from “Missing Persons” (a work-in-progress)

Alberta kept to her journal and let everything else slide. She wrote out her hurts and her hates, and she hid them between the mattress and box spring, away from prying eyes.

After her father died, her mother finally had to learn how to drive, otherwise they were trapped where they were, the three of them in their big empty house. Cabin fever, or stir-crazy. Anything with a higher temperature, deepening to boil. They couldn’t keep depending on neighbours to take Emma in to town for groceries and other errands, or the first few weeks of prepared meals after the funeral, nearly a dozen women in the area, every night, taking turns.

It was Mrs. Friesen, Brian’s mother, who had offered to teach her, afternoons Alberta and Paul watched their mother drive circles around the yard; Mrs. Friesen the passenger, calm. Their mother a wreck.

Emma wound so tight she was kinetic; a spring. A spring that only explodes out before coiling up again, slowly squeezing the air out before another release. Alberta and her brother learned to walk on glass; whether cracked or shattered depended completely on their mother.

Alberta tried to persuade her mother that she should be learning too, but Emma wouldn’t hear it. You’re too young, she said. Paul simply wanted to go along for the ride, pounding gleeful palms on the window or backseat as they drove in circles. As they drove in eventual squares, turning corner on dusty corner around quarters in two mile stretches.

Needless to say, whenever Mrs. Friesen came over for Emma to learn to drive what was once their father’s car, the children were relegated into the house. At least until the engine stopped, and the two women came in for tea.


In the end, Emma drove herself a month before her license took effect. Everyone in town knew. If you were to ask anyone about it, no one would admit to knowing anything, but would have called it special circumstances. You don’t expect three people to stay out in the middle of nowhere without a car, do you? Even less if they have one. Emma something stronger when no one else was looking.


For Emma, beginning to drive herself on roads she thought memorized, lost her way as quickly as she found it again, more than a few times. Roads she thought she knew but less than she remembered. It was like re-learning a language after a stroke, with the frustration of taking longer to get anywhere moving slowly to the joy of discovery, of parts of the land around that she previously hadn’t known.

Once she was a bit more comfortable, she took to driving on Sunday afternoons, by herself or with Paul, in a different direction from the house simply to see where she might end up. She used a series of highway around and the valley below as her boundaries; when she came to one, however she got there, she would return home the way that she knew, back along a more familiar series of turns and straight lines.


For Alberta, it felt nearly impossible to get lost on a grid. There was time, and then there was only time, turning left or right or heading straight through.
Alberta


It seems too obvious to mention that Alberta dreamed of escape, but to where. If there was as much sky as what was under it, her choices would be infinite. Even the direction itself didn’t matter, whether the rise from the west, or sloping down to the east. Each side held its appeal. Or to float down the hidden river that sat miles beneath her.


After her father’s death, shopping with her mother became more tense. Alberta, Emma and Paul, walked through a strip mall an hours drive from the house. Emma, tired but driven. Up at dawn rolling dough for bread, leaving it rise under damp cheesecloth at home. What they would tiptoe around. Dozens of loaves. For a bakery in town. If Emma saw her, or her brother, they would be forced to join in. Alberta working soft brown with her hands. Pounding with whole wheat flour that padded soft sounds on the floor as it dropped, in small handfuls. That made footprints from the dog, or white puff on his dark nose.


In the discount clothing store, Alberta caught a slap from Emma’s hand, on the back of her shoulder. She was humming too loudly again, nearly singing out loud. A habit she got into from spending so much time alone, or with Paul. Releasing the music in her head. The soundtrack to every piece of her, everything that she does. She said nothing, but glared at her mother. She said not a word for the rest of their excursion. She said nothing else for the rest of the day. Her green eyes shot daggers; her green eyes shot knives. Their mother didn’t notice, but Paul did.


Out of water, Alberta felt the full weight of gravity. Her body became stone, her feet turned to lead weights. She felt the air push against her face as she struggled to walk, wondered how it felt to be truly weightless, a creature of air.


To Alberta, there was no such thing as normal. The things that they used to do, ordinary activities were suddenly more difficult, with even the simplest act wrought with new tensions – shopping, going to school, dinner. Every act took on a new and tainted air. At school, no longer just the quiet girl, but the girl with the dead father. Alberta had never lost anyone before, but to Emma, it was far more. As though even their reactions to each other suddenly changed. Who they were, and what they were doing.


Alberta didn’t know if she’s the water or the fuel to her mother’s fire, but knew she was something liquid. Something pure. Her body pushed out impurities with a violent grace. Quickly, and unapologetically.


Mary knew the difference. Of what a parent was supposed to do, and what they weren’t. At least that what she told Alberta. Her own were examples of both, moving to such extremes that neither end she found terribly useful. As she felt, trapped in her own freedoms.

Not that Alberta saw that side, or would have understood. She saw only the freedoms at the end of Mary’s smile. As her own heart lit up. With equal excitement and envy.

During the long drive home, it felt so much longer. She cursed her mother under her breath.


When they reached an intersection, the road across their path firing straight and endless in both directions, Alberta stared so hard into the dot that made the line that the two ends looped around, and connected. Repeating grain elevators and water towers, and secret rail. Where hills and fields rolled wind into empty flow; where no tree, building or body could ever give a sense of space, and where there was no forgiveness.

To Alberta it felt as though they were about to cross an old and sacred line. It felt as though they were crossing something you couldn’t go back on.


(an earlier section of the same work appears here)

a note on the poetry of Stan Rogal

In Toronto writer Stan Rogal's ninth collection of poetry, Fabulous Freaks, (Wolsak & Wynn, 2005) he works the poem as collage through writing about the nature of celebrity. Starting from an innocent enough beginning, Rogal tears through the ugly truths (whatever they might be) of writing from such a beautiful place. In the first line of the first poem, "Haunts," he writes "Which craft bends such strange ambition?" (p 13), referencing a number of writers, text and bad jokes (in a poem dedicated to Toronto poet Heather Cadsby, writing "Whatever cads be on this heathered moor"). His willingness and fearlessness to use other forms is impressive, with each collection becoming its own individual project, or series of projects. For some reason, Stan Rogal is one of those writers who never seems to get enough credit for what he does, whether his plays, novels, short stories or poetry collections, one after another after another. Does the volume of such merely build up immunities? In a review of Stan Rogal's In Search of the Emerald City (Seraphim, 2004) in This Magazine (March 2005), Chris Chambers wrote:

"The prolific writer persistently demands what is and will always be highly valuable to readers: time. And if prolific writers value time differently than slowpokes, should we not then assume they value words--the tool of their craft--differently also?

Some writers are fast. Stan Rogal is one of these. The poet/playwright/fictioneer published his eighth collection of poems (his 13th book) last fall. In Search of the Emerald City (Seraphim Editions) is a sequence of 50 untitled poems that manage to spin Rimbaud and van Gogh through the kaleidoscope of The Wizard of Oz. In these punning, poignant, playfully allusive lyric poems, Rogal juggles various themes (going home, growing up, being exiled, going nuts, missing parts, giving up, talent being squandered/abandoned/unrecognized) and bizarre narrative turns (schizophrenia, suicide, asylums, ear slicing, leg losing, cancer) from the true lives of his principals. He smoothly goes about his business, introducing his characters and themes, buffering them with quest tropes from The Wizard of Oz and then loosening up and playing them off each other until some of these poems positively chime with the accretion."

Interspersed with visual collage works, by Rogal as well as collaboratively with Jacquie Jacobs, who was the other half of his collaborative (sub rosa) (Wolsak & Wynn, 2003), Rogal works image against image, and body against body, and letting the poetry come out through the collusion of smashed contrast. Rogal's best writing comes from both the collusion and the writing through myth-making, as in this fragment, the first part of the poem "ONCE UPON A TIME" (p 45), that begins:

Let's begin at the beginning: Once upon a time,
Say. Once upon a time there is a child.
There is a child & there is a journey
(as there is always a child & a journey in such cases).
There is a wood, or an ocean, or a desert.
At any level, a place, where bread crumbs have a snowball's
chance
& Grails remain uninvented.
Hell, it whispers. There is a howl in the wilderness
that threatens a guise of claws, fur, fangs
& smoky breath, set to boil young brains
Ecstatic.

