On Sept 5th I dropped in at Spoken Word Paris on their first week of return after the summer break. It was a wonderful atmosphere. Poets from all over read sang, spoke, recited or performed in English, French, Spanish, and Italian. I tried to photograph all but missed some.

Audience banter caused laughter. Was this during the good news report? And Canadian ex-pat Troy’s surrealism caused laughter. At one point there was a goat’s gramma coming out of a bellybutton biting its way out with an organ grinder?

Some people recited, such a this rap dropped. Suzanne Allen read from her new corrupt chapbook Verisimilitude with doggie companion wanting to be nearby, and comment on poems thru the night himself.

There were serious parts of reading Amira Baraka’s chapbook (with light assistance). The reader implored for more than the personal poem of individual lives but recognizing and being active in political realities.
Valentino and troupe did a 5-minute mystery theatre of A Crime of Passion.
Others played guitars and sang and had their CDs on hand.

Marie did a Red Stripes cover.
Mo gave an announcement about 100,000 poets for change. As much as I see about this, I’m still not under what they want to change. Change is good as an operating principle? Now there are 600 readings in 60 countries September 24th. It seems open-ended. Like poem-in-your-pocket-day or Random Acts of Poetry, it is about “reconnecting” poetry and the general population in solidarity.

(On left) Mr. James reading aphorisms of Kafka at random until the bell dings. (on right) Regular host David, who also runs Zero magazine, read off his screen.

Quite a few people off screens and handhelds, and this one of the few times I was reading off of paper.

At one point there was a clown!

Paul from Hamilton Arts & Letters was the feature. Ashley was asked to read Jeff Seffinga’s poem again, this time as if on amphetamines (and my camera did this. the suggestible hardware.). Other poems by Sima Rabinowitz and James Deahl were read by nominated volunteers.

Lisa Pasold was up. I read from been shed bore. And Eric who rocked the dino and read love poem about desire running across the rooftops.

There was a varied duckie atmosphere.
Considering what made the atmosphere so pleasant I can notice a few things: it was return week and reunion so people were especially happy to see one another again. I’m more used to readings like this.
People drifted in and out according to how much energy they had. The room was full, standing room only and smoking could happen just outside the door. People had freedom to move. (Unlike 3 reading series in Ottawa, the person at the mic or front did not call out or shame anyone who came late or left early, making so none of that disincentive to come at all.)
What else worked? The 5-minute time limit was respected. 3 hours can move along like 20 minutes in small parcels. People do their thing and get on with it.
People seemed to be interested in or respectful of each other’s ideas. No conversations or moans at the back. In Ottawa it seems common that if the speaker isn’t speaking your language you can talk among yourselves so people who do speak the other language can’t hear either.
It was wonderful to hear other languages. Even when I went into bookstores, things are categorized by subject, presuming people who want to know about, say, Goethe, may read German, Italian, French, English or whatever language they have the books in.
There was a mix of styles. No ghettoization there either. It keeps it more lively to have serious or whatever. Lovely refreshingness to that.
Spoken Word Paris is back on the 19th then goes back to the normal weekly in October.

An old issue from College de Pataphysique (a magazine going since 1953!), a back issue of Dans la Lune, some Issa, some translations done by Philippe Denis of Dogana, and a chapbook with poems by Jean-Pierre Chambon and paintings by Marc Negri put out by La Petite Fabrique.
And proof of my will, or perhaps, of my budget, is that I didn’t buy the entire store. Gorgeous things at Tschann Libraire. This is why people can love the physical object of the book not only the collating of ideas as a mechanism for transferring.

