Hype of another sort

Click on the image, and you can see it quite big and clearly, praise quotes and all. One quote makes me out to be a perfect innocent. The other compares me to The Incredible String Band, Nick Drake, and Paul Simon. Complimentary, as well as complementary. But it's also rather disconcerting, being perceived as a perfect innocent surrounded by ghosts.

Hafiz: A Crystal Rim

Hafiz

Rumi -- as translated by Coleman Barks and others -- is, according to this broadcast which aired a few weeks ago, the current best selling poet in the Western world, with Hafiz not far behind. Apparently, copies of Barks' The Essential Rumi have sold in the hundreds of thousands. According to Daniel Ladinky, translator (or version-maker) of Hafiz's "The Gift", the appeal of these writers is obvious: unlike so much poetry in the west, which has been singularly focussed since the early 20th C. on the shadow side of life, these 13th-15th C. mystics express unstinting joy, life, union -- all badly needed balm for the vexed and troubled spirit of this new millenium.

On the mornings when I chant -- yes I do indeed chant, it is my "shower on the inside" -- I like to read
daily reflections -- inspirations, quotes -- by not only
the likes of Nichiren Daishonin or Daisaku Ikeda, but also mystics from other traditions: Rumi, the Tibetan buddhist Sogyal Rinpoche (his Glimpse by Glimpse I recommend), and others. For the past few months I've been reading a poem a day from The Gift, after the Lotus Sutra recitation & I begin my Nam Myoho Renge Kyos. Many of these readings are indeed inspirational. Others, downright trite. Others a curious blend of brilliant and saccherine. Here, for example, is one:

A CRYSTAL RIM

The
Earth
Lifts its glass to the sun
And light
Is poured

A bird
comes and sits on a crystal rim
and from my forest cave
I hear singing,

So I run to the edge of existence
And join my soul in love.

I lift my heart to God
And grace is poured.

An emerald bird rises from within me
and now sits
on the Beloved’s
Glass.

I have left that dark cave forever
My body has blended with His.

Now I lay my wing
As a bridge to you

So you may join us
Singing…

I assume much of the music is lost in the translation. It has to be for this poet to be great. (There is even considerable controversy as to how much of Hafiz is left in these freewheeling "versions" by Lewinsky -- even if the book bills them as translations.) But the poet in me says, whatever the language, Hafiz -- or Ladinsky -- could have done well to cut all the lines after the first two stanzas: aside from that emerald bird, all they represent is cosmic syrupy yuk yuk -- and all that abstract God-talk is implied (indeed contained) in the beautiful images in those first two haiku-like stanzas.

But I love those first stanzas.

Three or four weekends ago I actually set elements of the above to music. At first I was only going to use those first stanzas --but then I found myself integrating other elements to complete the song. As a mystical song, it works well -- it doesn't sound forced or precious, like so much poetry put to music. To put it briefly , I got rid of the God-talk, and let the images speak for themselves. The song words go like this:

A CRYSTAL RIM

The
Earth
Lifts its glass to the sun
And light
pours in

A bird
comes and sits on a crystal rim
and from my forest cave
I hear singing....

(Instrumental, poss. arrangement: ethereal voices singing in harmony)

Now an emerald bird rises from within me
and sits
on the crystal
Glass.

I have left that dark cave forever
My body has blended with His.

Now I lay my wing
As a bridge to you

So you may join us
Singing…

Notice I replaced "is poured" with "pours in". Well, even with just nylon string arpeggios as accompaniment, the passive form Ladinsky used sounds like "is bored". I still feel there's a certain awkwardness in the final lines -- but song has gone over well with listeners, discerning friends + folk at the cafe I play in once a week. The music of course is integral. Someday, maybe, I'll master the technology to post recordings. Whether this ends up being *crystallized* into a recording or simply, like bird song, disappearing into silence.... well, it has resonated well for me.

... couldn't help but set down some reflections on how silly last night's awards ceremony was. Here they flew the three first-place winners all the way down to Montreal to drink champagne and chat for half an hour with Eleanor Wachtel about how wonderful it feels to win the award, what got them started, what inspired them to write what they did, cite judges' comments, hear a couple of local musicians sing harmonies over strummed guitar -- and, they didn't even read excerpts from the work that won the award to begin with. (Unlike what the above hyperlinked PR indicates.) I hope if the CBC went through all that public expense they at least recorded the writers reading their work for broadcast next week. Even so...

P.S. They didn't.

The poetry winners of the 2006 CBC Literary Awards are, for first prize, Méira Cook for A Walker in the City and second, Kelly Nora Drukker for Still Lives.

Award winners' bios and the judges' praise for their submissions can be found here.

Congratulations to them all! I'll look forward to hearing their work on CBC Radio One's Between the Covers between 10:43 and 11 pm on weekdays next week.

