter (with one three-word exception, mentioned later), but the metaphorical thrust is a maladroit list (his fallback modus operandi) which culminates in a terribly integrated mythical enactment (“Cronus eating his children. The shattered house/of Job. Kali beading her tether of skulls.”). Yes, the first snow is sometimes a harbinger for fatal accidents amd hypothermia. And that first flake -- that’s one small flake for a person, one giant mound for personhood -- contains multitudes, to mix poetic allusions. But the pathetic fallacy of the oak, the overblown proportion of “pissing/jet cold brew down chimneys”, and the self-regarding wink “Proto-poetic provocateur” bury this poem in a winter of its own making.

SPRINGSIDE AFTERPLOW

How far Tyler’s come from naming the animals in that strangled linguistic garden. The relentless compounds pile up like the abused spring snow the poem’s addressee -- the plow -- shoves along. I like “climate abscess” and “synthesized sludge”.

THE HOUSE AT THIRTY-TWO BELOW

The personification of the house is much better than that of the oak in “First Snow”, though a few similes puzzle (“Ice brittles, shrinks like a clerk”; “shingles/rough as North Sea skin”).

LAST SNOW

“Rubbing snow’s grief into our flesh”. Ugh! To be grossly pedantic, snow is crystalline ice water and has never been known to harbour or express grief. Do “we” become “as snow” under certain temperatures and conditions? That insight has been logged before Eric the Red brandished his sword. If there’s grief, it’s experienced by the “rubber”, but this would mean creating characters, a complexifying and emotional challenge that is sidestepped throughout this book in favour of the “safe” route of nature-and-object personae. I realize metaphors are involved. But a successful metaphor has to work on both sides.

DRESSING ARTHUR

The first of nine poems in the section “Home” which close out the book, “Dressing Arthur” is convincingly consistent in tone throughout. There were problems with a few details -- I’ll never believe an invalid can muster the strength to let go “obscenities … from his gut” -- but their recounting in mundane sharpness (“V-neck wiped/with dinner”) is a welcome change from the proclivity outlined in the commentary of the previous poem. I also like that Tyler is a definite presence in the poem, though a proportional one.

THE WORDS OF PHYLLIS

Phyllis was nearing “the end of language”, but there’s no excuse for the clear-minded observer to cloak this poem in generalities (“Scripts, and snippets of songs/play through her”) and awkward metaphor (“the end of language,/its crumbling walls reveal her/spitting the gravel of her name.”).

GWEN ASKING THE TIME

After reading “Gwen Asking the Time” many times, lines and phrases refuse to be retrieved. The poem feels like it was created through a processing plant: attention to detail is exacting, but the sound is lifeless.

FEEDING RENA

One of a handful of this book’s keepers, “Feeding Rena” is strong in metaphor and image, with fine summation (“her eyes, stones on a prairie road, watch everything and nothing.”). Rena will live.

EDITH’S SONG

The Wile E. Coyote-one-second-pause-mid-air-off-a-cliff enjambments are appropriate and highly effective. It’s not easy representing these lives, and interiors must be sought and conveyed with subtlety and clarity. That Tyler has gone three-for-five so far in this section is to his credit.

ERNIE’S CANE

Good. I can see many things here. And with clear vision (either in experience or imagination), a transforming space is created for the reader. “[H]e staggers/toward you, ready to timber”, “tilts that boulder of a head”, are strong entries, presaging both mild fear and sadness.

SOME THINGS I KNOW ABOUT JACK

Jack's an interesting person, all right, perhaps one still in the early stages of dementia, though it's obvious he still possesses a strength of character lacking in many others of sound mind and body. And that's the good news, here. The details, "as is", didn't make it as a poem.

NANCY LEAVING

The run-on block paragraph is the perfect form for the frantic Alzheimer’s patient in this poem. A terrifying experience, Tyler chooses wisely by letting the scrambled narrative run its course. Excellent bites include, “our hands group like fish to catch her” and “the ground a narrow beam”.

VIOLET

“She wants to lead/you someplace holier.” “Want” is a sublime word choice. Powerful, understated, honest, concise, “Violet” is an obvious choice to close out this very good final section.

More Lists!

2010-08-26T03:46:00.000-07:00

I've been busy losing money and enjoying the summer, as well as reading more books than the first slush pile screener for Harlequin, Inc.

I have found time to follow and enjoy the various lit lists lately, however, and thought I'd participate in the fun by pasting the top books, by sale, for three categories for the years 1962 and 1992. Any pre-commentary would blunt the results themselves. Oh, and also with recent blogo-slicing developments in mind, a reminder that comments are always welcome, though of course spam and sham will be flushed.

1962

Fiction Bestsellers

1. Katherine Anne Porter, Ship of Fools
2. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Dearly Beloved
3. Allen Drury, A Shade of Difference
4. Herman Wouk, Youngblood Hawke
5. J. D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
6. Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, Fail-Safe
7. Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II, Seven Days in May
8. Irving Wallace, The Prize
9. Irving Stone, The Agony and the Ecstasy
10. William Faulkner, The Reivers

Critically Acclaimed and Historically Significant

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Students for a Democratic Society, The Port Huron Statement
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Michael Harrington, The Other America
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy
Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore
Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind
T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook
Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics
Fritz Machlup, The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the U.S.

Nonfiction Bestsellers

1. Dr. Herman Taller, Calories Don’t Count
2. The New English Bible: The New Testament
3. Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book: New Edition
4. Virginia Cary Hudson, O Ye Jigs & Juleps!
5. Charles M. Schulz, Happiness Is a Warm Puppy
6. Irma S. Rombauer and Marion Rombauer Becker, The Joy of Cooking: New Edition
7. Louis Nizer, My Life in Court
8. Frederic Morton, The Rothschilds
9. Helen Gurley Brown, Sex and the Single Girl
10. John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley

1992

Fiction Bestsellers

1. Stephen King, Dolores Claiborne
2. John Grisham, The Pelican Brief
3. Stephen King, Gerald’s Game
4. Danielle Steel, Mixed Blessings
5. Danielle Steel, Jewels
6. Sidney Sheldon, The Stars Shine Down
7. Anne Rice, Tale of the Body Thief
8. James A. Michener, Mexico
9. Terry McMillan, Waiting to Exhale
10. Mary Higgins Clark, All Around the Town

Critically Acclaimed and Historically Significant

Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man
Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses
Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men
Al Gore, Earth in the Balance
Edward O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life

Nonfiction Bestsellers

1. Rush Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought To Be
2. Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, It Doesn’t Take a Hero: The Autobiography
3. Naura Hayden, How to Satisfy a Woman Every Time
4. James Herriot, Every Living Thing
5. Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
6. Sam Walton, Sam Walton: Made in America
7. Andrew Morton, Diana: Her True Story
8. David McCullough, Truman
9. Gail Sheehy, Silent Passage
10. Madonna, Sex

Anis Shivani's "15 Most Overrated Writers"

2010-08-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

It's been entirely predictable how the anti-Shivani arguments have run, as seen on other blogs and on the burgeoning comments section of the original piece in the Huffington Post (currently 1, 378 entries). For the record, of the fifteen authors given a bird's-eye assessment, I've only read Ashbery, Collins, and Oliver. I'm ambivalent on the former, and on the other two, I thought Shivani was dead on.

It's also predictably convenient how Shivani's larger argument has been ignored by those who benefit from the set up. On that issue, here's Shivani in his own words:

"As for the reviewing establishment, it is no more than the blurbing arm for conglomerate publishing, offering unanalytical "reviews" announcing that the emperor is wearing clothes ...

The ascent of creative writing programs means that few with critical ability have any incentive to rock the boat--awards and jobs may be held back in retaliation. ...

As for conglomerate publishing, the decision-makers wouldn't know great literature if it hit them in the face. Their new alliance with the MFA writing system is bringing at least a minimum of readership for mediocre books, and they're happy with that. And the mainstream reviewing establishment (which is crumbling by the minute) validates their choices with fatuous accolades, recruiting mediocre writers to blurb (review) them."

But then, Dana Gioia, Joseph Epstein, and Thomas Disch all said much the same things over a decade ago about the culture of poetry.

To summarize the main points of contention to Shivani's essay (commenting on them is superfluous):

"Mr. Anus should stop with the ad hominems!"

"He's never even read these authors. Who is Shivani, anyway? I've never heard of him till now. His writing probably sucks, and he's just envious."

"I've stayed up till 2 a.m. reading Amy Tan, so she must be a good writer."

"9 of the 15 authors trashed are women. It's obvious he's sexist!"

"This is so mean-spirited! Real writers, the greats -- or decent critics -- never had the time or low morals to argue viciously in the public sphere about other writers."

"Good or great writing needs encouragement! Without the support of institutions, many otherwise 'can't miss' writers would fold and fly away like a pup tent in a windstorm. And in any event, creative writing courses are all about building self-esteem, anyways, not producing the next Tolstoy or Dan Brown. Articles like these just make the Silliman brouhaha all too real -- one woman left literature altogether because someone attacked her work in a comment stream!"

[and my favourite irony guffaw:] --

"Anus should keep his hole shut! People should be able to express themselves however they like."

