NINA BRUCK: STILL LIGHT AT 5:00

Here's the first chapbook off Sky of Ink Press (photographed outside, propped up on a flowerpot on my balcony -- at 5:00, to be precise, for obvious symbolic reasons & to take advantage of that beautiful waning afternoon light. Click through to see it large -- and caress that card stock with your eyes).

Clearly, its author prefers that her words speak for themselves. Be that as it may, I find it hard to resist tooting a few notes on her behalf.

Several things can be said about this remarkable woman. One is that she’s an extremely talented poet, possessed of a quick intelligence and the surest eye and ear. Even at their most tragic, her lyrics are leavened by a playful wit and warm, easygoing sensuality; many of her poems are pure fun. Here's another: she's written a lot of poems, quite enough to make up at least one or two excellent collections. Everything I've seen by her is good, and much of it, very good. Here's another: up to now, she has hardly published at all -- a handful of appearances in reviews and a League of Poets anthology; one poem was read out on CBC Morningside by Peter Gzowski. In 1992, on a whim, she entered some poems into Matrix Magazine's "New Voices from Quebec" Competition, and emerged with First Prize. She has submitted nothing since. And here's another thing: she was born in 1923. (Yes, she won that "New Voices" prize at the age of 70.)

I first met Nina Bruck at Susan Gillis's "Tiny Sea in the Ear" QWF poetry workshop back in 2004. It was a particularly good workshop, with a lot of capable writers around the table, so a number of us continued on afterwards, meeting on an informal basis about once a month for a couple of years. It always struck us as odd that Nina had never really published; indeed, once we grasped her depth of talent, it became deeply frustrating. Finally, my friend Raphael Bendahan and I prevailed upon her to produce at least a chapbook before she departs. By this point, we had clearly demonstrated how well we related to her work, and gained her trust as editors. So one fateful Saturday early last January, before any final qualms or "cold feet" could take over, Raphael and I stormed her apartment (on invitation of course), and with her fished out of her voluminous papers -- she had taken them out of her drawers and they covered her table, bureau, desk, in huge, disorganized stacks --twenty-one poems worthy of a fine chapbook and banged them into my laptop on the spot (before they flew away, so it felt). It took between 2:30 and 10 pm, with a break for supper. What fun! At that pace, we expected it to be out in a matter of weeks, but what with life's interventions, differences on how to order the poems, time required to refine a few lines, copy-editing corrections and re-corrections, all the usual (and some unusual) finicky details, it took the full nine months required to have a normal real baby. And now that it's finally out, it feels good to hold this little poem-being and flip once again through its contents.

To give you some taste of what I'm praising, here's a prose poem, the only one in the selection:

THE HEINTZMAN -- 1933

The day they repossessed my mother's baby grand I heard them leave, scaring the canary. The house forgot to breathe, then the fridge began, louder than ever. The walnut bench still stood, crammed with a thick Scarlatti in a yellow jacket and the sheet music from Rose Marie. I was supposed to be their own Yehudi Munuhin someday or failing that, to simply "play for your own comfort." Anyway there we were, the empty space filling the room. I knew they expected me to cry but I was mad, at the canary, its small bones, its timid knees, its inability to make a sound.


Some publishing details: Printed in an edition of 100 copies on high-quality cream-coloured paper with a cardstock light grey cover, Still Light at 5:00 is 25 pages long and contains 21 poems. The dimensions of the chapbook are, we think, typical of Sky of Ink Press productions to come: 8 1/2" by 7", that is, legal sized paper folded in half. Although this size can be inconvenient because of limited range and availability of quality paper stock, we like it because, compared to the typical folded 8.5x11 chapbook format, it leaves lots of room for a poem to breathe: longish lines aren't squeezed at the margins and there is no problem sticking to a decent-sized font.

Still Light at 5:00 is available for $10 Canadian or American including postage -- or an interesting trade. Just write to me via my website.

For more on Nina Bruck, click on the label below.

I grant you that...

Raphael Bendahan, a friend of mine & fellow poet with whom I've set up a little chapbook press, has written an insightful post on the grant writing process, on a new blog he has set up. He's sat on many juries himself, so has some trenchant things to say about that particular game.

