Commentary: HOKEY CAHOOTY

Think of pastorale, the divine bucolic. Spenser's Arcadia, Virgil's Eclogues, Theocritus' Idylls: rolling pastures, prancing lambs, satyrs playing pan flutes under fleecy clouds. This is my take on the pleasures of .... the countryside. It's the second poem down: you may have to scroll.

Thanks again to Nth Position for publishing it and "North Hatley" above.

Some editing tips

Courtesy of CE Chaffin, via Shann Palmer:

In this enterprise some things occurred to me that may prove helpful to others in the editing process. Here goes:

1) Always suspect the ending. You may have to strike one or more lines. Watch out for dilution, for over-explication.

2) Suspect the first stanza. Often the first stanza is like starter fluid; it’s only there to get the car started, it’s not really part of the car.

3) Transitions from the first to second and from the penultimate to the ultimate stanzas are frequently muddled. Make sure the substance is clear.

4) The title can almost always be improved. Taking a phrase from the emotional climax of the poem is reliable and works well. To make the title a comment on the poem is also good. To make the poem dependent on the title for its full meaning is very good if you sin neither in obviousness or obscurity.

5) Unless you have a very good editor, time is your most valuable ally. Give a bad poem five months in the drawer and when you take it out again you’ll most likely put it out of its misery. With truly inspired poems it’s tempting to go off trying to get the perfect draft the first night, but that way lies madness and robs a poem of its juice, which is hard to recoup. Remember: with each revision you lose a little more juice. Beware an over-reified poem; it is the mark of too many revisions. Such a poem reads unnaturally, perhaps even stilted; it has been sucked dry. (This made me think of Auden for some reason.) ;-)

In other words, beware, beware, beware! But beware of being to wary; that's wearying.

Digital Maoism

The hive mind is for the most part stupid and boring. Why pay attention to it?

The problem is in the way the Wikipedia has come to be regarded and used; how it's been elevated to such importance so quickly. And that is part of the larger pattern of the appeal of a new online collectivism that is nothing less than a resurgence of the idea that the collective is all-wise, that it is desirable to have influence concentrated in a bottleneck that can channel the collective with the most verity and force. This is different from representative democracy, or meritocracy. This idea has had dreadful consequences when thrust upon us from the extreme Right or the extreme Left in various historical periods. The fact that it's now being re-introduced today by prominent technologists and futurists, people who in many cases I know and like, doesn't make it any less dangerous.

-- Jaron Lanier, "Digital Maoism"

Boosting Poetry's Profile by Ordering Locally

In response to what I wrote about online ordering a couple of posts back, my friend and fellow-writer Elise Moser, who happens to work as a publisher's representative, passed on these thoughtful remarks on the advantages for poetry's profile of ordering through local bookstores rather than on-line -- considerations that had frankly never crossed my mind (pls. excuse the tiny font: formatting it small was the only way to transpose an e-mail into blogger without having line-breaks all over the place):

...I wanted to mention, having seen you post on Amazon and other online
book ordering services, that there is always also the option of ordering
through a bookstore here in Montreal. That has two advantages. One is,
they pay the shipping and you avoid customs charges. The other is that
when you make a special order it affects their view of the book market.
So for example if they get some special orders for a specific title or
author they might order some of those books for their shelves. And if
they see a lot of orders come through for, say, poetry books, they are
more likely to order poetry titles for stock. This is especially
important for a subject like poetry, which is underrepresented in
bookstores due to lack of knowledge on their part, but also due to the
perception that no one buys poetry. I wouldn't say you should give up a
good price or some other advantage, but if it's all the same, why order
from U.of Chicago direct when you could raise the visibility of poetry
at Paragraphe, or Bibliophile, or the McGill Bookstore? And this would
have the benefit for you, in future, of making poetry books more
available and, potentially, therefore even broadening the market for
poetry. Just a thought.

