A feel-good poetry reading review

Just came back from a poetry reading at the Atwater Library featuring Carmine Starnino and Elizabeth Bachinsky. Both are fine poets and excellent readers, so it was a truly pleasurable experience.

Carmine Starnino went out on a limb and read from new material, some of it so recent he himself wasn't entirely sure it was "lame". Well, whatever lameness it may have had on the page, I didn't catch it, and it definitely had something: drawing upon the triggers of an "unaccountable sadness" as homely as a fencepost or a willow, each object was described with such precision it acquired a statuesque quality. A lengthy prose poem building on the conceit of "working class clouds" took its risks, but yielded rewards: a whimsical (yet peculiarly melancholy) tour de force, it will surely feature in a future collection. Curious that none of his books were for sale, as far as I could see; I would have seriously considered picking one up. Also a significant critic, editor and anthologist, here he gives an excellent interview in the Danforth Review.

Elizabeth Bachinsky leavened the reading with lighter entertainment: a palindrome and some mildly flarf-like poems derived from google searches from her first collection, and narrative poems from her second, including a series about pregnant teens from her hometown, about which she drew laughter with the claim that it was the teenage pregnancy capitol of Canada -- or at least, the town with the highest quotient. Her work was conversational, deft, yet penetrating, and certainly did what it wanted to do, and I can't see anything wrong with that. (Boy, I'm nice tonight, but that's how I feel: my evening teaching schedule doesn't allow me to attend many readings, and I certainly have no regrets about coming out to this.)

The Montreal Anglo poetry scene is so closely knit that in the audience I met several habitués I knew, and indeed didn't even have a decent amount of time to chat with them all. Let's see -- Elise Moser, Angela Leuk, Jon Paul Fiorentino, Raphael Bendahan, Peter Dubé (well, I was just introduced to him), David McGimpsey, and Maxianne Berger were all in attendance. I think I just named about thirty percent of the worthy few that braved the extreme Feb. cold to come to this reading...

A Manifesto of sorts

The following was written by Sekai, a visual artist, dancer and choreographer, to set the tone for a conference of visual artists that took place earlier this month at the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) Cultural Centre here in Montreal. Sekai is an old friend of mine, as well as a mentor of sorts. I helped him a bit with wording here and there, and the final lines emerged out of a conversation we had on what he had written -- but basically this comes out of his life, and is an expression of his nearly half-century of involvement in the arts. I think it's well worth considering by pretty well anybody.

Art is first and foremost a celebration of Life and Living.
It is a community’s means of expressing its very aliveness and well-being.
A community’s triumphs over its daily struggles are expressed and examined through the processes of creating art.
Art is the poetic manifestation of our very humanity.
Art is an activity in which all can participate and not some elitist form of showmanship.
Art is expressed in our lives in special ways, coming from out of our daily activities.
Making art is inherent in our biological (i.e. DNA) makeup.
Art in all its manifestations – music, painting, dance, theatre, images, to name a few – is a means to restoring our connections with the world and cosmos in which we inhabit, as well as restoring connections with and within ourselves, all humankind.
Art is as necessary as the very air we breathe. Without Art, it is impossible to live and raise a harmonious human society.
For those of us who practice the Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin, art lies at the foundation of our beliefs in peace, education and culture, which humankind deserves.
We artists need not talk about art, but rather “make and do”: manifest art on a continuous, daily basis in our lives, for art enhances our lives.

SGI, by the way, is a Buddhist organization devoted to Nichiren Daishonin's Buddhism, which consists, in the most summary terms, of the practice of chanting the mantra Nam Myoho Renge Kyo to raise one's life condition, and the study of the implications of that mantra. I'm happy to admit that I too am a member of that organization; while I consider myself a "Buddhist without beliefs", I do know from lengthy experience that that practice can bring great benefit, psychologically, physiologically and, by implication, within society -- much in the way that physical exercise and good eating unquestionably brings benefit. In any case, what I find interesting here is the emphasis on community, a thing notably absent in contemporary urban society. The implications of that absence are many, not the least of which is an unhealthy preoccupation with fame and celebrity.