STIFF COMPETITION

I just got an e-mail that made my heart beat a little faster:

Dear Brian Campbell,

On Friday February 23, 2007 at 8 pm, please join CBC Radio One's Eleanor Wachtel and special guests for the announcement of this year's CBC Literary Awards winners on CBC Radio One.

Prix littéraires Radio-Canada winners will be announced on the same day at 10 am on la Première Chaîne de Radio-Canada's program, Christiane Charette.

In the meantime, you can see who the nominees are at www.cbc.ca/literaryawards (in the "Shortlists" section.)

Readings of the winning entries will air on CBC Radio One's program Between the Covers during the week of February 26.

We hope you will join us on-air for this literary celebration!

The Awards Team

For a second I thought they had contacted me to tell me I had won.

Obviously, though, if they have posted the finalist authors' names, the winners have already been decided. (Before, they had only posted the titles... this is, after all, a "blind" -- I always find that a funny adjective -- competition). Here's the list, cut and pasted (red highlighting mine):

Poetry

(List of the 2006 nominees in alphabetical order of title)
A Walker in the City by Meira Cook
Active Pass by Jane Southwell Munro
Almost Postmodern and Nouveau Roman by Hector Williamson
Bending the Branches by Karen Bodlak
Canadiana by Gary Pierluigi
Cell by Cell by Catherine Greenwood
Crow by Cornelia Hoogland
Field of Gems by Brian Campbell
How To be Alone & Other Poems by Julie Bruck
Monstrance by Sarah Klassen
Nine On Nine by Rosalind Goldsmith
Over a Road's Broken Shoulder by Brenda Schmidt
Planning your Seascape by Jeramy Dodds
Sacraments for the Dying by Rachel Lindley
Sicilian Journey by Rosemary Clewes
Speak Softly Low One by Tammy Armstrong
Still Lives by Kelly Nora Drukker
The Art of Poetry by Joel Giroux
The Confession of the Cod Fishermen by Harold Rhenisch
The House of the New Self by Jen Currin
The Inertial Observer by Christopher Weagle
The Light Gatherer: Mattie Gunterman's photos by Catherine Owen
The Policeman's Wife some letters by Marina Endicott
Things Intersect by Jacob McArthur Mooney
To a Curl of Water by Shane Book
Under Glass by Joanne Page
Variations on Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations by Gary Highland
Water Mark by Michael Crummey
Waterwheel by Elana Wolff
Words for Snow by Linda Rogers

Familiar names include Julie Bruck (her mother, Nina Bruck, must have divided loyalties: not only is she a dear friend of mine, but another poet friend and I are in the process of editing her chapbook!), Elana Wolff, Harold Rhenish (I see he's also up for the Creative Non-Fiction award this year), Catherine Owen, and Michael Crummey (also an acclaimed novelist).

Names that ring a bell (I must have seen them somewhere, in journals, etc.) include Meira Cook, Sarah Klassen, Kelly Norah Drukker, Marina Endicott, Gary Highland, Linda Rogers.

Other names I see on the League of Poets member's list include Jane Southwell Munro, Cornelia Hoogland, and Brenda Schmidt.

From what I know of these people, this is stiff competition! I wish them all luck (but especially me!)

An Artie Gold Poem

Just cracked open Dennis Lee's anthology New Canadian Poets (1970-85) and found three Artie Gold poems. Art was, at his best, artless in an artful way. Here's one I very much like, and it serves as a fitting epitaph:

             life.

              In a sense
is the exact opposite of what we want     and
that opposite isn't death
                        but fence.
somewhere   over   a rainbow
you see, it's parabolic.
sometimes stretched out on drugs that make me taller
I sway over two kingdoms of sidewalk concrete adjacent
but over the line.  clothes vanish through the magic agency
 of drugs
naked to my brain my genitals hang like a child's drawing
 of scissors
open large enough only for the beam of life to shine through
I trap the living photon and aim it down.  my friends say:
  Artie,
 you have dropped your handkerchief.

Thanks to Nick for directing us to this Tony Hoagland essay on self-consciousness in poetry -- how it helps, how it hinders.

RIP Artie Gold, 1947-2007

Just learned from Todd Swift all the way over in England that poet Artie Gold, whom he refers to as a "Montreal legend", died yesterday.

I must confess -- and this feels spooky -- though I live in the same neighborhood, walk the same streets and quite likely, without knowing it, crossed paths with him in the 17 years since I came here, I really didn't know him.

Reading through the sample poems Todd highlights, I find a devil-may-care, stream-of-consciousness quality... at times engaging, at times grandstanding, at times hackneyed, wanting in finish.

Tho I can't even picture his face, I imagine Artie Gold from behind the curtain, a sardonic smile curling on his lips out of feigned respect for this oblivious listener who never did catch on, who never did appreciate his words during his lifetime.