1.5 minutes of "fame" (13.5 to go)

An odd bit of news: yesterday I was interviewed by Justin Hayward of CBC TV, to appear on national (rather, local) television. No, not as poet or singer or anything like that... it was part of a series on global warming (imagine they should be doing a series on that!). A friend of mine recommended me to him because I'm a frequent user of Communauto, a popular car-sharing service here in Montreal. Stats show that users compared to car-owners leave a considerably smaller "carbon footprint".

It so happens I was renting a car to go to work that evening. So we went through the theatrical ritual of doing a typical TV report -- me walking to the car, opening the car door, getting in, as a scene-setting intro (Don't look at the camera!) to be accompanied by a voice over description -- then the interview proper, then a "two shot" to be inserted between the opening shot and the interview (us talking in the distance about n'importe quoi), then me driving off. Took about 20 minutes in all.

The interview should be airing on the 6:00 news next Tuesday.

Doorways to Distribution

Last week I got this little e-mail missive. Its writer just gave me permission to reprint it here:

I am a student at Langara college and I recently read a poem of yours posted on Paul Headricks office door. It made me smile, especially the last line--"grunt".

Jen Gordon

Have to say, you made my day, Jen.

Paul, it seems, is a real fan of this poem of mine that appeared in The Antigonish Review. He's even gone to some extraordinary lengths to get it reprinted elsewhere. Ironically, just posting it on his office door has probably gotten it more readers than The Antigonish Review itself -- or for that matter, any of the other "purely literary" venues he tried to get it reprinted in. (However, he has tried, besides Geist's "Findings" section, Harper's and CBC radio -- we have yet to receive news from them...)

3

I just realized that the third anniversary of this blog just passed last Friday. Actually, Out of the Woodwork first came to being on Blog City back in May, 2004 -- but I soon found there were more advantages with Blogger, so I moved here. And 521 posts and 45,007 visits later, I'm still here. It's been a great educational experience, an excellent place to contact poets, make friends (of the virtual sort), and further develop my views on poetry, the arts -- and life. Thanks to all you who visit and leave comments. This blog shows no signs of abating yet!

Fast Food Nation

Last night I saw Fast Food Nation. Generally, I came away quite impressed with this fictionalized film about the evils of our fast food system, despite its obvious flaws and only partial dramatic success. It's always tough to make a drama whose main purpose is a documentary MESSAGE, rather than telling a good story about the trials and triumphs of a central character or characters. At first, it seemed, the main star was the Mickey Big One itself -- camera angles and conversations turned rather noticeably around people's plates and fridges, not to mention TV commercials and suburban fast food alleys. It was indeed hard going for a while identifying with any of the characters -- neither the migrant workers from Mexico who are coyotied across the border and compelled to work in the brutal conditions of a slaughterhouse/hamburger plant, nor the marketing manager of the fictional Mickey's Hamburgers who feels impelled to investigate the plant for hygienic, and as it turns out, moral impropriety. But eventually, once the characters and story lines are established, a very moving drama unfolds. The acting is superb, and the dialogue natural and well-handled. Some pretty big stars lent their talents to this one, including Bruce Willis, Avril Lavigne and Kris Kristofferson; a number of the lesser knowns also turned in excellent performances. It is a film, though, that leaves you shaking your head at the unending grimness of it all: The marketing manager fails to have any effect on the firm that employs him, the exploited workers continue to be exploited, a group of student protesters fails to raise the slightest ripple of awareness, the SYSTEM goes inexorably on. This of course is gritty REALITY in big caps -- right down to those hard-to-get stock shots of the killing floor, some of which are noticeably grainier than the dramatic footage. It's been said that if our factory farms and slaughterhouses had windows, we'd all become vegetarians. It's actually remarkable that the director was able to get such juicy (rather, bloody) stock footage at all. The forces of concealment are so pervasive and powerful that a film laying bare some of our systemic horrors is actually refreshing. In other words, it's a message that needs to be told -- and retold. Too bad the film was so poorly distributed (I saw it only because a student of mine passed on a pirated copy.) Anyway, you can be sure I won't be eating steaks or hamburger for a long while. (I should probably leave off pork & chicken, too.)