Rogal manages to take what is familiar and completely twist it, moving it around so it becomes something completely other, but in such a way that the reader has remained through the journey. Consider previous works of Rogal's, and his fascination with such cultural icons as Marilyn Monroe and The Wizard of Oz, from references scattered throughout his first collection, Sweet Betsy from Pike (Wolsak & Wynn, 1992) to his Wizard of Oz long poem, In Search of the Emerald City (a much earlier version was published as a chapbook by above/ground press in 1996; it was reworked extensively for the Seraphim edition). His collection The Imaginary Museum (ECW Press) is based on Mallarmé's idea that everyone has "un musée imaginaire" in his head, holding both masterpieces and velvet paintings of Elvis. Other collections, such as (sub rosa) and Lines of Embarkation (Coach House Books), riff off ideas from the outside, becoming texts of reaction, a text responding to something other (as someone once suggested, what all texts really are, in the end). A self-proclaimed “lusty collection,” in (sub rosa), Rogal worked a collaboration, writing a series of poems in reaction to a series of paintings by artist (and partner) Jacquie Jacobs. Going outside writing into visual art is certainly not a new thing, with Stephanie Bolster and Fred Wah being only recent examples using art as a trigger, but the breadth of Rogal’s interest, from science, philosophy, writing and pop culture, brings in a whole other range of ideas and experiences into his poems. His collection Lines of Embarkation (Coach House Books) riffed off ideas from the Douglas R. Hofstaedter book Goedel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, much in the same way George Bowering’s Delayed Mercy (Coach House Press, 1986) riffed off lines from other writers’ works, from other lines, phrases, ideas, etcetera.

A starting point as well, like predecessors Bowering and Judith Fitzgerald, Rogal allows the language to move through itself, both intellectually and musically moving and working through its own ends. With an ongoing influence by the open-ended form pushed by San Francisco poet Jack Spicer, Lines of Embarkation was a book touching on Achilles, Scylla and Charybolis, Gogol, biology and Mars constructs, it seemed fitting that it would begin with the Leonard B. Merger quote, “The world is a complex, continuous, single event.” and going through a framework not only for the collection as a singular object constructed out of fragments, but Rogal’s poetry as a whole, breaking down into individual collections, yet continuous. It reads as a continuation of the bpNichol mantra illustrated by the open-ended Martyrology, that the text connects, even if only on the basis that it is all written by the same hand. So many of his collections shape and are shaped.

From that collection to this new one, both illustrated with Rogal’s own artwork, intensifies the collage aspect of his poetry, taking bits, jumps, fits and starts from other parts, weaving them into his own. Moving from John Berryman, Jack Spicer, Stanley Cooperman (the late poet and professor at Simon Fraser who taught Rogal), Richard Brautigan and others, they read like threads that have moved through all of Rogal's poetry so far, reaching back as far as the mind can see. Saying, if you want to understand me, go here. In an "author comment" for his collection Personations (Exile Editions, 2001) on the League of Canadian Poets poetry spoken here page, Rogal wrote:

"My work tends towards an attempt to deal with grand ideas or issues, though set within a very personal arena. My first collection of poems, Sweet Betsy From Pike, dealt pretty much with ecology and environment. My second collection, The Imaginary Museum, looked at Art. My third book, Personations, centred around the notion of 'maleness' and can one be a well-rounded, caring, sensitive, intelligent human being and still be a man in the sense of maintaining an identity separate from woman. My fourth book, Lines of Embarkation used science as a stepping off point for developing poems. My fifth book, Geometry of the Odd dipped into chaos theory and my next book, Sub Rosa, will offer various interpretations of a group of eight paintings.

Some singular influences on my poetry (in no particular order) include: Jack Spicer, Marjorie Welish, John Berryman, Richard Brautigan, Judith Fitzgerald, Arthur Rimbaud, Kenneth Patchen, Stanley Cooperman, Michael J. Yates, Viktor Scklovsky and Anne Sexton. Add to this the Beats, the Black Mountain poets, certain Surrealists, the letters of Lorine Niedecker/Louis Zukofsky, the literary theory course I took at York University.

Through it all, I imbue the work with various discourses, from fairy tale to myth to science to art to academia to street vernacular and so on, all in an effort to collapse time and space in order to make everything appear alive and lively here and now. Obviously, some of this comes from my background as an actor and director, which may explain my love of the present-tense verb. In all of this I'm certainly not alone, though it makes for a seemingly tight crowd at times.

Some call my poetry modern, others post-modern, some call it lyric, others call it language; some see much of it as stream-of-consciousness, others read it as tight and well-thought out; some see it as imagistic, others as idea oriented; some see it as wildly subjective, others as coldly objective. This I perceive as a good things and wouldn't disagree with any one's interpretation. I'm happy that someone reads it and gets something out of it. Overall, I write poetry because I get a kick out of it and it gives me an opportunity (a way) to explore and experience the world through language."

In a recent interview he echoed the sentiment, where he said:

"Yeah, I do think things out a fair amount and try to make each book different in some way. In fact, within the books themselves I consciously try to offer variations, whether in style or voice, though clinging somewhat to a particular theme. Part of this is because I read too many books that sound the same all the way through or read like the same poem or story and this tends to bore me. I tend to play with voices in the poems as well as with line length. My short stories tend to genre-jump, moving from naturalism to noir to magic realism and so on. I like ‘playing’ and it keeps me — the writer — interested. I trust that others find it interesting, though the mainstream generally likes (prefers, demands) a quick easy label. My first novel was filmic/noir, my second a pseudo writer’s journal with a thin narrative (which no reviewer seemed to pick up on), my third (unpublished) is an epistolary novel in female voice, I have a collection of linked short stories coming out in the Fall, the novel I’m working on now is much more loose and stream-of-consciousness but around a specific plot line. New short stories are much more absurd/magic realism and poems around the themes of freaks and monsters.

A lot of this has to do with what I’m reading or watching at a particular time or simply an accumulation. Plays this year run from performance of a noir piece about a serial killer to a comedy with songs about Bertolt Brecht to a Beckett-like piece and will end in August with a frenetic dark comedy in a Futurist vein. The whole shift to keep me amused more than anything else, but also wanting to try certain established things and re-work them into something else. I guess, the whole collage metaphor (more obvious in the poems and plays) is a big thing for me.

Also thinking about a Country-Western play. We’ll see if I can keep it up amid the lack of notoriety and funds. Great reviews for recent play, which is nice and tends to keep me pumped."

The last section of Fabulous Freaks, "The Celebrity Rag: Opà!," focuses more heavily on the myths of celebrity, writing an eighteen page poem that even includes at the end, a "Cast of Characters (In Order of Appearance)," including Miles Davis, William Hearst, Clark Kent/Superman, George Bowering, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Saddam Hussein, George Bush, Sonny Bono, Tom Waits, Christopher Reeve, Karla Holmolka, Paul Bernardo, Barbara Gowdy, Catherine Zita-Jones, Britney Spears, Mike Myers and Avril Lavigne. As Rogal writes as brief introduction, "This is an interactive piece in which celebrity names are encrypted into the poems as homonyms. There are also further clues to assist in the uncovering. See how many you can 'dig up'." (p 69).

Shilling down by the boxcars manages barely enough
to shoulder fortune's wheel against the fleece. Argot or
any dimly coined titanic hit hard & sunk amid the gambol.

Much hubris grants scant pleasure, seems, all hugger muggery
gone limp at the lip as light breaks & sirens sound off.

About as funny as a dam's antler, to watch your noble dream go
tits up from the fallout: fart jokes & further gross contaminate
leeching land, sea & air for lack of … je ne sais quoi … cultivation?

What unholy concord that dives & flashes
oozes ohs borne on the bloodied wings of beheaded bats.