P.S. April 15: Seems I was mistaken. For the last couple of decades at least, AG lived in NDG, not Mile End where I live.

Rooms with views

According to my Dictionary of Poetic Terms (right now I'm nearing the end of "S"), the word stanza comes from the Italian for "stopping place" or "room".

I've thought of stanzas (verse paragraphs, if you will) as "frames", but not inns or rooms.

Inn is a little hard to get one's mind around. Where will the reception desk be, and will there be a bar? Where the sleeping quarters? Does one even want sleeping quarters in a poem? Or alternatively -- would stopping place mean snack bar, bus shelter? A nook, mountain lookout? (That appeals to me.)

Rooms: I like that, creating rooms -- or a series or rooms -- with words. Let's see, how high will the walls be? Will the floors be level with the ceilings? As one walks into house that is the poem, will the rooms get bigger, or smaller, or all stay the same size? And what's a one-line stanza -- a crawl-space?

I just added a few nuanced touches to my "Reviews Review" -- a general survey of top tier Canadian (vs. some American) reviews I posted a couple of months back. This time I singled out for special praise The New Quarterly (yes, it is one of my favourites of the CanLit reviews), added some observations about Brick and its relationship between Brick Books, as well as some qualifiers -- i.e. that many of the reviews publish the same writers, even the same types of poems -- to a general observation that there is "not much to choose" between many of them. That post is of course a work in indefinite progress. And I don't even know if anyone is definitely interested. Well, I am.

Good news

A poem of mine was taken today by The Saranac Review. It will appear in the coming August issue. Thanks, Nick, for tipping me off as to the existence of this review.

Come to think of it, that's my first south-of-the-border print publication: not very far south (i.e., Plattsburgh, New York), but I'm planning a slow invasion.

Carlos Martinez Rivas

CMR

Funny, about 6 months after this post on Carlos Martinez Rivas, I got this remarkable comment from a woman who apparently had been part of his and Octavio Paz's entourage more than 50 years ago in Paris. It lead to a rather touching exchange. At the time I meant to post it, but somehow that idea got lost in the woodwork of my own brain (ah, distractions, projects, love, work....). Anyway, looking over my CMR posts I saw our correspondance there, and thought I'd shed some light on it today -- almost a year later. The connective possibilities of the internet of course are now pretty well taken for granted, but exchanges like this do renew a sense of amazement at just how great those possibilities are.

Anonymous said...

I knew Carlos Martinez Rivas more than 50 years ago when both of us spent many evenings at Octavio Paz's apartment in Paris. Elena Garro, who was then married to OP, always called him El unico Carlito. I remember reciting Apollinaire's Chanson du Mal Aime one night looking towards the Eiffel Tower to him and to Ernesto Cardenal. Then, we all scattered, and some of us never met again. Some years ago a Peruvian friend gave me sad news of Carlito and the devastating drinking problem that was destroying him. (No judgment here, my own husband died of it.) That may be why he never again published. To my shame I did not know that he had published to book you mention. I just googled him by chance after having pulled out of a box a picture of Octavio Paz and myself taken by a street photographer in Paris at that time and wondering what had happened to Carlos Martinez Rivas. I did not expect to find this much. Thank you.
Monique Fong

Thursday, March 23, 2006 11:04:00 PM

Brian Campbell said...

That's a beautiful reminiscence, Monique. Thankyou. I'm really touched.

Francisco was telling me the other day was that CMR never published beyond that one book because he was fixated on the idea that a poet should only be known for one book -- like Whitman for Leaves of Grass, for instance. He intended to put out an expanded edition of Insurreccion Solitaria -- as Whitman had done with Leaves of Grass -- but was never satisfied with the configurations he put together. Certainly, though, he was also disabled by his alcoholism.

Thanks again for sharing that with me.

Thursday, March 23, 2006 11:23:00 PM

Anonymous said...

Drinking is always so complicated . . . Anyway, here's another "sweet" memory of Carlito. Some of us had spent Christmas eve 1950 (!)at Octavio Paz's place and were walking the quiet streets of Neuilly singing, in Spanaish, while CMR was playing the guitar. This was allowed on account of the holiday. Not much of a memory, but an image of another time and place.
Monique Fong

Sunday, April 16, 2006 4:39:00 PM

Brian Campbell said...

Thanks again, Monique. I think I'll make a post out of these reminiscences... something about how the net connects, and who would ever expect, etc.

Sunday, April 16, 2006 10:40:00 PM

Anonymous said...

And thank you, Brian, for reconnecting me with CMR, etc.And do you know Alejandra Pizarnik? I only discovered her recently even though we sometimeswere in Paris at the same time.

Monday, April 17, 2006 10:28:00 PM

Brian Campbell said...

No I don't. I'll have to look her up.

