I was pondering, perhaps as usual, Poetry “shouldn’t be” about feelings, but doings.
Poems can be feelings and stories, but can extend past that. It can about what the poem does, not what it says.
Yet, here’s the new stumbling block, when I ask after friends I don’t seek to learn about doings as an end of curiosity but, if anything, an indication of their well-being/feelings. Hm. What does that indicate?
Do I agree with myself? When I take on caring for someone, or that sense of bond takes itself onto me, I want to enter their shoes, see what and who they like more favorably than before. All the nodes that light up for them are relevant for me as things to notice, perhaps appreciate if I can. I extend myself into that positive. What they hate or fear I don’t throw myself into. I notice but interests are housing of the mind and feelings are just fickle wind that blows thru its windows, even when its an abiding prevailing wind. I don’t trust feelings, mine or anyone else’s. I’m skeptical.
Even if motivations derive from feelings, are the plumbing system for the public fountains of one’s life, I have a hard time with the idea that people can believe in their feelings any more than tooth fairies.
I believe in gut instinct. That is another thing. It is a spinal, nerve column awareness of the data too big to parse to language. It is animal brain as body understanding threat or safety. It is not feelings anymore than an amoeba or slime mould, fish or ferret moving away from too much heat.
Gut instinct isn’t rendered into the superstructure of decorated thought that is poetry. Gut is movement, towards or avoidance. It is yes, no, uncertainty. But feelings are more for rococo phonetics. Or thoughts are.
Is the core of my problem of finding emotion-centered poems boring just bad implementation, B-movie type kludge, being told not led to be shown? Some of it.
Some is concern about the person wasting time, perfecting words when they could be addressing issues in life. What about the primacy of provocative stabs as emotional content? Yes.
There’s also the concern of valuing of emotional wings as good copy that trumps “anti-climatic” things like coming to ones senses, ruminating, countering oneself. It is a blurt channel that doesn’t admit much range. That’s part of the problem I have with “evocative” poems.
There’s the sidelining of mind, body, and subtly, sometimes. There’s the rewarding emotion with the driver’s seat when the vehicle of thought should be impounded for impaired driving, either excessive speed or wildly weaving or both. There’s what the hepped up emotions do the writers who do that to themselves, get repercussions and claim it as art when its just ineffective therapy because its in the box of entertaining others like a sitcom where characters are not permitted to develop. That would be being a control freak and not letting people work out methods they find acceptable for themselves but trying to override their choices by my disapproval. Part of that is sympathy at seeing people thrash. Part of that is naivety at believing that people believe in their own dramas and are unaware that they are playing make believe.
There are all those drawbacks.
But then there’s the matter that information that matters has some significance of attachment. Perhaps one has a fondness for gutturals or fricatives, but more likely there’s a personal tie. You care about the poem more if you care about the poet.
It’s TMI if it’s from a source that I have no connection with. Then it is an imposition. The emotional poetry coming from someone I’m in the cheering team for isn’t an imposition. It’s an extension of normal communication.
“Poems are not, as people suppose, emotions—those come easily and quickly enough. They are experiences.” said Rilke when talking about letting accumulation arrive. Silt settles and salient is visible.
Too many poems I read are easy, in the sense of superficial readings without probing that get applauded when they are a first draft survey at best.
Perhaps there’s a tacked on profundity. But it’s not a matter of depth in the transcendent sense so much as some people can knock those off the way others have a knack for rhyme and others for wit. The audience oohs. That’s no proof that something has been achieved anymore than the silence that greets a list poem that resists the idea of smooth or poeterly grace.
What’s the problem of emotional poetry? It asks me to care when I’m tapped for caring. I have an appetite for words and ideas but not the needy baggage that asks me to care when it doesn’t attempt to look after itself.
Part of the appetite for poetry is based on what is needed in life? Unrefined noise I’ve got. Things refined to the Nth degree, considered inside and out on level of ideological effect, poetics, role in society, effects in sound and rhythm, a story that’s been told, not so much.
Sometimes I want to be a matchmaker. I see one poet with flare and skill but duller than dirt stories. The person’s got nothing. I see a poet with verve from a great story but falls flat and kills it with the wording. If I matched them into a collaboration, probably, some of the time, by luck of Darwinianism, the dull story would find dull words more than the scintillating styling would map to a even better story, but still….
Maybe the what or the how doesn’t matter. Some people I’d be happy to have read a phone book.
I want communication from people I want to communicate with. Not from people who are narrow-spirited or mean, nor avoidant people who keep things conveniently loftly or edgy. Personality and mood makes more difference than content.
You become the company you keep. If someone is profoundly uncomfortable in their skin, do I want to grow in that direction? If someone only prioritizes crisis as a thing worth mentioning and seeks fire and conflict by preference, does that vicariously cover off any need I have for that, or encourage me to think in those terms of drama-seeking missals rather than solutions?
What traits do I want to cultivate? Humour, well-being, stamina, resilience. What would that poetry look like? Or would it only be a matter of observer and not the observed?