A poem is a cube with five sides. Three are painted with human faces, one with a wide-branching tree. The fifth side is blank— Your turn.
-- G.C. Waldrep

BAP: Best American what???

The 2007 BAP is out, and Jim Behrle shows us how hilarious it can be. This guy can be a riot -- and his posts on this volume show him at his best. (As for the BAP, this year, by the looks of it, shows it at its worst.) For the record (since Behrle posts a lot) I especially like this one, this one, this one and most of all, this one. "He's invented a new kind of poem for people who HATE poetry: PROSE POEMS! Short enough for stoned readers. A cute little emotional twinkee!!" When I read this, I almost fell off my chair laughing.

Jeffery Bahr, meanwhile, breaks down the BAP socio-economically, demographically, in terms of batting averages and bases on balls. (No kidding -- well, almost.) He even has an overall team standing: this ongoing breakdown of literary journals with relation to BAP.

So if you want to make a name for yourself & get on the USA poetry scoreboard, these are the ones to send to.

I wonder if Bahr'll tackle the Norton next? (The posterity scoreboard.)


These links courtesy of C Dale Young, by the way.

Turnarounds...

I just got an e-mail from the editor of Carte Blanche, accepting a poem among a handful I sent in early February. I scarcely remember sending them. The poem should be online in a couple of weeks. In the adjacent e-mail, an invitation to read in the Poetry and Prose reading series at Montreal Visual Arts Centre on May 15th, 2008. I graciously accepted. Peculiar the tenuous connections to the distant past and future this process brings about. Kind of reminds me of the joke about the snail on the doorstep. This time, though, the snail would say "Thank you!" (Why is there something cloying about that?)

Strand: Addendum

Having finished Strand's Blizzard of One, my overall impression is much kinder than my rather snarky remarks made in mid-read below. I can say now it was a worthwhile and enjoyable read, well worth buying. Poems that impressed me were "The Great Poet Returns" (quoted below), "The Blizzard of One", "Two de Chiricos", "In Memory of Joseph Brodsky", and the final poem, "The View". I also enjoyed his longish penultimate poem, "Delirium Waltz". That's quite a number of excellent poems for one collection (well, "The Great Poet Returns" is excellent, until those final lines...). I can see why Strand hasn't published a book since, and may never publish: the book seems a definitive bidding adieu to poetry, and life. That in itself is weighty, and significant. Here's "In Memory of Joseph Brodsky", perhaps the most moving poem in the collection. Pls. excuse what the formatting does to some of the longer lines.

In Memory of Joseph Brodsky

It could be said, even here, that what remains of the self
Unwinds into a vanishing light, and thins like dust, and heads
To a place where knowing and nothing pass into each other, and through;
That it moves, unwinding still, beyond the vault of brightness ended,
And continues to a place which may never be found, where the unsayable,
Finally, once more is uttered, but lightly, quickly, like random rain
That passes in sleep, that one imagines passes in sleep.
What remains of the self unwinds and unwinds, for none
Of the boundaries holds – neither the shapeless one between us,
Nor the one that falls between your body and your voice. Joseph,
Dear Joseph, those sudden reminders of your having been – the places
And times whose greatest life was the one you gave them – now appear
Like ghosts in your wake. What remains of the self unwinds
Beyond us, for whom time is only a measure of meanwhile
And the future no more than et cetera et cetera ... but fast and forever.

Love after Love
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Added to the blogroll/Naomi Klein

I just added Joshua Robbin's blog to my frequently-read blogger's list. Found it yesterday in a roundabout way: by googling the Strand's poem, The Great Poet Returns, featured below: his was the only site that had it. Then I got captivated by his content.

One of Joshua's recent posts is on Naomi Klein's latest opus, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. He's assembled an excellent cluster of quotes, links, even a You Tube video on this must-read polemic. For sure, I'll be dropping in on his blog quite often...

Also, added to my list of Fun sites is The Phrontistery, a compendium of rare, mostly multi-syllabic words, and Blogger Play, a never-ending slide show of images recently posted on Blogger. Blogger Play makes for a mesmerizing alternative "desktop" -- some mind-blowing juxtapositions (if you let your mind be blown), and some breathtaking photos (if you let your breath be taken) -- until the awareness of the sheer numbers of people constantly posting starts to feel wearisome.

