RIP Willard Eldrin Campbell



Dad et moi...



March 6, 1924-August 11, 2011

Passed away last week at Sunnybrook Veterans’ Hospital after a lengthy struggle with Alzheimer’s. Born and raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Willard later moved to Toronto, where he settled and raised his family. In his life he had been a farm hand, a factory worker, a writer, a World War II veteran, trade unionist, mature university student, school teacher and school librarian. He is survived by his loving wife Celia, son Brian, daughter Bonnie Wilson, and grandsons Thomas and Jonathan Wilson. He will be cherished in their memory as a peaceful and compassionate man, insightful and idealistic, with a gentle sense of humour and keen interest in politics and the arts, especially literature and poetry. He enjoyed music of all kinds – classical, jazz, folk, pop – and was frequently humming a tune. His children in particular owe to him their love of literature, music, and the world of ideas. His rich and inspiring life was commemorated in a private service.
　
Heartfelt thanks to the dedicated staff at K3 Sunnybrook Veterans’ Hospital for their years of care and support. In lieu of flowers, please consider making a donation to the Alzheimer Society of Canada.

-- Obituary, Globe & Mail

Back in the saddle...

Have been posting rather sporadically of late -- readership too has fallen off to about 20 visits a day, from a peak in the good ol' days of 60 -- a common complaint among bloggers these days, what with the brain drain into Facebook, Twitter and all -- but have decided to commit myself to at least once a week, if I can, to see if I can build that readership up a bit.  Comments to David Trinidad's poem, below, are encouraging. The first string in months! Keep 'em coming!

The last month I've been busy with teaching and two grant applications. 
The summer was a good and productive one -- wrote/revised a number of poems I'm quite happy with (including a couple that got accepted by Saranac Review), took trips to Quebec City and Baie St-Paul, to Toronto, and to my partner's mother's cottage north of Napanee, Ont. Reading highlights included Tolstoy's Anna Karenina (it has to be one of the best novels I've ever read -- I've been meaning to read it for quite some time), Camu's L'etranger (reread, this time en Francais), and, among poetry, which was mostly read online and in anthologies, Susan Briscoe's The Crow's Vow, Pris Campbell's Seatrails, and a book of tanka entitled The Ink Dark Moon, Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu translated by Jane Hirshfield (with Marco Aratani).  The latter was a brilliant read -- one I especially recommend.

Shots taken on recent snowshoeing treks... above, in a park near Mirabel Airport, north of Montreal; below, in a park near St-Jerome, the day after an ice storm.  Click through to see large.

Find the error...

For the next two weeks I'll be working like crazy -- full time including Saturdays marking CEGEP exams + teaching at night. So expect sporadic posts if any.

Books finished in 2009

Happy New Year!

Here are the books I finished in 2009.  One of my quirks is that I like to record page numbers. (I don't include filler pages and contents at beginnings.)  It's fun to keep a running tally, and compare with previous years.  Font sizes vary, and some poetry books have plenty of blank space while others represent a dense read, so all that specificity adds up to only a rough indication -- but it's an indication nevertheless. I don't include articles or single poems from volumes, reviews or the internet.

These numbers tell me this was my least reading year -- at least in terms of print books -- since 2002: 5783 p., 26 complete books, 4 unfinished (but substantially read). I'm not sure why -- the internet? More time listening to podcasts? My own book promotion? My biggest reading year since 1990 was 2007 -- 7,506 p., 33 finished books, 9 unfinished. 

I'm sure quite a number of you can top these numbers.  I'm not the fastest reader.  And yes, there are all those other claims on my time, like work, writing, etc. (ETC.). 

FICTION
Anne-Marie MacDonald: Fall On Your Knees Jan. (560)
Christianne Frenette: After the Red Night (trans. S. Fischman) May: 159 p.
Arthur Golden: Memoirs of a Geisha (June): 434 p.
Jack Kerouac: The Subterraneans (July): 112 p.
Orhan Pamuk: Snow (July): 463 p.
Hermann Hesse: Siddhartha (Oct.) 125 p.
Vladimir Nabokov: Lolita (Oct.) 315 p.
Elise Moser: Because I Have Loved and Hidden It (Dec.) 248 p.
Total: 2191 p.