Writers Fest’s new season is launching momentarily with the first 8 events announced. There’s even a cookbook launch. I’m not a celebrity-chaser and haven’t had a tv in about 8 years so Chef Michael Smith being a Food Network chef isn’t on my radar, but still it’s nice to see them branching out from affirming the great ideas that pollution is bad, torture is bad and wasn’t the Trudeau era grand. They usually do a variety of ideas and forms, from political life to graphic novels, memoirs, comedy writing, (especially during Transgress), philosophy, science talks and books for kids.
There’s a literary start this fall season with The Cat’s Table with Michael Ondaatje, hosted by Joseph Boyden, on on-stage conversation on Tuesday, September 13, 7:00pm – 8:30pm at Ashbury College. Ondaatje is one of those pedestal Canadians. Judging from the swoon-factor I saw at play the last time Boyden was in town, some smaller-scale Beatlemania, you might want to get tickets early.
In the same time slot, Margaret Christakos and Phil Hall are at Tree. Both consistently give above average presentations as exceptionally skilled thinkers and communicators. The new season’s readers are announced.
There are 4 other competing literary events that evening at Bywords calendar. Luckily Voices of Venus has moved to Wednesdays. The start of their new season will be the 14th at 7:00 pm at Venus Envy, 320 Lisgar St.
Literary Ottawa is hopping, as pointed out in an article cross-posted at OpenFile and Apt 613.
Out of town, Eden Mills is nearly underway. And westwards starting around the same time Blue Heron Books in Uxbridge Ontario starts their new workshops series with James Dewar who then forwards best of to Anansi’s poetry editor.
P.S. A whole other full set of September listing including proposals for literary forums at Quillfyre and there’s Writescape, an October writing retreat.

HARVEST MOON: A NIGHT OF POETRY A-PLENTY ( fundraiser for the League of Canadian Poets) hosted by Terry Ann Carter and Kevin Matthews, Saturday evening, September 17th , the Cube Gallery, 1285 Wellington West, 6:30 start for apple/ pumpkin pies and social, $5.00 cover

Out of towners include: Ian Ferrier, Eric Folsom (poet laureate of Kingston) and Catherine Kidd.
A round robin reading/performance for local poets include: Susan McMaster, Blaine Marchand, Sandra Ridley, Sergio (Hyfidelik) Gerra, rob mclennan, Ian Keteku, Stephen Brockwell, Ronnie R. Brown, Shane Rhodes, Claudia C. Radmore, Brandon Hint, Rhonda Douglas, Colin Morton, Rona Shaffran, Sarah Muse.
Call Me Katie (Monty Reid’s band) will be there!
The first ever “immortality auction” will be held to help raise funds for the League. Ian Keteku and Monty Reid will be auctioned to the highest bidder for a commissioned poem. If you have a birthday, an anniversary, or any event you want to celebrate, bid on a poet to write a poem for you.
(There will be another “fundraiser” in the spring to accommodate more League poets).

This notion of heart and mind combined for a poetry in balance…Mind and heart are horses hitched that can’t have one bolting ahead or the harness breaks. Or maybe just the metaphor breaks.
From field to table…Some plates have in combination the balance and some dishes contain within themselves all the elements that keep the integrity of ingredients. Some are reductions and purees to one flavour. But is it then more of a garnish or ingredient than an end product? One person could write a whole shelving unit of hermetically sealed preserves and not dabble outside the pop of lids.
Starting from near the beginning of notes, I’m dipping back into this:
The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates by Xenophon, (p, 64 in Kindle form, 430-350 BC)

[Socrates] counted it a kind of impiety to consult the oracles concerning what might be numbered or weighed because we ought to learn the things which the gods have been pleased to capacitate us to know.

That would make sense. Not throw oneself on the mercy of miracles or gods or signs or anyone, but work things thru rationally if you can as the first course of action.
Does the shadow need to be in the poem? Or by raising the cutout of the bright poem, the world provides the counterpoint. Happiness does seem like satire to the heavy-hearted. But that is not up to the poem but that part of the poem which the reader brings to it.
Happiness by Susan Griffin [via Shawn Lemay]

Happiness. I am not used
to this. (There is always
something wrong.)
Look at it
the bright early tree.[…]
For so
many years I hardly
had time to know such
moments. They struck me
with such intensity
I would have said
battered me open.