How jazz this holy coil that never breaks a cool blue sweat? Even
caught half-undressed in the elevator fails to catch: what better way
to hold a Frenchman's liquor than by the ears? "Fish gotta swim …"

Not so grand turn of the century or slick coated candy, this M'n'M
squarely hits the heat on the nail -- "Ow! Yo, muthafugga …" (p 76)

Ongoing notes, December 2005

I've been reading Larissa Lai's blog lately of the combined Taiwan trip she's taken with various other west coast authors, and the subsequent other blog they started, with contributors including Fred Wah, Roy Miki and Rita Wong. And why do bloggers ryan fitzpatrick, Laurie Fuhr and Sina Queyras keep mentioning my name? It's enough to make a boy paranoid. And did any of you know that Fredericton poet and publisher (etc) Joe Blades just had two of his collections translated into Serbian and published over there? He even got to go over for the launch. Canadian poet Ken Norris just had a version of Hotel Montreal published in both English and French as well. How can I get something like that? And did you see blogger John MacDonald's clever photo from the annual Gallery 101 art auction? Or the new website being constructed on William Hawkins, Ottawa's most dangerous poet? And what the hell is Nathaniel G. Moore up to now?

I recently got an email from Calgary's Jason Weins, wondering if there's a place that lists all the Canadian poetry books published in a year, something like a year-end review or list. Does Canadian Poetry do such a thing, he asked? Maybe Queen's Quarterly? I have no idea. Does anyone else? It sure would be an interesting list, if for no other reason than to find out about all the books I'm probably missing. Whenever anyone asks me such a thing, what were your favourite this or that over the past year, I'm always at a loss to remember. Just go back through my blog, really. I know I loved the new titles this year by Erin Mouré, Margaret Christakos, Sylvia Legris, Dennis Cooley, Andy Weaver, Meredith Quartermain, Stan Dragland, Phil Hall, Jay MillAr, Suzanne Buffam, Jordan Scott, Donato Mancini, Stan Rogal and Stephen Cain (I know I'm probably missing a bunch else). Steven Heighton, Lisa Moore, Paul Glennon, Jaspreet Singh. And then the two poetry collections I edited: William Hawkins and Shauna McCabe. And that's just the Canadian stuff. What about C.D. Wright, Rachel Zucker, Lisa Samuels, Juliana Spahr, Andrea Baker and Jennifer Moxley (to name but a few)? Geez, what else?

For Canadian poets, it's certainly been a year of poetry anthologies as well, with the impressive companions & horizons: An Anthology of Simon Fraser University Poetry (West Coast Line Books), Post-Prairie (Talon), Open Field: 30 Contemporary Canadian Poets (Persea Books, NY) and Writing the Terrain: Travelling Through Alberta with the Poets (University of Calgary Press) [my review of Post-Prairie and Writing the Terrain is due soon in Toronto's WORD], and, closer to home, 25 Years of Tree (BuschekBooks); others I didn't like as much, such as Breathing Fire II (Nightwood), and two I haven't yet seen, Carmine Starnino's pompously-titled The New Canon (Vehicule Press) and intriguing Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press), edited by derek beaulieu, a. rawlings and Jason Christie. And then there was writing in our time: Canada's Radical Poetries in English (1957-2003) (Wilfred Laurier University Press). What will next year bring, I wonder?

Oh; are you coming to the Peter F. Yacht Club Christmas party? Did you see I'm doing poetry workshops again, and ongoing editing services? And Erin Mouré recently pointed out this link to Harold Pinter's Nobel Laureate speech.

Prince George BC: Reprinted as a facsimile of seventy-five copies of the original handmade chapbook is home when it moves you, poems by gillian wigmore ($12), the first chapbook produced by Sheila Peters' Creekstone Press. A graduate of University of Victoria, wigmore makes a fine addition to other writers in Prince George (and area) such as Barry McKinnon, Hardy Friesch, Rob Budde, John Harris, David Phillips (will he ever publish again?), Donna Kane and Ken Belford.

she goes to bed wet and her hair pillow dries

in the morning she looks like a field bereft of winter
the grasses stuck together, dried in surges and hollows

after a long sleep she is dry, the snow has left her

over coffee in the sun she looks done over, undone
she looks uncertain
after-wintered

the field is aloof in april, the grasses disgruntled
she wants no company
save the absence of the wind

Prince George seems to be the mecca of poetry these days; Rob Budde even recently called PG the poetry capital of Canada (a claim made in the 1970s by a number of people as well, including McKinnon, Brian Fawcett and UBC professor/critic Warren Tallman).

at angles to the trans-canada highway -- ugly in spring, dusty in summer with long
winters, but under a migratory bird route -- the small town hospital under the
flyway sits like a succulent above the river, fat with life and death and make-do,
small town people succumbing to cancerous tumours, colo-rectal disorders, lung
collapses and the handful of stab wounds and broken-bottle inflicted cuts that
make the story believable -- leavable that's the point here but the view, the stretch
of the river, the goat-grazed islands in its lowdown middle, the river meandering
back and lazy forth, its sand bars showing, the river brings you back

-- "small town under a canada goose flyway"

You can find copies by at the end of their website or by writing them c/o 7456 Driftwood Road, Smithers BC V0J 2N7.

Ottawa ON: I recently got my contributor copies of the new and improved Arc magazine in the mail (I had two reviews in the issue). Whatever issues I have with Arc (and I have plenty), they are at least doing a considerable amount of work, including the "poem of the year" contest (now ten years old), the annual Diana Brebner Prize, and the monthly "How Poems Work" feature on the website, that they took over when The Globe & Mail dropped the feature. Even more impressive, watch for poems to reappear on Ottawa city buses, as last year Arc took it upon themselves to restart the one-off known as Transpoetry that happened in 1999 (the new version to appear in February); apparently a number of people have already been notified that their poems are soon to appear throughout the OC Transpo system.

Featuring a new design for their winter 2005 issue, #55, Arc still leans more toward the formally conservative than I, personally, am comfortable with (but what the hell), and the issue even sports a review saying good things about Carmine Starnino's collection of essays (in my mind, the essays were like The Passion of the Christ -- you walked out of it with exactly the same opinion you walked in with; essays as spirited as his, I think, should be attempting more than that; I might not always agree with John Metcalf, for example, but his essays have made me rethink a few things…). Still, the issue is thick with reviews, something that seems less and less prevalent in Canadian Literature, especially where many of the journals seem to be concerned, and every fall, Arc always tries to review as many of the poetry books published in the Ottawa area as possible, including a feature review of the books shortlisted for the annual Archibald Lampman Award (for best poetry book by an Ottawa area writer).

The issue features, among other things, a poem by Ottawa writer Sylvia Adams, winner of the fourth annual Diana Brebner Prize, awarded to an emerging National Capital Region poet who has yet to publish in book form. It's good to see Adams get this kind of recognition, finally. Adams has been writing for years, and was director of the TREE Reading Series, ending her run way back in November 1993, and is currently a member of a number of writing groups around town, including the Ottawa-based Field Stone Poets. Judged by Michelle Desbarats, the honourable mention was Dilys Leman. The issue also features "Four Cantigas from O Cadioro" and "a preface to come" by Montreal poet Erin Moure, poems by a multitude of writers across Canada (and beyond) including Suzanne Hancock and Christopher Doda, as well as some love poems by former Ottawa resident and current University of Toronto professor George Elliott Clarke.

I will tell you of my vow my
lovely 7 later when i have from you de-
parted. i had for you my beauty my lovely
but to die 7 i would have died but pining
That never would i see you werei.dead
7 because of this i died not.
Pining at how god gives you so much.
in appearance.7 in fine speech.
i wd die but for my own good.
i loved you 7 god makes me realize
That never would i see you thus.
Pining for the way you looked
i should have died if god wd pardon me.
and for your appearance so fine.
i wd die but awaken then.

Pining for you i should have died like this
7 pining for you my lovely i died not.

