One nice side effect of practicing law is finding obscure and archaic words nestled in the proverbial fine print. While browsing through the Notaries Public Act to make sure I'm doing it right, I ran across this clause:

A notary public may, during pleasure,
...
(e) demand, receive, and have all the rights, profits and emoluments rightfully appertaining and belonging to the calling of notary public.

Emolument. Apparently it comes from the Latin emolere, which is to produce by grinding, and it means compensation for employment.

Employment is a grind, but notarizing documents is one of the least grinding ways I've had of earning my emoluments.

This is a fascinating image.

What is the quality that makes writing poetry? I think it comes from a complete lack of premeditation. Hovering on the edge of the next word and being surprised/amused/uncertain when the next word appears. But still, it's not that easy. It takes a lot of concentration. Maybe the effort of not premeditating? Of stifling expectation?

In any case, I can remember the feeling of writing poetry: the intense effort, the excitement, knowing physically this is poetry.

But I can't seem to do it anymore. I'm thinking while I'm writing. And it's not poetry, it's just stale.

Did learning law do this to me? I'm not convinced it didn't.

Soldiered through an Aldous Huxley novel this weekend; it's set in 1922 and apparently very satirical, although the finer points of the satire were likely lost on me. Had a vague sense as I read that life or at least literature is passing me by. Novel-reading is such a habitual, vaguely wholesome way to spend time. The lingering sense that it's good and valuable to read, read anything. Not that I didn't enjoy it, Huxley can be hilarious, it just seems odd to pluck a novel so clearly directed at its contemporary moment and read it with so little context, so aimlessly. It would be like reading Generation X in 2076 and wondering what on earth Douglas Coupland is ranting about (or like another less-than-17-years-old example...).

Before heading to the airport, I grabbed a few books, including Lisa Robertson’s Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture (the pleasingly compact clear cut press edition). It wasn’t until halfway through my flight to Vancouver that I realized that the book is largely about Vancouver. Strange synergy. Then I noticed a boarding pass tucked near the back of the book, documenting another flight from Calgary to Vancouver, in 2005. It occurs to me that I’ve been reading this book, in transit, for years. There are passages I must have read many times, I don’t remember particulars, but the book has become luxuriously familiar, a constant, I can dip into it at any point, it continues. On this reading,

“Thickets, a cave, a hut of boughs…”

called up Lyn Hejinian’s “A pause, a rose, something on paper.” But only briefly. It carries on:

“Thickets, a cave, a hut of boughs are the components of landscape that conventionally provide primordial coverage. Structurally the shack is a thickening, a concentration, an opacity in the lucid landscape.”

Elucidation of surfaces, space, enclosures: shacks, and scaffolding:

“When an immobile building, inevitably bored of its environment, wants a new site, a scaffolding can be constructed around it. Scaffolding substitutes for a site. By compression or condensation it transforms an atmosphere to a condition of access which is also a screen. The idea is easily inflated towards the surreal or the homeopathic, but it is based on observation. When at night we hear the scaffolding rustle, then look up to watch it sway, we feel voyeuristic longing. In darkness the scaffolding is foliage. Sometimes swinging on special leafy scaffolds we feel compelled to loose our little slipper.”

– Lisa Robertson, Occasional Works and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture

We have floundered and basted. Our portions have multiplied. We are sated but repenting. We are lost to our innermost rhythm. Our senses are surfeit. Our form is buffeted.

A light pulse has led us sparing. We have not sought stability. Our uncertainty has charmed us. We are as a gluttonous lover. And yet we have been wrenched. We have contorted. We atone.

Flimsy surrenderings bait us. Stubborn thickets spring to our mercy. Sabotage entices our lean baselessness. We hover fearing.

Our signal is a study in calm. Loop upon loop has cocooned. We have endeared ourselves to our other selves. Our clamour subsides. We are burgeoning.

"The Calgary Arts Development authority could be eliminated as well. Allow individuals to fund that through their charitable donations," he said.

So Calgarians can choose between property tax hikes of 23% or whatever ridiculous number they're suggesting, or the sudden complete elimination of municipal support for the arts.

Nice.

Living in this city has been bothering me lately. It's so frustrating to live in the strongest economy in the country (assuming that's still true) with grotesquely overvalued real estate affecting everyone's access to accommodation, rented or owned, to drive on crumbling streets, to negotiate an overlooked and clearly inadequate transit system, to suffer extremely limited access to medical attention because no doctors are taking new patients, to watch gang activity flourish for lack of funding for the police, and to not even have an independent bookstore in the downtown core to frequent, not to mention a decent coffeeshop open later than ten in the evening. I feel as though we sacrifice so much here to the culture of oil and gas -- all this city's resources are directed towards making money from oil. Which is sad, but not likely to change. What I don't understand is why can't all that oil money at the very least alleviate some of the problems that could handle some money being thrown at them? Why can't they hire more police? Attract more doctors? Fix the goddamn roads? Buy a few more buses? Shouldn't all that revenue be able to shield us from massive cuts to the already underfunded arts authority, or from further inflation of our overinflated property values? Why is this city so hopelessly self-destructive?

Something defensible stands in the way. Clearly standing in the way. Clattering the way. It’s standard. It’s manifested in doubles. It tremors with solidity. With its sense of its solidity. It’s knowing itself to be right. It’s beyond questioning. It’s standing in the way. It’s a block. It’s a limit of acknowledgment. It’s the limits of lines. Dark heavy lines. Because they don’t bleed. Something is logical and true. It’s tracing its own trajectory. It knows how it got there. It could get back. It could move forward. It sees paths. It sees its own way. Something obvious is blocking the way. It’s too obvious. It’s surface and leap. It covers and smoothes. It doesn’t feel any contradictions. It doesn’t need to justify. Something implausible is coating the way. It varnishes everything. It’s easy to overlook. It’s impossible to see. It’s actually nothing out of the ordinary. It’s easy enough to choke on. It’s a fine dust. It shouldn’t even bother you. It’s not really in the way. Something overbearing obscuring the way. How do you know that’s the way? There’s no way of knowing the way. It’s taking the way. It’s not necessarily even that way. It could be any way. Do you even know there is a way? Something is taking the way.

Hey Alberta artists, why not fill out the Alberta Foundation for the Arts survey?

What I realized at yoga today: a huge part of the appeal of smoking is taking deep, slow breaths, holding until it almost hurts, then exhaling smoothly right to the bottom of your lungs. The nicotine is nice but not necessarily the whole point. Or am I remembering smoking wrong?

Moderate goals:
I would like to 1) read in Montreal 2) do a poetry workshop at Sage Hill 3) and maybe the Banff Centre 4) read in Vancouver again to an awesome audience like the incredibly awesome audience at the KSW last spring 5) read in Portland again because they were pretty awesome too 6) read in Ottawa 7) turn my current writing project into something complete and significant 8) make more chapbooks 9) write that book review I said I would write 10) go to more than one reading a month.

Fascinated lately with the idiocy and insensitivity of certain newspaper headlines. On cbc.ca the other day:

"Suncor to reign in oil sands' plans"

And in either the Sun or the Metro on Monday after somebody set several fires in Calgary over the weekend, causing a lot of damage and exhibiting a reckless disregard for the safety of others:

"Arsonist lights up weekend"

Looking for something to read? Read Taken by Daphne Marlatt. I just finished it and started Ana Historic, also by Daphne Marlatt. I read them both several years ago and was left with a lingering impression of Damn!She does prose well. And she really does:

And so there was the constraint of finishing tea, stiffly, passing the last of the Jaffa biscuits, wiping her mouth on the serviette before getting up to help Mother with the plates, the washing up she did herself now, and all the time wanting to rush out into the street, howling at the unfairness of it all. War. And what of those women who'd managed to get to Signapore and decided to stay there, stick it out to the end with their husbands? That kind of courage. What was Peggy doing now? Still meeting for coffee at Robinson's, displaying her baby over petit fours? Putting a brave face on it, playing mahjong with other wives holed up in The Raffles? And what if the hotel itself took a direct hit? Could she stand it? The game of keeping up morale, stacking your dragons and your winds in neat little walls, while the real walls were falling all around you -- surely they'd have a bomb shelter. But where? Under the dance floor, under the Palm Court where the waiters in their high-buttoned tunics would hardly be standing by? Panic, smoke, people rushing out to get the last food in the shops. No difference between mem sahib and servant.