NON-FICTION
Malcolm Gladwell: The Tipping Point 277 p.
Malcolm Gladwell: Blink 288 p.
Edith Hamilton: Mythology May-July: 465 p.
Sherwin B. Nuland: The Art of Aging July: 290 p.
Yves Engler: The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy. Sept. 245 p.
Ari L. Goldman: Being Jewish Dec. 31: 257 p.
Total: 1722 p.

POETRY (Whole books)
Shannon Stewart: Penny Dreadful: 70 p.
Barbara Pelman, Borrowed Rooms, 122 p.
Carolyn Marie Souaid, Paper Oranges, 106 p.
Charles Simic, The World Doesn’t End, 74 p.
Laura Sims, Practice, Restraint 99 p.
Robert Creeley: On Earth: Last Poems and an Essay. June: 89 p
Fiona Tinwei Lam: Enter the Chrysanthemum. June/July: 73 p.
Terry Ann Carter: Transplanted. August 8: 74 p.
Lori Cayer: Stealing Mercury. 102 p.
Sina Queyras: Expressway: 95 p.
Jack Gilbert: Transgressions (Selected Poems) 163 p.
Gendun Chopel: In the Forest of Faded Wisdom, ed.. & trans.: Donald S. Lopez Jr. Dec. 95 p.
Total: 1191 p

Poetry in Manuscript
Allen Sutterfield: California (from City of Words, Septile 2) Dec.: 65 p.

POETRY (Partially Read)
Jorie Graham, The Dream of the Unified Field (Selected) 82 p.
Anne Carson: Glass, Irony and God 72 p.

Total: 154 p.

CHAPBOOKS
R.W. Watkins & Robin Tilley: In the Grip of Sirens 20 p.
Raphael Bendahan: By All Accounts (ms.) 25 p
Total: 20 p.

SHORT STORIES
IN MANUSCRIPT:
Jocelyne Dubois: Delinquents 7 p. Spy in Love 5 p. Under Covers 8 p. = 20 p.
PARTIALLY READ:
Ken Wilber: The Spectrum of Consciousness June: 86 p.
Daisaku Ikeda et al: The Wisdom of The Lotus Sutra, Vol. 1 94 p. (unfinished)

Total: 180 p.

Total: p. 5783 p.
Reading per day: 15.84 p. 26 Finished books 2 Chapbooks Unfinished books: 3

Facebooking...

I'm on Facebook. Finally enough invites, persuasion and recommendation pulled me in. You can access my profile here. I see it can be indeed a powerful tool if you want to invite people to an event or whatever.

In the last 45 hours or so since I created my profile, I've acquired 51 FRIENDS. So it seems that I too am in the race to be the first to acquire a BILLION FRIENDS. Wanna be my FRIEND?

Of course, the whole "friends" thing is a silly misnomer -- it's Facebook contacts, really -- but despite myself, I find my feelings being manipulated by the fuzzy connotations. Like, suddenly I'm so POPULAR. At least, we're tapping each other electronically on the shoulder, so to speak.

I'm surprised by all the people who are on it -- some whom I would never expect. Clearly, in North America at least, I'm a relatively late adopter.

Facebook's friend-finding software can be quite uncanny. An old friend's site -- a fellow in Toronto who I went to university with, who I still keep in touch with from time to time -- came up quite early on, under "Suggestions"... and I hadn't even listed my interests, educational background, nada. (Still haven't.) On the strength of a few events, my bio perhaps? Anyway, Facebook tells me, NOW we are FRIENDS.