Blizzard of One

After more than two years of sitting on my bookshelf, Mark Strand's Blizzard of One has come down into my hands and I'm giving it a read. Today (well, technically yesterday) I read about two thirds, looked over others, some of which I remember from his reading in Montreal back in 2004. These poems provide a number of haunting moments -- all of them are finely wrought -- but I frankly don't find they have have the verve, edge or originality of those neurotic, weird, ground-breaking early poems. That may be too much to expect. "An extraordinary book by a master of the art of poetry...." says the blurb. I quite agree, but for that "extra". My hunch is that it was his reputation that won that Pulitzer, not the book itself. Nevertheless, to give him his due, so far I've read a couple of poems -- make that three poems -- that would have shone in his earlier Selected. Here's one, a personal favourite so far:

The Great Poet Returns

When the light poured down through the hole in the clouds,
We knew the great poet was going to show. And he did.
A limousine with all white tires and stained-glass windows
Dropped him off. And then, with a clear and soundless fluency,
He strode into the hall. There was a hush. His wings were big.
The cut of his suit. The width of his tie, were out of date.
When he spoke, the air seemed whitened by imagined cries.
The worm of desire bore into the heart of everyone there.
There were tears in their eyes. The great one was better than ever.
“No need to rush,” he said at the close of the reading, “the end
Of the world is only the end of the world as you know it.”
How like him, everyone thought. Then he was gone,
And the world was blank. It was cold and the air was still.
Tell me, you people out there, what is poetry anyway?
Can anyone die without even a little?

Frankly, tho, I find the last two lines of rhetorical questioning a little questionable. Are they not a false tail? They kind of resonate with the narrative voice and concern, and yes, I want to root for that implicit defence of poetry in the final line -- it's a nice sentiment, it comes out of a lifetime's dedication -- but wouldn't the poem have better ended with, "the air was still"?

There's a fair bit on Mark Strand in this blog -- including, I see, another false tail. If you're interested, click on the label below.

Hicok afterwards

Thanks to Andrew Shields for posting a link to this poem by Bob Hicok. (Andrew in turn found this link on C.Dale Young's blog: both bloggers are on my blogroll.) Hicok, one can gather from the poem, was one of the Virginia Tech killer's creative writing teachers. He's also fast becoming one of my favourite contemporary poets: I can say that with confidence although I have yet to order a book of his. More links to his work can be found via the label below.

Robert Peake posted an interesting response to Dana Gioia's 1991 Atlantic Monthly article, "Can Poetry Matter?" I'm sure it would have rated some coverage in my essay published last year in the Rock Salt Plum Review on responses to Gioia's essay over the previous 15 years. Fundamentally, Peake argues that Gioia failed to take into account how the rise of new medias fractured cultural attention and lead to poetry's relegation to the sociocultural back burner of academia: that poetry is not alone in this subculturation: other traditional fine arts, notably "classical" art music, have undergone very similar changes. That while Gioia blames academia for fostering a cushy inbred elite (obviously not a healthy thing for any art), Peake argues that academia, like it or not, is poetry's last bastion: poetry's retreat there he likens to sap going back to the tree trunk as it weathers a seemingly endless cultural winter. All these are valid points, and Peake puts them extremely well. I also think they are all the more evident in 2007 than they were even in 1991, with the rise of the Net and its ever-expanding cyber universe, that mind-boggling array of ever-more sophisticated sources of distraction.

I've added three poems by the way to Sky of Ink -- poems recently published in The Antigonish Review, Saranac Review and Carve.

What I learned this weekend

Well, it wasn't too hard. I've since added a somewhat hokey fast finger-picking version and then return to a variation of this to round out a kind of instrumental. Maybe, if I play it enough, I'll actually convert. On this most inauspicious anniversary...