-Marlatt, Taken

Spotted chump in escapades, espadrilles, expirate, solidify. Spot chump among the loverly, whippeting, cradled. Stop limbs. Stop lips. Stop drawn out thankfully. Spot me new language. I’ll spin. Lay new grooves, I’ll mitigate. I want to level. Want to phosphorate. I’m gamely and gaming. Salivating. Shuddered.

Why does some blog grab text from other blogs and translate them to some language and then imperfectly back into English? I have no idea. But it came up with some nifty sentences:

She's almost French Canadian and almost efficiently on French.

Its mA thesis busy sentences and its central situation of Gertrude Stein's in the letter.

She was poetry publisher and then handling publisher for gas station magazine, between 1999 and 2004.

And it describes my thesis about as well as I ever did.

I guess that's what can happen when you put your name out into the internets. I guess this can happen too. All kinds of poets are all up in arms over it, but I don't really see why. Anyone who reads poetry knows you didn't write the poem attributed to you there. And anyone who doesn't read poetry, well, doesn't read poetry. They don't care.

I love the comments that threaten legal action. Seriously, on what grounds? Defamation? Because they implied that you're a poet? Copyright infringement? Because you own your name? Litigousness is a disease. Use your common sense instead.

Every published poem is its own elegy. What poet is not astonished, reading the mere poem on the mere page? The mere transcription of that other poem onto paper is a calamity, a desecration. Every poem, one might say, is a failed translation, an accidental imposter manufractured by the incompetence of a weak-eyed translator sweating in the light of a lantern whose wick is badly in need of a trimming.

- Robert Kroetsch, The Hornbooks of Rita K

Performance takes interaction

or Performance is buoying

or Performance is echolocation, sonar, whale noise

or Performance needs sticky surfaces

or Energy / Tension / Static

or Blow this scene This scene is blown.

I spend most of my day working on the computer, then I come home and spend my spare time on the computer reading theonion and cuteoverload and gofugyourself or checking my credit card bill or my bank account or looking for cheap flights or lately playing typeracer of all things (I hate it!) and so, no blog, no chapbook making, no writing. Sigh. I'm on the wrong side of the pendulum swing, I guess. Sooner or later something'll have to give.

Currently reading:

• Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf (on the bus);
• What the Crow Said, Robert Kroetsch (before bed);
• Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning, George Monbiot (actually only the first chapter so far; it may be too depressing to continue at the moment);
• Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, Frans de Waal (still; I keep losing my place);
• far too many poetry books that I flit among and have yet to become absorbed in or give the necessary attention to: Fond by Kate Eichorn, Blissful Times by Sandra Alland, Drunk by Noon by Jennifer L. Knox, Broken World by Joseph Lease, The Iliad Book XXII by Lisa Jarnot, Dies: A Sentence by Vanessa Place;
• the stack of chapbooks and ephemera from the Blow-out Small Press Books and Arts Fair enticing and reproaching me (not currently, but soon);
• Hudson's English History: A Compendium, Roger Hudson (in snippets, because that's how it's written);
• The History of Sexuality Volume 1, Michel Foucault (not actually currently, because I already finished it, but yay! I finished it).

What used to qualify as a threat to national security: "...100 sweating, uncombed women standing around in the middle of the floor with their arms around each other crying sisterhood and dancing." It's all either incredibly offensive or incredibly ridiculous.

I was all ho-hum about the Blowout this year, but after last night my faith has been restored. Congratulations to fS for finding such an incredible reading venue. But how uninformative for those who weren't there. Sorry. Maybe descriptions after the hangover is less.

In my head all day today:

Flawed logic

Pad crepuscular rays.

Gloaming.

The dimming reason. Fade in stray.

Patiently flaying. Seasons of discular moan.

The mournful mizzen.

The follicle scrim.

Open fire. Fall clearing. Mollifying dusk rim

opt. A civil trim. Assimilator.

Opulentor.

Home fizzing.

Load baring. Laymen foible

strop. Fob gobbling.

Homunculus. Opal.

Bundle.

Stow.

How can we take pleasure in a reported pleasure (boredom of all narratives of dreams, of parties)? How can we read criticism? Only one way: since I am here a second-degree reader, I must shift my position: instead of agreeing to be the confidant of this critical pleasure -- a sure way to miss it -- I can make myself its voyeur: I observe clandestinely the pleasure of others, I enter perversion; the commentary then becomes in my eyes a text, a fiction, a fissured envelope. The writer's perversity (his pleasure in writing is without function), the doubled, the trebled, the infinite perversity of the critic and of his reader.

- Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text

A Plan for Preserving Birdsong

Is it true that tiny lawyers
.....Hatch in puddles in the spring?
I plan to capture orioles,
.....And teach them how to sing.

But if they can't, the lawyers,
.....Dressed in cunning feathered suits,
Will congregate in sheltered spots
.....And toot on tiny flutes.

- Dennis Lee, The Bard of the Universe

What blossoms did I know? Stinkweed and maybe the shooting star. Buffalo beans in the springtime. Wolf willow. Pin cherry. Foxtail. Does quack grass blossom? Does pigweed bloom?

- Robert Kroetsch, The Words of my Roaring

Feeling Overwhelmed, Stuck, or Burned Out? Personal Life &Work Life out of Balance? Having Trouble Saying No?

This is a workshop for lawyers that want to learn to:

· Work more effectively, yet also have more fun in their lives!

· Create healthy personal boundaries.

· Enhance all their relationships!

· Make life affirming decisions about balance!

· Make changes or complete ongoing changes.

· Maintain excellent mental health and manage stress!

I feel stressed! from all the exclamation marks! !

One of the most pleasing things is stamping DRAFT in big, red letters on legal documents. Stamping COPY comes a close second, but stamping DRAFT is more satisfying somehow.

Currently reading:

• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard (on the bus on the way to work, because it fits in my purse);
• The Words of My Roaring by Robert Kroetsch (too quickly, because Kroetsch books are basically recreational drugs);
• Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals by Frans de Waal (partly for the pictures of apes and monkeys, partly because de Waal rocks);
• Dies: A Sentence by Vanessa Place (haltingly, because I'm too distracted to give it the attention it deserves);
• Chicago Review 53:4 & 54:1/2 (intermittently);
• Implexures by Karen Mac Cormack (barely, because I just started, but expectantly); and
• A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright (again, because I need to refresh my memory).

OK, I google my own book too damn much, but look! you can buy it at Target! I would love to see my book in a bargain bin at Walmart or Costco or something, marked down to a super-low price, like 50 cents. That would be one definition of success.

And here's Audiatur, a neat site my book has popped up on (thanks to derek beaulieu). Not sure of its purpose, or its language, but it has a lot of poetry.

Do I (does my writing) have a wilting gaze? Really?

In case you haven't read it already, here's Rachel Zolf's very cool acceptance speech for the Trillium prize, recently awarded for her book Human Resources.

Slowly turning into a lawyer: yesterday I added a "furthermore" of my own volition to a court order I was drafting, for no reason other than to make it seem more "legal". But the furthermore looked incredibly strange and I had to google it to make sure it was really a word. And later I took a "therein" and a "thereon" out of a contract I was editing. So all is not lost, yet.

WTF? Of course it's worth $112.82, but who's buying?

Aww yeah, T. Rex and Marks & Sparks. Sigh. I remember Marks & Sparks.

Poetry! Social conscience! Tiny books! So cool.

Ridiculous but persistent fear #783: mistaking the Lysol bottle for the Listerine bottle, as they're both under the bathroom sink, and I keep forgetting which brand name belongs to which product.

