"The Second Fallacy"

C.Dale Young has an excellent poem up at The Chronicle of Higher Education.  The commentary is well worth reading too...

Passenger Flight in blogworld...

Pris Campbell has posted a plug for Passenger Flight, along with two prose poems from it:  "Claire Obscure" and "Fishy". Thanks, Pris. 

Pris has a good lively blog, and has written, I daresay, some excellent poems herself.  (Although we're not related, the family name-resemblance did bring us into contact when I saw our names beside each other on Ron Silliman's blogroll some years back...)

Plug for Woodwork

I've just learned Online University Reviews lists Woodwork as one of the top 100 poetry blogs. But they've overlooked a number of other worthies, including (hyperlinked on my blogroll, to the right) Robert Archambeau's Samisdat Blog, Sina Queyras' Lemon Hound, Rob McLennon's blog, Seth Abramson's Suburban Ecstasies, Pris Campbell's Songs to a Midnight Sky, Todd Swift's Eyewear, and Mary Biddinger's Wordcage, to name a few. Meanwhile, they've listed CD Young's Avoiding the Muse twice. Other things on their list, like the Slate Poetry Podcast, aren't properly blogs at all. Maybe if they paid more attention to their own editing, they would also pay a little more attention to what's out there. But, it's nice to be listed.

Vehicule Press blog/Montreal Gazette poetry series

I just learned that Vehicule Press has a blog -- and that editor Carmine Starnino's postings there are quite informative, particularly about the Montreal literary scene.

From it I learned that the Montreal Gazette has a summer poetry series in its online arts section, wherein prominent local poets read a poem on video. I always welcome those rare instances in North America where literature is directly transmitted through the popular media, rather than parsed out to us through those questionable intermediaries, the reviewer and the interviewer. Certain Latin American papers, as I've pointed out before, do this all the time -- i.e. Managua's La Prensa and Mexico City's Exelsior. Would that this feature -- or something like it, possibly with inclusion of literary text -- last all year long.

Seems I'm on Vehicule's blogroll, and that's the occasion of my learning of their existence -- rather belatedly, since the blog has been up since 2007. Soon they'll be on mine.

Wayside Poet Bloggers

Going through my blogroll -- my "Other Worthies" list down at the bottom of my right-hand gutter, many of which I hadn't clicked on since 2006 -- I found a number of poet bloggers who I used to link with quite actively have either cut or dimmed their lights. AJP Liszkiewicz, Ana Bozevic Bowling, Chris Lott, Dallas Marina, Erin Noteboom, Estaban Arrellano, Julie Carter*, and Gail Armstrong are among those who have all closed up shop or lie dormant. Jim Behrle, whose ongoing lampoon of American Pobiz reached splendid comedic highs, now -- is this deadpan joke, or accident? -- redirects us to some sacchrine commercial venture called americanpoetry.biz... Once central stations, poet bloggers who engaged us with a lot of flair, are now neglected way-stations: Nick Carbo, AD Thomas, Anthony Robinson.

Of course, all fun things pass. Has the poetic blogosphere become too crowded? Has the novelty worn off? Have the rigours of cyberslavery worn writers down? Clearly, all or any of the above. While the likes of George Murray, Zach Wells and Collin Kelley continue to blog vivaciously and Silliman ad-infinitum, I sense a growing ennui in po-blogosphere.

Gail Armstrong, in signing off for good, expresses a common sentiment:

I don’t suppose it even needs to be pointed out that my enthusiasm for this weblogging business has near fully waned.

We’ve had a good run but it’s no longer fun. Or useful. And I admit to a certain – perhaps misguided and no doubt ludicrously precocious – nostalgia for a once more intimate web, one with less of a noisy strip joint about it.

Gone, it seems, are those heady early days of freewheeling poetical discourse and debate. Gone the sense of discovery, of breaking frontiers in a new kind of community-building. So why do I keep this blog up? Well, I have a new book coming out that's exciting to post about. (Out of the woodwork, indeed.) I still enjoy the physical act of putting things up -- images, poems, the occasional mini-review. Writing here hones skills, keeps a vital (if diminishing -- let's say, flickering) sense of connection. Occasionally, real connections are made, and I still learn from others here. So I blog...

*I've since learned she blogs from this address. I also learned that her husband just died. I am deeply sorry.

Silliman, Seth and the SOQ/Post Avant

Seth Abramson has been railing, here and here, most eloquently if wordily, against Ron Silliman's SoQ/Post Avant binary, which Silliman persists, nilly-willy, to promulgate. Oh how familiar to my ears. Here's my comment (slightly amended) which I left on Seth's most recent post, and which, believe it or not, I put some effort into writing.

