Just for fun

And because I'm almost as big a fan of Glee as Cabaret.

Though seriously, Fox? Fox?
Okay, actually no, can't put Glee and Cabaret in the same sentence. But it is fun.

How to Write: Reading by derek beaulieu

On August 21st derek beaulieu gave a reading from his new work of conceptual fiction How to Write at Monastiraki in Montreal. I apologize in advance for the wobbly video... I have a lot of things going for me, but a steady hand is apparently not one of them. If you can get past the trembling screen, though, you'll get to enjoy beaulieu's reading of the first piece from How to Write entitled "Nothing Odd Can Last," a collection of plundered questions about the famous novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. I'll also be interviewing beaulieu about his book, so if you have any questions for beaulieu about this piece or about any other section of How to Write, let me know.

Helen Hajnoczky's first book, Poets and Killers: A Life in Advertising, is forthcoming this fall from Snare Books. She is now living in Montreal, and wants you to tell her about all the awesome poetry things she needs to check out!

Wow, good news!

On Tuesday, the Pacific Salmon Commission announced it expects as many as 25 million fish will return to the Fraser this season.
That's the largest return since 1913 and more than double what was forecast just a few weeks ago.
On Tuesday night, fisherman were down on the docks preparing for what may prove to be an epic fishing trip.
Stewart McDonald said he does not plan to sleep for the entire 32-hour stretch.
"It's probably going to be the best fishing of our lives…. They're just coming in on hordes, it's amazing to see," said McDonald.

Read more: 

Holy Obviousness Batman

No offense to the writers on either list, but this entire thing? It's depressing. It's obvious. It's old. And it's certainly not productive.

It's kind of shameful actually. To wrap this in a guise of neutrality when it's an old turf war.

>>

I'll paste the comment I left on Steven Beattie's site and hope for a productive dialog out of this.

LH says:

August 25, 2010 at 10:24 am

I don’t think anyone is villifying anyone. I have nothing against Metcalf, or any of the writers, or you.

Call me naive, Steven, but I do hope for a bit of distance between such lists and one’s immediate peers. As a national reviewer I would expect to see a list that took into account the actual national scene in all of its complexness. Isn’t this part of what you’re reacting to? A kind of network of persistant back scratching? Is how one eradicates such small circles simply by replacing them? I thought we wanted to move beyond that.

As I said yesterday, I appreciate your willingness to take a bite out of things. I hope you can be equally willing to face the response.

As for the texts, it’s curious isn’t it. What way has this entire project been about setting up the writing for consideration and/or reconsideration? Worth thinking about. And of course, that may happen in the coming weeks.

Top Ten Things Wrong With NP's Critique-let of Erin Moure

(Because Reimer never met a fray she didn't belatedly jump on.)

"Cryptic without being particularly interesting, stricken with various political and linguistic theories, and barren of the sort of grace one typically looks to poetry to provide, it’s all too easy to take a pass on."

1. Use of the adjective barren in a micro-review of a woman. (But at least they didn’t call her hysterical!)

2. Multiple nominations for the GG seen as a bad thing.

3. Assumption that readers of poetry are looking for “grace.” (When I’m in the mood for a little grace, I go to the ballet. Or think about my grandmother. Or watch my cat eviscerate a mouse. Or read Hallmark cards. I’d like to suggest that there are many others who aren’t interested in graceful poetry.)

4. “Without being particularly interesting.” According to whom? By what criteria, and what evidence?

5. “Stricken…..with various….theories.” OMG, theory! Quick, somebody, medic!

6. Moure held up as a straw figure to explain poetry’s lack of mass audience.

7. Moure given the “nod for being so prolific and so honoured.” Oh, so it’d be ok if her output was smaller.

8. Seriously, can we call a moratorium on descriptors of women artists that reference the womb?

9. The editors dislike of politics and/or linguistics as a component of poetics. Because that makes it too “cryptic.”

10. “…it’s all too easy to take a pass on.” How did your editors let that awkward sentence pass (on) by (them)?

-----------

Nikki Reimer is the author of [sic] (Frontenac House, 2010). She lives in Vancouver, where she volunteers for the Kootenay School of Writing collective and chronicles the East Van Cats.