Close call

This is what I saw out my window last week. I was typing away -- writing another review for the MRB, in fact -- when suddenly two fire trucks roll up, sirens dying, right in front of my house. Then the truck above raised its ladder -- for a moment it seemed it was going straight into my window. Eventually it went up onto my roof. If you look closely (click thru to see large), you can see a fireman scrambling up. This is the shot I took before I evacuated.

It seems a fire started in a neighbours' kitchen two doors down, caused by an electrical repair that went very wrong, making flames go up the insides of the walls. Eventually ten fire trucks were parked on my street. The fire dept. soon contained the fire; the back ends of the two apartments affected, though, were completely burned out. Luckily no one was hurt. My neighbours will have to move out for the next three months before their lodgings are made habitable again. Luckily they had fire insurance,which will cover lost belongings as well as the costs of relocation.

Today I took out a fire/theft/liability insurance policy with my bank. The idea had always been at the back of my mind; this incident put it very much at the front of it. For a tenant like me, it doesn't amount to much: about $300 a year. Worth it in a city where we live cheek-by-jowl with who-knows-who.

Back

rare sunny morning on the sun deck

Back in town -- was away for a writing week at a cottage near St-Adele, Quebec, the same one Jocelyne and I rented last year (more pictures here). It was a great retreat -- although for the most part the weather was awful. Out of seven days, we had two sunny ones (but still cool, as my sweater attests), and the rest of the time it was gloomy, raining, and cold -- too cold to use the sun deck or swim in the lake. A couple of nights it went down to the single digits (C., that is). We had to use the wood stove (which was fun -- like almost anyone, I love watching fires) and wrap ourselves in warm blankets. Still, I got some good writing done -- four poems, two among my best, methinks -- and lots of reading, including Orhan Pamuk's Snow, Sherwin Nuland's The Art of Aging (my god, how I'm thinning up there! Maybe that's the occasion) and poetry by Fiona Tinwei Lam and Jack Gilbert and a number of podcasts from Poetry magazine (more about those later). J. meanwhile did a couple of good short poems and two paintings. We punctuated our solitude with visits from friends. Among them was my friend Raphael Bendahan: we spent a day selecting and editing poems for the next Sky of Ink production, his chapbook, whose working title is By All Accounts.

The cottage is a great place to focus, and a tremendous relief from our own clutter and the city noise, but weather-wise, we have not had luck. Last year, too, it also rained almost every day, and we've had dominant bad weather in previous years. A couple of friends have bought a cottage near La Chute and invited us to stay for free. I think next year we'll be doing just that -- and waiting for a decent forecast before setting out.

back

The trip to Van was wonderful -- we were blessed with fine weather every day -- LCP Conf/Fest was highly enjoyable too, and made a number of interesting poetic contacts and discoveries. Nevertheless, the meeting with my uncle was the highlight. Still spry and lucid at nearly a hundred -- he'll be reaching his centenary in a couple of months -- he's a walking oral history. Filled me in on all kinds of details of our family past, plus vivid recollections of what it was like to be a Nova Scotia coal miner back in the '20s, and even the Halifax Explosion, as experienced 60 km away on a farm near East Mines, NS.

On my last day, though, I felt a sore throat coming on, and on the plane back the congestion started -- which lead, it seems, to a classic case of barotrauma -- otherwise known as airplane ear -- when the plane made an unusually fast descent. A week later, my ears are still blocked. The cold became a nasty one; I'm still not over it. Still, with end of school stuff and other matters, I was surprised to find today that I had scarcely looked at this blog in over two weeks. Ah well, things happen. Will post eventually.

Busy this week...

...organizing a training session in school on technology in the classroom, doing in a QWF workshop leader application (which meant a time-consuming update of my literary CV -- the latest having been lost in the crash), and writing a review of Christiane Frenette's After the Red Night for the Montreal Review of Books -- my first paid reviewing gig. That's due at the end of the week, but since I'm flying to Vancouver Thursday for the League of Poets' Fest & Conference (aka AGM), it's got to be in sooner.

Also...recovering & re-updating files after the crash.