Don Domanski's All Our Wonder Unavenged

2010-08-08T20:39:00.000-07:00

When Don Domanski, in 2007's All Our Wonder Unavenged, sticks to phenomenological transmission, his gently vatic voice gains that authority through the erasure of observer and observed, and the merging of different sentient beings, even insentient objects into elements ("the street like a greenhouse drifting gradually out to sea" from "An Old Animal Habit") , while avoiding (a tremendous feat!) the perils that Tim Lilburn often succumbs to by way of hopped-up and distorted imagery, dramatic murkiness, and transpositional antics. Lines gather spiritual force by subtle metaphor, tantalizing atmospherics, and honest cadence. There're too many out-of-time snippets to quote here. A few examples may give a hint, at least, though I do a disservice to the integrity of the poems they're culled from: "hard to see the inlay of ghosts in the spider's web/or sense the sleepers shining back from the other side" ("In the Dream of the Yellow Birches"); "quiet up here among the colourless wands of spruce/moths tracing thin bracelets in the air" ("A Trace of Finches").

When the author superimposes spiritual commentary on life-as-awe, things go south. It's not just that the reader is subjected to this unnecessary framework, but that the traditional spiritual truths revealed are badly formed, even wrongfully detailed. "Ars Poetica", as the name suggests, is loaded with these "statements". "but never scribble/a single sentence that will be weightless and endure//behind our backs words sign-off": I don't understand this contradictory belief. If all our words perish, what of the vast, epistemic spiritual record that even Domanski himself learns from and cherishes? If the answer is that the word only points to enlightenment, there's no argument here, as reality is relative and absolute. "to write is to enter the rehearsals of solitude": it's the other way around. It's been my experience, backed up by the same spiritual sources Domanski details, that silence (I'm assuming "silence" can stand in here for "solitude", though if not, I'm wrong and Domanski would have been better off choosing a much different word) is the ever-present stateless bedrock and precursor to creativity (writing, in this context). "what takes me through the field takes me home eventually/to the blank page": continuing with this same line of thought, "what takes me through the field" is a silent meditation, if I'm to read the poet aright (and I think I do in this case -- Domanski is skilled at constructing a cohering metaphysic), so there would be no sequential crossover involved since the same meditational quality would be the impetus for sitting down "to the blank page". A "rehearsal" would mark a duality, however subtly it's experienced. From the titular poem, "Cling to unity the Taoists said over and over" shockingly contradicts what many have suggested the philosophy of Buddhism can be accurately reduced to: "no clinging". 'Killing the Buddha when you meet him on the road' is purposely provocative so's to drive the point home. (Buddhism and Taoism, though culturally and tempermentally different, nevertheless cohere in core precepts, and Domanski reveres, and alternates between, the two allusive formations.)

I enjoyed the trip but not the (occasionally) intrusive speaker. I always did prefer choirs or musical soloists to the confession booth or the pulpit.

Gary Geddes' Falsework

2010-07-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

Gary Geddes' seventeenth book of poetry, 2007's Falsework, operates in that curious mix of poetic construction and prose patchwork. The concentration of prose isn't limited to the well-structured one- or two-page narrative characterizations, but are also evident in the poems. Though syntagms are suitably startling -- "seconds. Girders, piers, elephantine" -- , mimicking the fall from Vancouver's collapsing Second Narrows bridge during construction in 1958, far too many passages are flabby and awkward. Entire poems escape the tangled outlay:"Over-Easy" is a powerful, elegant exception. But more representative is "Great Blue": "From my bedroom window I watched the blue heron,//as precise and accurate as an accountant, balance". All three two-letter words beginning with "a" in the second line could be eliminated for greater musical felicity and dramatic impact, and either adjective is redundant. There's an effecting interchange between dangerous action and intelligent reflection throughout the creative reworking of a gripping story long past its one-week news flash, and that only heightens the frustration at the divide of imagistic force and the fatal falsework at the heart of the book's condemnation. Geddes has set down an admirable archival and imaginative investigative account of the grim, gross failures of Dominion Bridge and Swan Wooster and Associates. Unfortunately, though the multi-voiced poems emit heat (and often light) on the local tragedy, they're riddled with the same poorly engineered grillage of that massive span. As Geddes has one of his speakers reveal, "We die a little/when a structure fails."

Sharon McCartney's Under The Abdominal Wall

2010-07-20T21:13:00.000-07:00

This is fearless and direct. Though the subject matter -- family mortality -- is often harsh, even harrowing, readers who turn pages quickly in order to satisfy dramatic resolution may easily miss the subtle effects camouflaged in unadorned syntax, as in the delayed "together in a way we will//never be", from "Niagara, 1968". McCartney's sequencing gathers steam as one moves along Under The Abdominal Wall, and, in a number of moving poems as various as "Dying, My Mother" and "The Real Estate Market in Southern California", suggestion and curt phrasing etch assessments and moods more effectively than leaky, prosy explanations could ever hope to do with the same material.

The Offal Office (Final)

2010-06-27T22:35:00.000-07:00

"At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favours, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations."--Obama

Says the man who received sizeable campaign contributions from BP. In fact, of all the oil companies who helped place Obama in the circuitous office, BP was the largest supporter. Of course new regulations will be drawn up, and some token fines and wagging fingers will be dished out, but it's all for the assuaging of the public's mood.

"When Ken Salazar became my Secretary of the Interior, one of his very first acts was to clean up the worst of the corruption at this agency. But it’s now clear that the problems there ran much deeper, and the pace of reform was just too slow. And so Secretary Salazar and I are bringing in new leadership at the agency – Michael Bromwich, who was a tough federal prosecutor and Inspector General.

His charge over the next few months is to build an organization that acts as the oil industry’s watchdog – not its partner."--Obama

What Obama should do is hire an overseer (not a bureaucrat or bloated bureacracy) with up-to-date experience, and a long and sustained history, of oceanographic success, as well as one in similar standing with pertinent geological expertise. That way, BP (and other oil companies) can't hoodwink the "independent" watchdogs with bafflegab and cynical good intentions.

Michael Bromwich is a lawyer. He will have to appoint experts in the requisite areas to hold BP accountable. SinceBromwich isn't an expert in these areas, his decisions on who to target, hire, and trust on these issues will be hit-or-miss.

And, as stated earlier, if the expert is studied enough to challenge BP on any indiscretions based on an authoritative understanding of the complexities involved, does anyone actually think BP will allow Obama to put the arm on them?

"For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we have talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels."--Obama

And that's all this hypocrite is doing now. Talk is needed, obviously, though when people simply talk about the oil problem, solutions (and there needs to be many, various, and complex solutions) are all over the map in effectiveness. I was no fan of Jimmy Carter, but at least he dared to invoke the challenge of conservation and preservation to a national audience in the face of rampant consumerism.

What was Obama's campaign talk regarding the energy crisis? Oh, yeah. The worst of the options: ethanol. Terrible energy returned on what is invested, displacement of food crops resulting (already) in famine in India and Mexico, and unscaleable.

"The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight. Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be here in America."--Obama

Unbelieveable. He actually taps China as an example. China, whose record on regulatory malfeasance is alarming and systemic. Remember the lead-poisoned baby toys? The tainted milk? Yes, the officials responsible were murdered, something that U.S. banking CEOs need not fret about. But if it weren't for public outcry tied to desperately needed export markets, the silence would have been deafening.

China's billion-plus are now the world's leading car purchasers. Coal emissions are choking their urban centres. Environmental degradation is rife.

But of course the greater irony would be hilarious if it weren't so sobering. Obama's regulation-without-results bureaucratic expansion doesn't allow a climate in which small businesses can effectively set up those needed, cutting-edge businesses.

"We cannot consign our children to this future."--Obama

The rhetoric worsens. Obama's already consigned America's children to a future of penury and hopelessness. The foundation was scooped long ago, but the current U.S. president has accelerated the financial nosedive. (Oil scarcity and financial hardship are intimately intertwined. I've talked a bit about it in other posts, but it's beyond the scope of this piece to go into greater depth here.)

"The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now. Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash American innovation and seize control of our own destiny."--Obama

Stump rhetoric doesn't quite transform to the oval office. But here comes the meat-n'-potatoes:

"we have already taken unprecedented action to jumpstart the clean energy industry.

As we speak, old factories are reopening to produce wind turbines, people are going back to work installing energy-efficient windows, and small businesses are making solar panels. Consumers are buying more efficient cars and trucks, and families are making their homes more energy-efficient."--Obama

Unprecedented? I suppose if one confuses niche busyness and self-promotion with knowledge, seriousness, and long-range planning.

Wind turbines. Ha. Wind is a non-starter except for individuals in plains states or just off the ocean in Southern California, or for very small communities. Even here, there are many issues which make it problematic if not impossible for the long-term. As Spain is finding out, maintenance of the turbines is expensive, and needs (wait for it) increasing inputs of oil to run at all. Wind is sporadic, even in areas most amenable to its benefits. Massive areas are needed to build wind farms. It's simply not scaleable as even a minor replacement for oil.

Energy efficient windows. Again, a few drops from a barrel of oil. Efficient windows are very well and fine. Verna and I just installed our house with them last year. Our heating bill fell slightly. More important than energy efficient windows is turning the damn heat off when not around, wearing extra clothing in winter, being naturally more fit so circulation isn't slowed (thereby reducing personal heat), and a number of other mundane but effective options. This falls under the category of common sense. That an acting president is seriously floating these bromides in the face of Peak Oil is inane, and it misses the context in which the speech is given: namely, that oil, while Obama speaks, continues to blacken the ocean.