Re-reading more of the books that I rescued from storage, including in immediate succession two of my favorite novels: Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley, and Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. Both offer a satirical picture of mid-to-upper class English society uncomfortably adapting to modernity, Crome Yellow right after the First World War and Lucky Jim a few years after the Second World War. Each has a young man as its protaganist, in Crome Yellow a pathetic, ineffectual poet, and in Lucky Jim a frustrated, reluctant academic. I've read each of them several times, once every few years. I'm not sure why they have such a hold on me.
Lucky Jim is laugh-out-loud funny, with that British kind of humour that's witty, absurd and ridiculous, like Monty Python or Will Self. On this reading, however, I noticed the pathos more than the humour. Most of the comedy comes from characters who are stuck, either in their careers or in their neuroses.
Crome Yellow has its funny moments too, but it's much more subtle. It seems quite rooted in the era it portrays, and I get the sense that I'm missing some of the satire, because I don't really know what Huxley is referencing. Some of it hits home, though, like this:

Mary looked at the picture for some time without saying anything. Indeed, she didn't know what to say; she was taken aback, she was at a loss. She had expected a cubist masterpiece, and here was a picture of a man and a horse, not only recognizable as such, but even aggressively in drawing. Trompe-l'oeil -- there was no other word to describe the delineation of that foreshortened figure under the trampling feet of the horse. What was she to think, what was she to say? Her orientations were gone. One could admire representationalism in the Old Masters. Obviously. But in a modern...? At eighteen she might have done so. But now, after five years of schooling among the best judges, her instinctive reaction to a contemporary piece of representation was contempt -- an outburst of laughing disparagement. What could Gombauld be up to? She had felt so safe in admiring his work before. But now -- she didn't know what to think. It was difficult, very difficult.

Melancholy, adj.:

Re-reading ribsauce, an anthology of women's writing published in 2001. When it came out I wrote a positive review for filling Station, but I couldn't remember any specifics. All the work has definitely stood the test of time (not that 2001 was very long ago...). It's particularly interesting to read works-in-progress from writers who've since published some awesome books, i.e. Heather O'Neill, Emily Schultz, Emily Pohl-Weary, Larissa Lai, Rita Wong...

found non sequiturs:

Non-profits spark an interest.

... showing what's owing...

Buy Yourself a Bacheelor,

Thanks for served you!

Very happy to be the featured poet for June on the excellent ditch, the poetry that matters.

Third reiteration of Chump

Chumps shore up the overflow blot water the river rimmed.

Chumps in interlocking patentless plastic. Stock chump in dollar stores, trade chump at boothed auditorium fairs, pissy underground shops.

Chump bleatingly, strange longing fumble squawk.

Limpid pooling drool at the lip of chump, grim masses foster chump. Blotted chump oils paper casts lurid patterns.

if you're after getting honey
then you don't go killing all the bees

The first page of a poetry series I'm working on. Right now it's called "again and again".

Enunciation of the fervor. A blip in the cosmos. Drip of syrup tipples from fork edge. Times fodder. Food loosens, grips down the gullet. Shot a pierce. An arrow pierces air and finds comfort. Lines betray. Try deep breathing into belly. Spill over your thighs and sink. Meet three folds of body. What thrills through which body when words like circumspect slot into their places. Putting letters through their paces. Letting.

Is it normal to notice language this much?: A co-worker was telling me about how her Dalmation attacked the neighbour's Chow and I said "Isn't it like, five times the size?" And then I didn't hear anything else she told me because all I could think about was all the "i" sounds in that sentence, all the words that go letter-i-letter-e, the progression of "s" throughout the sentence, the odd rhythm (iambic mixed with spondaic, I think). And of course I've had that sentence in my head all day...

The question is, am I obsessively noticing that stuff, or do I say the things I say according to some need to align words in poetic ways? Oh no, that sentence rhymed too (sort of).

Ugh. I think this might be the cause of some major failures to communicate. I think I sometimes say what sounds best (poetically) instead of what I mean.

Oh well, communicating is one of the least interesting things there is to do with language anyway.

Still under the thrall of Saturday night's movie, The Visitor, which is refreshingly complex, quiet, slow-paced, but still engaging, romantic, clever, and deeply yet subtly critical of the perennial dangers of fear, complacency, bureaucracy.

It left me wondering what I can do.

The immediate answer is nothing, as I'm not American so can't vote or otherwise affect American immigration policy. The slightly less direct answer is to work in immigration law, which I've considered before, but I honestly don't think that's an area of law in which my strengths lie. The oblique but most significant answer is to be more engaged with politics, policy, law - to understand who represents us and what decisions they are making and how those decisions affect us, at all levels, from municipal to federal to international.

Canadians always have recourse to the comforting yet deceptive notion that we're not doing as badly as they are - our immigration policies are never quite as Draconian, our detention policies are never quite as constitutionally unsound, our social policies never as regressive, our criminal justice system never as cruel. But is any of that even true?

We currently have a prime minister who openly models his governance after the Bush administration, with one major difference: he's intelligent. He's competent. He doesn't want open debate, and for the most part, we're not demanding it. The foundations of democracy are eroding or at least being obfuscated, and we're not complaining.

My thinking in this area is always muddled, nihilist, conspiracy-theorist; I tend to overstate things. But I'm tired of being afraid of what governments can do, I'm tired of the false dichotomy of powerful against good.

The unfortunate result of reading in Vancouver and seeing so many Vancouver writers in Calgary is that I want to go back... I miss the beach, I miss the old buildings, I miss the humidity, I miss the trees, the uneven sidewalks, the density, the little produce stores, the electric buses, the hills....
Of course when I'm in Vancouver, I miss the sky, the light, the smell of snow, the smell of Chinooks, some strange unnameable quality of Calgary that I can't quite put my finger on...
I will never be content.
Merely form ill fitting into form...

Happy: Finally bought a bookshelf and was finally able to rescue a box of books from storage. Earlier this year I sorted some of my books by genre, so I grabbed one of the poetry boxes and am now surrounded by many books I sort of forgot I owned, such as Erica Hunt's Local History, Nathalie Stephens' somewhere running, Dennis Cooley's Bloody Jack, Susan Holbrook's misled, Dionne Brand's No Language is Neutral, Robert Kroetsch's Hornbooks of Rita K, Steve McCaffrey's Seven Pages Missing and on and on...

Even happier: The bookshelf is one of those big square IKEA ones that can probably fit another two boxes' worth of books at least...

Why is poetry always a feast or famine? There were many enticing events over the last couple of weeks, but I couldn't make it to all of them. Partly because they coincided with the first few weeks of my new job and the last few, agonizingly drawn out, weeks of the bar course. Now that I'm all settled in, homework-free, and refreshed from sleeping for most of yesterday, there are no events on the horizon...

Anyway, starting three weeks ago: My fellow LINEbooks author Kim Minkus launched her book 9 Freight at Pages with a lovely reading. Here's a measure of success: although the audience was small, I'm pretty sure everyone there bought at least one of her books. As should you.

Then two weeks ago, the Old School reading persevered through a number of setbacks, including Calgary's ridiculous week-long callback to winter weather. Again the audience was small but very receptive. Jill Hartman, Emily Cargan, Brea Burton and Julia Williams all read brilliantly and made me feel all envious and anxious and I need to write new stuff!!

Thursdays have been bad days for me, because I usually stay up late Wednesday nights finishing my bar course assignments, and so I missed the Spoken Word Festival event the Thursday before last featuring David Bateman, Hiromi Goto, Jordan Scott, Karen Hines, and Ivan E. Coyote. I regret not seeing all of them, but particularly Ivan E. Coyote, who I saw at the Spoken Word Festival about four or five years ago and thought was incredible. Even though I was living in Vancouver for three years after that, I never managed to see any of her performances for one reason or another, but I've since read all of her books. Her writing is quite different from most of the authors I read, but it's wonderfully original, straightforward and profound.

Last weekend, I made it out to Vancouver for my reading with Julia Williams at the Kootenay School of Writing, sadly one of the last events at Spartacus Books, which has to relocate due to rent issues. Spartacus has been a great place for readings, very spacious, comfortable and welcoming. The reading went really, really well. Julia read a mix of poetry and fiction, interspersed with sardonic commentary. I've always admired her ability to extemporize wit. I read for longer than I usually do, but it was great, especially when the audience started interrupting me to ask questions and getting me to repeat one poem and generally to explain myself. That's the best response you can get from a poetry audience, I think - just the sense that what you're reading is making people think. Hopefully, the audio recording will be up at the KSW site soon.