Poems can have that direct inside-to-inside punch to them. I have a weakness for overlooking anything in novel or short-story form. Ideas are too dilute. Points take too long to get to. The barbs of the story all work too often in one direction. I get restless. Some value poems only that show the order behind the chaos. A mood of lightness without being slight is hard to achieve.
Johanne Wolfgang con Goethe, Erotica Roman, from poem XXI:

You men are aroused in the passions by obstacles and excitement;
I prefer to go slow, savoring pleasures secure.
Is it not bliss to exchange tender kisses containing no dangers,
Sucking into our lungs, carefree, our partner’s own life?
That is the way our long nights of enjoyments are passed. We listen,
breast against breast, to the storm pouring down rain in the wind

Poems of Passion by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. I read it on Kindle but it lost the illustrations and the line breaks. Better at Gutenberg.
I like how she turns back on herself, negating what a previous poem said, arguing in verse along the course. I give myself entirely and displace my art, then recants in Individuality, “it [my art] cannot be drained, dissolved, or sent/ Through any channel save the one He meant”

for while I love you so,
With that vast love, as passionate as tender,
I feel an exultation as I know
I have not made you a complete surrender.
Here is my body; bruise it, if you will,
And break my heart; I have that something still.
You cannot grasp it.

Friendship after Love,

So after Love has led us, till he tires
Of his own throes and torments and desires,
Comes large-eyed friendship: […]
Is it a touch of frost lies in the air?
Why are we haunted with a sense of loss?
We do not wish the pain back, or the heat;
And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete.

Love and loss are a natural fit for music and language. Some subjects and attitudes are just not poetic, I’ve been told, but not believed it. But why read what is not constructive to mind and heart? Is life too easy and comfortable within so one needs to add discomfort from without? Some messages are undercut by a pleasant musicality. How to jar and yet maintain attention? What would be the line between deconstructive and destructive?
Tussi Research by Dieter M Graf (Green Integer Books, 2007) is a dark read, given content of Nazi occupation, mass murder, masturbation, curses and swans. It’s held together not by content or narrative but technique and tone. The 2nd chapter of the book is 14 pages (28 as facing pages are in German) of sustained pivot like a soap opera of enjambments. p. 65-66

Red, a land
scape with pro
paganda, raging
voice’s little box.
Were the fiancée
a she-bear, fig
uratively speaking,
one wouldn’t dis
member others so.
If she got horny
at the sight of left
handed natures that
forget bodies,
gas them: that’s
what right
wing lout’s do, the
fiancée doesn’t come
along there, either.
That’s all too
much to ask.

The poem, record player goes from mandrake to “Eleven/leftover boys work/ to the bone, field” to the longhairs’ dilemma and “Something /isn’t ticking right in //us. Predecessors/” eventually wending past, “Attached/to the trees,//polished human/ skills. Enough// about Sunday walks.” to the death of King Kong.
It’s frenetic in a way. It dazzles the brain to read each line twice or three times as it stands alone, or clusters with the next line or couplet and reconfigures. Yet it maps well to the content of anger, discord, distress and rebellion against violence and fascism. It doesn’t pad around it concluding in form that there is a good cause behind, a comforting meaning. It records and recoils.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs

Sometimes, when my master found that I still refused to accept what he called his kind offers [to become his lover in a house he’d set up], he would threaten to sell my child. “Perhaps that will humble you,” said he.
Humble me! Was I not already in the dust? But his threat lacerated my heart. I knew the law gave him power to fulfil it; for slaveholders have been cunning enough to enact that “the child shall follow the condition of the mother,” not of the father […] Always it gave me a pang that my children had no lawful claim to a name. Their father offered his; […] I knew it would not be accepted at their baptism.