Small businesses are apparently busy making solar panels. I remember one of Obama's other thousand-and-one speeches given to convince the world what a wonderful job he's doing. He boasted about a single business owner who sounded hopeful about a solar panel start-up. This is the worst sort of anecdotal revelation. First, the entrepreneur was just beginning. Every business owner is hopeful when beginning. It's a prerequisite to counter all the hard work needed to generate momentum. Most businesses fail within the first year of start-up. Secondly, it was one anecdote. For every Arizona solar panel start-up, there are a thousand small organic farming start-ups squashed by the agribusiness behemoths who funded Obama, and who call the shots on subsidies, allowances, district rights, tax relief, and access to markets. The food industry is slightly more important than the energy efficient windows industry, but Obama's deflections will convince a few naive Greenies, I suppose.

Consumers are buying more efficient cars and trucks, according to Obama. That is a lie. National stats just in that SUV sales have increased the last quarter now that gas prices have fallen slightly. By the way, though gas prices will escalate to $4, $5, $9 and more, the more troubling event will be gas shortages. This can happen even when (as has been the case for decades) gas prices are being kept artificially low. And even to mention "energy efficient" cars and trucks is to see just how dangerous is the direction of federal bureaucrats, whether in the U.S. or Canada. Transportation technology is always supposed to be the saviour, but there are very real world and existing technological solutions to much of our travelling needs, namely trains and buses. Bikes, walking, car pooling, cutting out needless jaunts, arranging (if possible) one's environment so that it doesn't require numerous long trips per day. I could go on, but the dirty little secret -- and where Obama already contradicts himself in this speech -- is that energy efficient windows aka energy reduction is just a smokescreen for business as usual with no guilty conscience. What difference does it make if you trot out your garbage to be recycled if the oil-fed plastic in the waste is off the chart? What difference does it make if you buy a car with greater gas mileage if you're just going to be the sole occupant of the vehicle for long drives in the country gazing at the scenery? One looks in vein for a greater vision in Obama's speech, but after the rhetoric has subsided, all that remains are facile good intentions.

"Scientists and researchers are discovering clean energy technologies that will someday lead to entire new industries."--Obama

More lies. Not "will" someday lead, but "may" someday lead. And we've been hearing that talk for decades, too. The important temporal reality here is that "someday", even were it a given, is still too late. The time to act is not "now", as Obama says, but yesterday. I'm a betting man, and I'll give 10 to 1, against my desires, that after the oil eruption is off the news rolls, sweet dick will be done in any meaningful way, to address the comprehensive, expensive, massively transformative overhaul of energy infrastructure needed to effect any change.

Scientists and researchers have always been working on new energy options, on a scale possible to replace fossil fuels. What the politicians don't want to tell anyone, for fear of getting pitched out on their ears next election, is that all their hard work, ingenuity, and desire, haven't resulted in any meaningful replacement for oil. Whatever discoveries and avenues that have been followed -- hydrogen cells, waste products, carbon sequestration -- have proven to be incompatible with one or all of the following benefits that oil provides by way of price, adaptablility, safety, abundance, reliability, transportation smoothness and quickness, efficiency, storage, and most importantly of all, scale.

I'd go with ridiculously expensive and numerous nuclear plants for the next half-century while continuing to support resources for scientific exploration. Even if the glacial federal powers agreed on implementing the nuclear option, it would take 15-20 years for it to be finalized. And current economic resources, of course, make that far from a guaranteed outcome. The only promising long-term option I see at this point is ocean/wave generation. Research is still in relative infancy; who knows how it'll pan out.

The remainder of Obama's oil slick concentrates on more fluff and bluff. He concludes by exhorting his audience to pray. I knew Baby Jesus was behind one of those oil platforms.

The Offal Office (Cont'd)

2010-06-21T20:19:00.000-07:00

"This is until the company finishes drilling a relief well later in the summer that is expected to stop the leak completely."-- Obama

To elaborate on the above with a bit more detail than in my previous response, the jury is not only out on whether or not the relief well will cap the eruption, it is scratching its head over whether or not the spewage will ever be contained and stopped. New reports have delayed the possibility for "success" from late summer to Christmas. Then there is hurricane season to get through. This year's natural Gulf coast assault is projected to be a particularly nasty one, and if a few category fours are in play, not only will relief operations be shelved, but hurricane winds could transport benzene particulates inland and northward many states. In addition, the ongoing video flow of the eruption shows microfractures adjacent to and removed from the gouged origin. The Oil Drum site has a detailed, technical analytic report from a geologist on the possibility that the outburst may never be capped. Furthermore, there are currectly thousands of other Gulf Coast deepwater wells with the same faulty blowout preventers (and other compromised safety components) ready to offer up their dark secrets. Obama suspended all other such drilling (within a week of Okaying it -- so much for foresight), but the problem then becomes one milder in exigent decisiveness, but greater in philosophical direction. I mentioned the Deep Jack deepwater hullabaloo some time ago, and how the "200 year boon" of the "find" in the Gulf was supposed to be a slam dunk. (The story disappeared like hydrogen gas from a leaky valve when the amount, technical plausibility, and pinpointed location of Jack were found to be more hope and hype than fact.) Deep Jack was 13 miles under water; this particular eruption happened at 1 mile. Technical proficiency -- what James Howard Kunstler calls "techno-triumphalism" -- is blindly lauded by most. BP fucked up largely because of economic shortcuts. But at 13 miles, all the safety precautions from a revamped and rewritten regulatory code (not possible anyway under the long-standing system of bought-out politicians) are puny (pardon the bad pun) when drilling is needed in uncharted waters.

"Needed" because, of course, if this disaster has shown us anything besides the greed of multinationals, it's that the low-hanging oil fruit has disappeared, and that next spring won't usher in more petro-apples. Likely, as drilling is suspended, a polluted BP (and other cos.) will rise, phoenix-like, from the bituminous coke and set sail for West Africa where money is not only King but Judge, and the U.S., already looking at the disappearance of 30% of their imported oil from a tanking Mexico-Cantarell, will be forced to rethink motoring-for-fun-and-convenience. The same energy binds apply to Canada, as well, of course. We're always smugly pissing on the wasteful States, but, per capita, Canada is slightly worse in oil usage. The U.S. has 5 % of the world's population and uses 25 % of the oil; Canada's numbers only look mild by total amount since at 1/2 of 1 % of the world's population, we use approximately 3 % of the world's fossil fuels. So, 6 times as much as the norm, rather than 5 times for the U.S.

I'd planned on commenting on the rest of Obama's oval office damage control say-nothingism in this post, but I've only repeated one sound-byte, and still have the rest to go through. More in a day or so.

The Offal Office

2010-06-16T00:32:00.000-07:00

I haven't heard horseshit like this since Baghdad Bob was rousing terrified and bewildered citizens with his witticisms. Unfortunately, the condescending, platitudinal insincerity from The Chosen One lacked the effervescent farce of that man, (who now has his own DVD on the market! -- "We blocked them inside the city. Their rear is blocked.")

"Good evening. As we speak, our nation faces a multitude of challenges."--Obama

No shit, Sherlock!

"At home, our top priority is to recover and rebuild from a recession that has touched the lives of nearly every American."--Obama

What you mean, "our", boss? I thought your biggest priority was to bail out Goldman-Sachs by transferring the remaining wealth of the middle class to the bankers while simultaneously printing more debt to create the illusion of "recovery" which, of course, will simply accelerate inflation and (ergo) systemic poverty and economic collapse. Guess I'm not reading the right hymn book.

"Abroad, our brave men and women in uniform are taking the fight to al-Qaeda wherever it exists. And tonight, I’ve returned from a trip to the Gulf Coast to speak with you about the battle we’re waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores and our citizens."--Obama

Gotta love that metaphor, what? But -- though Obama published two poems during his undergrad days -- he's not a poet, and neither are his speechwriters. An oil spill can't be compared to military combat. Tactics in the former case are often best employed in a drawn-out, infiltrating, subtle geographical coverage; waiting and watching (Obama thought the "important" video intrusion appropriate after 57 days) is not only the wrong course of (in)action, it's dangerous. Options, strategies, organizational wit and forceful mobilizations are imperative. But Obama, as usual, is content in simply appearing to do something. (More on that later.)

"we have directed BP to mobilise additional equipment and technology. In the coming days and weeks, these efforts should capture up to 90 per cent of the oil leaking out of the well."--Obama

Each word is important, n'est pas, poets and curious readers, viewers, listeners? "Should" capture, and my favourite, "up to". Of course, "up to 90 per cent" is a correct estimate if dreadnoughts per cent is recovered. The noble-prize winning scientists, the university think-tankers, and the geologists on the federal payroll just may have problems in enforcing their harsh economic solutions onto the BP powers-that-be to implement any of their creative proposals. But politics and energy makes for strange poop deck bedfellows. (And more on that later.)

"This is until the company finishes drilling a relief well later in the summer that is expected to stop the leak completely."--Obama

BWAHAHAHAHA!

"But make no mistake - we will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused."--Obama

It's Obama who's mistaken if he thinks the general public, American and world, believes this obnoxious assertion. Yeah, congress can slap a fine of a million or two on BP (equivalent to the rest of us to charging a one-time GST payment on a pack of chewing gum -- wait! can
that plug the hole, perhaps?), but Washington has been slobbering all over the oil leaders' asses pre- and post-spill. Election funding -- and the American-Canadian "way of life" (luv that phrase). Obama is just a middle manager caught in a tight bind, like any other uncreative, compromising, beleaguered business manager trying to satisfy the bosses and his "underlings".

"Because of our efforts, millions of gallons of oil have already been removed from the water through burning, skimming, and other collection methods."--Obama

And scientists have now upped the estimate on the leaking oil: between 6 and 9 million litres a day are now spewing free. But to mention that would have been .... churlish, I suppose, in this need for a meaningless sing-a-long.