Last Tuesday, Jordan Scott launched his latest book blert at Pages with his usual mesmerizing and haunting performance. I haven't read blert yet, but I'm looking forward to it.

Again because of the curse of Thursdays, I missed derek beaulieu's launch of his new book Chains at the Uppercase Gallery, but I plan to visit the exhibition of his visual poems sometime over the next month.

Friday was the final event of the Spoken Word Festival, featuring Sachiko Murakami, Steve Collis, Colin Browne, Weyman Chan, and Fred Wah, at the Art Gallery of Calgary. I'm running out of positive adjectives and don't want to repeat myself too much. But what the hell: lovely, brilliant, wonderful, fascinating, etc. Colin Browne and Fred Wah in particular can teach everyone a thing or two about how to perform poetry.

And that's all, for now... Actually, I won't mind a lull in events too much, I have a lot of reading to catch up on.

Do not waste a minute, not a second, in trying to demonstrate to others the merit of your own performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it, but you can labor steadily on something that needs no advocate but itself.... Yet do not be made conceited by obscurity, any more than notoreity. Many fine geniuses have been long neglected; but what would become of us if all the neglected were to turn out geniuses? It is unsafe reasoning from either extreme.

- Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "Letter to a Young Contributor," 1862; quoted in My Emily Dickinson, Susan Howe

If you're in Vancouver tomorrow, hope to see you there.

Things I noticed this week:

There's a store across from my bus stop that sells tennis rackets and skis called "What's Your Racket and Ski". Maybe they figured one pun was enough...

A coffee mug I used at work had the motto for Calgary Independent Reporters Inc. on it: "Stepping into the Future... Today!" Awesome.

This is probably the kind of thing I shouldn't expend too much energy on, but it annoyed me, and I believe in getting things on the record:

This is a note sent out to the English Literature Students' Society email list about the reading I organized and hosted last Saturday:

Well, today was certainly an interesting day. I headed downtown earlier this evening with the intention of going to the Old School reading at the Truck Gallery. I got downtown to the gallery’s front steps, only to be confronted with a sign stating, quite clearly, that the reading was open to “members and invited guests” only. This caveat had not been mentioned in any of the advertising for this event, including the official mailing list, the readers’ promotions, and the University of Calgary English Department webpage. Not feeling inclined to try bluffing my way past the doorman (and probably woefully underdressed anyway in my khaki cargo pants and fleece sweatshirt), I decided to call it a loss and caught the next train home. Bugger all to show for my time. So let this be a lesson to all you event planners out there – if you’re going to make your do an exclusive party, be a nice chap and let people know ahead of time! My apologies to any of you who tried the same thing as I did, based on the fact that I listed this event in my last newsletter, and got the boot at the front door.

This is the email I sent in reply:

I'm sorry you had so much trouble getting to my reading last night, but I can't imagine that there was a sign like that outside the Truck Gallery. I certainly didn't see one. Maybe you were at one of the fancy restaurants on either side of it? Or the jazz club on the corner? The Truck is in the basement of a pretty old and run-down office building, and there is no way they have a dress code, doorman, or members only policy.

It bothers me that you have sent a notice to your entire mail list insinuating that I would be careless enough to invite the public to an exclusive event. I've been organizing events in Calgary for close to ten years, and my reputation in the writing community is very important to me. I'm sure your mail list is large enough to have some influence on people's opinions.

Obviously, the event was open to the public, or I wouldn't have advertised it all around town. I was hoping someone would post a correction of some kind to the email list, but so far no luck.

One of my new favorite bands, The Duke Spirit:

Petition against Bill c-484, Unborn Victims of Crime Act

There's a bill under consideration at Parliament right now that purports to protect pregnant women by making it an offence to cause injury to an unborn fetus, but which, quite obviously, will merely make it easier to impose restrictions on women's right to choose to abort their pregnancies.

The bill has passed second reading, so it's well on its way to becoming law. Canada has not had any legal restriction on abortion since 1988 (although procedural policies have certainly restricted many women's access to facilities where safe and timely abortions can be performed).

I was involved in a Students for Choice club in my last year of law school, and the vitriolic opposition to the concept of choice frankly shocked me. Just to be clear: I don't advocate abortion. I think having to choose whether or not to end your pregnancy must be the worst experience any human being could ever go through. But if the choice has to be made, the decision should rest solely within the power of the women who have to make it, not within the power of men in suits in Ottawa or anywhere else (well, unless they're the father... you know what I mean).

Anyway, sign the petition here. Read more about it here, here, here and here.

Know all men by these presents...

He cannot guarantee long time until the entire garage will fell off.

Words herein importing a number of gender shall be construed in grammatical conformance with the context of the party or parties in reference.

Is “tot lots”a term of art?

The road supposes to be fully completed...

Find the problem if there is one and fix it!! Lawyers fix problems.

The roof has no support at all, and was built with negligence.

Yes, gender difference does affect our use of language, and we constantly confront issues of difference, distance, and absence, when we write. That doesn't mean I can relegate women to what we "should" or "must" be doing. Orders suggest hierarchy and category. Categories and hierarchies suggest property. My voice formed from my life belongs to no one else. What I put into words is no longer my possession. Possibility has opened. The future will forget, erase, or recollect and deconstruct every poem. There is a mystic separation between poetic vision and ordinary living. The conditions for poetry rest outside each life at a miraculous reach indifferent to worldly chronology.

- Susan Howe, My Emily Dickinson, p. 13

Emily Dickinson's life was language and a lexicon her landscape.

- Susan Howe, My Emily Dickinson, p. 27

Apparently I started this blog over five years ago (April 10, 2003, but I hid the first year and half or so of posts). Back then very few poets had blogs. Then most poets had blogs. Now most poets have abandoned their blogs. And still I blog. And still, as far as I can tell, hardly anyone reads this. How charmingly futile.

I ordered a bunch of books about three weeks ago, then forgot what I'd ordered, but decided not to find out, so that I'd be surprised when they came. Today I was pleasantly surprised to receive The Book of Beginnings and Endings by Jenny Boully and My Emily Dickinson by Susan Howe. Nice work, self of three weeks ago.

Best parts of working in a law office:

1. Clients come in a lot, so there is always coffee.

2. Saying things like, "Did that fax come in for the Smith file?" or "I'm working on the Jones file right now." Who knew that could be so satisfying?

Searching for David Bowie videos on youtube led me to a cover of "Hurt" Bowie did with Nine Inch Nails, which reminded me of this video of Johnny Cash covering "Hurt," still affecting and disturbing and lovely.

This sentence is like a cul-de-sac, you can walk along it but you won't really get anywhere:

The knowledge of the innkeeper and his staff of the plaintiff’s somewhat limited capacity for consuming alcoholic stimulants without becoming befuddled and sometimes obstreperous, seized them with a duty to be careful not to serve him with repeated drinks after the effects of what he had already consumed should have been obvious.

Well, blog, I've enjoyed our time together, but I have to go be a lawyer now.

Maybe I can visit you on weekends...



UPDATE: I'm not actually miserable, just adjusting.

I'm not big on hippies, but I love this Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song.

"almost cut my hair
it happened just the other day
it was gettin' kinda long
i coulda said it was in my way...

but i didn't and i
wonder why
feel like lettin' my
freak flag fly"

Today I'm trying to remember how to publicize a poetry reading. Remember way back in the day when it was all about making lame-ass posters and putting them up around the university or on 17th ave and expecting people to a) notice them and b) remember where to go when? I miss that in a way. Although it is definitely better to spread the word electronically and not have to leave my house or pyjamas.

I used to read the Poetry Foundation blog mainly for Christian Bok's posts, now I read it mainly for Linh Dinh's posts.