CXL! (150,1) [246] #262
Roy Queymado

-- Erin Moure

St. John's, NFLD: A lovely little hardcover collection of sixty-four pages, Stan Dragland’s small vignettes in Stormy Weather / Foursomes (Toronto ON: Pedlar Press, 2005) read almost as personal meditations, sliding easily between the essay and prose poem. Even Dragland’s more formal essays move through the personal, much like the essays by Calgary writer Aritha Van Herk, including (as he calls it) his “prose blues” piece 12 Bars that co-won the bpNichol Chapbook Award in 2003, and was included in his collection of essays, Apocrypha: Further Journeys (2003), part of NeWest Press’ Writer-as-Critic series. In many ways, Stormy Weather seems an extension of the work done in Apocrypha: Further Journeys, moving from topics such as kitchen music and the McGarrigle Family Album to the rituals of pool-playing and literature (Agnes Walsh and James Reaney) and “after September 11, 2001,” all set in his new home of St. John’s, Newfoundland, while still holding together as an extended elegy. “Look here, dear reader, I feel like hell but that hasn’t stopped me from writing this stuff. I’m writing this stuff even though I feel like hell. When have I ever had any more inspiration? Jack up the beanstalk, the legend of Mr. Iceberg – when have I surprised myself more? When have I been more surprised?” (Dry Bones).

From all his years of hard-won wisdom, Dragland brings us into the work through the filter of his own experiences, both emotional and intellectual, and often through the filter of music as well, not only through this collection of prose meditations / poems, but through Apocrypha: Further Journeys, and even back to his biographical first novel, Peckertracks: A Chronicle (1978). Stormy Weather reads as an elegy while talking of aloneness without being alone, writing about living with his books and his friends and his reading.

Broken into four sections of three pieces each (nearly as months and seasons), Dragland moves through such placement of people and place in his writing that it becomes hard to see it not shaped as a story he’s telling. Do you remember from the old Fat Albert Show (circa 1970s), when narrator Bill Cosby came on at the beginning and said, “If you’re not careful, you just might learn something before we’re through”? “And Agnes said to her therapist, who was really not grasping the problem, she said, ‘You can look out your window at the beautiful snow falling there, and just enjoy it, can’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well,’ said Ag, ‘I can’t ever look at that beautiful snow without having to search and search for words. I have to write it down.’ And he looked at her funny. Which gave her serious doubts. Was he the therapist for her? Which of course made me chuckle. You’d better write that or else I will, I should have said. But of course I’m a dab hand at keeping things to myself.” (Come All Ye).

(a variation of this review appeared in Arc #55)

Victoria BC: Continuing their own tradition of finely produced chapbooks is George Murray's A SET OF DEADLY NEGOTIATIONS, produced by Caryl Wise Peters' Frog Hollow Press. The past couple of years, since returning to Canada (Guelph, I think) from New York City, Murray, the author of three trade poetry collections, has been so busy with the BookNinja website that he started with fiction writer Peter Darbyshire, so it is good to see that the poems are still there, somewhere. An impressive weight to the collection (printed on a heavy stock, and large enough to have two signatures), it was originally promoted as a collection of sonnets; sonnets are a dangerous form. The past few years, I've noticed more and more poets writing in the form again, which by itself is interesting (I remember when late Ottawa poet Diana Brebner was one of the few writing them, back in the mid-1990s, before it became fashionable again, or the hidden sonnets of John Newlove), but such a form so worked and overworked, it can be difficult and more demanding to master (I think of Leonard Cohen working in lyric rhyme, and writing eighty or ninety verses before he works his way back down to four or five). Imagine: to write a sonnet you are suddenly in the context of every other sonnet written, from William Shakespeare, to Ted Berrigan's collection The Sonnets from the early 1960s (included in a new Collected Poemsout from University of California Press), to the chapbook ESP: ACCUMULATION SONNETS (BookThug, 2004) by Toronto poet Jay MillAr (although MillAr, as an example, worked pretty loose with the form) [Let's not forget the brilliant collaboration by Stephen Brockwell and Peter Norman, the best argument for the form]. Sure, structurally these are "real" sonnets, far more traditional. But to what end?

The John Newlove poem, "The Tasmanian Devil" (Groundswell: best of above/ground press, 1993-2003), is impressive because the fact that it's a sonnet isn't the first or even the second thing it tells you, but something you have to realize, after you've gone through the guts of the poem. It's a great poem first, and a great sonnet later.

It seems there are a whole bunch of these poets around, including Murray, Zach Wells, Peter Norman and various others, working in this whole "new new new formalism" thing I keep hearing about. Where do I keep hearing that? An issue of Cross-country from the 1970s with David McFadden and Ken Norris, writing new formalism. Was it even new? Was it even formalism?

THE BEAUTIFUL HANDS OF SKEPTICAL WOMEN

The beautiful hands of skeptical women,
the mouths of pursed disbelief. The dirge
interrupted, the broken pall: elegy's
need for repetition, weeping widows,

and other forms of calm continuance.
The ambulettes are full to overflow,
carpools of the gory, overrun
with flesh; the hospital doors have had enough.

The fear of contact, the need for touch.
Some women are always shivering:
light sweaters and arms across chests, chilled
even in the blood heat of August. Trace

in your palm what would permit each to die
or heal in private; what will be left to chance.

These are good poems, as Murray is a good poet, but they are not great. I want so much for them to be great. Impressive as a collection of sonnets, as a collection of poems I somehow find them less interesting. Of his three poetry collections -- Carousel: A Book of Second Thoughts (Exile, 2000), The Cottage Builder's Letter (M&S, 2001) and The Hunter (M&S, 2003) -- it was his second that I found most compelling. Murray has a good sense of craft and a fine ear, but he sometimes lets the craft take over, to the detriment of the poem. I like it best when he simply writes and isn't carving out a particular.

And I can't help but ask, why don't Frog Hollow Press chapbooks include biographical information about the author? Some of us actually like to know those things.

Frog Hollow Press can be found at their website, or by writing c/o 1758 Armstrong Avenue, Victoria BC V8R 5S6.

I haven't seen my copy of this yet, but am very excited. It was presented to George at a birthday party for him recently, & somehow he had no idea it existed until it was presented to him! Happy Birthday, George.

Announcing

71 for GB: An anthology for George Bowering on the occasion
of his 70th birthday; mostly new works by friends, writers, poets and artists

Its a great game ask 71 writers, some from out of retirement, each to step up to the plate and deliver a short text on the occasion of Bowerings 70th birthday. What will they do reach for some nostalgia out of the strike zone? hit a zinger back through the box? work the words for a base on balls? swing mightily for the bleachers? pop up right out of genre? agonize over the last strikeout? You wont want to miss this one.

--Frank Davey

Profits from this limited print run will be contributed to the George Bowering scholarship fund. The George Bowering/Poet Laureate scholarship is given to a student graduating from George's old high school in Oliver, British Columbia. The student must have a demonstrated interest in writing and be a bit of a pain in the ass. The first scholarship was awarded in 2004.

130 pages, designed and printed by Coach House Press
$20 Canadian plus shipping
order from jeanbaird@shaw.ca


That 1935 miracle churns poetry

that 1935 miracle herds words like cats

marvel oozing syntax rolling

stones and homeruns over country.

--Suzette Mayr, from Reflections of George (or George Bowering, That Cream Soda)

You can hear George everywhere. Go to a ballpark, hes shouting at the umpire; go to a pub, he announces TFP (Traditional First Piss); go to a party or a reading, hes the loudest man in the room. No kidding. You cant miss hearing him even if youre a whole block away, or youre driving by Nat Bailey Stadium with your windows down.

You know what that loudmouth side of him does? It creates space around him so he can write his heart out. He jokes off his worst so he can write his best. He can hit a poem out of the park, slam a paragraph over the infield, and land a chapter that looks so easy that the centrefielder catches it with grace.

No one can strike his writing out. Theres a George rhythm to his work and play. Friends and readers sometimes have to stretch to catch a joke, but theres no doubt Bowering has balanced his life so he can compose books. More books than hes had birthdays--not bad, eh? He catches phrases and creates lines or sentences with glee. Deep love and consciousness also. Consciousness is how it is composed.