Poetry guy reviews his Urban Geography 101

photo by Christopher DeWolf, from Welcome to the Mile End

Talking with a friend about last week's Waverly St. bash, he pointed out that a number of things peculiar to the geography and urban architecture of Montreal make these kinds of happenings possible where they simply aren't in other cities: we have a lot of well-defined, high-density, mixed-use neighbourhoods (by mixed use: lots of corner stores, restaurants, family owned businesses, and the like integrated with residential land use, i.e. within short walking distance) . In other places (the Mtl. suburbs, most of Toronto, and particularly wholly suburban cities like Houston or LA), you can go out on the street and take a long walk past 10,000 neighbours, but whatever would you do that for? Where would you walk to? Better to hop in your car and drive... hence neighbourhoods without sidewalks, etc. The car, it would seem, is the culprit more than any other so-called anti-socializing factor (i.e. TV, the internet, franchise and mass-marketing) behind the disappearance of community in North America. Just a side-note. And a pretty obvious one, come to think.

Simon DeDeo writes some interesting advice to poetry bloggers. Much of it I agree with; some of it I don't (i.e. is serifed print really easier on the eyes? or just his eyes?).

An additional discovery -- purely technical one for your bloggers out there -- is that if you click on "edit Html" (upper right hand corner in Blogger) when creating a post, you can paste copy directly from Word or even possibly your email program without screwing up formatting, which tends to happen if you paste it directly into Compose with all its format presets. Just discovered this the other day. (Before when I had to do this I was pasting into Notebook and then into Compose -- a tedious two-step process.)

RRS feeds is something I definitely have to explore. And the site meter, to continue to be of any validity at all, has to reflect their use. (Right now, I don't think it does -- does it?)

Watch out for a change from a black blog, by the way.

Is Dylan Poetry?

I posted this comment in response to Andrew Shield's post about "testing" Dylan's lyrics as poetry by considering the lyrics on their own. Andrew in turn was responding to a discussion on Matt Merritt's blog on whether Dylan could be considered poetry. I'm sure I reacted rather swiftly & archly -- I don't think either of these guys particularly looks down on art of songwriting -- but anything suggestive of that kind of reductive approach gives me instant heebee jeebies. So I reacted.

The trouble with most literary people -- I mean academics and the like -- when they consider song craft is that they lack musicianship, or appreciation for the musical qualities of a good song. (They may love music & certain songs, but that's not the same thing.) When evaluating a song as poetry their first inclination is to excise the music and to see if the lyrics work by themselves as a poem. Inevitably, they are disappointed. They are then likely to put down songs and the songwriting craft as "bad poetry put to music", a "minor art", etc.

In a good song, lyrics and music are inseparable; in the writing of them, the latter evokes the former more often than the former evokes the latter. (That's at least my experience: nothing like learning a new chord progression to bring out a new song from me...)

If one were to do a truly faithful critique of a song, part of that job would be to look at certain chord changes or rhythms and see how they correspond to the emotional colorations of the words that go with. Most of these, of course, are purely intuitive on a part of the songwriter, as with most vocabulary choices in poems. Few literary academics have any idea the kind of discipline it takes to come up with a good bridge, how strictly honed diction has to be to follow the punch of a rhythm, and how much thought -- or feeling one's way -- can go into that. "Inspiration's great," Sheryl Crow once said, "but knowing the craft will save your ass." Couldn't be put by a better craftsman -- or woman.

IT DIDN'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE

Maurice Kenny

He was gonna teach us...
my sisters and me how not to smoke
or drink burning whiskey, and
oh yes...how to swim in the lake...
much to my mother's screaming and
flailing arms in summer air.
(She hated the Chaumont Bay
cottage with a passion. A camp
he near worshipped and we kids
adored from late June to late
August.) He knew he was right,
my mother wrong; it was done
only for our good and safety.
He'd load us into the rowboat
one at a time, myself last
as the youngest of three, row
out 25 or 50 feet and dump
the kid overboard, and force
a swim home even if yhou
didn't know how...you'd learn
on the spot was his philosophy.
Later we had cigars to smoke
and vomit. Then he brought
out the whiskey bottle.
Forced us to drink until drunk,
and very very sick. At six
I became an alcoholic.
It didn't work so well, but he
had good intentions.

Saranac Review, #3, 2008


Maurice Kenny is a poet, publisher and professor. His book Blackrobe was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and, in 1984, he won the American Book Award for The Mama Poems. Kenny's work has appeared in nearly 100 journals. Presently, he teaches at SUNY Potsdam.