SPRING

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots,
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

In the face of an obstacle which it is impossible to overcome, stubbornness is stupid. If I persist in beating my fist against a stone wall, my freedom exhausts itself in this useless gesture without succeeding in giving itself a content. It debases itself in a vain contingency. Yet, there is hardly a sadder virtue than resignation. It transforms into phantoms and contingent reveries projects which had at the beginning been set up as will and freedom. A young man had hoped for a happy or useful of glorious life. If the man he has become looks upon these miscarried attempts of his adolescence with disillusioned indifference, there they are, forever frozen in the dead past. When an effort fails, one declares bitterly that he has lost time and wasted his powers. The failure condemns that whole part of ourselves which we had engaged in the effort. It was to escape this dilemma that the Stoics preached indifference. We could indeed assert our freedom against all constraint if we agreed to renounce the particularity of our projects. If a door refuses to open, let us accept not opening it and there we are free. But by doing that, one manages only to save an abstract notion of freedom. It is emptied of all content and all truth. The power of man ceases to be limited because it is annulled. It is the particularity of the project which determines the limitation of the power, but it is also what gives the project its content and permits it to be set up. There are people who are filled with such horror at the idea of a defeat that they keep themselves from ever doing anything. But no one would dream of considering this gloomy passivity as the triumph of freedom.

- Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

Reading philosophy is a skill I have yet to develop. I've read about a third of de Beauvoir's Ethics of Ambiguity and really have no idea what she's getting at. I'm reading through a thick haze with sudden passages, like the above, bursting into clarity.

Caught the new Joe Strummer documentary last night. Maybe it was the wine I drank prior, or my semi-traumatized emotional state going in, but I walked out of that movie wondering how I got so distracted, so complacent, so bloated and ineffectual. I want to trim fat, I want to walk away clean, keep walking, keep writing, forget success and failure, forget status, forget reception.
I want to be productively angry.
I want to wear army boots again. Why the hell did I stop wearing army boots?

Overwhelmed by fonts.

Anxiety: too many projects, too little resolution, too many self-imposed deadlines, too many books on the go, too many lists, too many possibilities, too little focus, too much coffee, way too much chocolate.

Very taken with Rita Wong's forage lately. It's an incredibly full book, confronting so many different issues and taking on so much complexity. I thought a useful way to start summing up why I like this book so much might be to list in general terms the subject of some of the different poems. The list soon spiraled out of control, and I was just skimming the surface of her poetry: genetic engineering, US patents of wheat, seeds, grains, transgenic pigs, laundry toxins, chinese launderers, native american naming, chinese remedies, war, resistance, discarded computer toxins, oil, economy, smog, body toxins, prisons, wealth, weaponry, chinese language, capitalism, consumerism, endangered species, food, powell street, pride, connection.

It's a serious book, but also ironic ("disaffect, reinfect me.") and playful. Many pages have quotations in hand-written script scrolling along the sides, or Chinese characters nestled among the poems. The visual effect is one of having access into an author's notebook, where ideas and observations ferment among foraged materials. It's a subtle balance of political and personal, an organic panoply of affront at the myriad outrages committed on, by, and for us. Which us? Many us-es. It's a complex text, sensitive to the constantly shifting power imbalances that configure status in the hyper-capitalized, post-colonial, globalized world.

One of my favorite poems in forage:

canola queasy

vulture capital hovers over dinner tables, covers hospitals a sorrowful shade of canola, what gradient decline in the stuck market, what terminal severity in that twenty-year monopoly culled the patent regime, its refrain of greed, false prophets hawk oily platitudes in rapacity as they engineer despair in those brilliant but foolish yellow genetically stacked prairie crops. how to converse with the willfully profitable stuck in their monetary monologue? head-on collisions create more energy but who gets obliterated? despite misgivings i blurt, don't shoot the messy angels with your cell-arranging blasts, don't document their properties in order to pimp them, the time for business-as-usual died with the first colonial casualty. reclaim the long now. hey bloated monstrosity: transcribe your ethics first or your protein mass shall turn protean mess and be auctioned off in the stacked market and so you can reap endless cussed stunts.

- Rita Wong

I've been working on a couple of different "poetic statements" for the past few weeks, a form I'm not very familiar with. I seem to be going through some kind of academic backlash phase where I don't want to write about theory at all. I'm trying to make really honest statements about what I think about poetry without reference to academic jargon, and I'm finding it fairly difficult. Sometimes I think I've written interesting and complex observations, other times I think I'm just stating the obvious. The worst is when my attempts to state things honestly devolve into confessional, emotive psychobabbling. It's really disturbing how closely my concept of my poetics is linked to my concept of self. I'm not sure if that's a strength, in terms of writing, or if it's simply an inability to transcend the familiarity of the lyric. I think it's useful to put some effort into examining all this, why I write, what I expect from writing, etc. But there is an element of avoidance in it: I haven't actually written any poetry in quite some time. Oh well, stringing words together in some fashion is never really a waste of time, right?

I'm so upset that McNally Robinson is closing its Calgary location. Sure, it's a blow to the literary scene, since it's one less free, convenient, and most importantly, licensed location for readings. But even worse, it'll cause a major reduction to my quality of life. I live downtown, in a city of a million people. I should have easy access to all kinds of culture. But sadly, no, there are no other bookstores in downtown Calgary. Not even a Chapters. Oh yeah, I guess there's a Coles, but it's one of those sad, off-putting mall bookstores. And anyway I don't like to spend my money at the Indigo-Chapters-Coles empire.

Walking to McNally's, browsing their poetry section, their magazines, their prairie writers section, their sale section, maybe having lunch or a coffee, hitting a couple of clothes stores on the way home - this is one of the most satisfying ways I can think of to spend my time. I guess I could walk across the river to Pages on Kensington. I was there this afternoon, and I noticed they have a pretty impressive poetry section lately (they stock my book). But it's a much smaller store, and they don't sell remaindered books at superlow prices like McNally's and big box bookstores. I can't buy books (other than poetry books) for retail! That's absurd. Just last week, at McNally's, I bought a J.M. Coetzee novel and a University of Oxford Press book on Athenian democracy, each for under five dollars. How could I possibly make such random purchases at retail prices?

I was at Higher Ground earlier this afternoon, writing, and I noticed some lanky slacker type guy reading the same book on Athenian democracy I've been reading, which he clearly also bought at McNally's. In a city without an independent outlet-style bookstore, where are the kind of people who sit around coffeeshops all afternoon reading for fun and self-improvement supposed to acquire their reading materials? Damn you, McNally Robinson, the forces for good in this city are so few, how can you abandon us?

The KSW has recently updated its archive of audio recordings. Here's Juliana Spahr reading from a text that later became The Transformation.

Two of my favorite quotations. I remember finding these somewhere in my meanderings on the internet when I worked an agonizingly pointless job and spent most of my work days reading online. This was before Facebook so my use of the internet was actually pretty productive; I would read lots of articles, essays, opinions, poetry. I was trying to learn as much as possible to counteract the mind-numbing effects of my job.

The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force. It it immaterial whether this force be founded on ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live. - Tolstoy

All paid employments absorb and degrade the mind. - Aristotle

There's been an uncharacteristic lull in literary activity in Calgary for the past month or so. I think the last reading I went to was at the beginning of February. Looks like things are picking up a bit next week, and even more in April, thankfully. I hate not having readings to go to.

It is in the continual and violent refreshing of the idea that love and good writing have their security.

- William Carlos Williams

Neologism is an erotic act.

- Roland Barthes

Wow. David Bowie covering the Pixies. Apparently he performed this song when he came to Calgary in 2004, but I don't remember it. I do remember that the concert was incredible. He's amazing. I also saw the Pixies (in Saskatoon! in some kind of agricultural fair building!) and they were horrible performers. I mean they sounded great, but they were so uncharismatic. They didn't even look at the audience, they didn't even seem to want to be there. The bass player in this video also played with Bowie in Calgary and she was unbelievably good. She actually kind of upstaged him.

Lovely. Why do you believe in poetry?

