I read novels. Not all novels but. In the exceptional one each sentence hooks forward and stands fresh in perspective.
For example,
“One of the doctors said that his boot had probably saved his life, and she felt like kissing it, although in all the confusion, no one knew exactly where it had ended up.”
Barbara Kingsolver’s The Bean Tree.
For example
Before me an older man of about my height but with fully twice my mass in his upper body. His torso was the size and shape of a bass drum
the piano mover arrives in T.E. Carhart’s The Piano Shop on the West Bank.
Low density sometimes distresses me. In sources unnamed there are other sentences.
Beyond narrator predicting, then it playing out as predicted, events happened then being recounted to another character the same way, and antecedent problems, so many redundancies and padding drive me just a little batty.
She gave her name to one of the doormen manning the entrance.
She stepped out the door and looked up at the blue sky outside.
She looked down at the terra cotta floor tiles.
She took in the cast plaster medallions and dentil on the ceiling.
She wondered if the little pink pill she swallowed was to blame.
She shrugged her shoulders.
She cut a piece of cheese and put it on a cracker, which was cold from the fridge.
She took her place at the end of the line.
The bell over the door jingled as the door shut after her.
redacted
I could pass over typos easier. Likewise poetry can state and explain the obvious but published ones are more likely to have been edited.
Over at Via Negativa where the Poetry Blogging Network happens there are interviews using Bhanu Kapil’s famous “12 Questions“. Chen Chen uses “12 Questions” for a number of poems in his new book: Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency
Who was responsible for the suffering of your mother?
What is the shape of your body?
How will you live now?
What are the consequences of silence?
How will you/have you prepared for your death?
What would you say if you could?
Who are you and whom do you love?
What do you remember about the earth?
How will you begin?
Describe a morning you woke without fear.
Tell me what you know about dismemberment.
Where did you come from/How did you arrive?
Word went out Thursday that he was moving to palliative. By now you’ve probably heard of the quick decline of Robert Hogg and our loss of him on Sunday.
I never did the math that he was 80. He was busy in the 60s with that zeitgeist of poetic excitement. He had a young energy. Even cancer’s “trauma age” didn’t impinge as much as on some people.
Death has offended and hurt many again. Its timing is never good. In the last few years, Bob was redoubling his efforts to get more of his work out before people while he could. Love while you can, write while you can and support while you can seemed to be his driver.
He was like electricity, always there at the ready when you reach for him. He had a calm gentle humour, plain spoken and as if amused by life.
It’s funny seeing the tributes coming out from so many and from so far and yet not surprising at the same time. He had the rare gift while talking to you of making you the only person in the room.
Song The sun is mine And the trees are mine The light breeze is mine And the birds that inhabit the air are mine
Their voices upon the wind are in my ear
Connexions by Robert Hogg, (1966)
Robert was a professor of English Literature and Poetics at Carleton University for 38 years, where he nurtured a new generation of Canadian poets and writers. After his retirement in 2005 he devoted his attentions fully to writing and milling. He published five books of poetry and six chapbooks. He also edited a comprehensive anthology of Canadian Poetic theory. His work has appeared in over 70 publications throughout the world.
He also founded and operated Mountain Path Organics, an organic farm, stone ground flour mill and natural food distribution company in Eastern Ontario.
Long time ago, knowing he was an organic farmer, and took grain to mills, somehow I believed he was the Bob of Bob’s Red Mill. Course eventually I realized South Mountain wasn’t in Oregon.
Reading at Peter F Yacht Club, 2019.
Probably close to a decade ago I did a reading at a library. The organizer and the librarian came, and some curious person from within shelves popped out. And eventually 3 others, one being Bob.
It was snowy outside but the warmth of the room is not how many attend. A great reading has a sense of community and attention. It had that.
Afterwards I put out all I had published on a table and Bob carefully looked at each item, sampling, weighing, as I stood, on tenterhooks, would I actually sell something? He looked at me and said, “I’d like to take…” [dramatic pause} “one of each.” What an encourager!
I was glad he got to see the tribute chapbook to him that rob organizeed.
but then, there’s this other small perfection of his
doe nestled into the shape of the ditch
Stevenson’s Some of the Silence
Not a hair out of place in this small awarenesses. Nothing extraneous and yet they reach wider than their concrete content to an unravelling, the unavoidable entropy, and to the rightness, the perfect complementary fit of adapting.