Ron Silliman's opposition of SoQ and Post-Avant is patently reductionist and polarized. The likes of Henry Gould and I were pointing this out back in 2005. As I said in that post, where does Poe, who first coined the term SoQ, fit in? Yet Silliman is a juggernaut. I reckon he'll keep on railing against that SoQ strawman regardless of this or any other discussion: he lent us a profoundly deaf ear in the past. For that reason, I only visit Silliman occasionally now. Silliman shares a vast awareness of the *sociology* of poetry, particularly the poetry he is interested in, which for the most part, doesn't do a lot for me. I also appreciate his links lists and astute political observations. But -- he has his axe to grind, and he definitely has something to gain by the likes of you lashing out so verbosely against it. I find it interesting that here at least he links to you, creating (I hope, at long last, he proves me wrong) the disingenuous impression of being "open minded".

A game of tag

Earlier this week I received the following tag from Pris Campbell (no relation, except some book- & cyberspace exchanges):

RULE ONE, I have to grab one of the books closest to me, go to page 56, type the fifth line and the next two to five lines that follow.

RULE TWO, I have to pick five people who love books and who could receive the Bookworm award with honor.

So happens it's Phil Hall's White Porcupine, which I'll be reviewing next month for The Rover.

our giant muskrat soul kept falling apart
into butchered townships aflame with primal colour
& the spit of the grease was the shared song
of the brush & the pen slicing through forgiveness

"our giant muskrat soul"? Well, this particular part of the poem is about the poet's relation to Norval Morisseau. Condensation of language, I'll say.

Let's see --
Zach Wells (would he bother?)
Peter Pereira (has he gotten one already?)
Joe Massey (would he deign?)
Indran Amirthanayagam (love that name, longest on my blogroll)
RW Watkins (would he find a haiku long enough?)

No, I won't ask them directly. They'll have to find this virtual tap on the shoulder here.

One hell of an amazing post about getting out of hell...

Steve Schroeder tells us how to poetry blog. Hilarious!

A couple of new bloggers for my blogroll: fellow Montrealer Stephen Morrissey, and one Indran Amirthanayagam, a Vancouver-based Ceylonese (Sri-Lancan)-born poet-diplomat who writes his posts in flawless English, Spanish, French, and who writes poetry in all three languages. I just read an excellent post of his reflecting on Latin American poetry, and international influences in general.

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.

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.

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.

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.

THE DAILY POEM PROJECT

Over the last few months, Andrew Shields has repeatedly invited me to participate in his Daily Poem Project, where he, his students, and certain fellow bloggers vote on the best of a week's Daily Poems. The final round -- a kind of playoff of Project finalists -- was this week, and I decided at last to give it a go. Here are the poems that made it into the final round. And below, my comments on poems from that selection that made it onto my personal short list. My suggestion: click & read the poems first, if you can, before reading my comments on them.

All of these poems had interesting things to say & ways to say 'em, but none gets my total vote. All, or practically all, lapse into (or emerge out of) discursiveness. That is, they don't express or evoke so much as talk about... or maybe, to put it more precisely, the evocation these poets manage to do is hampered by the talking about they fall too easily into. Discursiveness is the bane especially of academics, people who do too much essay-writing and -reading, as most of these writers are. Be that as it may... The poems that got onto my "short list" were:

Christian Wiman -- The River. Some great writing here, but I felt let down with the word "crocodiles." He was evoking the animals so well up to that point, he practically (& I'd say, poetically) didn't need to actually name them. I think the poem would have been better if he had continued evoking their qualities through vivid description, but telling us what they are somehow turns this into a high-falutin' version of National Geographic. OK, maybe better than that. And what's that father doing there? OK, I'll accept that.

Tom Sleigh, Blueprint -- This one, I thought, was going to be (as Li Young Lee puts it in a quote a couple of posts back) all out of the mental centre to the exclusion of all else, and who needs that in this overly mentalized society? -- but as a critique of that "abstracting" process, an evocation of the reality he would like to express, this does become quite forceful & ineffable at the end. (Which means I can't say any effin' thing beyond that, without turning this into an effin’ essay).