Against Micro Moments

We steal text. We manipulate it. We copy and assemble. We Tweet before we've fully formed our thoughts. We make lists of Best/Worst Over/Under Rated. We. Operate. In. Bites. We can't seem to give ourselves space to,

what?

to

what? 

think.

This is your brain on computers:

...technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.

I love technology. Really, I do. But I can't quite believe the hours we all spend Tweeting back and forth. Myself included. When I recall that for years I wouldn't have cable in my house because I didn't want to be a consumer of culture but rather a producer, it all seems so quaint.

How many hours do you spend in front of a computer?

How many productive hours?

Poetry Magazine gets up in your face

Please read the following pieces posted recently on Poetry Foundation, one by Abe Louise Young, the other by Raymond McDaniel. These are timely pieces that prod at questions of appropriation. Here is a link to the source of McDaniel's appropriation, and here's a link to one of the poems (which I have added above after finding a video of the same poem). Of course there is a sense (assumption) here that it is only conceptual writing that appropriates and is thus to be blamed for pushing us into this quagmire of accountability and crisis of content/meaning...ha, I say. Lyric appropriation has been going on since poets began listening. Conceptual writing just ups the ante.

But it's a good discussion. A necessary and timely one.

And yes, maybe we need a new movement...or a non-movement?

For the record, I never find myself asking what Henry Gould thinks. If he wants me to know, he'll tell me.

Jesus Loves Everyone: Do We Need Gay Bookstores?

In North American cities the rents are rising quickly and bookstores have a hard time keeping up, even those that are mainstream. London seems to be sufficiently spread out so that this isn't happening...or not at the same rate. This is purely conjecture on my part, based on mere weeks and limited walking, but I have to say the texture, the percentage of retail/residential, pleased me. And clearly these bookstores are able to thrive. Gay's The Word, just around the corner from Skoob, on Marchmount, was busy every time I walked past. Mostly filled with men, as it caters mostly to men.

When I saw the store front it really felt like running into an old friend. And I mean that in the sense of familiarity but more so in the "old" part. Literally I skipped back in time. To a time when such storefronts were risky. When to see them was to sense the hair on the back one's neck rising with delight. It also reminded me of  a much more complicated time where there were much less intricate relations between corporate interests and lesbian and gay culture--where the wit and sarcasm was more for play, more for coded play, than it was for general consumption; for advocacy more than selling cars, etc.

In fact his little store is a classic queer bookshop: intimate, upbeat, in your face.  Purchased this visit: critic and cultural figurista Terry Castle's "sexually charged memoir" The Professor.  I'll have to wait a bit to read it, but am very much looking forward. It includes "Desperately Seeking Susan," Castle's brilliant essay on Susan Sontag. Other purchases include and an assortment of excellently evil cards. For example:"Jesus loves everyone ... except you, you little cunt..." Yes, sarcasm is just one more service the Queer community offers. No longer free of charge, but there you have it.

There is a long, long, list of new books out that I must own, and to be honest, I hadn't thought of many of them as "queer" before seeing them in the bookstore: Colm Toibin's Brooklyn, for example, or anything by Ali Smith. Is that a matter of not reading in this context anymore, a matter of simply having one's identity filters on the side, a matter of age, or that the way we in North America are encountering "the bookstore" has and continues to change? Think about the number of gay and/or women's bookstores that have closed down over the past few years. Did we begin to feel there was no longer any need for them?

The long list of books about gay London would not have fit in my suitcase. Fascinating though. A history of queer culture in England. Not enough poetry--there never is enough poetry in gay bookshops is there? I don't know if my friend David Groff's anthology Persistent Voices was there. This is a new anthology of voices lost to Aids. Is there such a thing as a poetry bookstore? As a gay poetry bookstore?

In any case lack of poetry or not I loved, loved, loved this little store. So happy to know it's there, because yes, we need them. Check out this little blurb about a documentary about a gay bookstore in Taiwan. And say thanks to all those long gone and still standing. Here's an old favorite: Vancouver's Little Sister's.