--G. Maria Hindmarch

CONTRIBUTORS

Margaret Atwood, Endre Farkas, Roy Miki, Margaret Avison, M. A. C. Farrant, Cath Morris, Douglas Barbour, George Fetherling, Erin Moure, derek beaulieu, Brian Fisher, Susan Musgrave, Ken Belford, Dwight Gardiner, Ken Norris, Tony Bellette, Goh Poh Seng, Charles Pachter, Charles Bernstein, artie gold, P. K. Page, Reg Berry, Hiromi Goto, Stan Persky, bill bissett, John Harris, Greg Placonouris, Christian Bok, Steven Heighton, Meredith Quartermain, Michael Boughn, G. Maria Hindmarch, Peter Quartermain, Marilyn Bowering, Robert Hogg, Margaret Randall, Thea Bowering, Reg Johanson, Jamie Reid, John B. Boyle, Kent Johnson, Lisa Robertson, Di Brandt, D. G. Jones, Spider Robinson, Brian Brett, Lionel Kearns, Renee Rodin, Nicole Brossard, Robert Kroetsch, Stephen Scobie, Colin Browne, Patrick Lane, George Stanley, Leonard Cohen, Red Lane, Anne Stone, Victor Coleman, Jason LeHeup, Sharon Thesen, Wayde Compton, Billy Little, Lola L. Tostevin, Dennis Cooley, Nicole Markotic, Will Trump, Pierre Coupey, Daphne Marlatt, Chris Turnbull, Greg Curnoe, Mike Matthews, Kate van Dusen, Frank Davey, Suzette Mayr, Aritha van Herk, David Dawson, Steve McCaffery, Fred Wah, Stan Dragland, David W. McFadden, Chris Walker, Phinder Dulai, Don McKay, Victoria Walker, Paul Dutton, Barry McKinnon, Phyllis Webb, rob mclennan.

a question of translation:

This email arrived in my inbox today. I wonder if it's related to the brooha Zach Wells started, suggesting an award for Goran Simic?

Dear Friends

Robert Majzels and Erin Moure have put together a letter (included in the attachment) in the hopes of lobbying to the Canada Art Council to expand their criteria to recognize and promote the translation and publication of foreign works in Canada. If you would like to lend your name in support of this cause please write to either Erin Moure (emoure@ca.inter.net) or Robert Majzels(majzelsr@sympatico.ca).

thank you,
Oana Avasilichioaei

Hi everyone,

We just wanted to send you a copy of the letter (with a few tweaks and polishes), and signatures we mailed on December 1 to the Canada Council. People are still sending their names in support, and in about 2 weeks or so, we will send these names as well. Please do feel free to circulate the letter to others, and encourage anyone else who wishes to support these efforts to send us their name and location. Anyone can, of course, write directly to the Council, expressing their ideas on the issue.

It has been heartening to witness the passion and enthusiasm of so many writers, editors, and translators. We want to stress that our effort is but one of many, and that the question we all raise here has been raised for years. If anything comes of this latest effort, it will be first and foremost thanks to earlier efforts, particularly those of translators. Let's hope the timing now is right.

If nothing else, the response to our proposal and the list of names appended certainly demonstrate how strongly readers and writers feel about nourishing this work here at home, as part of our literature and place.

We will keep you in the loop, and we welcome hearing of any parallel efforts or comments that will help open the debate and keep it alive.

Thank you,

Robert Majzels, majzelsr@sympatico.ca

Erin Moure, emoure@ca.inter.net

Here' a draft of their letter. If you want to be included, send your name (and location) to either Erin or Robert.

Joanne Larocque-Poirier
Manager, Celebration 2007
Canada Council for the Arts

Melanie Routledge
Head, Writing and Publishing
Canada Council for the Arts

Dear Joanne Larocque-Poirier and Melanie Routledge,

Following my conversation with Joanne during jury deliberations for the Governor General’s Awards in English Translation 2005, I took up her suggestion to elaborate a proposal for extending Council support to Canadians translators working from languages other than Canadian English and French to translate non-Canadian authors into French, English or First Nations languages.

I first consulted poet and translator Erín Moure just last week, and as others caught wind of our initiative, we quickly discovered that many writers, editors and translators are as passionate about this issue as we are, and wanted to append their names. People seem to want to ally themselves to opening up this debate and doing something. The proposal breeds a lot of excitement.
As several people suggested I send the proposal to Melanie Routledge, I am including her as well at the outset.

We believe this initiative is crucial to Canadian readers and culture. It would not only contribute to diminishing Canada’s cultural reliance on American, British, and French filters here at home when we look outward to the world, but it would increase Canada’s contribution to cultural understanding and dynamism on the world stage. I look forward to hearing your response and any ideas you may have to bring the idea to fruition.
I’d like to thank Joanne, above all, for her encouragement.

Sincerely,

Robert Majzels
285 Spicer/West Bolton, Québec/J0E 2T0
(450) 243-1336/majzelsr@sympatico.ca

CANADIAN CULTURE: OPENING DOORS TO THE WORLD

In the years since the creation of the Canada Council, and thanks in no small part to its intervention, Canadian writing in both English and French has emerged from its infancy to become a recognized player on the international scene. Meanwhile, funding and support for translations of Canadian works between our two official languages has made possible a dialogue between English and French Canada and enabled writers in both communities to learn from and influence each other.

In our reception of world literature, however, Canada is virtually silent. Without the administrative support for translation of works by nationals from other cultures into Canadian languages and a Canadian context, we are attempting to sustain a national literature in isolation.

This is not to say that Canadians have no access to literatures of the world. However, because we rely on English translations from the United Kingdom and the United States, and on French translations made in France, we view the world through foreign glasses. We are letting these other cultures open the world to us. Those individual Canadian translators who take up the work of translating foreign works must do so without institutional support; Canadian publishers are barred from using block grant funds to publish those works; and our prizes and grants exclude them. We, in effect, force Canadian translators to “emigrate” their skills and work elsewhere if they want to publish.
By not taking measures now to support those Canadian artists in the domain of literary translation who are working to open Canadian culture to new and vital influences, to international works filtered through a Canadian – not an American, British or French – sensibility, we not only point them toward the border, toward leaving their country, but we attempt to maintain and grow our literature in isolation and, above all, we lose an opportunity to enhance Canada’s cultural dynamism by beckoning the world in, and welcoming it into our literature and our place and time.

Why are Canadians taking up the work of translating literature from foreign languages? Well, first of all, because we can. Thanks to decades of attention to the craft of translation, to university programs in translation, and to the large number of multi-lingual Canadians, and to immigrants bringing their literatures with them, we have in this country the talent and skills to locate international work and create high-quality translations that will find a home in our own literature, helping ensure its vibrancy, while also potentially having a market here and abroad.

Britain, France and the U.S. in fact produce very few translations from other languages; in 2004, for example, just 3.2% of all books published in English were translations. As far as translation into English is concerned, this is undoubtedly, at least in part, one of the effects of the globalization of U.S. culture, and of cultural myopia in the U.S. We cannot rely on our neighbour to the south to reverse this trend, and to provide us with access to the stories, rhythms, and sensibilities of other cultures and languages. Canada, with its tradition of building ties between different cultures and respecting minority languages, has a role and responsibility on the international stage to foster exchanges that allow different cultures to understand and impact each other.
By relying on translation that originates abroad, filtered through values and choices that are not necessarily ours, we impoverish our own literature and the world to which our young people have access. Canadian literature and society need this nourishment from other cultures. Without it our literatures are in danger of provincialism, and we cannot play a full role on the world cultural stage. Whether or not this is already happening in Canadian writing is perhaps a matter of debate, but it is still true that vibrancy will inevitably be lost without stimulation from outside.

The Canada Council has always known and argued that our Canadian idiom and culture differs from that of the U.S. or Britain. When our access to world literature is mainly via U.S. or U.K. incursions, we receive values, lexicons and angles that may not reflect ours. Translation is not a neutral activity; translations are also reading practices and, as such, are culturally and historically embodied, marked by the translator’s lexicon and values. Even as translation enriches, challenges and finally alters possibilities in the target language, Canadian translators read and translate from Canadian perspectives and into Canadian idioms (note the use of the plural here, for there is no question that local perspectives and idioms are heterogeneous). To preserve and develop the various idioms and cultures of Canada, we need to provide a Canadian context for reception of these literary texts from outside our borders. We need heterogeneous translation practices rather than the homogeneous language spawned by economic globalization.