Laure Ann Bosselaar , Friends -- She doesn't like her heart much, does she? But somehow I feel her description more than a tad put on, adjective-heavy. Her friends she likes better-- so that makes her quite likeable despite herself, doesn't it? I was struck by "the sun heaves daylight" -- that line leaps out as more profound & elemental than the rest of the poem put together. I like nevertheless "I thrum the lit syllables of your names on my sill... etc. An interesting way to evoke friendship. A funky ugly/striking artifact of a self-loathing (?) people-person.

Reginald Shepherd, "Eve's Awakening" -- I like a number of things about this poem. Stanzas five-seven are particularly beautiful. But would Adam know what a flag is? (I don't think Adam knows what a fig is at this point.) Somehow I think RS named God too early. Could it have been better

He called me by a name I'd never heard,
tried to enclose my hand in his: that garden
suddenly seemed small, enclosed
on every side, something that said God,
said call me that.

Something like that.

Oh, and where the heck is Eve? She's hardly there. No, powerful as it is as a title, I don't think I'd call this poem that.

Hadara Bar Nadav, Inside the Maze -- A hell of an interesting poem, the only one I've read from the point of view of the Minotaur. Culturally it is de grande portée. The unique lay-out of words, once one figures out how to read it, makes one feel one is entering the brain of another species, a slow-thinking one at that. (At first I thought the words could be read up and down as well as right to left -- would have been a miracle if the poet had managed that.) This poem quite grabbed me and took me along on its journey, but when the Minotaur refers to his "fragrant catalog", suddenly he becomes Assistant English Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Again, "talking about" -- too bad, but this highly avoidable mis-step unfortunately second-rates the poem, in my view.

Adrian Blevins -- Hey You -- This is one poem that, though highly mental, does not talk about, but is in its own highly eccentric terms -- and leaves you to figure out what those terms are. Kind of reminds me of EE Cummings in the use of an adjective as noun. I enjoyed "I threw my beautiful down at the waterway against the screwball rocks." & I love the final line. I almost gave this one my vote, but for semi-penetrable obscurities in lines 6-10 that didn't satisfy me. So does it really say "Hey You" to me? Well... not very loud.

SO, AFTER ALL THIS "THINKING ABOUT" --

THE WINNER IS:

Hadara Bar-Nadav, Inside the Maze!!!

P.S. It seems Bar-Nadav won the over-all vote too. For the final tally, see here.

For the last few months, Andrew Shields has been running what he calls the Daily Poem Project. Its final round, where people vote on the best daily poem since the project started, has its deadline at midnight tonight. You can read the poems, and participate, here. Sorry for the short notice! I'm back in Mtl. after a week of almost total absorption in teaching in this immersion program I'm in. (I have three more weeks to go.) Just before I left, though, I answered Andrew's call, and participated... it turned out to be an opportunity to read & evaluate some "top flight" contemporary American material. You'll see my short list with comments & final vote tomorrow.

PS. Andrew tells me (comment below) the deadline is actually Sunday night (Jul. 1) So as not to prejudice the voting, you'll see my take on probably Monday -- if and when I get a chance to sit down for a few minutes in the computer lab.

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...

Canadian Writer blog links

Funny, all this time I was labouring under the impression -- the delusion, as it turns out -- that for some mysterious reason I was one of the few Canadians on the poetblog block. This may have been true when I started back in May, 2004, but it sure ain't true now. Be that as it may, most of my little blog community -- found mostly via either the seemingly exhaustive blogroll on Silliman's Blog or Victoria Chang's deceased blog -- comes from south of the border. (See links lists to the right.) That may be soon a'changing. Here's an extensive listing of Canadian poet/literary bloggers -- a resource for myself as much as for others -- cut and pasted directly from Rob McLennan's blog. (A huge thanks, Rob.) As he puts it, why do so many of them have not a single link to another...? Yeah, why? Why have we been labouring in isolation from each other? These include (and the rest of the commentary is Rob's, not mine):

