Although the calendar says it’s spring tomorrow, Mother Nature is having none of it here in Toronto. As a howling wind swept around my house in the east end yesterday, variously tossing down rain, snow, sleet and hail in succession, a little package arrived from Edmonton’s NeWest Press. When I opened the package, it was as if a warm spring breeze wafted out …
Flipping through, sampling intriguing dashes of poetry from Jenna Butler’s third collection, I found I was as enamoured by the fresh first impressions of the physical book as I was by the words on the page. No surprise, then, to discover that this book’s design was imagined with the signature subtlety, attention to detail and fidelity to the subject matter that characterizes all of Natalie Olsen’s fine work. (Learn more about her work and creative process at her Kisscut Design blog.)
The lattice of leaves and tendrils, underpinning the themes and images of nature throughout Butler’s collection, is echoed throughout the book. Swoon … even wee leaves sprout from the page numbers. Spring is in the air!
Just as the book’s epigraph from George Melnyk states, “the visual turns visionary.”
Thank you to NeWest Press for providing a review copy of Seldom Seen Road, by Jenna Butler.
William Blake and Robin Blaser have a meeting of minds over appetizers, and the rest of the vibrant, clattering table of poets fades into the background. Lucy Maud Montgomery drops her napkin and Jacob Arthur Mooney gallantly picks it up and returns it to her. Kimmy Beach and Brendan Behan plot postprandial mayhem over dessert, and convince Milton Acorn, Helen Adam, Al Purdy and Paul Quarrington to join them. Suzanne Buffam flirts with Charles Bukowski. Margaret Avison has reassuring words for Ken Babstock. Billy Collins and John Cooper Clarke swiftly find they have much in common; Warren Zevon and Jan Zwicky are less certain of that, but are cordial and collegial nonetheless.
I’ve been tweeting a #todayspoem tweet every day since December 26, 2011, inspired by this. In addition to revisiting and going deeper in my own poetry collection, #todayspoem has compelled me to go further afield in print and online, and my daily tweets have reflected both my own explorations and those sparked by other #todayspoem contributors. So, while I’m imagining what this first 300 poets I’ve tweeted would have to say to each other if I sat them at a table … I’m also imagining the new guests who will be joining them in the days, weeks and months to come.
The illustration, added with good-humoured respect for all fine poets and translators, is Alice at the Mad Hatter’s tea party — Illustration to the fifth chapter of Alice in Wonderland by John Tenniel. Wood-engraving by Thomas Dalziel (from www.victorianweb.org).
Well, I’m closing in on 10 months (211 poets in 288 days, to be exact) of #todayspoem. Yep, and so far, I haven’t missed a day. As I’ve mused before, did I have any idea I’d be this far along a journey through poetry when a bunch of us bookish Twitter friends had the first #todayspoem discussion back in late 2011? I knew I would commit to it, and I did. What I didn’t know was how far-ranging a journey it would be, and how much I’d learn from both my own explorations, and from the discoveries I’d make through the generosity and creativity of other #todayspoem contributors (who I hope I’ve accurately captured in this Twitter list).
As far afield as I’ve gone at times with #todayspoem, I notice from keeping track of my choices that there are poets I’ve returned to more than once. The following is a list of the poets I’ve visited and revisited for #todayspoem inspiration, with links (where available) to some of their poems that I’ve chosen, read, enjoyed and derived inspiration or solace from early in the morning.
I’m thrilled to introduce Bookgaga blog visitors to a very special guest book reviewer. Amanda Earl is an eloquent and prolific literary supporter, and writer and artist in her own right. I suspect many of you reading this blog already know her and perhaps have met her in person at one of the many arts events in which she takes part.Amanda’s most recent poetry chapbooks and e-books are “Sex First and Then A Sandwich” (above/ground press, Ottawa, Ontario, 2012), “me, Medusa” (the red ceiling press, UK, 2012). Her poems appeared recently or are forthcoming in Rampike, fillingStation and In/Words Magazine. Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal, and the (fallen) angel of AngelHousePress. Follow her on Twitter @KikiFolle or Pinterest pinterest.com/kikifolle/. For more information, please visit amandaearl.com.