Montreal ExpoArt

Monika Aebischer, "Balancing Ritual", 2006

On Sunday, my partner and I went to the Montreal ExpoArt Festival exhibition in Old Montreal -- four big tents of "emerging" contemporary visual artists from around the world. It was fun strolling among the stalls, seeing what people were doing or trying to do. It's sad to report that of the 100-odd artists featured, only two or three struck us as really quite interesting, and of those the work of Toronto artist Monika Aebischer captivated us the most. Her work has both a decorative appeal and symbolic depth, and we spent a fair amount of time talking with her about the themes and methods of her compositions. What can't be captured here is that all her works are covered in a smooth, thick resin that makes them look like figures trapped in amber and -- by extension -- in time. More can be found on her website. Others, well -- we saw ones who had their technique right down, but left us cold with facile or overly conventional conceptions; others that were downright bad (whatever that is -- won't go into that today). It seems everyone, including Monika, was striving to achieve a certain unique but appealing artistic signature or "look", a recognizable, repeatable and (hopefully) marketable "brand". In a world of multitudinous influences, where any sort of juxtaposition is possible, this kind of self-imposed limitation seems stifling. But that's what people are doing these days in all the arts: one-note Johnny's riding one-trick ponies. In the world where everything's happening all at once more than ever, that's one way to get noticed. I guess I'm feeling snarky today... I think, though, Monika's work is really good.

New Books

After my summer stint at Bishop's U. my bank account runneth over ... into my credit card. As a gift to myself for my hard work, I've finally gotten around to ordering some poetry books that have been on my list, a number of them at least, for some months now:

Crush by Richard Siken
Saying the World by Peter Pereira
Some Ether by Nick Flynn
Selected Poems by Robert Creeley
The Naomi Poems: Corpse and Beans by Saint Geraud (AKA Bill Knott)
Practice, Restraint by Laura Sims
The Little Ice Age by Maureen Seaton
Strike Sparks: Selected Poems by Sharon Olds
Rose by Li-Young Lee
The Orchard by Brigit Pageen Kelly

+ some resources:

The Call to Create: Liberating Acts of Imagination by Linda Schierse Leonard (which I reviewed here... gave away my first copy, this is a replacement)
A Poet's Companion by Kim Addonizio (figured a poet always needs one)
Dictionary of Poetic Terms (formerly Longman Dictionary of Poetic Terms) ed. by J. Myers, 2003 ed.

Some tips on ordering books through the internet: prices can vary wildly. Shop around! Since I live in Canada, my default dealer is Amazon.ca: Orders are made in Canadian $, most of the books are shipped within Canada (I avoid therefore possible customs charges), and orders of $39 or more are eligible for free shipping (if you choose books that fit within their free shipping criteria.) Books that on the face of it look a lot cheaper from American dealers often turn out to be more expensive with currency conversion and international shipping rates... and take longer besides. Sometimes though a particular book can be ridiculously expensive from Amazon.ca that is far cheaper from say, Abe Books or Powell's. Case in point: the one (used but clean) copy of Call to Create on Amazon.ca was $58 CN; the copy in similar condition I ordered from Abe Books was $11 US + $6 shipping for a total cost of about $20 CN. The one 1988 issue of Dictionary of Poetic Terms on Amazon.ca was a whopping $88 Can. I got a brand new 2003 issue direct from University of Chicago Press for $23 US + $7 shipping -- maybe $36 Canadian. So far in my bookbuying I haven't been hit with customs charges (they can be steep!). Customs charges don't apply on items valued at less than $20; the few items I've bought for more have slipped under the wire anyway. Fingers crossed for this batch!

One obvious trick I've just recently copped onto: when you find an interesting book, put it in your shopping basket but don't go ahead and buy it until you make a quick check with other dealers first.

Abe Books has proven to be an amazing source for rare and hard-to-find books. How else could I have laid my hands on a decently priced 1968 copy of Bill Knott's Naomi Poems? (More will be written about that remarkable poet in later posts.) Powell's is good too. Does anyone out there have any other suggestions? How about suggestions for poetry books written since, say, 1995?