"If there are problems in the operation, we will fix them."--Obama

Ah, to be sanguine. I had more respect for Cretien after 9/11. At least he was out in the open playing golf, not politics. Federal bureaucrats know dick about stopping oil spills, and about securing the technological procedures in making sure they don't happen in the first place. But they have to put the thumbscrews on oil companies with respect to regulation with teeth. Reagan gutted the regulatory system, Clinton (through repealing the Glass-Steagall Act) put the final nails through the financial coffin, and Obama can't stop playing a sentimental tune on Nero's fiddle.

"Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness.

And this fund will not be controlled by BP."--Obama

No, it'll be controlled by federal appointees who, in turn, are comtrolled by BP. If the "independent" overseers make a "suggestion" that BP doesn't like, BP will tell Obama et al about it, and Obama, in turn, will tell the "get tough" boys to cool it. It's the same song and dance between the federal reserve, the U.S. Treasury dept., Congress, the five megabanks, and (not least) the regulatory "powers", all of whom recruit from each other, collude with each other, cover for each other, and share long histories with each other. When Obama retained Geithner and others from the Bush era, did anyone honestly still believe in "change"?

"In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party."--Obama

As I say, same as the first party. Party, party, party! No independence day. And who sets the claims? And what is the process and rationale for those claims, in serious consideration and follow-up, firstly, and secondly in amount, duration, comprehensiveness?

"Earlier, I asked Ray Mabus, the Secretary of the Navy, a former governor of Mississippi, and a son of the Gulf, to develop a long-term Gulf Coast Restoration Plan as soon as possible.

The plan will be designed by states, local communities, tribes, fishermen, businesses, conservationists, and other Gulf residents. And BP will pay for the impact this spill has had on the region."--Obama

Obama strategist: "Boss, the oil companies were as popular as firecracker enemas even before this spill. Now? Hey, just keep hammering that mantra home."

Obama: "BP will pay!"

British Petroleum is the fifth largest business in the world. The puny punitive damages possibly inflicted by Obama's administration is laughable contrasted to the natural hit BP (and other oil giants) have been taking during the long, slow decline in world oil production. When (not if) oil companies collapse like whoopee cushions assaulted by Sumo wrestlers' reclining bums, those same executives will simply move to a different area of energy interest, which they will then corner (with the help of massive government subsidies), and for the token (to them) and requisite kickbacks for governmental largesse. The history of Ford Motors, Firestone, the major airlines, and any other company that created and served the suburban build-out were not only encouraged, but inspired with cash, exclusive rights, tax write-offs, and overt destruction of alternative energy infrastructure. Even if BP were forced to liquidate and declare bankruptcy (ha ha), they'd simply resurface under a different name and be back in business, unscathed, with a minor procedural blip. Obama has to stop threatening to get tough. He has to get tough. But, then, as stated, it's obvious why that won't happen.

More on this anon. Time for a long nap.

Of Oil Spills and Left Wing Simplification

2010-06-01T14:20:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell

The author of this Guardian piece makes an important point as the base for his essay: we focus on the recent Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but aren't even aware of greater environmental disasters of faulty oil infrastructure. Unfortunately, proportion gets thrown out the door, as do several facts in his otherwise speculative exposition, predictable in a topic where misinformation and ideological tunnel-driving are the norm.

Shell Oil aren't saints. They should be held accountable in many ways for the disgusting situation in Nigeria. But the lion's share of the blame goes to the Nigerian government. The country is no longer a colonial beggar but a sovereign state (if one can ignore the porous borders where volatile and enormous crosscrossing migration is necessary due to gangs -- some employed by the government, some by backroom oil company deals, some by the looting class -- and due to a search for the barest necessities caused by environmental devastation, oil and otherwise).

The Niger Delta, says John Vidal, "supplies 40% of all the crude the United States imports". This is the Guardian's environmental writer? The correct figure is 12%. He also states that the quality of Nigerian light crude is the world's best. How so? It's no better or worse than any other highly saleable crude from the OPEC bloc, from Russia, from Canada, from Mexico.

But it's the speculative drive of the essay which is most innacurate. "Rebels" attack the pipelines of Nigeria, but the economic strong-arming behind these attacks, which have been ongoing for years, and which have been reported extensively in the media (contra Vidal's assertion), are skirted. In a country where wholesale government corruption forces poor families to tap and siphon oil for individual use and/or sale, and where government workers, already compromised by protecting the rulers' Swiss-bank accounts, also puncture the black goo treasury for personal profit, and where gangs -- both unaffiliated and government-controlled -- also line up at the trough, Shell Oil is just one component in a corruption of staggering complexity.

Despite some feints at objectivity by way of lumping the Nigerian government in with the evil oil conglomerate, the thrust of the essay follows the usual simplification I hear almost every day amongst friends, strangers, and on-line pundits: corporations are the cause of all the world's problems. People want a convenient bogeyman; life is easier that way. We can take a little pill (albeit a bitter one) and go back to sleep.

The fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico happened because of cheap, insensitive safety shortcuts on the oil tanker. I'd also love to see British Petroleum fined, flogged, and festooned with invective. But even in this international media excoriation, there's plenty of blame to go around.

Richard Sanger's CALLING HOME

2010-06-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

Richard Sanger's second collection is more assured than Shadow Cabinet, the voice frequently declarative and reveling in its own irony or waywardness. The shaping and unfolding of the various narratives repeats the historical-personal juxtaposition and transposition of his opening volume, but Calling Home is scored with greater depth in a number of fine poems which (I'd wager) become impatient with using social anecdotes as personal parallel, instead creating a closer identification between character(s), speaker, and reader: "Fashion Notes From Paris", "Dispatch", "High Park". The backside contains a few negligible reminiscences, much slighter set pieces that were perhaps inserted as a filling coda or as a tentative desire to unmask multiple personae.

Richard Sanger's SHADOW CABINET

2010-05-31T21:23:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed Richard Sanger's first collection of poems, Shadow Cabinet, for several reasons. Many one- or two-pagers concentrate on people -- their feelings, thoughts, reactions -- without using them as background props to (said in a hushed, reverent tone) nature, and, indeed, without feeling the need to bring in environmental imagery at all. (There's one remarkable exception, and for an intelligent purpose, but I'll let readers not familiar with the book discover the surprise themselves.) This is a refreshing departure in a contemporary po-world where nature has barged its way into the cathedral again (minus the Romantic counterbalance and metaphorical shading of human complexity) and the priest(ess) is paid a resurgent respect or, at the very least, allowed a benign acceptance. I also enjoyed Sanger's affecting trick of juxtaposing personal experience with historical snapshots in humorous structuring, as in "Travels With My Aunt". And, last but not least, I enjoyed how Sanger was able to bring that historical detail into the readerly living room with fresh diction and lively characterization. There's plenty of room for mixed sympathy; the figures speak, or are spoken for, but the reader is left to form his or her own conclusions.

James Langer's GUN DOGS

2010-05-25T14:11:00.000-07:00

Gun Dogs is Maritimer James Langer's first collection of poems. More seasoned than many millwright authors of seven productions, the volume (not in a malnourished sense) is slim and tight. "Bushcraft" is a dangerous journey with a surprising conclusion; "Home Suite" is a richly observed meditation on mutability and solidity, then and now, and avoids mawkish sentiment, no easy task on this overcrowded thematic path. Pleasant, tumbling sounds proliferate: from "Treble Hook", "A brazen fowl sets the third claw of its call/in the sun's jaws and hoists dawn/up over the gunwale." So far, so good. But after closely reading and rereading half the book, a nagging question formulated itself against the chiming morphemes. Where's the voice? I don't mean an original voice, a distinctive one, but just a recognizable vocal stamp. Without that -- and I couldn't hear it -- all the work, however technically efficient or musically adroit, couldn't make up for an idiosyncratic style, an off-the-rails slant, a vision (voice and vision are intimately connected) which goes beyond tied-off summation of quotidian observation, however truthfully it's rendered. Admittedly, questions of voice in poetry become highly subjective, often matters of taste and historical or emotional association. But no matter the subject or narrative heat, the tone in Gun Dogs is uniformly subdued, even where surface dynamics are altered. It's been stated by many veteran poets that a personal voice -- powerful yet flexible -- is the most difficult hurdle to clear. The late centenarian Stanley Kunitz said that crafts(wo)men were a dime a dozen. That's unfairly extreme, but it reminds me of afficionados, both lyric and post-postmodern, who go to an allied extreme in seeing every praised effect as indicative of a specific ideology or school. There are many very good, lasting poets who lack the je ne sais quoi of individual thrill and felicity. The more poetry I read, the more I see it in a vertical pulse, rather than in an associative nod.

I thoroughly enjoyed Gun Dogs, and highly recommend it. I just don't know if I'll be as happy to pick it up for a fifth reading two years hence.

Contest Results

2010-05-17T20:49:00.000-07:00

I would have liked to have sent out the prize of a purchase, but the only entry was from a Chinese character spammer, and I feel no compunction in spoiling that attempt. I warned you about that enviro-diet book review, but, on second and third thought, feel in tune with switching course and laying down a whack of mini-reviews I've had in the hopper the past two months. But first ....