For security, my wonderful computer guy suggested an external hard drive, which goes for an extra $120 or so. This may be a good option, especially for saving programs and settings. (It also assures a little extra money for his pocket.) Burning disks is also a solution, although recordable disks can become unreadable in a scratch. But a 4 gig UHB stick, which goes for like $12, is adequate in most cases including mine for My Documents and photos... but, so easily lost!

Here, though, may be the securest and cheapest solution: on-line storage. You can even store 2 gigs for free. Here's a couple of sites a friend suggested:

idrive.com
mozy.com

If your house burns down, your stuff is "out there". If there's a nuclear holocaust, well, maybe they're stored underground. (I'm sure I'll want to get at my stuff, after I'm vapourized.)

Clearly, with about one in ten hard drives failing every year, this security issue is worth obsessing over until it's dealt with once and for all. Anyone "out there" -- are there known (i.e. hacker) issues with these sites?

UPDATE: Well, I tried downloading mozy free version, but found that I didn't have much flexibility in choosing files to back up: My Documents as a whole is greater than the 2 gig limit, and I couldn't break it down to choose the most useful folders that would fit under that limit. Then I balked about paying say $60 CN a year for the unlimited backup. What am I buying into? What are the security issues about storing files online? Could hackers ever get into my files? (There are issues even with incrypted software). Mozy it turns out is better-rated by a number of review sites than Idrive, but there have been some complaints that, like the old AOL, it's difficult if not impossible to cancel a subscription. Anyway, I need to be convinced, even though it does seem a quick and easy way to obtain off-site data backup.

back...

My computer crashed again, this time fatally -- so I got another one, a 2-year-old HP Workstation XW 6200 with a new 250-gig hard drive & CD burner for about $400, taxes included (according to the link above, this thing once retailed for $5,500... hard to believe the depreciation). My repairman gave me a rebate on much of the cost of the previous repair (about $300), which really didn't work out. This one is a solid, highly rated beast that nevertheless runs very quietly, more quietly than my laptop -- and he tells me it should keep me happy (can any machine keep you happy?) for years to come... I'll keep my fingers crossed. I've been saying PC stands for Piece of Crap; if this one doesn't work out any better I'm definitely moving to Mac.

I've been busy customizing the system, reconfiguring e-mail, etc. (Second time this week.) I lost Dreamweaver, so it may be a while before I am able to update my website.

There's a poem in this drudgery, I'm sure. May Sisyphus be my muse.

Back

I've got my computer back -- suddenly it wouldn't start because of an "error or missing file" in the registry -- but a power outage while the repairman was reinstalling Windows caused an even worse crash, resulting in major complications. I've lost a lot of files including my most recent backups (it seems my backup disk was damaged beyond repair), and the rest, recovered, are so scrambled that... well, it's as if someone took all my file cabinets of 20 years, dumped them on the floor and shuffled all the papers. Also largely gone or scrambled: my email address book, my bookmarks, most programs.This will guarantee lots of hair-pulling over the next months.

The Toronto reading went well. Joe Rosenblatt, his delivery slowed by a recent minor stroke or heart medication (I never got that clear), delivered a curmudgeonly performance of witty, self-deprecating animal poems. Ed Nixon was decent in content and better in delivery. My reading was -- blow own horn for few seconds -- as good as ever, and I sold ten copies to family, friends, and a couple of strangers, now new acquaintances.

Poetry Plus

Above, yours truly reading at the Arts Cafe Poetry Plus reading on Tuesday night; below, Jocelyne Dubois (my partner), launching her chapbook, Hot Summer Night, published by our own (that is my and Raphael Bendahan's) Sky of Ink Press. The place was quite packed, actually -- despite the empty seats up front (they had just been vacated), people were standing in the back. We were both well-received, and Jocelyne sold five copies of her book, all to "strangers" (close friends had already received a free copy.) Overall, the reading was a good one for Poetry Plus: Julie Mahfood read some particularly dark, touching and tightly written poems; Steven Manners read some ascerbic, conversational pieces that were well done; and there was a woman in the open set -- I forget her name, but she's the attractive woman with the loop earrings pictured to the far left in the picture up top -- who reada piece that blew us all away drawing on her harrowing experience surviving Hodgkin's Lymphoma. All three I'll keep an eye out for. Carolyn Souaid -- who happens to be my editor at Signature -- turned in a fine reading despite suffering the throes of a migraine headache. I look forward to reading Paper Oranges, her new book.