If I understand correctly, the object of Today’s Poem (#todayspoem) is to expose the general tweeting public (the Tweetosphere) to a daily dose of poetry in 140 characters or less. These poem bits are also posted by ardent poetry enthusiasts or Internet junkies, take your pick, on Pinterest, along with a photo of the author or book cover. Today’s Poem is the brainchild of Vicki Ziegler, who I know as @Bookgaga on Twitter, but haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet. I am trying to lure her to the Ottawa International Writers Festival this fall for tea and book mayhem.
I began taking part in Today’s Poem this year, most likely in January. At first, I simply opened a book of poems at random and tried to find an excerpt that was compelling and brief enough to post. I had some trepidations about this exercise. What if I wasn’t representing the poet’s work properly by excerpting those 140 characters? I found I often had to exclude parts of lines to fit within the 140-character limit or I could choose to continue in another tweet, thereby breaking the line with the noise from the traffic of other tweets. But the thought of the goal of the exercise, to help people (and myself!) rediscover or discover exciting poetry, motivated me to dive in. I think this is a very creative use of Twitter, which is often just a place for narcissistic self-promotion and the repetition of sweet homilies. I commend @BookGaga for her altruism and initiative.
My most recent month-long ritual has been to post lines from the work of Anne Carson, not just her poetry, but also her translations of Greek and Latin plays, her essays and her novellas in poem form. I am fascinated by Carson’s exploration of form, the tension between formal elements and the everyday. As a former translator myself, though never a literary translator, I am interested in Carson’s take on the translation, both in the essays she writes about a single word, such as “bittersweet” and the translations themselves in the way in which they enliven and create their own new spaces, much in the way Erín Moure, another literary hero of mine, does with her translations from the Galician or invented personas.
I think of Anne Carson as a model of literary exploration, my older poetic sister. She is eclectic and daring, willing to try anything to explore the limits of her craft, and I respect that, aspire to it for my own writing. Not to mention that she didn’t have her first book published until she was 42 when Brick Books published Short Talks, probably the most treasured of her books on my shelves. While I’m past 42 by many years, Carson demonstrates that there is hope for the spineless.
Starting August 1, 2012, I posted a line from the most recent collection of her work I own, Nox. I don’t have Antigonick yet, Carson’s update of Antigone in a form similar to that of a graphic novel.
My poetry shelves are arranged for the most part alphabetically, and for the most part, according to the order that the work was published, but books have a tendency to unsort themselves for the avid reader. I posted lines from Carson’s work in approximately publishing order with most recent first.
August 1: “The phoenix mourns by shaping, weighing, testing, hollowing, plugging and carrying towards the light.” Nox (New Directions, 2010)
I am intrigued by Carson’s focus on the retelling of myth and the reanimation of Greek and Latin literature to present day. I wasn’t educated in the classics, alas. Carson’s writing is a way to learn about them, a way in.
I love Carson’s wit and sense of humour:
August 8, 2012: “Always planning ahead that’s me, practical as purgatory my mom used to say.” Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera (Knopf, 2005)
Am astounded by the beauty of her lines, which aren’t sentimental, but visual and memorable, often with an edge:
August 12, 2012: “A fell dark pink February heaven/Was/Pulling the clouds home, balancing massacre/On the rips.” Men in the Off Hours (Knopf, 2001)
August 18, 2012: “Hotel gardens at dusk are a place where the laws governing matter/get pulled inside out,/like the black keys and the white keys on Mozart’s piano.” The Beauty of the Husband (Knopf, 2001)
Carson deals with concerns such as death, anger, youth, beauty in ways that resonate and strike a universal chord.