Why do I believe in poetry? Solipsistic reasons, I'm afraid. I use I too much, anyway. The mark of self-absorption (awkward word: it sounds like the self is a sponge absorbing itself. self-absorbed-ness isn't much better. the state of being self-absorbed). I believe in poetry because I feel like it's the only way I can communicate. I'm obsessed with the way words work in my head. I'm obsessed with the feel of language in my mouth. I'm obsessed with the rhythm of my speech. I'm obsessed with myself.

Then again, reading and writing poetry is a good way to meet people. I believe in that part too.

As disturbing as the low voter turnout (around 40%) in yesterday’s provincial election is, I don’t think that’s the most disturbing aspect of the ridiculous political process in this ridiculous province. There’s no reason to think that the people who stayed away from the polls would have voted against the Conservatives; maybe they would have voted Conservative but realized the Conservatives could easily sweep the election without their votes. So there’s no point in bemoaning lost opportunities for change due to voter apathy. All voter apathy shows is how many people here (and across Canada, also in the US) take the power to vote for granted. I’ve never (until yesterday)* voted for a winning candidate, in any election at any level of government. But I don’t find that discouraging. The point has never been to vote to win, the point is to vote out of an appreciation of and respect for the democratic process. You live under a form of government that recognizes your voice: use it, for Christ’s sake! Less than a hundred years ago, I wouldn’t have been allowed to vote; how could I possibly not vote now? Even as I write this, of course, I recognize my idealism. I don’t actually have any respect for contemporary democratic process, any of the political parties, the political party system, campaigning, rhetoric, spin. I sometimes respect some of the candidates, but rarely the ones who get an opportunity to effect anything.

The most disturbing aspect of the electoral process is how many seats the winning party can take with a disproportionate percentage of the popular vote. The Conservatives won 72 of 83 seats across the province with only 53% of the votes. How is that possible? It shouldn’t be. The Liberals, with 26% of the votes, ended up with only 8 seats. Why should the Wildrose Alliance, with 7% of the vote, take no seats, while the NDP has 2 seats with 9%? I think it’s awesome that the Wildrose Alliance lost its seat, but it’s not really fair. Here’s how the legislature should look, if seats were allocated according to the proportion of voters who support each party**:

Conservatives 44
Liberal 22
Wildrose 6
NDP 5
Green Party 4
Other 2

Granted, the Conservatives would still hold sway, but at least other perspectives would have more of a presence.

There are alternatives to the first-past-the-post system. They been the subject of referenda in BC, PEI, and Ontario, but so far they’ve failed. Maybe partly because the various systems of proportional representation are so complicated, and maybe flawed. But I still think any system of proportional representation has to be better than our current blunt, simplistic method of determining who represents us. The federal NDP is a proponent of proportional representation, largely because it would give them significantly more power in Parliament. I don’t know whether the Alberta NDP party supports proportional representation, but even if it did, it would be an uphill battle trying to get the issue on the table. The Progressive Conservatives would never support proportional representation, at least not while the first-past-the-post system guarantees them landslide victories, and as long as the Conservatives don’t recognize the issue, neither will most Albertans, sadly.

* I voted for the successful Liberal candidate, Kent Hehr, because he seems like the most intelligent and reasonable choice, also because I figured he might actually win. I’m so glad to live in a Calgary riding with a non-Conservative MLA, but I feel a bit queasy about voting Liberal. Oh well.

** I’m curious about the 96 people who voted for the Communist party of Alberta, and the 51 people who voted for the Alberta Party (whatever that is).

Not sure what to make of this email:

Hello,

My name is Thomas Labelle and I am the Career Advisor for the faculty of Humanities here at the University of Calgary. This year our office (Career Services) is hosting a career Panel night destined to provide some insights and career tips from alumni (like yourself) to our current students. Designed to be an "Informal and informative" session, ideally panelists would be happy to share how they have used their humanities degree effectively in the world of work.

If you are interested please contact via email
The panel will be held at 5pm , March 11 (on campus), beverages and food will be supplied

Thank you for your time,
Thomas

They only seem to have my email address because I registered with the U of C job search site and have been checking it regularly, which would suggest that I haven't actually managed to use my humanities degree effectively in the "world of work." I wasn't aware that's what a humanities degree is for. In fact, in certain worlds of work, I've found it be more of a liability than anything else: sometimes people think you're odd, indolent, perverse, subversive, "uppity", judgmental, whatever, if you're too edumacated. Serves me right for working in Alberta, I guess.

Oh shit, I have to vote today! Almost forgot about that....

There’s no writer worth her salt who needs any help with self-destruction. (via Silliman's blog)

In the morning, I listened to the icy low of cows. The sunlight flickering off the frost like a whiteness, a white eyelet sheet over the mountains, over the window, over the bedroom. A thousand eyes peeping through. A thousand spies shivering, recording.

...

For every romantic gesture, a counter gesture. The wisteria shying from and needing the sun. Dependant too on latticing, old bark, fencing, things on which to cling.

- Jenny Boully, [one love affair]*

I'd like to be in Vancouver these days: upcoming readings by Rita Wong, Jason Christie, Wayde Compton, also David Chariandy, Souvankham Thammavongsa, Wayson Choy, Anne Simpson, not to mention recent readings by Maxine Gadd, Colin Browne, Kim Minkus... I have lit scene envy...

Turns out paper is less of a problem than ink. My chapbook printing plans are now derailed while I wait for ink to come in the mail because the fancy new inkjet printer we've had since Christmas only takes ink that isn't sold in stores (well, maybe one or two stores, but way the hell in the suburbs). Damn, damn. Damn.

My joints crack more often than ever lately, every time I move something sounds, from a small high toe-joint crack to a deep bass hip bone, sometimes several in succession on my spine or neck, each vertebra pops-pop-pop.

I can crack my wrist joints at any time. The joints in my feet will each crack at least once a day, and sometimes in concert as well.

Neck cracks are worrisome, they’re either a symptom or a cause of bad posture and worse, that hunched over old-looking-ness. Sometimes shoulder cracks are incredibly, jaggedly loud and violent-seeming.

Strange there isn’t more pain, strange the body makes such brutal adjustments, air pocketing then sharp bursting, pressure and release, pleasure and shock.

Mystery solved: LINEbooks books are now distributed through New Star Books, which is a member of the Literary Press Group, which gets books in stores. Nice. Look for accrete or crumble in a store somewhere sometime.

I have a new chapbook all ready to print, text laid out, cover designed, but I can't find any red cover stock. Granted, the only place I've really looked is Staples, but there's nowhere else in walking distance, except for Reid's, which I might check out today. I looked online, and found that the world of paper is infinite and complex and I'll back away slowly, thanks. There are a few brands of red cover stock available online, but at American sites with high shipping costs, and really, I just want to make some chapbooks so that I can hand them out, so I should keep the cost I invest in this (and time, and sanity) to a minimum. I really hope I find some red cover stock soon, this chapbook is going to look awesome....

Last night I attended a lecture in the Shakespeare series by professor emeritus Dr. James Black, who I unfortunately never took a class with, but whose reputation for having memorized every single line of every Shakespeare play I'm of course in awe of. I've been meaning to attend one of these lectures since the series began in January, but it's always been too cold or a holiday or I've been busy. Last night Dr. Black lectured on Julius Caesar, starting with a bit about Wayne and Schuster, which the audience, mostly in their fifties, ate up, but I have no more memory of ever watching them than I do of the Friendly Giant, although they're apparently just as Canadian-ly famous. His point was that parody of J.C. only works because everyone knows it, or at least recognizes some lines from it ("beware the ides of March", etc.), because it's one of the more widely taught Shakespeare plays. He then talked about how John Wilkes Booth acted in a production of J.C., Freytag's 19th century construction of the drama theory and how J.C. transcends the formula, resonance of Falstaff as sacrificial beast in Caesar's desire to have fat men around rather than lean and hungry Cassius, resonance of cannibalism from Titus Andronicus, the politics of meals, the example of politicians handing out pancakes at the Stampede, Caesar's complicity in ignoring the soothsayer, Brutus' fatal mistake of underestimating Antony, Caesar wounding himself "among his privities" and I still wonder exactly what that means, ambition, and the overarching theme of politics linked to eating. I took copious notes, although I'm not really sure why, maybe some kind of university-withdrawal issue, and I really enjoyed the lecture. It was like being in school, but not in an unpleasant way. Looking forward to Antony and Cleopatra next week, if I make it.