Today, at long last, I looked up Alejandra Pizarnik -- there is quite a lot on the net available on her, all of it in Spanish. She strikes me as another remarkable poet, well worthy of being brought into English by anyone willing to expend the time and effort...

A CALL...

Some time ago, someone sent me an e-mail with a PDF attached of a very interesting translation he had done of a poem by Carlos Martinez Rivas, a poet I am considering translating.

Unfortunately, I lost the e-mail. I believe may have I accidentally deleted it while cleaning out my inbox.

If that person happens to be reading this, could he send it to me again?

Absent replaces Void: Cleaning House

At long last, I've re-organized/edited my links list. Greg Rappleye and Reginald Shepherd, two new poet-bloggers who write substantial posts, I've added to my "A list" of poet bloggers. (Both are seasoned poets, and have quite impressive credentials. I've read their credentials, but not their poetry -- some time I'll get around to that!)

A few months ago, I put my B list --"Other Worthy" poet bloggers -- down in the basement of my blogroll, because that list was getting damned long and making other categories -- e.g. associations and reviews -- hard to scroll down to. But that included some writers that I found myself wanting, at least from time to time, to check in on. So, Nick Bruno, Todd Swift, Deborah Ager and Ali & Jordan Davis have been reinstated in the top group. Feel good. You're in a select group. (If you're reading this...if, at the end of time, this even matters...etc., etc. )

Absent, Guernica Magazine, Box Car Review and Hobble Creek Review have been added to the list of On Line Reviews. All these look like reviews worth examining & that I might want to get published in. 3am Magazine, Void Magazine, Subtle Tea, and Words Myth I've eliminated from my list. Basically, the poetry I read in them either badly needed editing, was too young or did nothing for me. Slowly, as I examine the reviews in my lists, I'll be getting rid of ones like those...

A MOST UNUSUAL FAN LETTER

Although this is a blog chiefly about poetry (in the strict words-on-the-page sense of poetry), I also do -- mostly have done, but, oh yes, still do on a more-or-less weekly basis -- things musical. Yesterday I found something rather unusual in my website's e-mailbox: a music fan letter from a young man in Africa. Here it is, copied, pasted. I replaced his name with an initial (not his) to maintain at least some semblance of confidentiality.

Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 11:35 AM
Subject: greetings from your fan in uganda africa,

Hullo Brian Compbell , Iam A. age 18 years old your fan from uganda africa, I like your music so much and listen your music on the radio here called radio sanyu f.m which plays all the song in the world but i appreciated your voice and your songs and i try maiming your song so that i can sing it in the school,i listen to your songs every weekend those are one of your songs which i listen
.
Far AWay'
'I will Tell You Why Tomorrow'

Am sorry of telling this we don't want to beg but the bad codition we have here makes us to beg therefore i beg you to send me some clothers, i know this is gone make you hard to reply but i beg you to reply because am your fan here who like your music so much,ples am sorry of telling this i know this is not your job of
helping people but the stiuation here makes us to beg thanks, have got to go hope hear from you. bye

A.

Of course, with that final paragraph, I began to wonder if it's spam. (Even my Spam Bully filters weren't sure.) But unlike, say, that other notorious spam-scam asking for your bank account number in exchange for a generous cut from hidden gold reserves in Nigeria, this one seems to know too much in particular about what I do, and his request, if it is indeed clothes, rather too modest. I mean, touchingly so.

I began to think, jeez, here's this guy who trudges through the dust in worn out shoes and the only clothes he owns (if they aren't rags, very likely holes in them) to the local internet cafe in say, Kampala, to frantically type out his appreciation for my music -- no time for spelling or grammar checker, they charge by the hour at those cafes -- and then press "SEND" to this guy in Canada, maybe he can help. How poignant. But odd.

How he -- or that radio station -- got a hold of my music is a mystery to me. My promotion has hardly been extensive. (By the way, if you want to hear streaming files of the songs in question, click here. "Far Away" is the second one down. "I'll Tell You Why...", further down. You've got to click on the songs to hear 'em. Did they get them from here? Rather doubt it... these files are not exactly top quality, nor are they downloadable.)

Anyway, after a few moments of hesitation, I wrote back.

Hello A,

Thank you very much for your praise for my music. I am left a little curious, however.

Is it clothes? Or is it a CD you want?

I am also curious how Radio Sanyu got my music, since I never sent them the album and I have only parts of those songs on my web site.

I am sorry to hear of your need.

Sincerely,

Brian

Maybe I should have been more forthcoming. Maybe I should have expressed a deeper appreciation for his appreciation of my music. If the tone seems guarded, well, I felt guarded. Had he asked me for my CD + a few clothes in the package, that would have made more sense. But just clothes? (Rather, clothers?) No mention of size, let alone an address. Maybe that will be forthcoming in a further missive. Hmmm. I await his reply.