August 23, 2012: “Youth is a dream where I go every night/and wake up with just this little jumping bunch of arteries/in my hand.” Plainwater (Knopf, 1995)
For a very good overview of Carson’s work and insightful interviews, I heartily recommend:
I have been gratified by the responses of others on Twitter and Pinterest. Carson’s lines from Today’s Poem have been retweeted and repinned by people from all over Canada and the UK, possibly from the States too. One of the goals of this exercise for me is to spread the good word about poets whose work excites me.
August 31: “Sappho begins with a sweet apple and ends in infinite hunger.” Eros the Bittersweet (Princeton University Press, 1986)
Did I have any idea I’d be this far along a journey through poetry when a bunch of us bookish Twitter friends had the first #todayspoem discussion back in late 2011? What I did know is that I felt very committed from the outset to giving it a concerted try. I would do my best to read and share via Twitter every single day an excerpt from a poem to which I’d given some consideration and reflection. So far, so good. I was still enthusiastic when I checked in after two months, and six months in, I’m still interested, motivated, intrigued, jazzed … and have yet to miss a day.
What I didn’t know when I sent my first #todayspoem tweet on December 25, 2011 was where my poetry explorations would take me. What I also didn’t realize is how many others would be along for the adventure, and how their contributions, comments and insights would send me off on new side trips along the way.
Overall, the exercise (which has never felt like an exercise, actually) has compelled me to revisit and go deeper in my own library. It has also inspired me to go further afield in print and online, with poets with whom I was already familiar, but also very excitingly with poets old and new I was encountering for the first time.
And what of the daily poetry excerpts and selections themselves – my own and those of other #todayspoem contributors? Well, every day is a fresh intersection with where I am and how I’m feeling and what that day’s poem provokes, evinces or confirms. Not a day goes by that those simple tweets and where they lead have amused, amazed, surprised, touched, agitated, intrigued and more. Try it for yourself.
So, without (much) further ado, here is a list of the poets whose work I’ve read and incorporated in #todayspoem tweets since December 25, 2011. For each name, I’m going to link to a biography, article, interview, review or some other resource that might inspire you to go off on a few poetry side trips yourself. Thank you to the poets, publishers, #todayspoem contributors and poetry lovers in general who have filled and enriched the first six months of this venture, and are likely to help me turn this into a lifelong habit.
“To crow would have been out of place; and besides this rooster wanted to be different.” Irving Layton, The Laughing Rooster (1964, McClelland and Stewart)
“The paper’s still empty, the poem unwritten. You would have done better to have talked to your mother.” PK Page, How to Write a Poem from Coal and Roses (2009, Porcupines Quill)
“Kevin Costner stayed in this hotel Babe Ruth and Calvin Coolidge too This is a sacred place” August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City (2008, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
“I started spelling my name backwards, retreating from the space a name makes.” Rosemary Sullivan, Sisters from The Space a Name Makes (1986, Black Moss Press)
“and the wind began to blow and all the trees began to bend and the world in its cold way started coming alive.” John Darnielle, Woke Up New from Get Lonely (2006)
“It’s the spot where the dogs always stop overlong, then look at me as if to say, Explain this, please.” Chase Twichell, The Park From Above (2012, Plume Poetry)
“And when Peace here does house He comes with work to do, he does not come to coo, He comes to brood and sit.” Gerard Manley Hopkins, Peace from Poems (1918)
“It was the last conversation I ever had with her. I told her I liked baseball, to make her happy.” Dave McGimpsey, What Was That Poem? (2011, Walrus Magazine)
“Outside there are sirens. Someone’s been run over. The century grinds on.” Margaret Atwood, Secular Night from Morning in the Burned House (1995, McClelland and Stewart)
“a rediscovery and immersion into poetry, specifically the joy of reading poetry aloud” – Audiobook narrator and voice artist Xe Sands discusses how she has expanded her poetry landscape thanks in part to #todayspoem
Two months and a bit into it, the #todayspoem inspiration is still going strong. Check the hashtag any day of the week – and at any time of the day, for that matter – and you’ll see that a core of regular contributors from around the world are starting, ending or pausing in their days to savour and contemplate a good poem, and then share it with others. There are more than 70 contributors sharing their #todayspoem selections daily or periodically – I’ve captured them in a Twitter list.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m amazed every day at what #todayspoem contributors are reading and sharing. I faithfully bookmark/favourite the #todayspoem tweets and go back at every opportunity to explore the links, videos, pictures of pages taken straight from volumes, knowing that I’m going to be dazzled, amused and moved anew. I have this lovely feeling, too, that for every person sending out a thoughtful #todayspoem tweet every day or every week, there are even more people quietly reading, enjoying and reflecting on the poems we’re sending out into the ether.