From my afternoon at the library, gathering:

Our language system is linear, based on difference which sets up polarities. It provides a space within its discourse for the oppositional. People in positions of power can make use of the strategies that exist to discredit work that is contentious to the social order. The unfamiliar is often labelled by the mainstream as inaccessible, which both discredits it, and recuperates it as marginal. Or it is labelled as topical, which is an attempt to devalue it. -- (Patricia Seaman, p. 107)

A real power of words is that they make our ignorance more precise. Writing is negative aspiration: to work strenuously towards the moment when failure is confirmed. -- (Anne Michaels, p. 97)

It's acceptable to be in a state of never quite arriving. -- (Patricia Seaman, p. 109)

-- Open Letter 8.4, 1992

I'm all for this trend of undesirability and cynicism in writing; a lot of what I've been writing lately is ugly, angry, bleak, generally negative. Not sure if I've got handle on the sardonic, witty angle, but I can work on that.

Hilarious account of the worst reading ever (via Cancult).

Watched the Ramones movie last weekend: so, so good, they were such pathetic freaks, now I love them even more. The movie sparked an interesting discussion about originality and failure, how the Ramones were seminal but never successful. As usual, in my opinion, Gertrude Stein has the best insight into the issue:

No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who also are creating their own time refuse to accept. ... Those who are creating the modern composition authentically are naturally only of importance when they are dead because by that time the modern composition having become past is classified and the description of it is classical. That is the reason why the creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic, there is hardly a moment in between and it is really too bad very much too bad naturally for the creator but also very much too bad for the enjoyer, they all really would enjoy the created so much better just after it has been made than when it is already a classic, but it is perfectly simple that there is no reason why the contemporary should see, because it would not make any difference as they lead their lives in the new composition anyway, and as every one is naturally indolent why naturally they don't see. ...

For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling. Now the only difficulty with the volte-face concerning the arts is this. When the acceptance comes, by that acceptance the thing created becomes a classic. It is a natural phenomena a rather extraordinary natural phenomena that a thing accepted becomes a classic. And what is the characteristic quality of a classic. The characteristic quality of a classic is that it is beautiful. ...

Of course it is beautiful but first all beauty in it is denied and then all the beauty of it is accepted. If every one were not so indolent they would realize that beauty is beauty even when it is irritating and stimulating not only when it is accepted and classic. ...

- Gertrude Stein, "Composition as Explanation"

I had a great time reading in Edmonton on Tuesday: the smallish but very receptive audience perfectly fitted the cozy space of the Cafe Select (upstairs), which is just oozing with ambience, all black walls and art and high ceilings. Everyone laughed when I read from Dirty Work (always a plus -- it's so awkward when you try to deliver funny lines in a funny way but the audience isn't expecting to be amused and just seems befuddled) and it was nice to read from accrete or crumble knowing that no-one there has heard me read from it ad nauseam. My fellow readers were lovely, particularly K.L. McKay, she has a great rhythm and command of lyricism in her poetry. I sold a few books, handed out a bunch of chapbooks, and picked up a copy of Spire. Also got to hang out with my sister, and her boyfriend gave us a quick tour of Edmonton sights (ie. the bridges, the river, the U of A), I always forget how pretty parts of Edmonton are -- overall, it was well worth the six hours of Greyhound hell getting there and back.

Le contretemps ~ The contretemps

His (admissible?) dream would be to transport into a socialist society certain charms (not values) of the bourgeois art of living (such a thing exists, indeed there once existed several): this is what he calls the contretemps. What rises up against this dream is the specter of Totality, which demands that the bourgeois phenomenon be condemned entire, and that any leak of the Signifier be punished.

(Might it not be possible to take one's pleasure in bourgeois [deformed] culture as a kind of exoticism?)

-- Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes

La chantage a la theorie ~ Theory blackmailed

Many (still unpublished) avant-garde texts are uncertain: how to judge, to classify them, how to predict their immediate or eventual future? Do they please? Do they bore? Their obvious quality is of an intentional order: they are concerned to serve theory. Yet this quality is a blackmail as well (theory blackmailed): love me, keep me, defend me, since I conform to the theory you call for; do I not do what Artaud, Cage, etc., have done? --But Artaud is not just "avant-garde"; he is a kind of writing as well; Cage has a certain charm as well... --But those are precisely the attributes which are not recognized by theory, which are sometimes even execrated by theory. At least make your taste and your ideas match, etc. (The scene continues, endlessly.)

-- Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes

One of my favorite Harryette Mullen poems:

Off the pig, ya dig? He squeals, grease the sucker. Hack that fatback, pour the pork. Pig out, rib the fellas. Ham it up, hype the tripe. Save your bacon, bring home some. Sweet dreams pigmeat. Pork belly futures, larded accounts, hog heaven. Little piggish to market. Tub of guts hog wilding. A pig of yourself, high on swine, cries all the way home. Streak o' lean gets away cleaner than Safeway chitlings. That's all, folks.

- Harryette Mullen, Recyclopedia: Trimmings, S*PeRM**K*T, and Muse & Drudge

Oh my god, my book is on amazon.ca! As are the other LINEbooks! My little book is part of the corporate machinery. I feel so validated. Also a little dirty. But I like it. Of course, if you're going to buy a copy, you should go through an independent, like Apollinaire's Bookshoppe or McNally Robinson. Unless you want the sweet savings (27%!) only a mass distributor can offer. Not sure why I find this so exciting...

reading Kyle Schlesinger's chapbook Look. from No Press (which has No web presence). intrigued by but not sure what to make of the period in the title and the complete lack of punctuation in the text. the poem reads like soundbites played over and over, snatches of phrase woven together. the alternation of phrases suggests a pattern, but if there is one I didn't discern it. the possibility of complex pattern hints at a procedural poetics, while the colloquial tone of the alternating phrases invokes a form of found poetry, an idea of the poet recording all the voices he hears in an urban environment, on a bus maybe, or a street corner. at first it reminded me of Robert Fitterman's notion of the unified voice of the poem giving way to a multiplicity of voices collected at random. but Schlesinger's text doesn't reveal any such method, it could just as easily record the speech of one putative person in snatches of time, or the thoughts circling and resurfacing in someone's mind. on a second reading, i realized that the text presents a narrative, actually a very strong narrative, centred on someone getting shot, money, drugs, danger, which makes me wonder why how I could have missed it at first. probably because I was so taken with the idea of sampling and remixing the text evokes.

...
Gonna take that
I'll take it
Worked you over
Cup of coffee
Along for the ride
Worked you over
Along for the ride
Holdin' the bag
Worked you over
Cup of coffee
Holdin' the bag
Put you away
Kiddin' me
Holdin' the bag
Kiddin' me
Save yourself
Holdin' the bag
Put you away
Save yourself
How you doin'
How you doin'
Save yourself
....

- Kyle Schlesinger, Look.

Check it out, my first time reading in Edmonton!

Factory (West) reading series:

Natalie Simpson
Diane Cameron
Kristy McKay
Janice Williamson

Tuesday, February 19, 7:30

Cafe Select (upstairs)
8404 109th Street
Edmonton, AB

Just got back from mailing my Alberta Foundation for the Arts writing project grant application, in itself a huge accomplishment for me. I've been thinking about applying for writing grants for years (or at least for the few years in the past many years that I haven't been disqualified by attending university full-time), but I've never been able to conceive and describe a coherent writing project. I tend to write without any preconceptions, and then look back at what I've written to see if any themes/similarities/ convergences can be teased out through editing. So I've found it difficult to propose a project before writing and even more difficult to explain why a project should be funded.

The project I applied for is probably a long shot. I think most funding organizations evaluate applications with a certain mindset that includes certain buzzwords, and I have no idea what the AFA's buzzwords are. I tried to focus on themes that are very particular to Alberta, and even moreso to Calgary - hell, I even mentioned the prairies a couple of times - but I'm not really sure if that's what they want. Oh well, I'm just glad I actually tried, for once.