Skoob bookS

It took me a shamefully long time to get the pun in the name of this bookstore even though they make it obvious in the sign. An excellent collection of books here in a space that reminds me somewhat of the basement of The Strand before it got its fancy renovation.

They sell the Penguin mugs, though not all of them. Jane Austen's Persuasion seems a bit more difficult to find for example. Pride & Prejudice, yes. You can guess which mugs the Hound owns no doubt.

Many many many orange Penguins lay about this store in boxes and on shelves. It seems the most abundant colour. Penguin has some marketing genius going on these days. Too bad the brilliance doesn't spread into areas such as acquisition and upper management. One wonders what it would be like to have editors who approached their job with a little verve. Out in their tights looking for the rare and original instead of standing at the end of this or that assembly-line waiting for the prefabricated manuscripts to pop off the end of the line.  I am somewhat in jest here, but only slightly. Acquisition should be a strange game, no?

In any case, very much liked this bookstore, in the heart of Bloomsbury, in the basement of the Brunswick Centre, which is a mall, running parallel to Southhampton Row and near Coram's Fields. Not a very good looking mall as malls go, but a busy one, with a Waitrose and Starbucks for surfing and various other restaurants for noshing. You have to go in the "back door" of the mall to find this shop. It isn't obvious. It's downstairs as well.

This bookstore is all about regrets for me. So many excellent literary biographies that are on my list, so many modernist treasures--Ottoline Morrell, Woolf's biography of Roger Fry, Letters of Vanessa Bell, Marjorie Strachey's novel and so on. Books about England, history, geography, travel, some I'd never heard of and many I wanted to read. And good copies at that. Note to self: bring empty suitcase next time.

Say no to Enbridge

Oil pipelines along rivers just isn't a good idea. End of story.

Enbridge has closed off Line 6B, a pipe with 190,000 barrels of capacity, since a late July rupture sent 19,500 barrels of crude leaking into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. In so doing, it has shut off an important sales valve for Western Canadian crude and triggered an escalating set of problems.

Not only has the Alberta oil patch been forced to juggle barrels through a limited network of jammed pipe, it is now also contending with prices that have dropped substantially, eroding profitability across a broad swath of the industry.

Save the last pristine watershed in British Columbia. This is a no-brainer. Very nice to see people outside of the Terrace/Kitimat area talking about this. The area needs development. It has needed development since the 1970s but it's been a slow downward spiral in population since then and an upward climb in unemployment rates. The kind of perfect storm for a large multinational to come in and develop with very little resistance.

But there should be resistance. Big time. This is one of the most beautiful areas on the planet. Do nothing until the right thing comes along, that's what I'm thinking.

On the matter of first editions

There are bookstores that specialize in specific kinds of books: first editions, 18th Century, poetry, drama, and so on. Collinge and Clarke, this eclectic little shop on Leigh Street in Bloomsbury had some good ones. They apparently specialize in "private presses" and possessed one book I particularly love, as you can see in the second photograph...

a first edition of Virginia Woolf's The Waves. 
If I could have only one first edition that would be the one. Particularly because it was a Hogarth Press book, and because Vanessa Bell would have designed the cover, and so on.  The Waves was available for 800£ or $1,200, and it wouldn't be on the shelf long, I was told. It was lovely to hold, but I am not going to be acquiring such an item any time soon.

It's much easier to find a first edition of a Gertrude Stein book than it is a Woolf. I have one or two first editions of Stein, and technically one first edition of a Woolf, but it's a book that wasn't published until a few years ago. A copy of her essay, On Being Ill. I don't think that counts...

There used to be a great used bookstore in Toronto, on Bathurst just south of Dupont. I bought several great first editions of Canadian books there--novels and poetry. Paul Vermeersch used to work there I believe and may have more to say on the matter than I.

Another good one, since we're in Toronto now, and not London, is Balfour Books on College. I generally stop in there every time I'm in Toronto, though I don't always find something to fill out my collections. They have a great collection of paperback Canadiana, and often some very good art and criticism. Balfour is in the business of slimming down their stock because they too are moving. Driven out by rising rents as so many bookstores are. They are smart though, they're buying the next building they move into. It's near College and Spadina. Very much looking forward to the new location.