Poemeleon

Here's a damned nice internet poetry review.
Quite enjoyed a number of the selections. Their next deadline, for an issue devoted to persona poems, is only a few days away.

My spacey reflexes

Under the manuscript guidelines of Contrary, an internet review I quite like and that I sent work to yesterday, I discovered the reasoning behind the one-space rule at the end of sentences. A friend told me a few months ago that was de rigeur nowadays, but I didn't believe him.

Well, unfortunately for me, that seems to be the new standard. Here's what Contrary says:

Use only one space between sentences. Only one space is needed between sentences unless you are using a typewriter. Typewriters are monospaced – they allot exactly the same amount of space for an i as for an m – and monospacing tends to visually obscure the transition from one sentence to the next. So for many years typing teachers have taught their students to use two spaces between sentences. But word processors, including the one you’re sitting at right now, are capable of proportional spacing – they allot about one-fifth as much space for an i as they do for an m – and a single space is sufficient to distinguish between sentences in a proportionally spaced document. Have a look at any professionally-produced book or magazine and you’ll usually find only one space between sentences.

Personally, I still prefer the look of two spaces -- despite all the single-spaced typesetting I read every day. Besides, I was taught way back when by none other than Miss Bernstein, my Junior High School typing teacher, to type two spaces -- and that's my reflex (even here, writing about it... although I see Blogger software automatically changes it to one space). But, if one space really is the standard, that means I'll have to change my reflexes -- and start changing work I send out.

A couple of paragraphs in the last post I decided to withdraw. That happens sometimes.

Bits

Peter's back -- after taking a break from the distractions of His Virtual World. Welcome back, Peter!

****
Al Purdy's coming back too -- as a statue. I wonder how he would feel, seeing himself frozen into stone?

******

Pressing shuffle...

Today, after working out at the Y, I went to the Arts Cafe (one of several "boho-ish" cafes in my neighborhood) and read Simic's Selected and Hicok's This Clumsy Living -- one poem of one, then one poem of the other, to balance and blend each other's flavours, so to speak. Funny how so many poets are like a restaurant with one dish on the menu, or if a number of dishes, all cooked the same way, seasoned with the same herbs and spices. These two are terrific poets: I'm not complaining about the quality of what they dish out. They have truly "found their voice" (or taste buds). But after a few poems, yeah, I get the idea, I get the tone and cadence, and something in me yearns for a more adventurous eclecticism. Hence, this rather more satisfying method of reading: take two or three collections-- preferably by poets of significant contrast -- and go from one to the other to the other ... rather like putting several music discs in a CD tray and pressing "shuffle".

I used to think that these patterns of sex differences resulted mainly from average differences between men and women in innate talents, tastes and temperaments. After all, in talents men are on average more mathematical, more technically minded, women more verbal; in tastes, men are more interested in things, women in people; in temperaments, men are more competitive, risk-taking, single-minded, status-conscious, women far less so. But I have now changed my mind. It is not a matter of averages, but of extremes. Females are much of a muchness, clustering round the mean. But, among males, the variance—the difference between the most and the least, the best and the worst—can be vast. So males are almost bound to be over-represented both at the bottom and at the top. I think of this as 'more dumbbells but more Nobels'.

-- Helena Cronin, philosopher, London School of Economics

This from The Edge, an extract from an article on how great scientific thinkers have changed their minds. A number of fascinating tidbits here.

Richard Wilbur

A Measuring Worm

This yellow striped green
Caterpillar, climbing up
The steep window screen,

Constantly (for lack
Of a full set of legs) keeps
Humping up his back.

It’s as if he sent
By a sort of semaphore
Dark omegas meant

To warn of Last Things.
Although he doesn’t know it,
He will soon have wings,

And I, too, don’t know
Toward what undreamt condition
Inch by inch I go.