Saw what Brenda’s reading so here’s my this week.

Wow, it took me 3 years to get to The Factory Voice by Jeanette Lynes. And that’s with hearing it at First Edition, and being impressed at the distinct vivid dialogues. But then, I’m hesitant with novels. So many pages. But then when reading collected works instead of single collections anyway, what’s the difference?
Stanley Kunitz: The Collected Poems. I’m almost thru it. This is the 3rd book, I think, that I’ve read of his. There’s an openness I like. Him being a good person shines thru.
The Great Enigma is the 3rd book of Tomas Tranströmer that I have. It had been on my wish list for a long time and finally I caved. He has a density of image. I’m a little surprised at his vehemence here, comparing the collection plate to a levitating beggar’s cup and, (also p. 122)

Inside the church: vault and columns
white as plaster, like the plaster bandage
around the broken arm of faith

Making Handmade Books has been on my wish list for a while too. Unlike a lot of book craft books this isn’t appliques onto covers but diagrams and examples of different ways to put a book-idea together.
Ackerman’s One Hundred Names for Love we’ve been picking away at slowly. It’s not ideal for reading aloud, yet not adverse either. The sentences are medium length. Longer sentences strip the voice. Shorter give more room for swallowing. It can be picked up and set down at any time because although it goes roughly forward in time, it has a lot of flash forwards and flashbacks as well.
Fabric Sewing Guide. The 3rd or 4th sewing/knitting manual I’ve got. But this has such rich details of so many kinds of fabrics and their use. Maybe I’ll get closer to altering my own clothes in Refashion Co-op fashion.
And still working my way thru Year with Rilke and other online readings, like Me, Medusa by Amanda Earl and the poems for Walrus Magazine’s people’s choice.

A free 10-week ModPo course using PennSound, the Kelly Writers House, and Jacket2’s PoemTalk. That’s a 20-minute overview of the course by U of Penn Prof Al Filreis.

I describe the course chapter by chapter, and then I introduce several denizens of the Kelly Writers House on Penn’s campus.
These are the people you’ll be seeing in the videos, collaborating with me on close readings of our poems.

The first link includes where to do registration. It suggests the course load is 5-8 hours per week. The course begins on September 10.

Founded by David O’Meara and Chris Swail in 1999, Plan 99 is entering its 12th season. All readings take place at 5:00 pm at the Manx Pub (370 Elgin St).
Saturday, September 29th: Don McGrath and Michael Lithgow