Here we are afterward, listening to another featured reader. Jocelyne is looking through another chapbook that was available for sale that evening.

Carte Blanche -- remplie

Carte Blanche came out with its 7th issue today, and in it, to my pleasant surprise, are two poems of mine, since their acceptance letter only mentioned one.

So why the critter above? He's my cat, Batman, and it's from the experience of living with him for 12 years that I've gained the wealth of feline experience that went into Purr, a pantoum-like thing that attempts -- and who knows, may even succeed at some points -- to see the world through his eyes.

The other poem, It's Not That I'm Getting Older, concerns the paradoxes of middle age.

Other contributions are by Jocelyne Dubois (my partner -- when her short story was accepted for the same issue, it quite a joyous surprise), Anne Diamond, Bruce Henry, Ilona Martonfi, JR Carpenter, Angela Leuk, Elise Moser, Licia Canton, Maria Giuliani, Claire Sherwood, George Amabile, Julie Mahfood, Katherine Mockleer, K.V. Skene, Melissa Bull, Michelle Barker, Nathaniel G. Moore, and Yaqoob Ghaznavi.

Although this is Carte Blanche's first issue to publish international submissions, only two or three writers this time are from outside Quebec. That number will surely increase in future issues.

More Newfoundland pictures shortly.

I interrupt my slide show for these guys (and gal): about half my class on our final day (last Wednesday) of the spring term... let's see: from L to R, Jean from Cameroun, Choun Ming from Laos/France, Shadi from Syria, Bao Ming from China, Svilen from Bulgaria, Rodman from Costa Rica, Dary from Cambodia, Mohamed from Morocco, and this other guy -- can't remember his name -- from this exotic place called Ontario. We had fun together learning English all year (and yes, I learned from them)... I love you all, and this slide show is partly for you guys!! (Including, of course, those of you who didn't get into this photo.)

It's Canada Day, and summer is definitely upon us. This is the first summer I'll have had off in the last ten years. (Previous summers, I taught ESL immersion at Bishop's University: this year, I decided to change my routine.) Plans? Jocelyne and I are renting a chalet on a lake in the Laurentians for a week ; we'll be taking in some of Montreal's festivals, including the jazz festival; probably take a short trip to Quebec City & take in some of their 400th anniversary celebrations as well (not that I'm big on celebrations, but it happens to be.) As well -- actually primarily -- to write poetry, put together a second manuscript from what I've written, continue taking lessons with this guy & practice new arrangements of my songs, edit & produce a couple of Sky of Ink chapbooks, one by Jocelyne and one by Raphael Bendahan, do submissions and prepare (maybe I'll actually do it this time) a submission onslaught for September. I'll keep this blog active. What are your plans?

Back

Yrs. t. at Le Depanneur Cafe a few months ago... didn't get photos from last night... [Photo: Adrien Chevrot]

Just getting over two weeks and a half where work quite took over. This week I got called in for a full slate of supply teaching plus my 9 hour regular shift in the evenings. Last week, even more work. Made plenty of $$$ (for me at least) but already I feel significantly out of touch with Brian the poet. I'm looking forward to contacting him again.

Tonight though was truly refreshing: I performed some of my songs & read from my translation of Santos at Volver Cafe, sharing the stage with another singer-songwriter named Normand Raymond and an excellent Django Reinhardt-inspired jazz quartet lead by guitarist Philippe Albert. I'm happy to report that the cafe was packed. (40 people? 50?) And show went très bien. The audience was really warm and responsive, a happy surprise considering that there was no smoke in the air nor alcoholic drinks at the tables: just a lot of Latin Americans and French Quebecoises, whose hot blood more than made up for the cold air outside.