Here're the answers, for anyone curious about matches (from the last post):

a) 19. From "Another visit to the Oracle"

b) 24. From "Cain"

c) 6. From "The Faerie Queene"

d) 15. From one of his poems, ha!

e) 22. From "Dead lakes"

f) 2. From The Hobbit

g) 21. From King John

h) 14. From Playboy Of The Western World

i) 11. From A Handful Of Dust

j) 23. From The Tree Of Yoga

k) 12. From Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

l) 3. From "Grey Eyes"

m) 17. From "[37]"

n) 13. From "Untitled" from The Energy Of Slaves

0) 5. From "XIII" from Trilce

p) 4. From "Spring"

q) 18. From "Nevertheless"

r) 25. From "Skunk Hour"

s) 8. From "45" from "Caelica"

t) 16. From G.

u) 7. From "Spring" (Not an alternate version of Moore's poem.)

v) 1. From "Nocturne"

w) 10. From "July Man"

x) 26. From "Down, Wanton, Down!"

y) 20. From "Lady Lazarus"

z) 9. From "Reality"

Monday Mailbag #15

2010-05-10T15:43:00.000-07:00

Dear Tribal Hack:

How come you never give out prizes on your blog? No one cares about opinions, we just want the comp.

-- Okra Winfree

Dear Okra:

True. True. The first person to match all 26 authors with the correct quotes (number to letter is easiest to transmit as an answer) wins a sale of one of his or her books, to me, which I'd (eventually) blog-review (oh joy!). Contest closes next Monday at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time. If no one hits all 26 matches correctly, purchase-prize goes to the highest total. Anyone can enter. If the winner hasn't written a book, I'll post (and link, if applicable) to a poem of his or her choice, written by either that person or any other. No skill-testing questions necessary regarding what components make up kryptonite or who (other than Jimmy Hoffa) got swallowed up in the Bermuda Triangle. Multiple entries not allowed. Nor are hints entertained. Submit responses either in the comments section, or by back-channel mail. Winners not eligible for any additional prizes, e.g. subsidies, grants, job blurbs, book blurbs, character assessment, pre-burial beatification, or testimonials of any kind. No additonal prizes or perks to be granted. Bribing encouraged, though the site manager reserves the right to snigger uncontrollably at the presumption. In the event that the correct answer is submitted through private correspondence, and a later correct answer shows up on my unmoderated blog comment stream, the Ashton Kutcher (sp?) type readership numbers agree to accept my honesty in the early, unrevealed-by-verified-time revelation. This contest is open to all and sundry, and in no way discriminates between poetic schools, rivalries, utopian halls, seminar groups, or personality quirks and deficits.

a) Margaret Atwood

b) Irving Layton

c) Edmund Spenser

d) Raymond Souster

e) Miriam Waddington

f) J R R Tolkien

g) William Skakespeare

h) J M Synge

i) Evelyn Waugh

j) B K S Iyengar

k) Tennessee Williams

l) Sara Teasdale

m) Catullus

n) Leonard Cohen

0) Cesar Vallejo

p) Edna St Vincent Millay

q) Marianne Moore

r) Robert Lowell

s) Fulke Greville

t) John Berger

u) Gerardo Diego

v) Georg Trakl

w) Margaret Avison

x) Robert Graves

y) Sylvia Plath

z) Dorothy Livesay

---------------------

1) "The murderer drinks his wine wide-eyed"

2) "Well, are you alive or are you dead?"

3) "It was April when you came/the first time to me"

4) "To what purpose, April, do you return again?"

5) "Rednuhtetum!"

6) "Then woe, and woe, and everlasting woe"

7) "My life is a lemon/but my song is not yellow"

8) "Absence, the noble truce/Of Cupid's war,"

9) "Encased in the hard, bright shell of my dream"

10) "Old, rain-wrinkled, time-soiled, city-wise, morning man"

11) "Tony's as happy as a sandboy, isn't he?"

12) "Both of us married into society, Big Daddy"

13) "I walk through the old yellow sunlight"

14) "You'd do it handy, maybe, if I'd gold to steal"

15) " 'Mac went for a shit"

16) "You use the future to console yourself for the youth you never had"

17) "Your numbers, a hundred or so,/leave me undaunted"

18) "As carrots form mandrakes"

19) "Of course there's hope"

20) "Ash, ash -- /You poke and stir"

21) "Put a little water in a spoon"

22) "The dead lakes"

23) "If a person goes into a swoon, is that samadhi?"

24) "Taking the air rifle from my son's hand,"

25) "Thirsting for/the hierarchic privacy"

26) "Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame"

----------------------------------------------------

edit: Silly me. Of course, in the interest of transparency, all answers must be submitted through the comments stream. In the event of a tie, first response wins. In the event that no answers are submitted, I'll instead buy and review a copy of "The Ectoplasm Diet For The Post-Green Revolution" by Rance & Sid Pistil.

Monday Mailbag #14

2010-05-03T13:33:00.000-07:00

Dear Tribal Hack:

Looking at all the poems I've composed over the last three years, I see a loose-jointed lawn dart tournament theme running through it, needing an injection of corticosteroids to reduce the hyperbolic swelling of intense competitiveness and bizarre pageantry. I'm thinking of sending most of them out to beleaguered editors, but is there a need for yet another poem about the spiritual benefits of fresh air and the beauty of the arcing steel arrow?

-- Mark Dotty

Dear Mark:

There are many ways you can present this to your editors without them gently placing your efforts in the circular file. Think of the obvious arrow metaphor. (Do you play in a league? And is it co-ed?) These days, there seem to be a renewed interest in poems which show a technical expertise in the subject they're relating, similar to what novelists have often concerned themselves with. Are you up on the particulars of lawn dart composition, the history of lawn dart champions and championship matches, the scandals and back room shenanigans? But most of all, can you write a poignant line such as the following, contained in the immortal lawn dart poem by Randy Shakespeare?: "the quiver plunge breasts the sparse dew". Good luck!

Monday Mailbag #13

2010-04-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the late mailbag entry. Canada Post employees went on a one day wildcat strike over the enforced introduction of non-hallucinatory envelope glue, but it's been rescinded, and resolved with extra days off for transient aphasia.

Dear Tribal Hack:

Al Purdy has often been called Canada's most popular, even most revered, poet. I notice you've said nothing about him in print, to date. Thoughts on the late idol?

-- Joy Carling

Dear Joy:

I quite like some of Purdy's work in 1965's Cariboo Horses. The shagginess is clipped at least a little, and it lent more force to the rhythm (often jarring, rarely musical) of his lines. But even in North Of Summer, only two years later, the offhanded tag-ons begin to accumulate, and he begins to lose me. Later Purdy I find abysmal.

But here's one of the funniest CanPo one-pagers I've read, Purdy's tribute to Ralph Gustafson during a poetic ambassadorial trip with the latter to the former Soviet Union. It's from his The Stone Bird, published in 1981:

INSIDE GUS

Ralph. His poems opposite. To him.
At least the form. Gnomic?
Simple beliefs? Tough beliefs
-- tough to retain and nurture.
"Believe in nothing and poems." Not true.
"A gentle man," says Mark Pinchevsky.
Belief is gentle too. Sentimental?
Oh sometimes. If flowers and music are.
If love is. Love also is comic.
Is bone and blood. Is falling feather.
Useless? Well, subjective. Unstatistic.
Flowers and music. Chronicler of tag ends.
Notary of the unnoticed. Registrar of colour.
Wisdom? What's that? Who knows one?
Monk-scribble on sheep stomachs? Faith in blue
sky, goodness, cliches like banners:
our battered coffeepot brewing tea
in Sovietskaya Hotel, in Samarcand, Riga:
Betty in faded dressing gown fetching it:
he glances, absent, "Oh -- thank you."

Monday Mailbag #12

2010-04-19T15:29:00.000-07:00

Dear Tribal Hack:

I'm tamping the well-worn path of personal spiritual epiphany in a poem I'm currently composing. I'm trying to compare a monarch butterfly's wings with hope and lightness, but I'm afraid of the cliches and bathos in my attempts so far. Any ideas?

-- Ida B. Free

Dear Ida:

Didn't you write in a few months back requesting info on monster truck rally poem anthologies? In any event, what you need is, indeed, to deflect attention away from that most boring of poetic themes: the state of the speaker's (read: poet's) spiritual progression. Unless you're writing scintillating lines. Then it doesn't matter, and almost anything goes. But from the little you've given me here, I'd say to go for the jug, and then the jugular. Violence could be the way forward. The colonial madness of the Monarchy; Micrococcus brewing for decades to release the black death; cardenolides killing mice and grackles who think a thorax a non-threat; the long migration to San Luis Obispo where priests paste patterns of dusted gold over vestments. Whatever wayward direction your effort takes, at least kill the urge to transform the butterfly into an intercessor between you (if first-person speaker) and God. And remember the butterfly's first, and real, transformation. What? You thought you weren't enlightened?

Monday Mailbag #11

2010-04-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

Dear Tribal Hack:

In certain circles of lit crit, as well as in informal dialogues, I've lately noticed a disparagement of the comma, its overgenerous deployment, "roadblock to natural flow", and stylish pretension. Call me behind the times, but what brought this on? Seems petty. And ill-informed.