Donald McGrath grew up in a fishing village on Newfoundland’s Avalon Peninsula, leaving at nineteen to study at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He has been a longshoreman, factory worker and waiter, and currently works as a translator in Montreal. He has published the poetry collection, At First Light (1995) and has just released The Port Inventory with Cormorant Books. His poems have appeared widely in periodicals, and one was selected for the longlist Web anthology of this year’s Montreal Poetry Prize.
Michael Lithgow was born in Ottawa and settled in Vancouver in the mid-80s, where he was active in community radio and television, theater, freelance writing, and poetry. Before returning to school to pursue studies in communications, he worked as a paralegal in First Nations law. His poems have appeared in numerous Canadian magazines and in Cormorant’s anthology, Undercurrents: New Voices in Canadian Poetry. He currently lives in Chelsea, Quebec, where he is finishing a Ph.D and teaching at Carleton University. Waking in the Tree House is his first collection.
Saturday, October 27th: Fiction Cabaret with Pasha Malla, Missy Marston & C.S. Richardson
(An Ottawa International Writers Festival/ Plan 99 event)
Pasha Malla burst onto the literary scene in 2008 with the publication of his debut short story collection, The Withdrawal Method, which won the Trillium Book Award and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize, and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His new book, a novel, is called People Park.
Missy Marston’s writing has appeared in various publications, including Grain and Arc Poetry Magazine. She was the winner of the Lillian I. Found Award for her poem, “Jesus Christ came from my home town.”The Love Monster is her first novel. She lives in Ottawa, Ontario.
As an award-winning book designer and now author, CS Richardson has worked in publishing for over twenty years. He is a multiple recipient of the Alcuin Award (Canada’s highest honour for excellence in book design) and his work has been exhibited at both the Frankfurt and Leipzig Book Fairs. The End of the Alphabet, his first novel, has been sold in ten countries. His second, The Emperor of Paris, tells the story of an illiterate Parisian baker who falls for a bookish art restorer.
Sunday, October 28th: Poetry Cabaret with Matthew Tierney, Marcus McCann & Nyla Matuk
(An Ottawa International Writers Festival/ Plan 99 event)
Matthew Tierney is the author of two previous books of poetry. His second, The Hayflick Limit, was shortlisted for a Trillium Book Award. He is a former recipient of the K.M. Hunter Award, and has placed his poems in numerous journals and magazines across Canada. He lives in Toronto. His new book, Probably Inevitable, is published by Coach House Press.
Marcus McCann is a poet and journalist. He grew up in Hamilton. From 2006-2011, he worked at Xtra, where he held various posts including managing editor of both the Toronto and Ottawa editions. He’s the author of two books of poems, Soft Where and The Hard Return, and a number of chapbooks. He was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert and Robert Kroetsch awards, and in 2009, he won the John Newlove Award. He now lives in Toronto.
Nyla Matuk’s first book of poems, Oneiric, was published in 2009 by Frog Hollow Press. A second, Sumptuary Laws, has just been published in 2012 with Signal Editions. Poems have appeared in The Shore magazine, Misunderstandings magazine, ARC Poetry and PRISM International. Her poems are also online in the Archive of Poets at Greenboathouse Books. Short fiction and essays have appeared in the literary journals Event, Room of One’s Own, Descant and in Alphabet City’s Food and Trash issues.
Saturday, November 10th: Debut Fiction with Scott Fotheringham & Alice Peterson
Scott Fotheringham used his experience as a research scientist in New York to write this novel. He holds a PhD from Cornell University in molecular genetics, and a BSc from the University of Guelph. He left Manhattan and a life in science to live in the country. He now lives and writes near Ottawa, after a sojourn near Halifax. The Rest is Silence is his first novel.
New Zealander-Canadian Alice Petersen was the 2009 winner of the David Adams Richards Award, offered by the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick. Her stories, published in Geist, The Fiddlehead, Room, and Takahe, have variously been shortlisted for the Journey Prize, the Writers’ Union of Canada competition, the CBC Literary awards, and the Metcalf Rooke Award. Petersen lives in Montreal with her husband and two daughters. All the Voices Cry (Biblioasis, 2012) is her first collection.
Saturday, November 24th: Debut Poetry with Carey Toane & Stewart Cole

Carey Toane is a journalist, poet and librarian-in-training. Her poems and translations have appeared in Canadian journals and anthologies since 2007. She is the co-founder of the mechanical journal Toronto Poetry Vendors, and the original host of Toronto reading series Pivot at the Press Club. Originally from Alberta, she has also lived in Finland, the Middle East and New York City. She is currently taking a master’s degree in library and information science at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. Her first collection of poetry, The Crystal Palace (Mansfield Press) is out this fall.
Stewart Cole’s poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Fiddlehead, Prism International, Quill & Quire, Books in Canada, and Studies in Canadian Literature. His chapbook Sirens was published by Cactus Press in 2011. He grew up in the Rideau Valley south of Ottawa and has since lived in Victoria, Montreal, and Fredericton. He now lives in Toronto. His first book is Questions in Bed (Goose Lane Editions, 2012).

Influency 12: A Toronto Poetry Salon now has registration open. At $249 + $139 texts, that’s a deal.
Curriculum:
Sept 19 — Welcome, Book Distribution, Introductions


Sept 26 — Aisha Sasha John performing from The Shining Material & Gimme Your Little Quiet | Helen Guri on The Shining Material & Gimme Your Little Quiet


Oct 3 — Sandra Ridley performing from Post-Apothecary | George Elliott Clarke on Post-Apothecary


Oct 10 — Dave McGimpsey performing from ‘Lil Bastard | Aisha Sasha John on ‘Lil Bastard


Oct 17 — Helen Guri reading from Match | Sandra Ridley on Match


Oct 24 — Angela Carr performing from The Rose Concordance | Nicole Markotic on The Rose Concordance


Oct 31 — Nicole Markotic reading from Bent at the Spine | Dave McGimpsey on Bent at the Spine


Nov 7 — Mark Goldstein performing from Form of Forms | Angela Carr on Form of Forms


Nov 14 — George Elliott Clarke reading from I & I | Mark Goldstein on I & I


Nov 21 — Students deliver their Wonderments