I’m still experimenting with ways of archiving and showcasing all the #todayspoem selections, with links to texts and more information about the poets, poetry collections and publishers. Once I’ve got that figured out for my own selections, I’d also love to be able to find a way to aggregate all contributions in one place, if possible. Anyhow, this month, I started gathering and “pinning” my poems on Pinterest. What do you think?
How bunches of us bookish sorts on Twitter decided to start our day with some poetic inspiration – and share it with each other – is described here. You can always quickly tap into what we’re most recently sharing and discussing by simply checking out the #todayspoem hashtag on Twitter. You can check the hashtag and see new contributions at just about any moment of the day or night, as contributors are posting an astonishingly diverse and eclectic range of poetry selections around the clock and from around the world.
I’m amazed every day at what #todayspoem contributors share. I don’t have time to read them all on the spot, but I faithfully bookmark/favourite them in Twitter, and go back at every opportunity, knowing that I’m going to learn something new, be entertained, be moved, be surprised … and it’s all those great moments that keep the day rolling along, truth be told.
I’ve kept track of my own #todayspoem selections so far and just wanted to share them, just for fun and perhaps for enticement to more of you to follow and maybe join in. At very least, stop by, read and enjoy. If you’re tempted to pull a book of poetry off the shelf (even a virtual shelf, such as the great poetry resources online at sites such as The Scottish Poetry Library, The Academy of American Poets and the Griffin Poetry Prize, amongst others) and inspired to share what you’ve found, just add the #todayspoem tag to your tweet and a network of poetry lovers will get to enjoy it.
My #todayspoem selections so far …
December 25, 2011 Lorne Daniel (@LorneDaniel) Dog on Ice, from Drawing Back to Take a Running Jump Weedmark Publishing
December 26, 2011 Robert Graves The Cottage
Excerpt: “Now somehow it’s come to me To light the fire and hold the key”
December 27, 2011 Roo Borson The Garden, from Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida McClelland and Stewart (@McClellandBooks)
Excerpt: “Eye of the lake half-closed with ice. Ducks at one end, sleeping.”
December 28, 2011 Charles Wright Little Landscape, from Scar Tissue Farrar Straus and Giroux (@FSG_Books)
Excerpt: “To lighten the language up, or to dark it back down Becomes the blade edge we totter on.”
December 29, 2011 Derek Mahon Homage to Gaia, from Life on Earth Gallery Press (@TheGalleryPress)
Excerpt: “Coleridge kept an Aeolian harp like a harmonica lodged in an open window to catch the slightest flicker”
Excerpt: “Just for today, if I were to pass myself in the street I wouldn’t even raise my hat, or say hello.”
January 20, 2012 Valerie Rouzeau (translated by Susan Wicks) Cold Spring in Winter Arc Publications (@ArcPoetry)
Excerpt: Mirror just let me see is this my head? But aren’t I grimacing, a new line too a bar across my forehead?
Miroir dis-moi voir c’est ma tête? N’ai je pas une grimace, une nouvelle ligne aussi à me barrer le front ? Valérie Rouzeau
January 21, 2012 Sina Queyras (@lemonhound) Acceptable Dissociations, from Expressway Coach House Books (@CoachHouseBooks)
Excerpt: “This poem resembles urban sprawl. This poem resembles the freedom to charge a fee. The fee occurs in the gaps.”