This work of translation is already being done in Canada, unsupported, often unnoticed. Canadian writers are translating literature from Argentina, China, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Galicia, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, to name a few. However, this work is done under conditions of struggle, without access to institutional supports other writers and translators can take for granted, and is going largely unrecognized, and often unpublished in Canada, as a result. Translators are compelled to seek publishers elsewhere, meaning in the United States, thus finding themselves caught up in the vortex of the infamous brain drain.

Of course, Canadian letters do have a distinctive history already, with a rich variety of themes and forms, but these did not and cannot evolve in isolation from influences outside our borders. In the past, not surprisingly, such outside influences have been overwhelmingly British and American in the case of literature in English, and French in the case of Quebec. But other influences have also played a role. Who can imagine contemporary Canadian drama without the influence of Ibsen or Chekhov, Canadian prose without Kafka or Garcia Marquez, Canadian poetry without Neruda or Lorca? In the present historical moment, our contact with international experiences and approaches can and must be allowed to multiply. Our cultural tapestry can be made more vibrant by letting the world enter. In multiplying and strengthening our ties with the world and its literatures, we will all benefit, as writers, as translators, as readers, as a society united by values of justice and diversity. As well, other cultures will embrace ours more readily and recognize our distinctiveness. We would assume a more dynamic and fruitful place on the world stage, as our translations filter out into the world.

What measures can the Canada Council implement to remedy this situation, to foster translation from beyond our borders and invite new air into our literatures?

1. To begin with, Canadian literary publishers should be allowed to use a set proportion of their block grants (funding without which it is impossible to publish a literary book in Canada, especially books that open up practices apart from the mainstream) to publish the work of Canadians translating from languages other than English and French, and from works of literatures outside Canada by writers who are not Canadians. This major change can be accomplished without any cost to the Council, and with great benefit to the literature.

2. At least on a trial basis, the Council’s translation grants should be extended to cover translations from literatures other than Canadian French, English or First Nation languages, into Canadian languages, regardless of the citizenship of the original author, as long as the translator is a Canadian whose work is recognized by qualified peers. Finding readers to judge translation quality in any language will not be difficult in this country, thanks to the large number of multilingual writers and translators either born or immigrated here. It’s probably worth warning from the outset against the temptation of limiting or listing the source languages the Council would recognize. Such discrimination is dangerous and tantamount to making judgments on the relative value of different national literatures. If a recognized Canadian publisher is prepared to publish the translation in Canada, it’s not the Council’s role to question the source language, literature, or culture.

3. At some point, the Governor General’s Awards, Canada’s highest literary accolade, which seeks to applaud every type of literary production, ought to include a category for the translation of a foreign-authored work by a Canadian translator. We must find some way to recognize these translations, to applaud their existence, to applaud the craft and dedication and artistry of the translators.

Of course, the Canada Council is limited by the money governments make available to it. New programs must involve new funding, and not take from existing programs. But we do not believe the measures we are proposing would be all that expensive, especially in the initial period of implementation; the numbers of translations are just not that high, which is precisely the problem. Certainly, for Canadian translators, writers, and for Canadian readers, the potential return on such an investment makes it foolish to pass up. The loophole that refuses to honour the contribution of one sector of Canadian cultural producers – translators from international languages – will be closed, and our translators will feel welcome, not stifled, at home.
We believe the Council has a critical role to play in expanding the field of Canadians’ reading experience, and the time to act on this pressing need is now.

The following individuals have expressed their support for this proposal:

Phyllis Aronoff, Montréal QC
Oana Avasilichioaei, Montréal QC
George Bowering, Vancouver BC
Per Brask, Winnipeg MB
John Buschek/Buschek Books, Ottawa ON
Barbara Carey, Toronto ON
Lisa Carter, Toronto ON
Margaret Christakos, Toronto ON
Paulo da Costa, Victoria, BC
Mary di Michele, Montréal QC
Patrick Friesen, Vancouver, BC
Linda Gaboriau, Montréal QC
Phil Hall, Toronto ON
Beatriz Hausner, Toronto ON
JonArno Lawson, Toronto ON
Lazar Lederhendler, Montréal QC
Robert Majzels, West Bolton QC
Daphne Marlatt, Vancouver BC
Roy Miki, Vancouver BC
Jay MillAr, Toronto ON
A. F. Moritz, Toronto ON
Erín Moure, Montréal QC
Kenneth Mouré, Santa Barbara CA
Michael Ondaatje, Toronto ON
Susan Ouriou, Calgary AB
Sina Queyras, Brooklyn NY
Michael Redhill, Toronto ON
Lisa Robertson, Poitiers, France
Howard Scott, Montréal QC
Adam Seelig, Toronto, ON
Martha Sharpe, Toronto ON
Gerry Shikatani, Peterborough ON
Goran Simic, Toronto ON
Sherry Simon, Montréal QC
Carmine Starnino, Montréal QC
Nathalie Stephens, Chicago IL/Toronto ON
Luise von Flotow, Ottawa ON
Fred Wah, Vancouver BC
Zachariah Wells, Halifax NS
Paul Wilson, Heathcote ON
Rachel Zolf, Toronto ON
rob mclennan, Ottawa ON

new from above/ground press

a reissue of bpNichol's The True Eventual Story of Billy The Kid
with an afterward (below) by carl peters
(originally published in 1970 by Nelson Ball's influential Weed/Flower Press)

$3 (+$1 for postage; +1$ more & in US funds please outside Canada); payable to rob mclennan, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario K1R 6R7

also still available from above/ground press

bpNichol's KON 66 & 67 (for jiri valoch (2002)
originally appeared as GRONK number 1: series 2

only $4 (+$1 for postage; +1$ more & in US funds please outside Canada); currently $30 (outside Canada, $30 US) for 2006 subscription, including broadsides, chapbooks + STANZAS magazine (next issue: Sharon Harris).

bpNichol is the author of The Martyrology, a life-long poem of 10 books, including an opera; Nichol explored and experimented with every conceivable form -- he wrote children's books, criticism, theory and novels. A list of his major publications would include: love: a book of remembrances (1984), Zygal: A Book of Mysteries & Translations (1985), art facts: a book of contexts (1990) and Truth: A Book of Fictions (1993). He co-won the Governor-General's Award in 1970 for four books of poetry: Still Water, Beach Head, The Cosmic Chef, and The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid (the other winner was Michael Ondaatje for his collection The Collected Works of Billy the Kid).

carl peters wrote his MA thesis and doctorate on bpNichol, Kabbalah & the practice of the sacred; he is the editor of bpNichol Comics (2002). He is currently writing a critical study on Gertrude Stein's prose, and another on bill bissett for Talonbooks.

bpNICHOL'S THE TRUE EVENTUAL STORY OF BILLY THE KID: MODERN FICTION & THE DECAY OF HISTORY
by carl peters

Naming comes from seeing, or vision; it comes from sight and observation: "billy the kid was born with a short dick but they did not call him richard (1)."

In that same part we read: "they called him the kid because he was younger & meaner & had a shorter dick." This is an observation uv sorts; it is de-scriptive in a classical sense: "could
they have called him instead billy the man or bloody bonney? would he have bothered having a faster gun? who can tell."

Craig Owens, in "The Allegorical Impulse: Towards a Theory of Postmodernism," writes "[the Allegorist] lays claim to the culturally significant, poses as its interpreter. And in his hands the image becomes something other (allos = other + agoreuei = to speak). He does not restore an original meaning that may have been lost or obscured; allegory is not hermeneutics. Rather, he adds another meaning to the image. If he adds, however, he does so only to replace: the allegorical meaning supplants an antecedent one; it is a supplement" (205). The first untitled part of bpNichol's short epic reads: "this is the true eventual story of billy the kid. it is not the story as he told it for he did not tell it to me. he told it to others who wrote it down, but not correctly. there is no true eventual story but this one. had he told it to me i would have written a different one. i could not write the true one had he told it to me." Finally, nonetheless: "all other stories will appear untrue beside this one." Truth is a supplement uv the false. That is fiction.

1. "this is the true eventual story of billy the kid." So begins bpNichol's novel (or anti-novel, if you prefer). So it begins again: "eventually all other stories will appear untrue beside this one." The true and eventual story opens with a demonstrative: "this." "there is no other story but this one." Well, it really says: "there is no true story but this one" - the one you are reading - a supplement, remember. "true" and "this" are meant to go together. "this" one makes it the "true" one; the true one is this one. So the story goes.