As for the matter of first editions--are we still interested in that? Given the quick and dirty rise of the ebook what will it matter which edition is which? I tend to think this will only make these delicious, material volumes that much more delicious. As much as I like technology, I don't get quite the same buzz from searching iTunes, or the App store as I do sitting in Balfour Books, or The Word here in Montreal, or the many shops I wandered in and out of in London.

On the other hand, I had to go into a Chapters in Oakville last weekend and was horrified by the erasure of all things Indie and Other. Why should I be surprised that a corporation is corporate? Does big necessarily have to be bad? I don't think so. It reminded me of the wasteland of my youth, looking for something interesting in a Coles...it wasn't until encountering my first independents, the old Granville Books in the Granville Mall for example, that I found a deep and vast selection of books that made me want to slip them in my penniless pocket and take them home.

This Is Why I Hurt You: A Brief Post on Kate Greenstreet

Kate Greenstreet
This Is Why I Hurt You, Lamehouse 2008

Greenstreet's little chapbook fell out from a pile of books on my desk marked "for review." It's a big pile and hers is a little book, even as chapbooks go. It's hand stitched, not overly so, and the paper is functional. A bold clear font announces the title. The book starts with a quote from Walker Evans, which makes sense since Greenstreet is first of all, a visual artist. "It's logical to say that what I do is an act of faith. It came to me. And I worked it out."

This is in fact a perfect clue to the reader in how to approach Greenstreet, who has two other excellent books under her belt. She reminds me of Erin Moure, the way she will stop and stare at her feet so to speak, in the middle of a poem. But the middle of the poem, the staring, actually become the poem itself. You think you're on your way and then you realize you're there. In it.

The first section has a series of statements in quotes:

"It makes me feel that being human is a good thing. Being human--and even just being the way I am--I'm not completely alone."

and later "I guess. I guess it makes me feel like we're all okay somehow." [starts to cry]

"How does poetry cause that feeling?"

"I don't know."

This small book manages to be several things at once: a journey, a meditation, an inquiry, a mystery, a document looking at its shoes.

I feel for the lamp and it's gone. Black is missing.
The red has a point but no lead.

Anis Shivani might have a hard time appreciating this little text. I don't. It's associative. It relies on your store house of images. Reaches inside, or melds with the reader's hard drive, ticking new connections at a pleasing pace. If perhaps you don't have the same imagery stored in your head as Greenstreet does, you can make your own connections.

You can approach it like you approached Twin Peaks. In the end it didn't really matter how the thread went did it. Or it did. Still, you sat on the same sofa, watching.

 When I think of people, I always think of you.
A drive, a death, a conversation. 

I do want to piece things together. I do want to think of you, and know you, dear reader, dear poet. The seams are in order. They proceed quite logically toward a moment of staring at my shoes. Or maybe yours, as the word turns. "I would alter little things in everybody's story," Greenstreet's penultimate line warns. Then "These are all the questions I have."

A Few Things I Learned About Life as a Poet from Watching Bright Star

I approached this movie ready to be snarky and suspicious. No romantic frippery for this lady, in either senses of the word. However, with a deft cinematic hand, Jane Campion "trace[s] the comminglings and collisions of poetic creation and amatory passion" in this tale of young John Keats (Ben Wishaw) in love. 1. Her cinematography in Bright Star is at once gorgeous and lived in, brilliant fields of lavender heath and daffodils in a meadow, roughly hewn wooden door frames and sparse furnishings. And the costuming, especially on budding seamstress Miss Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish,) from whose point of view the movie is told, caused many a wanton cry to erupt from my mouth. (Wanton = I want one.) Cornish wears a series of empire-waisted jumpers in striped linen or brown satin with frilly blouses underneath. Ruffly bonnets or "triple mushroom collars" frame her face. And the most fantastic pair of multi-buckled shoes I have seen in any movie. Oh, it is to swoon!

Drawing by Bertie from Melbourne, Australia. She is Who lives in that teacup? and Victorian Tea Party online

Oh, right, the poetry. In any case, I was able to glean one or two kernels of insight as to what the Life of a Poet might comprise:

* Poets never did make much money from their endeavors.