-- Dan DePause

Dear Dan:

I've also noted this. It's simply another avenue into snapped-shut claptrap, and away from the natural idiosyncrasies of unfolding thought. Thought itself is on trial. Or perhaps it's an insincere gambit, an academic make-work project, if you will. Intricate -- even serviceable -- construction is condemned as a holdover from patriarchal assumption, the sudden shifts in tone, subject, and dynamics a deflecting ploy, a smoke-and-mirrors display in order to dust alert corneal jiggles with chalkstick residue, the hypotactic vertigo an honour roll of borrowed authority, ideas as clauses, congestion as complexity, rhetorical overreach as vatic hammerlock, as tropes are ransacked for any quarklike hint of concrete plausibility, plain statement scuppered in a brew of appendages and spirochetes tapering into dendrites blowing free off a cliff recalling Wile E. Coyote that frozen moment mid-air when the eyes bulge and you realize the hens have all come home to roost, or to mangle comparables (else what's a meta-survey for?), the horses have all left the barn, those plain statements gaining unearned cachet through the overuse, misuse, abuse of that obtuse backwards-C curvature no writer with spine would ever cripple his or her prose with, and whose cheap separation by that one (now) not-so-humble abasing waver entire streams of illogic are compressed like a narrow dike battlement wedge, parapet sandbag on a driving river, or serpentine rat maze in a weir where the purl is all and the pearl non-existent, non-existent, yes, but the suggestion being sacrosanct, a stamp and promise, a block and hackle, a this and that of imperious crossbalk blackening the pages like crows on a white bedsheet in a Smithrite whose eggshell blue paint peels under a sun fixed and boring into the bin's contents like a magnifying glass burning the promiscuously jumbled detritus from the three-story firetrap, the residents hidden in a curlicue of stuttering neglect.

Monday Mailbag #10

2010-04-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

Dear Tribal Hack:

How will this end? A while ago a new kid on the block elbowed its way on to the CanPo scene: the niche anthology. At first this didn't seem to be much of a problem, and it actually made sense in some cases when the broad scope of "work poetry" or "love poetry" created easy access for general readers who otherwise mayn't have noticed the individual efforts. But lately I've been befuddled and annoyed by the bodily devolution of this option. I've chanced upon bowling poem anthologies (no, not a selected from Tim), Dennis Rodman poem anthologies, beer making poem anthologies, and black light gardening poem anthologies. What's your take on this runaway train?

-- Peg Squared

Dear Peg:

You don't talk about the quality of any of these poems in the tomes you outline. Remember, any subject is on-limits, or unlimited, if you will. What I'd like to see are more of these micro-niches combining their obsessions. For instance, a poem about Dennis Rodman stumbling into someone's black light garden at two in the morning after an all night bender may achieve tragic proportions. It's all in the handling, of course, but I don't see why an intrepid editor couldn't already find a hundred-page assembly of that sort. And good stuff, too, pared down from thousands of likeminded poems. Of course, a journal can simply make a call for that narrow subject through a theme issue. Much more interesting than a theme issue on "war" or "dreams". After all, if you're going to make restrictions, make it a challenge.

Monday Mailbag #9

2010-03-29T15:31:00.000-07:00

Dear Tribal Hack:

We're in the midst of a hot debate in our university seminar course about which of T. S. Eliot's masterpieces was the better, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" or "The Rum Tum Tugger". Any thoughts?

-- Anal Isis

Dear Anal:

Tough call. This conjures up all the old arguments about the supposed inferiority of light verse vs more respected poetry. Ralph Gustafson stated that "some believe light verse is not serious, but they are mistaken". Slightness can be more apparent in "serious" verse than what is on display in Edward Lear and .... well, Eliot's "Prufrock".

Let us turn to the great modernist's light verse caper. "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" begins with the immortal lines, "Let us go then, you and I,/When the evening is spread out against the sky". It's a jaunty mood, no doubt, and the breezy tone dominates. There may not be much contrast and counterpoint, but amongst the bourgeois teacup-and-marmalade fest are profound existential conundrums. "Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?". The poem, even after many reads, may happily affirm the banker's (the one reading, that is) experience, but a few nagging questions as to breakfast choices and hairstyles are voiced. This is light verse non pareil.

Eliot's "The Rum Tum Tugger", on the other hand, is all sturm und drang. "If you offer him cream then he sniffs and sneers,/For he only likes what he finds for himself;/So you'll catch him in it right up to the ears,/If you put it away on the larder shelf." This is, of course, savage, an unalterable playing out of natural encoding. And "sniffs and sneers" , in a brilliant twinning, condemns human capriciousness and cruelty, as well. Yet for all its weight, this entry from Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats effects a light rhythm to balance its terrifying content.

It's a close call, but I'll give the nod to "The Rum Tum Tugger". I guess I'm still a sucker for great themes and timeless conclusions no matter how charming and clever are worthy poems such as "Prufrock".

Rachel Zolf's HUMAN RESOURCES

2010-03-25T21:59:00.000-07:00

Word Perfect 10364276 Machine 672 or no it's not how we function set down 42 once in a great while 998661294 sheer hosed 336 folding tents 5591 to search our engine 604 claustrophobia who knew 68 petals on a wet black hard drive 08 free your data base the lessons have arrived

Sharon Thesen's THE GOOD BACTERIA

2010-03-24T22:08:00.000-07:00

The Good Bacteria, Sharon Thesen's 2006 poetry compilation, visits the highs and lows of her previous efforts. There's an intimate engagement with the natural world and with friends and observed strangers. Images are used as a stimulus for quirky and startling (though sometimes annoying) personal wit only tangentially tied to the original sight. "Eclipse of the Sun", unlike much from Thesen's opus, is strong and supple start to finish, integrated in thought, trope, and construction. And I love these lines from "Oh, Hello Count, How Are You, Do Come In": "ants cart a corpse. The hourglass/of their home is a sand volume". Either this volume was rushed to print, though, or the author hasn't managed to discriminate enough to shave and shelve, because diaristic prose -- on trivial subjects, no less -- pop up like running commentary on a news feed. "The Day Lady Di Died" is only one such example. An uneven book, but an entertaining one, and occasionally memorable.

The Openness Of The New Academics

2010-03-23T22:54:00.000-07:00

"History and social science are used in a variety of ways to overcome prejudice. We should not be ethnocentric, a term drawn from anthropology, which tells us more about the meaning of openness. We should not think our way is better than others. The intention is not so much to teach the students about other times and places as to make them aware of the fact that their preferences are only that -- accidents of their time and place. Their beliefs do not entitle them as individuals, or collectively as a nation, to think that they are superior to anyone else. John Rawls is almost a parody of this tendency, writing hundreds of pages to persuade men, and proposing a scheme of government that would force them, not to despise anyone. In A Theory of Justice, he writes that the physicist or the poet should not look down on the man who spends his life counting blades of grass or performing any other frivolous or corrupt activity. Indeed, he should be esteemed, since esteem from others, as opposed to self-esteem, is a basic need of all men. So indiscriminateness is a moral imperative because its opposite is discrimination. This folly means that men are not permitted to seek for the natural human good and admire it when found, for each discovery is coeval with the discovery of the bad and contempt for it. Instinct and intellect must be suppressed by education. The natural soul is replaced with an artificial one."

....

"Thus there are two kinds of openness, the openness of indifference -- promoted with the twin purposes of humbling our intellectual pride and letting us be whatever we want to be, just as long as we don't want to be knowers -- and the openness that invites us to the quest for knowledge and certitude, for which history and the various cultures provide a brilliant array of examples for examination. The second kind of openness encourages the desire that animates and makes interesting every serious student -- "I want to know what is good for me, what will make me happy" -- while the former stunts that desire.

Openness, as currently conceived, is a way of making surrender to whatever is most powerful, or worship of vulgar success, look principled. It is historicism's ruse to remove all resistance to history, which in our day is public opinion, a day when public opinion already rules."

....

"The loss of the books has made them narrower and flatter. Narrower because they lack what is most necessary, a real basis for discontent with the present and awareness that there are alternatives to it. They are both more contented with what is and despairing of ever escaping from it. The longing for the beyond has been attenuated. The very models of admiration and contempt have vanished. Flatter, because without interpretation of things, without the poetry or the imagination's activity, their souls are like mirrors, not of nature, but of what is around. The refinement of the mind's eye that permits it to see the delicate distinctions among men, among their deeds and their motives, and constitutes real taste, is impossible without the assistance of literature in the grand style."

Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

Monday Mailbag #8

2010-03-22T19:26:00.000-07:00

Dear Tribal Hack:

I'm deep into the composition of my first novel. Unfortunately, I've bitten off more than I can digest, assimilate and emit. There's a long, intricate plot, multi-layered and from multiple points of view. I long ago introduced the hero as naive about an infelicity pertaining to the upholding of his spouse's honour, but since then, everyone has commented, ruthlessly, upon his whereabouts and secret links to the Scientology elite, his creative culinary carelessness, and his bank account with the burgeoning right-margin zeroes while dressing in tie-dyes and puka shells. What can I do?

-- Dawn D. Layed

Dear Dawn:

Beats me. Sounds more wayward and nonsensical than intricate and interesting. Why not turn it into an uproarious, goofy romp, a post-logical send-up of expectation. If a murder mystery, fink on the real killer in chapter one, or better yet, page one. If a schmaltzy romance, make the characters unappealing in the first two descriptive sentences. If a war narrative, make the countries antagonistic in the techno-theaters Canada and the Seychelles. If a political intrigue, remember, everything hinges on the celebration of Juan Bautista's birthday. If in doubt at any time, make it a meta-commentary through the perspective of a failed TSA candidate. Good luck!

Monday Mailbag #7

2010-03-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

Dear Tribal Hack:

Occasional poems seem to have fallen off a cliff in contemporary CanPo ever since the project book -- whether unified narrative thread or linked sequence -- became popular. Could you display one of your favourite occasional pieces?