When a singer sings out, he or she breathes in as much as ten times as much air as someone sitting in the audience. So I must admit, nice it is to sing in a smoke-free environment: no bronchitis-like symptoms afterwards, no stinging eyes. Some day, perhaps, we'll look back on ashtrays in bars as we look on spittoons today: once a standard saloon feature, now those dinky brass chamber pots look just plain weird.

In this doggy dog world...

Since Jan. 3, I've been marking CEGEP English exit exams six and a half hours a day, and this week (Monday to Wed.), doing double duty, teaching my evening ESL class for three. Add in two and a half hours of commuting, and that makes for some full days...

English CEGEPs graduate about 8 - 10,000 students a year, each of whom has to write a standardized English Exit exam -- a 750 word essay analyzing either a short story or literary essay -- to prove that he or she has achieved an acceptable degree of proficiency in the language of, if not Shakespeare, Hemingway or Atwood. There are about 50 markers -- about half are CEGEP teachers, about half "externals" like me (although I have taught in CEGEP for a session or two...). This session there are about 4,000 exams to be marked -- the papers are graded by two independent evaluators who then consult to come up with a consensus on two of three criteria, going for the higher grade of the remaining criterion if it remains a grade apart. Failures are passed on to supervisors for further adjudication. Ultimately, all this byzantine-sounding complexity adds up a system that ensures a maximal degree of fairness, I believe -- although sometimes I wonder what it says about trust (or trustworthiness) in CEGEP standards that this sort of test has to be given for students who have already passed their way through the system.

I got the news today that I didn't make the CBC shortlist this year. I could have guessed as much: last year they notified me I was on it on Dec. 18. (Therefore, fellow competitors, if you haven't heard from the CBC by Xmas, don't hold your breath -- definitely, send that work elsewhere!)

Funny thing is, this year's submission was much stronger than last year's -- a new-and-improved version. Shows you how subjective these things are. Boo hoo.

A lot of the CEGEP exams this term are quite good (some, of course, are atrocious), but occasionally we come across funny phonetically-based spelling errors. One student wrote, "This is a doggy dog world."

Yes it is. Woof woof.

Books read in 2007

As I said last year, I keep track -- even of page numbers (subtracting blank pages at beginnings of books to come up with my totals.) It's a little game for me. This year, my grand total is a record breaker since I started keeping track around 1990: 7,536 pages, about 20.6 a day if you average it out. (Of course, font sizes vary, but I like to think these cancel each other out, sorta.) Not included are individual poems or articles read on the internet, in magazines, anthologies and collections -- that would augment the total considerably, but keeping track of those would be too obsessive, no fun anymore. Audiobook page numbers I calculated by looking up the print editions on Amazon. These are books read (or listened to) last year from cover to cover (a few were begun the previous year). Hyperlinks are to posts about these books on this blog:

POETRY
Sharon Olds: Strike Sparks: Selected Poems 1980-2002
Angela Leuck: Flower Heart
Artie Gold: The Beautiful Chemical Waltz
Nancy R. Lange: Femelle Faucon (French)
Theodore Roethke: The Waking
Elizabeth Glenny: A Periodic Sentence
Mark Strand: Blizzard of One
Gwendolyn MacEwen: The T.E. Lawrence Poems
Hafiz (trans. Daniel Ladinsky): The Gift
Pablo Neruda: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair (trans. W.S. Merwin) (reread)

CHAPBOOKS
Eric Folsom: Northeastern Anti-Ghazals
Pris Campbell: Abrasions
Nina Bruck: Still Light at Five O’Clock

POETRY/CRITICISM or ESSAYS
Jack Myers & Don C. Wukasch: Dictionary of Poetic Terms
Robert Pack and Jay Parini, ed. Introspections: American Poets on their Own Poems
Michèle Lalonde: Défense et illustration de la langue québécoise suivie de prose
et poemes