*Art, on the other hand, is generally for the rich.

* Wait a minute, Fanny Brawne and her siblings spend their days on needlepoint, reading, ballet and French lessons, though their mother is a widow and their dead father was a farmer? Shouldn't young Miss Brawne be dispatched to the city to cook and clean for some other family? Who is financing this beautifully aesthetic life?

*Though the question of poverty does come up later in the film. In fact, it's such a problem that Keats' friends must chip in to send him off to Italy for the putatively better climate. But these dudes (Keats and friend Charles Brown) don't even try to get day jobs.

*Poets like cats.

*Girls need to be taught poetry by boys who write it. (Apparently they cannot read and figure it out for themselves.)

*"Poetic craft is a sham. If poetic craft does not come as naturally to leaves to a tree then it better not come at all." Which seems a bit disingenuous coming from one who wrote sonnets.

*Boy poets have mommy complexes. Or woman complexes. Or both.

*"Doing nothing is the musing of the poet." Interrupt at thy peril.

*Musing = making one's mind available to inspiration.

*Those who are not themselves poets will always remark, "Is it successful? It's selling well, then?"

*It dost helps one's infamy to die young
* A dead poet's lady love must wrap herself in black and walk the heath mournfully the rest of her days. (Only according to the film; the real Ms. Brawne married twelve years after her poet's death, and by some accounts came to consider her earlier estimation of Keats to be "overrated." 2)

Here is the poem on which the movie is titled. I find it a bit mawkish, but I am reading from a 2010 perspective.

Bright Star, by John Keats (1838)

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death

-------------------------------------------------

Nikki Reimer is the author of [sic] (Frontenac House, 2010). She lives in Vancouver, where she volunteers for the Kootenay School of Writing collective and chronicles the East Van Cats.

You can tell a bookstore by its window

London Bookstores: Persephone

London has bookstores. Loads of them. I was taken by a few in particular, and I'll post about these over the next few weeks when I have the time. The first I admit I was attracted to simply because of its cover, or front. Excellent name, font, sign, window and location: 59 Lamb's Conduit Street. I first read of the street in Woolf's Diary. She makes mention of Lytton having bought paper from Lamb's Conduit Street, which is close to Coram's Fields, and Russell Square, etc.

The books themselves are a "dove grey" (arguably mauve) and simply and uniformly designed but for the front 'fabric' paper and folksy bookmark. Each with a preface commenting on the book--why has it been neglected, why we need to read it, etc. I bought four books, but could have bought many more. The first to catch my eye was Katherine Mansfield's Journal. Published shortly after her death by John Middleton Murray, it's a candid little gem.

Putting my weakest books to the wall last night I came across a copy of "Howard's End" and had a look into it. But it's not good enough. EM Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He's a rare fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain't going to be no tea.

Or, as Woolf says in her review (printed at the back) "We feel we are watching a mind which is alone with itself..." or "Katherine Mansfield about Katherine Mansfield." Also bought The Montana Stories, but haven't dipped into those yet.  Two other titles made it into the bag including a 19th Century novel by a young woman, Amy Levy, offering a critique to the London world represented in Daniel Deronda by George Eliot. 

There were a half dozen others I could have picked up had I endless pockets and luggage. These might have included Leonard Woolf's novel The Wise Virgins, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum, who like Anne Frank, lived in Amsterdam until 1943. Other picks: Julia Strachey's (yes Lytton's sister) novel Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, and Woolf's Flush. There are other greats: odd cook books and quiet collections of fiction.

I can't say I loved all the choices made here, but I love the concept behind this press, which is bringing out books that have been forgotten, or are less known, or good things missed...they look for women's texts, but don't limit their selection by gender. So yes, in a time when it's all doom and gloom these women are reinventing. 88 books so far. Online and physical, retail space.

