Putting your poetry into the stream of culture and literature takes either guts or naivety. Maybe both. But one does it because one must.
It’s an art, it’s a science, a compulsion and derived from pulse.
115. Trout Stream Creed by David Carpenter (Coteau Books, 2003)
(found at a bookstore in Saskachewan)
Write about what you love. There’s an argument for that. I find the notion of fishing horrific. Sports fishing is the same as game hunting as incomprehensibly callous but these poems are glowing. The love comes thru. Some of the poems are about caring for dying parents, coming to realization of his father’s mortality. I’ll be out of here tomorrow, says his father. The son thinks release, optimism, renewed life-wish and only considers later that his father meant acceptance of death. Which is understandable since there’s that decline in late life then a sudden improvement which is a hallmark of the zag before the end instead of a new better era.
You can tell when a writer is in their passion, not talking for platform or audience. It is written with a love and skill.
As father in the hospital again and may not come out this time, it becomes grounded in observations such as relating dad’s life attitude,
A thoroughly enjoyable book for craft and content.
116. Nicholodeon: a book of lowerglyphs by Darren Wershler-Henry (Coach House, 1997)
(found in library catalogue)
How curious vispo tributes go to men. Are there that few practioners? What would tilt to disproportionally male? Is it a generational thing related to socialization of females chatter of their lives and males speak more externally? Or about who mentors who and males happened to give access at a certain time and place?
This tribute to bp of using his elements in a letterpress tray particularly popped, as well as breaking the form of the book by having a fold out sheet. Wow, in a land of tidy bound pages it seems extravagance more typical of hand-made press items.
Structured as tributes, an insiders kind of book. I wonder what some people would get out of it.
117. Grey Owl: The Mystery of Archie Belaney by Armand Garnet Ruffo (Coteau, 1996)
(found in library catalogue)
What an enjoyable read, quite compelling as it went thru his life in a chronological memoir. I’ve seen a few books by Ruffo but this is my hand’s down favourite.
I too read of Grey Owl as a figure in my childhood and didn’t know he wasn’t native. A complex figure rendered from poems from various points of view to build a complete chronological memoir. It reads like a biography and unfolds like a mystery wondering what turn his life will take next. It hooks forward like a whole unit more than individual poems although each poem stands alone. I liked the research aspect and how thing from his journal were actually from his journal, like this,
We don’t have to make stuff up. There’s a wealth of out there to draw on.
118. Riveted: The science of Why Jokes make us laugh, movies make us cry, and religion makes us feel one with the universe by Jim Davies (Palvgrave & McMillan, 2014)
(seen at writers fest)
Everyone should read this. I was skeptical about it being pop sci with a lot of hook but no follow thru but it was chock full of neat little facts. It’s almost manic energy keeps up without being too all over the place. It took a while to adapt to the jumpiness of the almost stream of consciousness text but it is clustered by subjects. Still, I wish it had an editor to corral it a little more, but as the text and studies show, to work more to understand leads you to believe the text more.
Fascinating stuff.
OC and religion. Better than his talk at Writers Fest focussing more on how vs. people believing in UFOs.
119. Our Days in Vaudeville: 29 Collaborations with Stuart Ross (Mansfield Press, 2013)
(bought at an Ottawa small press fair)
Because it’s collaboration, it’s a different beast than some. Some poems went back and forth by word, or line, or couplet or quatrain. It has the feel of a exquisite corpse. Sometimes they jazz together. Sometimes it feels like two writers competing and resisting one another like a jazz improv I once saw.
Sometimes its reeling to sillyland like this,
Non-sequitur jumps is my mother tongue.
Favorite one has a sense of humour in playful pokes against one another as the two styles were collaged:
It has a meta level that reminds me of Michele Provost’s work in and against text.