-- Ivan Illitch

Dear Ivan:

You're right. And the reason occasional poems -- composition and estimation -- have been neglected has to do with the faulty conception that they're only occasionally warranted, or (worse) that they're slight (in effort and importance). This is snobbish (not to be confused with "elitism", which is an identifying badge of honour), and I herewith present an example, one of many such forays into the public art, by Rat Boone:

FOR FRANK BUMMERSMELT AND HIS NEW LAWN MOWER

In troubled times, Frank, when we're on our own,
when rats knock on the front door instead
of making furtive darts under the bed
to down dropped downers, dessicated dog bones,

it's good to know you're barbering the lawn
with a shiny red Deere, sitting like a Pope
on the plastic seat, singing in hope
that you'll knock over a startled rural fawn

then baptize its carcass with a wet wrench,
the soldered tool an envoy wand to announce
the end of Bambi idealism, that flounce-
fixture celluloid cartoon whose stench

of false innocence we smeared on on Sundays
on the go and whose image we discarded
when outdoor service reigned. We lorded
it over the dead and deathly. Frank, let us pray.

Monday Mailbag #6

2010-03-08T12:35:00.000-08:00

Dear Tribal Hack:

What are some of your favourite slush pile similes?

-- Asa Signifier

Dear Asa:

"His disappointment was palpable as a wet egg foo yung entree slipping off the fork half an inch from his pie hole and landing on the cold and curled linoleum."

"The light permeated the meadow like a cobalt rainbow arc populated by sliding cherubim emitting diaphanous clues."

"The light permeated the meadow like an abandoned bride in the lobby of a Motel 6 showing her Pepsodent ivories to the fat, sleepy night clerk."

Dear Tribal Hack:

I work in an incredibly boring subset of the boring financial sector and unfortunately have to travel to a week-long conference where my head will be filled with abstractions, both numerical and human. I'm looking for intellectual diversion. Can you recommend a book of light-hearted, even zany, poetry as a necessary corrective?

-- Ida B. Free

Dear Ida:

Always a Reckoning, and other Poems, by Jimmy Carter.

Robin Skelton's IN THIS POEM I AM: SELECTED POETRY

2010-03-04T18:18:00.000-08:00

Robin Skelton wrote more than one hundred books, including about thirty collections of poetry. Many people don't read that much in a lifetime. Many of those volumes were self-published as chapbooks or limited-edition releases, and other poems were distributed as broadsides, so much of his work must have been difficult to obtain and survey.

I found myself agreeing with many of Skelton's views in Memoirs Of A Literary Blockhead: the importance of lively poetry readings; anti-provincialism; imaginative administration ( oxymoron?). But I strongly disagree with his (and others') assertion that future critics and editors can, and should be able to, sort out the nuggets from the dirt. Even if that were possible (who has the time?), it's rather rude to expect someone or many someones to ingest a whale and spit back a few minnows (or in the case of a great poet, a freezer full of sockeye salmon). And of course, there are a lot of other thirty-plus-book authors on the go, so whale is frequently on the menu. So a tip of the hat to Harold Rhenisch for providing a remarkable postprandial buffet burp in editing from Skelton's bloated corpus.

I confess to previously dipping into the Vancouver Islander's verse in sporadic dabs, so it was fruitful to have a condensed collection spanning forty-one years. To note that Skelton is a poet of the interior (the soul, not the Chilcotin) is an understatement. He has depths to plumb when art meets experience: "We almost touch/but, swimmers pulled apart/by arbitrary tides,/are swept out on the night" (from "Night Poem, Vancouver Island"). Unfortunately, subtle movements of a soul are notoriously difficult to translate to a stranger via squiggly type. Many of the poems fade into the substratosphere when the inevitable abstract "someone", "solitude", "light", "time", "destiny", "death", "words", "thoughts", "world", "poems" or commonplace "stone", "tree", "sky", "cloud", "door" make some of their frequent visitations. And it's too bad. Because Skelton, when he wants to, can create, or recreate, a sharp and mesmerising tactile experience. Check out "Land Without Customs" and "A Ballad of Billy Barker". Still, and despite having influenced a run of West Coast poetry of aura over flora, fog over smog, I'd rather have those interior moods, however vague they may often be, than the pretentious, emotion-starved lines from those of the Vancouver academic set.

Robin Skelton's MEMOIRS OF A LITERARY BLOCKHEAD

2010-03-02T22:45:00.000-08:00

This memoir was published in 1988, nine years before Robin Skelton's death. It's always a pleasure to read a worthy personal retrospective when the author has the patience and lack of ego to delay a self-starring script long enough to have something to say over a wide life arc. And Memoirs Of A Literary Blockhead is fascinated with others as much as, or more than, the author. Skelton was a natural raconteur, his casual anecdotes reminiscent of a good-natured ear-bender at a pub who's just as concerned and successful at being interesting -- at garnering various reactions -- as he is in entertaining himself. His comic timing is superb, his British wit biting and dry. Meetings with Robert Graves and Ezra Pound punctuate the memories, but there are also delightful excursions into the lunacy of poetry readings where assorted "puddings" (Skelton's favourite word for academic dullards or prole dilletantes) congregate, full portraits of those close to him (with warts but also love), and just enough gossip to reveal surprising peculiarities of well-regarded artists while not so much as to turn those stories into cheap exposition. Skelton wore many hats -- art critic, poetry reviewer, poet, translator, teacher, editor, publisher, scholar -- but he wanted to be remembered primarily for his poetry. More on that in my next post.

Monday Mailbag #5

2010-03-01T20:55:00.000-08:00

Dear Tribal Hack:

The Olympic Games have been a bloated production for decades. Shouldn't there be alternative, small-scale fun games with peculiar-to-the-region contests hosted at the same time? Surely there'd be interest in organizing and attending them. And for a tie-in to poetry, why not a puncturing award-bestower for quirky or non-promoted poems/books?

-- Shirley Puzzled

Dear Shirley:

Great ideas! Actually, the former just completed its inaugural tungsten-clusters-in-a-brooch festooned medal ceremonies. Not many knew of the full slate of events since NBC didn't score us any multiple-sawbucks for advertising. But competitors were fierce, and this is my roundabout way to apologize for the late mailbag posting -- I just returned from Vancouver where I collected my top-porch tungsten for indoors elbow-bending. This will be a staple of the summer and winter Soul Limbics, the latter season a last-minute add-on with ice cubes complicating the athletic machinations.

As for a poetry parallel, I'll be organizing an award frenzy once a year, in October, as soon as sponsorship from Staples, Guinness, and Tylenol come through. Criteria for making it onto the short list will include incorporating, seamlessly, the words "marsupial" and "flaming" into the deathless text. More info at a later date.

Katia Grubisic's WHAT IF RED RAN OUT

2010-02-24T22:28:00.000-08:00

Katia Grubisic's initial collection, What if red ran out, reminds me of the work of Karen Solie, Ken Babstock (image, allusion, overview), and several other contemporary Canadian poets. Heady comparisons, but it can work against one, as well. The Banff Centre -- amongst other people and organizations -- is thanked in the postscript, and a derivative feel, if not an outright workshop-fretted editing process, prevails. It's to Grubisic's credit that invention frequently overcomes the well-worn path, if we can posit an anxiety of influence towards writers only a decade into their art: "[T]his one hewed out a burr,/between a reed and a bittern,/the rasping of wheat and the wear/of a rubber belt in the heart/of a machine" ("Raven on the Watertower") is a finely worked rhythm. But invention without control is like a dream -- sometimes vivid, but also disconnected, and in danger of evaporating. And even the inventive images can be blinded by preciosity, as in this from the closing "To take away, or be slowly taken": "I revert/to that night, closer to its ancient glittering eye, when I tried/to resuscitate the dark's ancestral smell." This is synesthesia on performance-dulling drugs. As one honouring concrete detail, Grubisic shines. In this vein, check out "Strawberry Jam" and "Prelude to Jumping in the River". The best poem in the book is "Paradise, Dam, North Shore", where action is marvelously tied to thought in a surprisingly deft late metaphor.

Monday Mailbag #4

2010-02-22T14:17:00.000-08:00

Dear Tribal Hack:

I hear poets constantly praised for nuance of meaning. But is it just a covering virtue for not knowing what the behaysooz they're talking about?

-- Frieda Illusion

Dear Frieda:

Frieda, the audacity! Don't you know that those deeper meanings, anti-meanings, no-meanings, multiple meanings, relative meanings, purposely confused and confusing meanings are only opened up when you've tiptoed through the minefield of French theory? Failing that, every poet has his or her own mythological geometry. There's more to the world than is contained in your philosophy, etc .... Except when it's the poet's.

Dear Tribal Hack:

I'm an established Canadian poet who's been reading on the circuit for decades. Lately I've noted a disturbing trend taking root from Victoria to St. John's, so it's not just a local fad. Hecklers are more frequent, but rather than direct engagement, the agitator will cough loudly and then hold up impeccably crafted calligraphy of popular retro bumper sticker and button fare: "Vote For Nixon!"; "Arms Are For Hugging"; "Free Willy". What's their real message? And what can I do about it?

-- Frank Lee Miffed

Dear Frank Lee:

Who cares about the intent? Don't let them mess with your head. Just like rock stars responding to audience suggestions, treat them like sincere requests spontaneously answered. Before your next gig, construct a few hundred poems, each bearing the title of the most popular slogans you've encountered. Honour the attitudes behind the several words. Should be fun. Here's one example to give you a feel for it.

MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR

Love, the clear and splendrous thing,
or so it goes, a wedding ring
or musical bed the seal
to the cynic's "let's make a deal".

But love is a deal, too, my friend,
more complex than a battlefield end.
In fact, that field can fester
with sly, self-conscious gestures.

Better to leave love to the brave,
those who rout short circuits, and rave
about your ideals to the pews
populated by new age crews.

Don Coles' LITTLE BIRD

2010-02-21T22:35:00.000-08:00

First off, a big thank you to Zach Wells for recommending this book to me. Perhaps he remembered that I'd earlier mentioned how much I appreciated Tony Harrison's poems about the Brit's father. Like Harrison's bravely searching poems, Coles' 1991 letter to his dead father treats their estranging differences with honesty, anguished memory, shifting mood, and persistent love. The dream metaphor of the titular image is haunting and troubling, its "ash-pale/feathers and ashen, downy breast/picking its way stiffly". The tone in Little Bird is intimate yet universal, and the constant, sad plea for communication is moving not only as addressed to his imagined father, but also to himself and to the reader(s). A few more amazing lines: "father --//a curious thing. Since/you died, all/the faces you ever/wore for me//have changed."; "So watching your mouth/move this way//is odd, guessing how/its trying to say/its lost poems."

Role Models

2010-02-20T21:16:00.000-08:00

More sports. Tiger Woods, yesterday, apologized in a staged, scripted thirteen minute video delivery in a broadcast which probably pulled as many viewers as the Fab Four in their first Ed Sullivan appearance. It was boring, and maybe Woods was sincerely contrite, but I found myself, during its replay, muttering, "why should anyone believe you?", to several points he addressed, since he's obviously been a practiced, successful, relentless liar to his wife and kids for years.

There are many intriguing angles to the Woods' soap opera, but I'm interested here in something Woods said, because most everyone seems to believe -- with Woods -- in the premise of the issue: that not only is it OK, even cool and right, that sports stars should be role models for children, but that the notion of role models is, itself, worthy, even necessary.

I don't get it. This seems one of those deeply personal beliefs based on what each has learned, felt, experienced in those wonderfully chancy days when our minds more resembled the simplistic developmental philosophy of Rousseau than that of conformist Oedipal Lacanians. For purposes of time and economical effort, one sports anecdote will suffice, though I could easily produce many more. I remember attending a hockey game at the old Vancouver Forum (PNE grounds) where the Canucks played in the now defunct Western Hockey League. I was around nine, with my older brother, and after viewing the testy contest (several fights), we ventured down to the first row where the Canucks were leaving the bench to the tunnel to the dressing room. Some middle-aged guy yelled to Canucks' journeyman Hank Cahan something like, "Hey, Cahan, ya chicken shit, why don't ya ever stick up for yer teammates?" Cahan, looking up: "come down to ice level and say that, you fuckin' yellow cunt!". Now, as a boy already in love with manipulating words on paper, I admired Cahan's vigour, cadence, ironical swiftness, and concision. Poetry, not didacticism.

Woods could have learned a valuable lesson, from Cahan or someone similar, in speaking from the heart and related viscera were he still in his formative years. Instead, Woods grinds out the cliches, references his fall from Buddhism (??), doesn't talk with his carefully selected audience, and basically reveals nothing. Behaviour to emulate?

In happier circumstances, my admiration was reserved for those absorbed in the moment who demonstrated rather than pontificated, who were joyful, unassuming, exploratory. I could rarely apply those latter adjectives to the big'uns. And frequently the ethical authority of adults, which supposedly made up for the dour demeanor, collapsed. Hypocrisy has been a particular pet peeve of mine since I was a child. Which generation should be filled with lively role models to which?

A long time ago I read an account of a man who recalled a conversation with a Judaic scholar who explained that Moses' "thou shalt nots" were mistranslated and misunderstood. "Thou would not .... if" is more accurate, meaning we don't abstain from murder, infidelity, thieving, etc., because of God's command, but because it is in our own nature not to do those things. We don't need to be protected from our dark side, the nonsense of "original sin", we just have to trust our own natural ethics. People are or do good, and an extrinsic code is credited. But the code is just a setting down after the fact of who we are in our day-to-day lives before any morals are agonizing over and wrestled with.

Kids, adolescents, even adults, don't need role models, they need heroes. Heroes are flawed, that is to say, human. But they have many qualities missing in the plodding, virtuous crew. Even an athletic machine crushing dimpled white balls could be one. Aside from his family, Woods doesn't owe anyone an apology. Except for being insufferable.

Shane Koyczan's Olympic Feat

2010-02-16T12:00:00.000-08:00

After yesterday surfing the fascinating links to and from Shane Koyczan's "We Are More" slam verselet, I began to think of two dominant meanings of the word "consumer". The first meaning is what we immediately and intimately acknowledge, that of material purchase and use. But goods are attractive and available depending on the consumer's own resources. Desire is often powerfully modified, lessened, even eliminated (though, also, certainly not in many cases) when the means to acquire the goodies -- and those goodies themselves -- are nestled amongst the higher branches.

The second meaning of this contemporaneously important word is more powerful, more subtle, and more devious. It acts as a stimulus for the first meaning, as well as being the prime impetus for many wars and religious straitjacketing. But "We Are More" is after different medals.

When Old Man Moses, or God, if you will, exhorted H/his flock to "go forth and multiply", the practical necessity was obvious for the continuation of the species. In undeveloped and developing countries today, practical reasons are also in play: mom and pop need a good crop of young'uns to pick up the slack on the farm when they become feeble, health care is rudimentary, there are scary infant and childhood mortality rates, and there are no social security or retirement benefits. But we're now in catastrophic overshoot. The first and most pressing reason not only doesn't apply, and hasn't for over a century, but the reverse is the case. The multimillionplus consumers who still buy the "go forth and multiply" mountaintop poem are doing so out of a misguided, outmoded, and ultimately dangerous collective belief in the everlasting, unchanging sanctity of scriptural authority. Just as the pen is mightier than the sword, so, too, is "hope" more powerful than salmon or a beet.

Which brings us to Shane Koyczan's pre-approved Olympic moment with (ironically) clustered rain clouds as backdrop, beseeching .... three? four? .... billions of variously receptive earthlings. I found it fascinating that the effort downplayed the real and trumpetted the schmaltzy Sunday school aspiration. The upwardly-mobile ad flack lays the lines down like pre-cooled fudge in a child's hand: we're not just about fishing off the Atlantic and playing shinny on the frozen backyard pond, we're more, "an idea in the process/of being realized". Koyczan then goes on to sugar the product until the nauseous closing line, "we made it be". Made what be? Has Canada not only solved all its responsibilites and problems, but done so in perpetuity? But when the chintzy rhetoric mill is rolling, who cares about elementary reflection and thought?

And this is where the "patriotic" attack the negative nellies. "It's supposed to be kitsch, to be a feel-good parallel to the Olympic can-do spirit". Well, the answer to that, of course, is which Olympics are we talking about? Amateur athletes (not the men's hockey players -- I enjoy pro hockey, but NHL players have as much connection with the founding Greek spirit of the games as an MP3 player has to Uranus) are to be applauded for their perseverance and work under often spartan support. Congrats to the non-doped winners. But what has this got to do with Canada's greatness? Pakistan and Ethiopia are also competing in Vancouver, but in those two countries (among others) that representation consists of one (1) participant. Is one person Pakistan or Ethiopia? Or is Koyczan saying that the mere fact Canada "won" the Olympic bid in itself meretorious? And the Olympic games are a competition. How are we better than specific other countries, and in what specific ways? I find a curious lack of nuance and development of those ideas. (A real tribute to Canada would have drawn out those realities.)

Canada got the nod because it made financial sense to the pork trough IOC and the sponsors the IOC had to sell it to. Period. Oh, and because Canada, being Canada, didn't piss off the Grand Dukes of the committee. They smiled, waited, and cheered the hosting prize. It's ironic, fortuitous for Chicagoans that Obama's entitlement statement after a last-minute flight to Europe in an attempt to score the (second-next?) summer games were turned down by an equally Royal IOC offended that this constant grandstander had the audacity of hope that he could charm the scammers. I say "fortuitous", of course, because the Olympics have become more expensive to produce everywhere, as the first meaning of "consumerism" has exploded ever since it was concocted immediately after WWII in the U.S., with -- twin consumer blocks of use and idea -- credit card initiation and Madison Avenue proselytizing. A one billion dollar overrun on the Olympic village and another almost one billion on security are only the hot numbers, the obvious scandal amongst a multi-pronged systemic sploogefest.

To make the parallel more direct, naked, Obama's successful "hope" campaign byte is the same as Koyczan's "dreams" and "ambitions" idea (and whatever other buzzwords the abstract revivalist sermon hit on). "Go forth and multiply" was a necessity. You could even be a tad grandiose (to steal a page -- oops! is Collins listening? -- from Koyczan's book) and say that Moses operated on a keenly felt spiritual imperative. But what Obama and Koyczan, no less than presidential speechwriters and Coca-Cola copywriters (the slam versifier is of course both initiator and vocalist), have in common is a formula for successful ideational consumerism. One need only to click on the comment-box replies to the Koyczan story in the official Olympic sponsor The Globe and Mail to see the overwhelming support for "We Are More", in many cases 40 for, 2 against. Even if one allows for a somewhat different ratio, taking into account statistical problems of sample size, motivation of respondents, and skewed bias of the readers, the fact remains that P. T. Barnum was a smart man. And Koyczan is well aware of that fact. Oh, Canada.