GREEN SATELLITE SHIMMER REPORT

I was going to mix colours, render an eddy
      of curving bright green, speckles of red
(touches of inevitable black in the gouache)
      inscribed within
“May this year be green,
       may it roll through you
 a meadow, a wave
   raised by the wind of your days.”
Something like that.

But other winds pushed that wave into space.

When I showed you my list of priorities,
the wave was gone.

“Weren’t you going to make me one of your undulations
for my birthday?”
you asked.

Annoyed, I threw the list down.

Now the day is past.   “Don’t bother,” you said.
“Your birthday’s coming up:  leave it to me,
I’ll make you the warm glow.”

The wave glistens.  Distant mirage.
The paints are in the cupboard.  Inner retort:
Still no time.

But I can write you this:  this lost satellite
wheels in my head, a shimmer, I made it
especially for you:
this green satellite shimmer report.

-- Saranac Review, Issue 3, 2008

Ashbery 007

John Ashbery has been appointed mtv's poet laureate (believe it or not). There are links to some interesting Ashbery poems on this site: I spent part of the day reading them. Enjoyed particularly "The New Higher" and "Paradoxes and Oxymorons". "Retro" and "My Philosophy of Life" had some interesting thought processes. The others struck me as remarkable for their emotional blandness. Is this appointment a blurring of that arbitary distinction between so-called "high culture" and "low"? Robert thinks so. In this excellent post he also roots among some earlier critical appraisals of the man. At least, tho, this is mtvU, which purports to be about "everything college".

RENTRÉE

Truth and beauty bombs.

Back to school this evening. My advanced ESL class at English Montreal School Commission. The fact that after all these years of doing this I'm looking forward to it -- intrigued by possibilities of doing new activities I as well as improving on the old, saying Hi again to colleagues and welcoming back returning students I enjoy -- testifies that I must be made for this. (In measured doses, of course.)

This is also ripe time for putting things in the mail -- submissions (oops! assertions), manuscript samples to publishers, etc. I thought I might prepare things in the final weeks of August so I'd "hit the ground running" -- but beyond working on the manuscript itself, just couldn't get into it. "The bare-limbed hedonism of summer", as Don Delillo put it once. Why, when I think of this sort of thing, do I imagine bending over some round porcelain bowl, sticking a finger in the back of my throat? Must counter with images positive -- my missives floating off like white birds over the ocean, the resounding cry of "land, land!", applause from all assembled animals (my poems) on deck and below. Something of that sort. "Turn that frown upside down!" etc.

Local Scene: Waverly en Fête

I have to say, I live on an amazing street: rue Waverly, in Montreal's Mile End area. So many artistic and rather cool people live here that a group of five of us formed a committee to have a community party to get to know each other better and to celebrate the cultural life of the street. ("Fête" in French is like "Fiesta" in Spanish... meaning party). It soon got quite impressive. Someone on the committee knew how to pull the right strings: we got the city to fence off the street, the local Y to provide tables. The city even gave us permission to provide our own alcoholic beverages. The afternoon began with a Children's Olympics and street theatre for the kids (second photo from the top -- click on it to see it big), a showing of paintings by artists on the street, a performance by a percussion/dance troupe called the Kumpa'nia band, whose leader lives on our street (third photo), followed by a pot luck supper and music. I donated my sound system; a guy who works in theatre provided lighting from a second floor balcony across the street. I performed some songs (A few pictures were taken during my set; maybe one will appear here eventually). Although a Cuban ensemble that was supposed to be the main feature failed to show up (they were on tour in Toronto and just couldn't make it on time), about a half-dozen quite skilled musicians ran into their apartments, returned with instruments and provided quite a varied evening's impromptu entertainment. In all, about a hundred people participated -- a truly huge turnout for the first time. Incidental costs were covered through sales of T-shirts with the insignia above, designed by one of our neighbours. In an age where "community" seems a thing of the past, where local warmth and camaraderie are ever-more unattainable due to so many anti-socializing factors including this internet you're on now, I think this is truly remarkable. I wonder, how many other neighbourhoods were throwing such a party for themselves this weekend?