------------------------------------
source - The New Yorker - 04/02/2008

thanks to Nick Bruno for this

PS: Mon. Feb. 11: some interesting e-mail dialogue with my friend Raphael Bendahan on this poem today. Raphael wrote:


WOW,

what a terrific poem...

Honestly though, I didn't get the line "Dark omegas meant/ To warn of Last Things". is this some kind of omen of impending death, or transformation? I'll look up omega and find out but I'm just a lazy reader I guess.

Wikipedia says:
Omega (the last letter of the Greek alphabet) is often used to denote
the last, the end, or the ultimate limit of a set, in contrast to Alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the New Testament book of Revelation, God is declared to be the "alpha and omega, thebeginning and the end, the first and the last".[3]

I wrote back:

Those lines made me stop too. But there is value in that kind of intellectual leap (even if it's a bit of a stretch), and it does resonate in certain ways with the rest of the poem. The Last Things could refer to end of the creature's life as a caterpillar, and of course the end of the narrator's life by metaphoric extension. But I think this line also has an ulterior purpose: to fulfill the Alpha and Omega of Wilbur's rhyme scheme.

Charles Simic

Lots of grotesquery in this man's work -- particularly the early work, which I'm now reading. This one has the raw and cryptic force of a Francis Bacon painting. You can hear him read it here.

FORK

This strange thing must have crept
Right out of hell.
It resembles a bird's foot
Worn around the cannibal's neck.

As you hold it in your hand,
As you stab with it into a piece of meat,
It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:
It's head which is like your fist
Is large, bald, beakless, and blind.

All it takes is a letter...

Emily Dickenson left the world with lots of poems in her desk. A modern Emily Dickenson would leave the world with lots of poems in her disk.

So much for the hype...

Tonight I was strongly considering heading down to the Sala Rossa to see spoken word pioneer John Giorno perform. Montreal's Hour gave him its supreme hype -- last week's cover and a full page spread -- proclaiming him a "literary icon" with a "star-studded legendary life", "internationally acclaimed", "one of the last living sons of the Beat Generation."

This kind of attention, of course, is rare for a poet.

And yes, from the interview and photos you can tell Giorno's a charismatic dude with interesting stories to tell, and at 72, he's unlikely to swing through these parts again.

But a telling thing is, not a line of his poetry was quoted in the article.

And because of tonight's weather -- a particularly nasty combination of blowing snow and sleet -- I balked further about hoofing 2 km. down the road and shelling out $12 to see him. Is this guy really worth it? (You see, like so many "legends", I had never actually heard of him until he pulled into town.)

So I decided to look him up on the net. And sure enough, his poetry is crap. You need only to read this to see how he strings together dead metaphors, hackneyed slogans and cliches. For a guy who hung with the likes of Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs, he didn't learn a lot -- about the art of writing, at least.

His Youtube performance is considerably more compelling, but like much of what goes under the rubric spoken word, it rings hollow because it consists of bad writing grandstanded into something, well, pseudo-compelling.

To his credit, Giorno founded Giorno Poetry Systems, releasing over 40 LP's of Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Ted Berrigan, Frank O'Hara, Aram Saroyan, and others. In 1968 he also created Dial-A-Poem, a wildly successful poetry promotion and an interesting concept even today. Besides being the subject of a couple of Andy Warhol's more controversial films, Giorno's greatest legacy may be as an energetic enabler and presenter of other writers.

Whatever Giorno is himself as a writer, there's got to be lot of genuine love behind that kind of effort. Besides, of course, the requisite dose of ego.

In the meantime, I'm going to thumb my nose at the weather, lie back and read Sylvia Plath's The Belljar. Now, that woman's prose absolutely crackles. (Her poetry, of course, deserves all the superlatives it's been given.) I'm also going to dip into Charles Simic's Selected and Bob Hicok's This Clumsy Living, which arrived today in the mail.

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