The Proof is in the Proof

Ok, admit it. You feel a sense of smug self-satisfaction every time you find a spelling error in a published novel, you laugh until you cry mocking newspaper headlines that say things like, “Thai Ministers Flea in Wake of Violence,” and you question the intelligence of any poet whose book has a really ridiculous spelling error in it. Now, I like ridiculing the ‘fleaing’ ministers as much as the next snob, but I have a deep, dark, terrible secret that you may have already figured out if you’ve been reading my posts regularly… I can’t spell. After I publish a post, my sister will almost always email me to tell me she enjoyed my post, and with a list of the spelling errors I need to go back and fix. Now, not only can I not spell, I’m also in the process of proofing my first book. I cannot go back and hit edit on the book... cue cold sweat. Of course, other eyes have seen the proof and picked out mistakes too, so I’m not the only English major responsible for making sure there are no grievous errors within the pages of Poets and Killers, and I am eternally grateful to my editor and copyeditor for this (not to mention my sister). However, if a few really obvious errors slip through all the proofs and into the book, I’m pretty sure I’m the one everyone is going to think can’t spell—and they would be right. Not only will people think I can’t spell, though, but I’m pretty sure everyone will think this is evidence that I am really, really dumb. When a lot of people spot a spelling error in a classmate’s power point presentation, or in the seminar paper of a fellow student, they immediately assume the person has done a half-hearted job, or that the person is sufficiently mentally stunted that even if they did put a lot of effort in, the material isn’t going to be worth considering. I've hear employers simply toss out c.v.s that contain spelling mistakes. But honestly—some of us just can’t spell. I don’t know why I can’t spell. I was read to and read a lot as a child, and my mother is a primary school teacher. I’ve always been bookworm-ish, and I’ve been writing copiously and constantly since I learned how to write at all. Furthermore, I’m old enough that I didn’t learn how to write on a computer with spell-check, so don’t go blaming Microsoft Word and technology for my problem. It’s not as though I’m lacking experience in the reading and writing department… I just can’t remember what words are supposed to look like. Words I’ve read and written a thousand times I will often have to look up because I cannot visualize words. Despite this fact, and with a lot of careful proofing, I’ve managed to get an honours degree in the language I can’t spell in, and am beginning an English MA in the fall. So, I’m not dumb, and despite my questionable choice of letters when writing words like seperately and indipendance, I do invest both time and effort in thinking through my essays and poems. I’m not saying that correct spelling shouldn’t be expected, incorrect spelling is distracting and jarring to the reader, but I do wonder if correct spelling is a reliable litmus test for the intelligence of the writer, or the literary merit of a book. Does my questionable spelling undermine my credibility as a writer or a critic? How harshly will you judge me if I let a spelling mistake get printed in my book?

Helen Hajnoczky's first book, Poets and Killers: A Life in Advertising, is forthcoming from Snare Books. It won't have any spelling mistakes in it.

Comments are so last decade....

Silliman has turned his comment stream off and I'm with a lot of people who think it's a good idea. There are quite a few last comments that illustrate my feelings exactly.

I, for one, applaud this move of YOURS. 'Twill be more like the "old days"  a "dialogue" between the writer and the reader  ... a revival of letter/e-mail, one-to-one writing/thinking  and maybe will lead to some productioning (?)

A little space between digestion and response. I said earlier that I thought the right response to a great poem is probably another great poem--I think the same might be true for a post. More thought rather than expressing one's anger, or frustration, or the "good post" thing which as we all know, isn't useful. I offer my critique of the comment stream with my own engagement included. The less I say publicly the happier I am these days. But I think that rather than embrace silence, it's about choosing the appropriate venue for one's response to a given situation. This has long been a concern for me. I don't regret my years of blogging at all, they helped develop a thick skin to better deflect the invectives while allowing me to craft a public persona. Very important. But in general, I can't say that engaging in comments has done much for me. I have done it, again a fact I've stated often, mostly because I am so weary of the bulk of these comment discussions being so very male, but no more for me. They take so much time and energy, and emotional energy too, taking in the constant high-emotion content: everyone is sensitive, everyone reacting as if this post, this one post, is indicative of a crisis of some magnitude...it's too much.

There is only one comment stream included in Unleashed. It ends the book. That was certainly one of the most productive and invigorating discussions this blog has seen in its long run. As of the fall, there will be no comments here either.