January 22, 2012 Dean Young Self Search, from Primitive Mentor University of Pittsburgh Press (@UPittPress)
Excerpt: “Some days you crash about raving how ignored you are then why the hell don’t people let you alone”
January 23, 2012 Lorne Daniel (@LorneDaniel) East to West, from Drawing Back to Take a Running Jump Weedmark Publishing
Excerpt: “We fly against the grain wash ourselves clean as wind and water clear”
January 24, 2012 AF Moritz Place, from The Sentinel House of Anansi Press (@HouseofAnansi)
Excerpt: “What if I’d never met my love and passed her now on this sidewalk – would I have the power to know her …”
January 25, 2012 Ann Scowcroft Phantom, from The Truth of Houses Brick Books (@BrickBooks)
Excerpt: “This is good-bye. This is your first step forward. This is your blood rattling with the new.”
January 26, 2012 Leslie Greentree (@LeslieGreentree) if I was a gate, from go-go dancing for Elvis Frontenac House (@FrontenacHouse)
Excerpt: “now I’m laughing aloud fiercely proud of the naked apertures racing across my kitchen like a banner”
January 27, 2012 Kate Hall Suspended in the Space of Reason: A Short Thesis, from The Certainty Dream Coach House Books (@CoachHouseBooks)
Excerpt: “The ground is still the same ground I paid for but the house is not in the same spot.”
January 28, 2012 Michael Ondaatje Driving with Dominic in the Southern Province We See Hints of the Circus, from Handwriting McClelland and Stewart (@McClellandBooks)
Excerpt: “Children in the trees, one falling into the grip of another”
January 31, 2012 Gwendolyn MacEwan Invocations, from The Broken Ark a book of beasts Oberon Press Excerpt: “In this zoo are beasts which like some truths, are far too true”
One daunting, harried morning, Heathcock paused to randomly draw a book of poetry from a shelf, and to just as randomly select and read a poem. Mary Oliver’s “Egrets” momentarily took him away from not enough sleep, from kids needing to get to school, from deadlines demanding to be met … and after that brief respite …
I closed the book, transformed, bolstered from the inside out.
From that day forward, each morning I read a poem.
A bunch of us book friends on Twitter – including Harvey Freedenberg, Jeanne Duperreault and Elizabeth Bastos – starting discussing the power of randomly selected and surprisingly resonant poetry to lift one’s spirits and put a new spin on the day. From that conversation, we agreed that we could all quite happily manage the New Year’s resolution of starting our day with a poem. We’d swiftly grab it from a bookshelf or online, as suited, and we would take the time to read, savour and contemplate, like a brief morning meditation. And then we’d share our choices with each other, using the #todayspoem Twitter hashtag.
Even before January 1st, several of us jumped in enthusiastically. The selections are diverse, whimsical, touching, haunting, prescient, eye-opening. Let me share a few of the tweets that have help to draw those of us who know about it (so far) into this exquisite shared experience:
As you can see, everyone is sharing their #todayspoem experience a little differently, with an image, a link, an excerpt, whatever fits in a tweet. Each tweet is enough to spur a moment of delight or recognition or, handily favorited in Twitter, is a lovely bookmark for future poetry explorations.
The #todayspoem experience is a dual delight. You treat yourself to an energizing moment of reflection in the morning, and then you have others’ shared #todayspoem gifts to enjoy just by going to the hashtag at any time. Care to join us?