Stuart Ross (Toronto), Michael Winter (Toronto/Newfoundland; writing these lovely bits of nonfiction/fictions), Corey Frost (Montreal/New York), poet/critic Gregory Betts (St. Catharine's ON), fiction writer Kate Sutherland (Toronto), expat Sina Queyras (New York), Jennifer Mulligan (Ottawa/Gatineau), Mark Truscott (Toronto), former Ottawa resident Wanda O'Connor (Montreal), Jon
Paul Fiorentino (Montreal), Rhona McAdam (Victoria), Ariel Gordon & her other one (Winnipeg), Tracy Hamon (Regina), Karla Andrich (Winnipeg), Jennifer LoveGrove (Toronto), Ken Kowal (Winnipeg), Rob Budde (Prince George BC), Jordan Scott (Coquitlam BC/Calgary), unknown (Toronto), Gary Barwin (Hamilton ON), Julia Williams (Calgary), George Murray (now in St. Johns NFLD), Thomas Wharton (Edmonton), Erin Noteboom (Waterloo ON), Zoe Whittall (Toronto), Harold Rhenisch & another one (150 Mile House BC), Kellie Underhill (Sackville NB), Peter Garner (Montreal), Bernadette Wagner (Regina), Jan Lars Jensen (Nova Scotia), J.R. Carpenter (Montreal), Pearl Pirie (Ottawa), Claude Lalumiere (Montreal), Abigail Friedman (QC), Marcus McCann (Ottawa), Lou Reeves (Ottawa), Nienke Hinton (Toronto), "mompoet" (Port Moody BC), Vincent Tinguely (Montreal), Sherwin Tjia (Montreal), Shawnda Wilson (Montreal), Jude Goodwin (Squamish BC), Jim Munro (Toronto), William Gibson (Vancouver), etc

more focused on poetry,

including poet ryan fitzpatrick (Calgary), Bywords editor Amanda Earl (Ottawa), Jeremy Stewart (Prince George BC), Denielle (Prince George BC), Ian Whistle (Nepean ON/Winnipeg), Jennifer Mulligan (Ottawa/Gatineau), Chris Hutchinson (Vancouver), Weldon Hunter (Vancouver), etc

reviews & announcements,

including poet/editor derek beaulieu (Calgary), former Ottawa resident Laurie Fuhr (Calgary), Bywords editor Amanda Earl (Ottawa), Nathaniel G. Moore (Toronto), kevin Spenst (Vancouver) etc

entertaining visuals, whether artwork, comic books or visual/concrete poetry:

ross priddle (Medicine Hat AB), Tom Fowler (Ottawa) etc

many of which still work some variant on all of the above (none of these considerations, as I give them, are absolute). What floors me are the ones who can keep more than one blog going at a time (I can barely keep up with my one). Why does Toronto lad Nathaniel G. Moore need one, two, three, four blogs? There's even a writers retreat with a blog, & then of course the blog for the late Montreal poet Irving Layton...

The collaborative ones are particularly interesting, including the one Ariel Gordon, Bren Simmers & others keep, as well as this one (when does Gordon find time to do anything else?) or this one, by folk I don't seem to know, as are the geographically-related collaborative blogs, including the one Rob Budde plays about in his northern British Columbia, The Calgary Blow-Out, or trans-cribing Canada, the Winnipeg Words, or my own attempts through the ottawa poetry newsletter. I think Anansi has touring authors get blogs, which is why (it seems) Lisa Moore started, and Michael Winter too, but he keeps going...

Vancouver writer/editor Wayde Compton keeps one with others, on his Hogan's Alley Project, working to celebrate the early histories of the black community in Vancouver. Apparently Toronto poet and ECW Press editor Michael Holmes has started one for mostly ECW business; The Mercury Press also has one for notices (& then all the others on my sidebar that I just haven't mentioned...). Has the blog simply replaced the noticeboard?

And then there are all the Canadians living abroad, working their own variations, including Sina Queyras (Toronto/Montreal) and Corey Frost & his other one (Montreal) wandering New York, or Todd Swift (Montreal), Frances Kruk (Calgary), Richard Rathwell (Ottawa/Vancouver) and John Stiles (Nova Scotia), currently living in England, or poet Neile Graham in Seattle. Where else?

On the isolation of poets -- and blogs as symptomatic of the problem.

"the books within the eardrum"

David Leftwich, whose blog Eclectic Refrigerator was a reliable source of superb posts before he let it go into deep freeze about a year ago, wrote this appreciation of a poem in Francisco Santos' Undressing the Night back in Oct. 2005. Get a load of David's nifty collage.

Brian Campbell has been translating Nicaraguan poet Francisco Santos for several years and now has a book of translations coming out from a Costa Rican press. For those of you not heading to your local Costa Rican bookstore this week, Brian has posted some translations and the introduction at Undressing the Night. Here is a sample:

FIESTA

The glass beyond the fiesta
the books within the eardrum
the quotidian in the blood --
and the madman with his dirty fist
comes out of the mineshaft
waving a flower

-Fransciso Santos, trans. Brian Campbell

The line "books within the eardrum” really resonates – it seems to condence into one line the whole aural appeal of poetry, the sounds that unlock like skeleton keys the doors to deep memory. If Santos can do this in one short poem, I can’t wait to read more.