Ongoing notes: summer lovin'

Where the hell has spring gone? How can it be summer already? What the hell have I been doing with all of my time? Moping, mostly.

Apparently Dan Wells, who runs the publishing company/bookstore Biblioasis & the (seemingly former; I can't find any current info) Windsor Festival of the Book down there in Windsor, Ontario is also now running Canadian Notes and Queries, recently acquired from The Porcupine's Quill, Inc. Also, the new issue of the Toronto pdf journal Paperplates has arrived. & did you finally see the BookThug review I did in The Antigonish Review? Did you know that Robert McTavish is finally premiering his documentary on the late poet John Newlove at the Saskatchewan Festival of Words in Moose Jaw? & my little sister Kathy & her partner Corey, too, premiered new baby Rory (7 pounds, 14 oz) on July 5th, a sister for 2 1/2 year old Emma (my daughter thinks they're naming their girls after tv show girls, from Friends & Gilmour Girls, but I seriously doubt that, even though I wondered it too…); Montreal poet Stephanie Bolster + Patrick Leroux are also due to premiere any day now (& so did Chris Turnbull, a while back). Is everybody in the family way? & if you missed her reading recently at The Factory Reading Series, shame; both John MacDonald & Amanda Earl blogged on such, with other photos up now at the official website. Working on a potential September event of same, possibly with Winnipeg poet K.I. (Karen) Press.

The 2006 edition of The Drunken Boat is almost online, including a Canadian section edited by Sina Queyras; it even has poems by myself as well as an interview I did with Toronto poet Rachel Zolf (who I found out recently lived in Ottawa from 1969 to 1974, when her mother Pat helped prevent traffic from going through the Glebe & instead around; does everyone have an Ottawa connection?). Also, I recently discovered a series of "blog-type" postings on this site, including magnificent pieces by Canadian poet Lisa Robertson, & New York poet Rachel Zucker. & I've been told I'm featured poet on this month's BC Poetry page, which is a lovely gesture (so thanks to them!). & even though The Danforth Review is shut down for the summer, various places like Northern Poetry Review & poetryreviews.ca are still needing & posting reviews, & the online component of Rain Taxi is always available, Vancouver's Rain Review of Books, or the ongoing Jacket magazine.

I've been getting emails lately from people who think all I do is read poetry (even though I feel as though lately all I've been doing is reading Phil Hall's poetry, in an essay I'm working on already twenty pages long…). Who has time to write blog entries on everything I do & see?

In my ongoing research on Glengarry County, Ontario [see other entries on such here & here & here & here] I recently read The Scottish Pioneers of Upper Canada 1784 - 1855: Glengarry and Beyond by Lucille H. Campey (Toronto ON: Natural Heritage Books, 2005) which was very good; & I'm still in the midst of that massive Saskatchewan: A New History by Bill Waiser (Calgary AB: Fifth House, 2005). I recently read Madeleine Thien's magnificent first novel Certainty (Toronto ON: McClelland & Stewart, 2006) & Tim Conley's near-electric short story collection Whatever Happens (Toronto ON: Insomniac Press, 2006) & would recommend them both highly (but for different reasons). I've been reading various issues of Granta lately, including #54 (summer 1996), "Best of Young American Novelists," & just started reading Christine Wiesenthal's The Half-Lives of Pat Lowther (on the late British Columbia poet murdered by her husband in 1975; Toronto ON: The University of Toronto Press, 2005), as well as the ongoing scouring of a million billion books on Ottawa this & that for my Ottawa: The Unknown City (Vancouver BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, forthcoming) (did you know that Buffalo Bill Cody brought his Wild West Show to town in 1893 to perform at what is now the intersection of O'Connor & Strathcona Streets? Did you know that Sir John Carling, the Governor General who started Ottawa's Experimental Farm is son of the guy who started Carling Breweries?).

& that's not even to get into the roughly 7,000 comic books I have in my current collection; in many ways I think Brian Michael Bendis & Josh Whedon have saved Marvel Comics from itself (I know a few people that disagree with me, though). Even though I've been a dedicated fan of Spider-Man in most of his incarnations since 1974 (if Toronto poet Phil Hall's token is the "killdeer," can mine be Spider-Man/Peter Parker?), the stuff in The New Avengers, Daredevil and The Astonishing X-Men, including The House of M, Civil War & X-Men: Deadly Genesis, has been some of the best stuff I've seen in mainstream comics in years; & now that Vertigo's magnificent Lucifer series is now over, where am I supposed to get my Vertigo fix? I mean, Hellblazer is good, but far too uneven… I'm liking the Frank Quietly Superman, but read almost nothing else from DC… & will we ever see more of The Authority?

& then the eight hours a day I try to watch of television; & then the fact that Kate & I see a new film almost every single Saturday; The Break-Up was better than I thought it would be (but Jennifer didn't like it as much); X-Men 3 was mind blowing (saw it twice); Nacho Libre is the greatest movie of all time; Superman Returns was okay, but the best part was the Spider-Man 3 preview; Venom is gonna kick ass…

Would like to learn some more Johnny Cash on guitar.

How Soon is Now? Danger, high voltage! Munich.