Carolyn Smart’s Hooked uses a wickedly irresistible premise: a twisted chorus of famous/infamous female figures from history and letters expounding vividly on obsession. Smart has fascinatingly curated the stories of women who made misguided and horrific choices for their objects of desire, and determinedly saw that desire through to often tragic conclusions: Myra Hindley, serial killer partner to Ian Brady (for Canadians, the pairing is clearly Homolka-Bernardo); Unity Mitford, aristocratically born contrarian who became a confidante of Hitler; Zelda Fitzgerald, gifted, increasingly fragile spouse of F. Scott Fitzgerald; Dora Carrington, a painter associated with the Bloomsbury Group who carried a lifelong, unreciprocated passion for writer Lytton Strachey; Carson McCullers, a renowned writer who struggled with relationships, ill health and alcoholism; Jane Bowles, a talented, underrated writer who lived an unconventional and peripatetic life with husband Paul Bowles; and Elizabeth Smart, a poet whose work was overshadowed in her lifetime by the scandal of her enduring passion for poet George Barker, with whom she had and then singlehandedly raised four children.
As perversely and diversely interesting as the subject matter and cast of characters are, the voices from segment to segment in Hooked are somewhat disappointingly similar. Rhythm, cadence and pace are not so vividly distinguished as one might expect given the women’s different nationalities, social upbringings, mental states and time periods in which they lived, not to mention the varieties of types of charisma and inaccessible attractions with which each was enraptured. In some cases, there is too much admittedly clever direct quoting of sources (clear as such because it is italicized), but not enough true transmutation and alchemy to turn those sources into fresh perspectives and something of Smart’s own.
Hooked has inspired me to revisit or expand my reading on all of these figures, both in biographical and fictional realms. Less so, Hooked has impressed me with Smart’s inventiveness as a poet, but her resourcefulness with respect to exploring subject matter will still likely compel me to seek out more of her work.
Thank you to Brick Books for providing a review copy of Hooked, by Carolyn Smart.
Dionne Brand’s Griffin Poetry Prize-winning Ossuaries is an extended verse account of the wrenching, troubled life of Yasmine, who lives constantly on the move, assuming new identities to escape activities somewhat vague in their specific intents, but decidedly explosive and violent in their outcomes. Layered over and drifted artfully around the central story are meditations on cultural and historical shifts and evolution: what disappears in the process, what changes, and what bones and remnants are left behind for future generations to unearth and decipher.
Almost 10 years later, the events of September 11th are emerging in varying forms in literature and popular culture. It seems some of the most profound renderings are sufficiently particular in detail, but not so much so that they cannot resonate more broadly, taking in other cataclysmic historical events. Such is the case with Brand’s evocations, which not only echo what happened in New York City, but Oklahoma City, London, Mumbai and other scenes of urban terrorism shattering comfortable, mundane, day-to-day life: “the stumbling shattered dress for work … the seared handbags, the cooked briefcases … it was just past nine in any city …”
An ossuary is a container, building or location meant to house human skeletal remains in their final resting places. While suggesting peace and finality on one level, perhaps mystery and portent on another if those resting places are unearthed generations later, Brand’s ossuaries feel open, unresolved, anything but peaceful. Even the lack of punctuation at the end of each ossuary segment within the long poem gives literal lack of closure to each chapter in Yasmine’s edgily peripatetic existence.
Yasmine has suppressed love and tenderness in her own life, hardened (ossified, even) her heart, glossed and silted over her own personal trail. Still, occasional traces of wistfulness in her observations (“the children mattered, or so she told herself”), or at least acknowledgement that she has held herself too harshly and rigorously (“except it was always there / struck, harder, the lack of self-forgiveness, / aluminum, metallic, artic, blinding”) seem to betray that she would like to leave a trace, have someone care. Finally, that seems to be what Ossuaries encapsulates: the traces that people leave, intentionally or unintentionally, destructively or tenderly – in the world, on each other, and in a collective impact on the environment, culture and history.
here we lie in folds, collected stones in the museum of spectacles, our limbs displayed, fract and soluble
Dionne Brand’s readings from her work (even her readings from others’ works, such as PK Page) are never, ever to be missed. Until her entrancing reading from this year’s Griffin Poetry Prize readings is online, immerse yourself in this reading from thirsty, from her last Griffin Poetry Prize appearance.
