Currently Reading

I’m reading slowly, flipping between…
Greek Passages by Peter Riley (Shearsman, 2009) (p. 76, re-reading)

Another monastery, 17th century crucifixes with minutely detailed wood carvings speaking of immense skill […] The speech that actually speaks, in words, pitches, arms, numbers, thing. In minutely carved olive-wood. / A road-side stall selling honey at a remote corner in the hills, in the mist. Try it, he says, taste it. A malt-like streaked honey with an addictive aroma. It is from those trees over there, he says. Maybe spruce. / What is to be done? // Ancient Sykion. At last. Acres of foundation ruins among brown grass, on the slope from a low ridge. The clear picture, the better articulation, the linear spread. Lord it is lonesome among poor remnants of success, struggling to recognize the world.

Glenn Gould by Mark Kingwell (Extraordinary Canadians, Penguin, 2009) (p. 37)

Is music the sum total of its performances and recordings, the always-in-progress lifetime of a piece as it moves from gestation to debut to interpretation and perhaps canonization? […] re-investing music in time, seems by the same token, to make it a prisoner of temporality.

400 Years of Log Fences by Eugene L Fytche (self-printed, 2008) (p. 10)

in the beginning the settlers fenced the crop land and let the livestock run free. Since everyone had a surplus of bush land, there wasn’t much occasion to quarrel over a few acres of land that might not be cleared for years and fencing of the property lines had lower priority than the improvement of the cropping land.

Letters to Unfinished J by Sheila E Murphy (Green Integer, 2003) (p. 41)

Sleep, although plush, cannot be recognized within the scrapbooks scented like libraries dressed in fine feathers of dust

The Gargoyle’s Left Ear: Writing in Ottawa by Susan McMaster (Black Moss Press, 2007) (p. 85)

But I’m part of that government. I’m a citizen of Canada. Now, for the first time in a long freelance career, I’m also a civil servant. What my government does is done by me. […] Slowly [we] resume our talk of strategies and deadlines, efficiencies and costs. Twelve civil, public servants together around a table.
no thirteenth one to blame
in this saintless room

Expressway by Sina Queyras (Coach House, 2009) (p. 11)

Flick of wrist, tug of tether, blast of rock,
What melting of rubber, what extension of self, what
Squeak of progress, what eye, what level, what
Parcelling and flattening, what neatly bundling,
What legacy? What future? What expressway? What
goat trail on steroids

Speeding the Work: The Effect of Women’s Poetry Blogs and Listservs on Equal Representation (digital paper by Tom Speaker)

black women writers in mid-nineteenth-century Philadelphia were also finding ways to be represented more through friendship albums, which were hand-made books containing immaculate penmanship, proper grammar and spelling, and respectable prose regarding the private and the political, all of which touched upon topics such as abolition, womanhood and motherhood (Armstrong 80). Poetry, short stories and journal entries were the mediums through which women chose to tackle these subjects, and the books were considered a way of building bonds between African-American communities, allowing black elite women to maintain social boundaries that geography would otherwise prohibit(Armstrong 82).

Interview with Shannon Tharp

AH: When you’re closing out whatever’s closing in, what are you doing to the out? […]
ST: I’m ignoring day-to-day activities that take up a lot of my time planning lessons, reading case studies, responding to e-mails, etc. I’m backing away from clutter. That said, I don’t ignore what’s outside of me. I’d really like to know what’s outside, what it is. Writing allows me to address that uncertainty and respond to it.

Haiku Canada Review, edited by LeRoy Gorman, (Haiku Canada, Oct. 2009) (p. 9)

a mourning cloak
this worn out
city woods
– Grant Savage

The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow (Vintage, 2008). (p. 189)

[re: reactionary firings] No matter what the difference in ability among the CEOs, they were swamped by the effect of the uncontrollable elements of the system, just as the differences among musicians might become unapparent in a radio broadcast with sufficient noise and static. Yet in determining compensation, corporate boards of directors often behave as if the CEO is the only one who matters. […] once we think we see a pattern, we do not easily let go of our perception.

Deleted World by Tomas Transtromer, translated by Robin Robertson (Enitharmon Press, 2006) (p. 17, re-reading)

Suddenly, something approaches the window.
I stop working and look up.
The colors blaze. Everything turns around.
The earth and I spring at each other.