You probably already know that we were in Boca
Raton, Florida recently [see my report on such here], but here’s another photograph from such. Our final
morning on the beach, in the midst of a spitting rain, and high waves from the
wind. Someone suggested that this might be a perfect cover for a Victorian-era
novel. Wuthering Heights in South
Florida?
Our pals William Hawkins and Greg “Ritalin”
Frankson are receiving the first ever VERSeOttawa Hall of Honour Awards at a ceremony as part of the third annual VERSeFest, March 17, 2013. Congratulations
to you both!
Oh Canadians, why do you send me so few
chapbooks?
Atlanta;
Philadelphia; Northampton; Jerusalem; Madison; New York: The only problem
with a collective, is that you can’t tell where they’re situated. Perhaps this
is their selling point. From the Agnes Fox Collective comes the short chapbook Luminous Terrene (January, 2013) by
Matthew Gagnon. I’m taken already with any work that begins with a quote by
French writer Emmanuel Hocquard. This ten page poem is composed as a generative
abstract: generous, open, subtle and remarkable. This poem withholds more than
it contains, and surprises as much as it reveals. I am intrigued by this work,
and wonder if this is a single piece, or part of something larger.
A gyre of minerals is
visible from the outcrop, but can we really say we’d rally behind the visible?
I won’t be extracted
from a custom or assembled into the fold of a wave.
A flock of fish is
breathing on dry land. There’s nothing modern about the way we cook fish.
An aggregate of water
over a film of water. Do we tread the water’s timetable, survey the riptide’s
antimony?
Read the night as if
the night is read, and in stoking the night, order it: punctuated.
Fastened to the umbrage
of what’s missing, my memory’s adrift in a receding tidemark.
Milwaukee
MI:
From plumberries press I received a couple of chapbooks, including Connor
Strathman’s Some Were Awake (2011), chelsea
tadeyeske and edwin r. perry’s suddenly you’re
naked and wandering through pasturage, on the farthest point of the peninsula,
they say, the form has failed. you’ve left so many of your things, left for
more favorable destinations. (2011), cynthia spencer’s In what sequence will my parts exit (2011) and chelsea tadeyeske’s HEELDRAGGER (2012), as well as the fifth
issue of Humble Humdrum Cotton Frock
(summer 2012).
THE ONE ABOUT PUBLIC
SPEAKING
A moron walks into a bar. He clinks a butterknife against a glass to get
the room’s attention. He carries a butterknife always, in a special handmade
holster. Night is the most mysterious time of day, he says. It’s 11:30 a.m.
Like I said, he’s a moron. Stupid women are at least attractive; this guy’s
only funny on accident. You would not exchange the word “love” for “power” in
the adage “It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all,”
but the moron would. Somebody told him that “verb” means “word” and he
interpreted this too broadly. Luckily, the moron lacks all capacity for
embarrassment. You have to learn shame, along with algebra and how to hug. The moron
loosens his tie. He’s on his way to a funeral. (kathleen rooney and elisa gabbert,
Humble Humdrum Cotton Frock)
There is something about the simple yet attractive
design and production that appeals, and some of the work as well, despite being
highly uneven. Even in the collaborative poem by kathleen rooney and elisa gabbert,
there are some striking lines and images, in a piece that otherwise could use
some editing, and time. There is something reminiscent here of Carleton
University’s In/Words [see my recent article on them here], of a group of young
writers producing and encouraging and publishing, a number of which just aren’t
there yet, but are awfully close. Not there yet, but worth watching, to see for
when they do.
The smell of the street
is now dusted in static
Salt lips and naked leaf
buoying in the sprung wind
court of lightning window
you lick your teeth
shows the image
of towels hung
on the ledges
Give me a heart of cloth
and a limit of tin
to protect it from the rain (Connor Strathman, Some Were Awake)
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