FICTION
Don DeLillo: The Body Artist. (Audiobook)
Stephen Mitchell’s adaptation of Gilgamesh. (Audiobook)
Hanif Kureishi: The Buddha of Suburbia. (Audiobook)
Frank McCourt: Angela’s Ashes (Audiobook)
John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces.
Heather O’Neill: Lullabies for Little Criminals.
Don DeLillo: White Noise.
Emmanuèle Bernheim: Sa Femme. (French)
Sara Sheard : Almost Japanese

NON-FICTION
Clotaire Rapaille: The Culture Code.
The Dalai Lama’s Book of Wisdom
Richard Hughes Seager: Encountering the Dharma: Daisaku Ikeda, Soka Gakkai, and the Globalization of Buddhist Humanism
SGI: Ordinary Heroes
Edward de Bono : de Bono’s Thinking Course
Piero Ferrucci: The Power of Kindness
Harry G. Frankfurt: On Bullshit
Naomi Wolf: The Beauty Myth.
Daniel G. Amen: Making a Good Brain Great
Alan Watts: The Book
Naomi Klein: No Logo

LITERARY JOURNALS
Saranac Review, #3 (Summer, 2007)
I include this, because its the one journal I read from cover to cover. It's as big as a fair-sized book.

Here are the books I have yet to finish, with the number of pages read this year:
The Practice of Poetry: 64 p. (inc. introduction)
Primo Levy: The Periodic Table: 126 p.
Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism: 380 p.
Jon Franklin: Writing for Story: 174 p.
Theodore Roethke: Words for the Wind: 24 p.
Robert Creeley: Selected Poems: 267 p.
The Classic Hundred Poems (Audiobook) 190 p.
Sherwin B Nuland: How We Die 23 p.
Ko Un: The Three Way Tavern (trans. Clare You and Richard Silberg): 34 p.

OK, so call me an egghead! But I'm sure many of you out there would leave me in the dust (or rather, frying pan).

Next year, I'd like to read a lot more poetry. Say, 25 books at least.

Guzzle your ghazals

I just came back from dinner at a Peruvian restaurant with five of my students; they wanted to have some fun over the Xmas break, and invited me out; I was happy to join them. We got stuffed on seafood and plied ourselves with sangria, and had plenty of laughs. The same five are captured in the above photograph taken at a school Xmas party about ten days ago (I have more than 20 on my class list: this is a small "core group" that hangs out together). They are, across the top, Gabriel from Columbia, Dary from Cambodia, Choun Ming from China via Paris (he actually grew up in France), and across the bottom, yours truly, and Svilen and Alexandra from Bulgaria. Lovely people, all of them.

Today I spent much of the day making three submissions (assertions?) to various reviews -- an occasion to look over the poems, fine tune with changes and deletions (one good reason to send things out: revisit your own work, and by implication, your life). A submission to CV2's upcoming Jilted Issue took me on a trip through time: I revisited a very lonely poem from almost two decades ago (it's a good one); the three more recent ones are a good measure of where I've come. A poignant experience, going through those: I'm sure CV2 is going to get a crop of heartfelt poems.

On Xmas day, I put up the post below. An exploration of ghazals, it's a kind of implicit Good Cheer. So I didn't bother with the usual huzzahs.

I remember I was distinctly disappointed when I learned how "ghazal" is pronounced in official Arabic: it is not a variation of gazelle, but rather more like "ghuzzle" -- perhaps appropriate for a poem form traditionally centred on drinking and love.

Right now, though, I think I'll make the implicit explicit: Season's greetings, everyone!

SNOW DAY

No teaching tonight -- Montreal schools are closed after last night's storm. It's the second snow day in two weeks. Here, the chairs on my balcony, a "cardrift" seen through my window, and the window through which I took that photo, beside the desk where I write.