2. The author doesn't have any answers, authors just don't, authors do. Emphasis on the verb. billy the kid doesn't have any answers either, he's just a character in this true story, like the author. Neither does the narrator have any answers. What is told is always going to be different than what is written down. What is told is also going to be different than what you're reading. That is history. Rumour & legend are faster than history. Truth resides in this. What is this, again? Right.

3. Gertrude Stein was bpNichol's great mentor; she loved that there was no such thing as repetition, only insistence, emphasis in that sense; readers didn't understand why she repeated a lot. The phrase "the true eventual story" of billy the kid is repeated at least 3 times in this short epical beginning - more if you consider its many versions and permutations. What does all this self-reference mean? It means that we are reading the true eventual story of billy the kid, and that the true eventual story of billy the kid is a reading, something made. Maybe billy the kid is an every-body sort uv character. Or, construction. i wonder if the true eventual story of billy the kid is another way uv writing the real autobiographical historical fiction uv everyone? Like i sd, allegory.

4. There are explanations. "billy was not fast with words so he became fast with a gun." "the true eventual (nice word, that, "eventual") story is billy became (nice word, that, "became") the faster gun." Gradually, billy the kid became the kid, the kid with the fastest gun - the kid who wasn't much for small talk, even tho he had a small, well. Did you catch the word even in the word eventual? That's interesting when you think about it. "this" story doesn't have a lot uv ups & downs in it, it's pretty flat as epics go. Even, even.

5. HISTORY plays a role in the novel, that's obvious. It is also a kind uv character. Of course it is. What makes history? How is history made? Time and place. There is a section in this true anti-epic novel and allegory that is about the town in which billy died. This is getting interesting even more. "this" true story of.

"history says that billy the kid was a coward." Legend, which is different than history, says that billy the kid was a hero. billy, the truth is, didn't take either all that seriously. How can you when they are the same and different? "rumour is billy the kid." That's probably true; this is the true eventual story of billy the kid after all. billy the kid, superman. Well. Or if he had had his portrait painted; if anyone could paint the true eventual story of billy the kid it would be Andy Warhol. Repetition as insistence is narrative; repetition as insistence as narrative is truth.

6. Craig Owens writes: "Allegory is consistently attracted to the fragmentary, the imperfect, the incomplete - an affinity which finds its most comprehensive expression in the ruin, which [Walter] Benjamin identified as the allegorical emblem par excellence. Here the works of man are reabsorbed into the landscape ["Place"]; ruins thus stand for history as an irreversible process of dissolution and decay, a progressive distancing from origin" (206). Remember what bpNichol, or the narrator, said: "it is not the story as he told it to me for he did not tell it to me. i could not write the true one had he told it to me." Naming, seeing and vision make allegory; reading makes allegory, too. They do not make history. There are too many holes.

7. billy the kid is meek in death. Eventually, and then he is not. "as he lay dying he said to the sheriff goodbye & the sheriff said goodbye. billy had always been a polite kid." 2 versions uv the word kid again; billy the ruthless killer with the fast gun and. billy the kid with the small. Now billy is in heaven. Observe the word even in the word "Heaven." Neat, eh? He's not off the hook yet! He's like God's brightest star. He questions God's authority. "if billy had had a gun he'd of shot god full of holes." Not fast with words, eh? Look again. Observe how many holes there are in that sentence. What does this say about the religious stance of this short epic anti-epic?

George Bowering sz that "Literature cant hurt you but reading can." i have always liked hearing that, even tho it establishes an artifical boundary between the writing process and the reading act. Barrie Nichol loved to tell stories; that made him the greatest story-teller uv our time; his stories are parables. Walter Benjamin: "This is the form in which man's subjection to nature is most obvious and it significantly gives rise to not only the enigmatic question of the nature of human existence as such, but also of the biographical historicity of the individual. This is the heart of the allegorical way of seeing" (cited in Owens).

Works Cited

Owens, Craig. "The Allegorical Impulse: Towards a Theory of Postmodernism." Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Ed. Brian Wallis. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984. (203-235).

a brief note on four American poets

For whatever reason, more of the American poets whose work have excited and interested me most over the past few years have been older men (Robert Creeley, Anselm Hollo, Ted Berrigan, etcetera) and younger women (see the piece I already did on New York poet Rachel Zucker). What do you think that's all about? What are the boys not doing? Anyway, here are four of them, in no particular order.

Pattie McCarthy, Philadelphia PA: I was immediately struck by the work of Pattie McCarthy when I first found some of her poems in an issue of the now-defunct Philly mag ixnay, a fraction of what would become her first trade collection, the unbelievable bk of (h)rs (Apogee Press, 2002). I later found a copy of her second collection, Verso (Apogee Press, 2004), and would recommend her work to anyone and everyone. A manual of how things should be done, the work in her first collection is electric, and even dangerous, writing not only a language of leaps and bounds but of a heart-wrenching music. A technician of stark, emotional thought, McCarthy matter-of-fact moves through all the dross and gets directly to the cut-throat heart.

indeed, the greediness
of it, its placement on the tongue :
antiphon. I'm aware of the changing

shape of my eyes, by hairlines.
a cauldron of bellies, legs
meeting under a barstool. my own

recently the more given.
your narrative in reprisal
is reversible. unpedestalled, still

illusory : the last sad office
pay. I think of how we might
simply walk out.

the syntax of the miraculous that
comes to pass at night, comes to characterize.
what we get as wholly unexpected.

the sum of my education, that
music the more brutal.
therefore or rather your sometimes sister.

-- "(p)salter," bk of (h)rs

I find interesting that in recent reviews, Ron Silliman talks about his amazement with recent books by Canadian poets, including those by Toronto writers Rob Read, Mark Truscott and Jay MillAr (the first I haven't read but the other two are amazing); becoming bored with American, where I'm of the opposite mind. Is it simply that we are so aware of our own models that we've seen it all before? Is it the newness that we love?

there isn’t enough blood in my veins to write my name.
[. . .]
agatha’s letters— inscribed on tiles, bells, amulets— against fire.

since I was born in daylight my mother said I’d never see anything worse than myself. however, it was the morning of the last day of spring, so with the solstice
I might get something yet. my grandmother from Cobh would not tolerate sheeogy
talk— she went to college to study piano (Bowling Green, 1919). nevertheless, she said
that since I was born on a Sunday there would be no cure for me.

-- from "piseogs," Verso

Lisa Samuels, Madison WI: When I first found some of her poems online I immediately knew that I had to publish some of them myself, eventually able to produce the chapbook “The Museum of Perception” (STANZAS #33, 2002; long out of print). An even denser language that McCarthy's, but with a different kind of electrical work, Samuels is the author of four other titles, including the chapbooks LETTERS (Meow Press, 1996) and War Holdings (winner of the Pavement Saw chapbook manuscript contest, Pavement Saw, 2003), and the trade collections The Seven Voices (O Books, 1998) and Paradise for Everyone (Shearsman Books, UK, 2005). She has also published an annotated critical reprint of Laura Riding’s Anarchism Is Not Enough (University of California Press).

Charity

The enormous room is full

it is empty

gas houses rise on a horizon
we are in it

through vamping the sound we

locate ourselves downside, the little man harboring
an opportunity inside his waist pocket, screens arriving faster
and faster

people are crowding their ideas, crowing with back wings unescapable
the woman is in charge temporarily, she thrills to it, walls collapsing

through this kind of displacement we

solve something or nothing, it is the same

woman standing to the side with no answers on her tongue
pushing out the skin with bankside cheeks

As she said in an unpublished (unfinished) interview:

I sometimes think of the title of one of my poems in The Seven Voices: ‘Refraction journal.’ That is to say my poems are usually transactions of more or less indeterminate beginnings (an urge to write, a line that starts me) that veer through various spatial imaginings, specific memories or observations, colors or sounds, rushes of frustration or enclosement, rhythms and so on. It is also sometimes the case that I write with specific incidents in mind, like with the poetry manuscript I am working on now, an extension of the kinds of poems I wrote for War Holdings. I hold an event in my mind, as though a narrative I don’t quite want to ‘tell’ since the newspapers have done that more or less, and I try to be there in slant images, or in the kind of breathing that took place (as I imagine it), or in documents or spoken or internal words, or sounds and shifts of body or intention. I did something like that when I wrote a few poems after reading extensively about the Rwandan massacres: some of those poems are explicit, or seem so to me; others are more muffled and generalized. Partly I don’t want to presume, but also I do want to presume, that I should put words in that place though I was not there.