Here's one of the poems my application depends on:

Is this Desire?

Claw’s manic retraction means a long fall, tumbling and rafting, borne aloft and lilt. The chump weighs heft, tittles a thrust, a glisten of spittle signals excitable sheen. Chump pockets knives, rusted bolts, flat cans – roadside ravages glimmer sure salvages the chump thumbs hungrily.

rob mclennan read at the U of C on Monday night, as part of the Markin-Flanagan writers in residence exchange with the U of A. I thought the turnout was a bit disappointing, particularly from the non-student literary community. But it was a decent sized audience, and as long as the usual Markin-Flanagan spread of wine and food is available, why complain? Sina Queyras delivered a comprehensive introduction to rob's writing, quoting someone (I can't remember who, and I really have to start taking notes at these things) who called rob a northern beat poet, pointing out the Whitmanesque impulse to know the self in his body of work, and referencing an illuminating line from one of rob's poems that he later read: "a body moving past lyric into post-lyric"...

rob read from a couple of different poetry series, including his recent sex at 38, from his novel white, and from a novel in progress. I think that listening to rob read has given me more access into his poetry than I've had previously. Hearing his intonations and rhythm of voice makes his choices of form and line breaks more apparent, and more organic. I enjoyed his novel in progress, which follows a character called Alberta through some sort of experience of living in the prairies; I have to admit that when I hear people read fiction I never follow the plot at all, I mostly just listen to the sound of words and the structure of sentences. Even more enjoyable than the reading was rob's somewhat subversive refusal to engage the usual English-department-ish questions about narrative and form or Aritha Van Herk's question about appropriating Dennis Cooley's characters. Maybe you had to be there to appreciate it, but it was all very entertaining.

I have a new chapbook from above/ground press: Dirty Work. It's not entirely new, because the same text was published in 2005 by No Press in an edition of 26 copies, but it may be new to you. I think it's free with a subscription to above/ground press, or $6 plus postage. rob mclennan tells me that it'll also be available as a PDF sometime in May, but surely you don't want to wait that long.

Also, nypoesi.net is featuring some excerpts from accrete or crumble ("Chump" and "sudden"), as well as another poem of mine called "Sentencing", and an Introduction that I feel kind of iffy about; I really, really need more practice putting my ideas about poetry into prose. nypoesi is a great resource for poetry and poetics from Norway, Sweden, Canada, and various other northern countries. Pretty cool (ha? eh).

My dreams lately are full of conflict, disappointment, failures. Caricaturistic figures with unreasonable accusations, cartoonish paranoias. It's a relief to wake up sometimes, except when I can't tell the difference.

Heard many poetries over the past few days. First the flywheel series on Thursday evening, where I was particularly impressed by Wakefield Brewster, a sound poet with all kinds of slam poetry chops, he's an incredible performer with some really great lines (not that I wrote any down...) I was pretty pleased with my reading as well, I think it was a bit calmer and controlled than the last couple of times I've read, and my new writing seemed to go over okay. My new favorite poem to read is "a long and fitful sentence accumulating grace", basically because it's a really long sentence that tests my lung power, and I think any grace it accumulates is through sounding out loud.

Then on Saturday afternoon, I attended the Just My Type reading at the Palette Coffeehouse in Art Central, featuring derek beaulieu, Paulina Constancia, Emily Carr, Glen Dresser, Emily Elder, Stuart McKay, Samuel Garrigo Meza, ryan fitzpatrick, and Natalie Walschots. I love going to Art Central, although I didn't stay to look around after the reading, mainly because I wanted to go home and hide from the cold. The Palette coffeeshop is a great place for a mid-afternoon poetry reading, full of brightly coloured art and comfortable couches, and a wall-sized window overlooking the C-train line, part of the Telus Convention Centre, the Regis Hotel, and the empty lot that used to contain a gorgeous brick building, no idea how old it was, I just remember noticing the intricate brickwork around its roof last summer and thinking it wouldn't last long. Anyway, it was fun to watch the poets decide how to relate their writing to the theme of "love": my favorite was Samuel's series of bear poems, and I also enjoyed Stuart's observation about male poets' hairlines (hardly specific to Calgary). Two things maybe we need more of are afternoon poetry readings, and themed readings.

Summer notebook series 6

The frame of page, mind, picture, capture. Stunned longing. Strung longingly, along a stuccoed wall struck lofty nails at rippled interval. This frame of mind sticks rigid to foursquare, flaccid to rapt mouth gape stare.

A whole city elates in gentle decay. The city without the city clusters support, rain-streaked paper bleeds sympathies, lead to laminated signs of comfort, the smallest capitalist gestures are heartfelt, and warranted. The city without the city sprung up hill, up vine and upknotted root rash in flower and flowering, flowered. Trees split wide for electrical wires in the city without the city skyline is a boon and value.

Steep bridge to sea spreads a sundry bay. Steamers and freighters slick wavering intention daily and nightly churning dark leagues. Sole agent strings a thin line and winds in arrays of sea species. Shell fragments slice up sand packs, seaweed clings and rots, the sky is best when glowering, mountain line shot, grey cloud glowering, grey sea slopping, beach a wasting line.

Summer notebook series 5 (dregs)

Frame of door, window, city light, speech.
Sod blossom, petal blossom, roof wide garden teem.

Hot wet weather curls down chirrup crash clank skew frame of city sounds drenched, subdued by drench.

Signs of clamoring maddening gargantuan span.

Spirals unwinding raucous snap fast gathers mossy cost analysis split stone ledgers from boulders and splinters from masts.

Earth-tone city, ripples whip through grass, sandstone city, blinding glass.

This would make a great epigraph, maybe for my next book:

Each leaf a runnel the
roofs now skiffs in green
I’ve never done anything
but begin.

– Lisa Robertson, the weather

Synonyms!

In London "trulls, trots, molls, punks, queans, drabs, stales, nuns, hackneys, vaulters, wagtails -- in a word, whores -- were everywhere."

- from this review of The Lodger Shakespeare, Charles Nicholl (via Silliman's blog)

February flywheel
featuring:

Kirk Ramdath
Amy Joy Hild
Natalie Simpson
Wakefield Brewster
Dale Lee Kwong

Thursday, February 7
7:00 pm
McNally Robinson
120 8th Avenue SW

Summer notebook series 4

Split fine mist. Spilt times drips. Drops milk down deep well of forced phrase. Mind on track on chugging. I hate to be this hunching cliche. Hate to stare down the distance fraught with meaning, stop start stagnate, radiate work and effort.

So this is the new state of my discourse, straight up and bland. damn. Not with a bang but a whimper.

This city feels patched together, thin like a showhome, showy like culture strained through a weak grasp of the concept. These words are not spackle. I'm a shoddy woodframe, I'm crumbling.

Thursday night the CBC held its annual Poetry Face-off, Calgary installment, at the packed Auburn Saloon. Dale Lee Kwong, ryan fitzpatrick, Sabo Forte, Jill Hartman, and Shone Abet were competing for... something, a chance to go on to a national round, I think. Anyway, I thought the jazz band added a really interesting element to the readings, especially because the CBC host asked each reader to explain their choice of music before starting. ryan's answer of "a little punk rock, Pink Floyd, and Enya" was the best, and whatever the band was playing worked really well with his reading, which ventured into the sincere end of the deadpan-t0-sincere spectrum ( ironically?) to good effect. Jill, who requested Twin Peaks type music for her "esoteric love poem", read a lovely, sensual poem that really resonated with the backing music. Dale Lee Kwong (who ended up winning) asked for "Chinese jazz", which the band did a great job with -- a slow, haunting sound fitting for her dramatic reading. All the readings were enjoyable, and the slickness of the event (CBC sponsorship, expensive bar, large crowd, judges making impassioned but essentially empty speeches about the poems, etc.) put me off less than I thought it would. It's good to see the Face-off becoming more representative of all the different poetry in Calgary, not just sound poetry.