So although the parents are freely associating, loving, one is a woman owned and would not be released or sold and her children become the legal chattel of her master even though born to free man and living in the household of their great-grandmother who was also free. It’s underscored repeatedly how the slaves were a rainbow of tones, some more educated and literate than the slaveholders.
In her story she swings between brutal episodes in graphic details and the good times such as when the sister of her grandmother’s former slaveholder came by to visit her old friend:

She often came to take tea with us. On such occasions the table was spread with a snow-white cloth, and the china cups and silver spoons were taken from the old-fashioned buffet. There were hot muffins, tea rusks, and delicious sweetmeats. My grandmother kept two cows, and the fresh cream was Miss Fanny’s delight. She invariably declared that it was the best in town. The old ladies had cosey times together. They would work and chat, and sometimes, while talking over old times, their spectacles would get dim with tears, and would have to be taken off and wiped.

She’s artful in storytelling, going thru suspense and relief and suspense and harshness, pure description and interpretation. It’s a dancing sort of text.
Skirrid Hill by Owen Sheers (Seren Press, Poetry Wales Press, 2005).
Some reading leads me to give up on humanity and some, like this one, reminds me why its worthwhile to be literate and/or not a complete hermit.
His poetry silences me like a cathedral. He astutely observes and keeps in balance, mind, heart, language. There’s a silk scarf in the wind against the sword sort of strength to his poetry. p. 18, excerpted,

Swallows
The swallows are italic again,
cutting their sky-jive
between telephone wires,
flying in crossed lines.
Their annual regeneration
so flawless to human eyes
that there is no seam
between parent and child.

Upon opening the book at random, the part shows the whole. Anyone who could write this could write other that I would like. And while my system for marking lines, that dot in the margin, or for the entirely, a dot to the side of the title, it is well-dotted. It’s not very excerptible. It builds slowly, carefully set up and then deepens not deep-ends.
In Four Movements in the Scale of Two, part II, it is hard not to expand outwards and quote in entirety for each being the best bit, but a bit, p. 31

with the brushstrokes of your gair,
adding depth with the impression of your breasts
against the sentence of my spine
and texture of your tongue
crackling close in my ear,
making me realize once more that bodies, like souls,
only exist when touched.

So, what can we said after that? Not only me but everyone can stop writing now? We can just read his book on a loop from now on. But of course, if we did, we would exclude some aspects of life, make ubiquitous shapes from the infinite small miracles with our yawns. We need beauty as we need air and water and nutrition but we also need resistance and some stumble to progress thru, something to oppose and something to be out of reach for satisfaction.
Ormstads who is unexcerptible lead to dom sylvester houédard who said,

“Words: hard and lovely as diamonds demand to be seen, freed in space; words are wild, sentences tame them. Every word an abstract painting, read quickly in a phrase words get lost: in concrete, eye sees words as objects that release sound/thought echoes in a reader. Concrete poems just ARE: have no outside reference; they are objects like toys and tools, jewel–like concrete things-in-them-selves”.

Sometimes we don’t have to make it into chains, just a loop. Does word need use per se or only to exist? We have use and can extend ourselves and expectations into the words. We need a bit of mess. A bit compressed and a bit perplexed.

The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne, (1928)
But whatever his weight in pounds, shillings and ounces,
He always seems bigger because of his bounces.
‘And that’s the whole poem,’ he said. ‘Do you like it, Piglet?’
‘All except the shillings,’ said Piglet. ‘I don’t think they ought to be there.’
‘They wanted to come in after the pounds,’ explained Pooh, ‘so I let them. It is the best way to write poetry, letting things come.’

On the Decay of the Art of Lying: Essay for discussion[…] offered for the thirty-five dollar prize* by Mark Twain (1885) [*did not take the prize]

An awkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth. […] None of us could live with a habitual truth-teller; but thank goodness none of us has to.[…] Courteous lying is a sweet and loving art, and should be cultivated[…] What I bemoan is the growing prevalence of the brutal truth. Let us do what we can to eradicate it. An injurious truth has no merit over an injurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered.

What a delightful man, if you’re in the mood for him. Like Dali I suppose. Strong personality yet stating arguments that should be aired. The myth of honesty as a candy gun that can’t kill. And other such rot.
Upcoming:
6×6, Issue 23 (Ugly Duckling Press, April 2011)
Ventrakl by Christian Hawkey (Ugly Duckling Press, 2010)