Stefanie Marlis, Patagonia AZ: I've been quite taken with the poems in Stefanie Marlis' fourth poetry collection, cloudlife (Apogee), and recent poems in Fence magazine. I like the sparseness, and the spacing. There's a clarity to her allusion, her intimate histories; a resonance that doesn't need to be understood to be felt, in a small collection of brief bitter storms.

her kelpie's side torn
my landlady's mended fence
now she worries when the javelinas
come up from the creek
how will they go home?
neighbor family
bivouacked on the lawn
for meteor shows
may hear their spliced hooves
cross the open-air theatre
outside my moon-proof
icy venetian blinds

-- "desert blinds"

Jennifer Moxley, Orono MA: After her first two collections of poetry, Imagination Verses (Tender Buttons, 1996; reissued since by Salt) and The Sense Record and Other Poems (reissued by Salt), comes a new one that pre-dates the previous two, her Often Capital (Flood Editions, 2005). Made up of two sections, the poems in Often Capital were originally published in chapbook form before her two trade collections, as the chapbooks The First Division of Labour(Rosetta, 1995) in an edition of fifty copies, and Enlightenment Evidence (Rem Press, 1996), in a first edition of twenty-five copies, and a second edition of one hundred.

the rumor, it isn't merely a fond perception

but the celebration of manly kind,

underground living made you monstrous Leo, a forgetter,

notorious evasion floats above

fucking day to day, the supposed hours flourish

they are stone-like in memory,

while opening words and walks display evaporation

hence the lady's journal, hence the letter entreating,

for even I don't remember my overt life anymore

erector though I was, and you quiet hours of dawn

where is your confirmation now except

in everyone else's mouth
-- Enlightenment Evidence

In many ways, everyone who writes should write postscripts the way she has, in her "afterward," talking about the constructions and origins of the two sections; writing an essay on her own work, with some memoir thrown in:

I began with a question: "how given chorus / a she complete"? My "she" meant to stand for women in general: i.e. how sing a fully realized female life? But this "she" also stood for myself and the Muse, she who must act as chorus for so many hidden thoughts. To question the way "she" exists---in history, in language, in love---brings the mirror of "he" always to the fore. Therefore the restrictions that tie the "he"---to history, to language, to love---inform these poems as well. "In Firenze, in Greece // Variations end on David's earth," referring here to Michaelangelo's David, the perfect classical male body; those erect nipples---"sad culvers"---give no milk, have no known purpose, and yet arouse us nonetheless. I had noticed the contemporary dearth of representations of female desire, especially towards the male.

Brick: A Literary Journal, Toronto

Another of the few journals I try to pick up regularly is Toronto's BRICK: A LITERARY JOURNAL. If anyone asks, yes, the journal and the press were connected at one time, with the press founded by poet Don McKay (originally under Applegarth Follies (publisher of McKay's Long Sault) (I think there might have been another name in there too), which then merged with Nairn before it became Brick Books), and the journal (originally "a journal of reviews") by Jean McKay (Don's first wife) and Stan Dragland, where they eventually merged for a while, and eventually split again.

From writing in our time: Canada's Radical Poetries in English (1957-2003) : "Began as Nairn books, edited by Stan Dragland. Don McKay became an editor and co-publisher in 1977; Truus Dragland and Jean McKay also helped with editing and production. Became Brick books in 1981 'to foster interesting, ambitious, and compelling work by Canadian poets, both new and established.'" (p 10-11).

At some point, the reins of the journal were taken over by Linda Spalding, who has been running since with Michael Ondaatje (Linda's partner) along with more recent additions Esta Spalding (Linda's daughter) and current publisher Michael Redhill (no relation), along with the even more recent Michael Helm (they should just change the name of the magazine to Michael). The press, Brick Books, publishing poetry for thirty-some years, is still run by Dragland and Don McKay, with an editorial board made up of five or so regular readers, including the two of them, as well as Jan Zwicky, Gary Draper and Barry Dempster. The day-to-day aspects of the press are run out of London, Ontario by the most lovely Kitty Lewis, Don's sister. (There, are we all caught up now?) (Though I've probably got most of that wrong; I expect I'll get a number of emails correcting me, but at least you get a rough sense of it all.)

Working a journal of reviews international in scope, the most recent issue, #76 (winter 2005) is new in my mailbox over the past week, and includes pieces by Dionne Brand (The sweet science in Toronto), Esta Spalding (An interview with David Sedaris), David Sedaris, Oliver Sacks (A friendship with Thom Gunn), August Kleinzahler (The 2005 Griffin Poetry Prize speech), Geoff Dyer (W. S. Sebald and Thomas Bernhard), Maya Jaggi (An interview with Toni Morrison), Darren Wershler-Henry (A certain type of dog), William Faulkner (Unpublished advice from the master), Fanny Howe (For Robert Creeley), Damian Rogers (Four poems), Eleanor Wachtel (An interview with Tomás Eloy Martinez) and the late Norman Levine (A letter to Brick and an early short story). Brick magazine has always served as an intelligent journal of pieces on writing and writers, an almost general-interest (literary) publication, that holds standards of interesting and compelling writing over fame, and manages to take poetry as serious as it takes fiction. The pieces by Norman Levine are a particularly compelling tribute, as publisher Redhill explains in his introductory note:

"As readers, we always want to do what we can to make an underappreciated writer better know, preferably in his or her lifetime. Norman Levine, the Canadian short-story writer, had always been known as a "writer's writer" but deserved much more. Two issues ago, we published a tribute to him in the form of a couple of drawings by Michael Winter. The drawings lovingly depicted houses Norman had once lived in. We sent him a couple of copies of the magazine, and on June 8, he wrote to us directly saying he had an idea: Would we like to reprint the first short story he ever wrote, something called "A Sabbath Walk," which appeared in 1956 in an Indian literary magazine? We received this letter on June 20, six days after Norman Levine died.

With the co-operation of Levine's daughter Cassie Flint, we have done just what he suggested, and we present in this issue of Brick Norman Levine's first published short story, a work that has all the hallmarks of his later writing: his sense of time and place, his grasp of human nature, and his quiet, understated style. It was the first gesture in a luminous writing career, and we hope that it will inspire our readers to seek out Norman Levine's books ― such as Canada Made Me and Champagne Barn ― and pass them around. We could not write back to him, so this is our reply, with thanks to him for the suggestion." (p 8)

What I've always admired about Brick: A Literary Journal was not only its seriousness, but its range, and its not-so-seriousness, including strange drawings and photographs, and regular pieces by apologist Cecily Möös (real or imagined, she has now apparently moved on to Denmark). The previous issue, for example, had a moving tribute to the late American poet Robert Creeley, as well as one of those irregular but most brilliant personal essays by Toronto writer Kent Nussey (when will someone be brave enough to collect all of these essays, which have been appearing in Brick here and there for years, into a collection?).

new poetry workshops at Collected Works Bookstore, Ottawa

i've just booked a series of dates, if anyone is interested, for the next set of poetry workshops im running at Collected Works Bookstore, Wellington & Holland, Ottawa, happening Wednesday nights (around both bookstore & my wacky schedules): January 25, February 1, 8, 22 & March 1, 8, 22 & 29.

$200 for 8 sessions. 7pm to 9pm. for information, contact rob mclennan at rob@track0.com or 613 239 0337

an eight week poetry workshop, the course will focus on workshopping writing of the participants, as well as reading various works by contemporary writers, both Canadian & American. the end-goal of the course will be a collective chapbook publication. participants should be prepared to have a handful of work completed before the beginning of the first class, to be workshopped.