April 5, 2010
There were sorcerers for such things
“But when Zach typed an a, it was magic. His iPod was magic. His digital TV was magic. The Internet was magic. Even his father’s car, the machine through which boys once achieved their first dominion over the physical world , was now controlled by a computer. Diagnosis of malfunction didn’t involve tinkering with an engine and getting covered in oil. The car plugged into another impenetrable computer at the dealership. Were anything to go wrong with the technical furniture of Zach’s life– and these days, machines didn’t sputter on you, develop a funny hissing sound, or start to squeak; they either worked, or they stopped dead– the notion of fixing it himself would never enter his head. There were sorcerers for such things, although the concept of repair had itself grown arcane; one was far more likely to go out and buy another machine that magically worked, then magically didn’t. Collectively, the human race was growing ever more authoritative about the mechanics of the universe. Individually, the experience of most people was of accelerating impotence and incomprehension. They lived in a world of superstition. They relied on voodoo– charms, fetishes, and crystal balls whose caprices they were helpless to govern, yet without which the conduct of daily life came to a standstill. Faith that the computer would switch on one more time and do what it was asked had more a religious than a rational cast. When the screen went black, the gods were angry.” –from Lionel Shriver’s So Much For That
April 4, 2010
Poetry Primer Number One: by Susan Telfer
Susan Telfer’s poems have been published in literary journals from coast to coast in Canada. She teaches high school and lives in Gibsons, BC with her husband and three children. Susan is the recipient of the Sunshine Coast Arts Council Gillian Lowndes Award, which is for a community artist who has demonstrated long-standing achievement and growth.
I first encountered Susan through her wonderful collection House Beneath (Hagios Press, 2009) and I’m so pleased that she was willing to share some thoughts here about poetry.
How do I need poetry? Let me count the ways.
As a child, I needed poetry without knowing I needed it, because it was provided in abundance through nursery rhymes, A Child’s Garden of Verses, When We Were Very Young, Alligator Pie and the Psalms. Starting in late high school and university, I began to understand how the poetry of the English canon sustained me. Robert Frost said, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader.” The right poem, I have found, is like the right homeopathic medicine: a tiny ‘like cures like’ tear to heal some deep hurt inside me. Here is a small sampling of my most potent remedies.
When I was in my twenties, with my first baby, and my mom was diagnosed with cancer and the hardest years of my life began, I found a poem in The Atlantic by Marie Howe called “What the Living Do.” I immediately cut it out, glued it in my journal and read it over and over. I didn’t know then that Marie was writing of her brother who had died of AIDS, or that my young mother would soon be dead, but I knew I needed that poem. Perhaps the most healing message from it for me was that in the midst of death you might catch a tender glimpse of yourself: “and I’m gripped by a cherishing so deep.” A snatch of the poem with a photo appeared in Oprah last year, and I realized then what powerful medicine that poem contains.
About four years ago I read “Our Lady of the Snows” by Robert Hass, and put a copy on my fridge. It was Christmas, and as usual, the ghost of my drunken father at Christmases past haunted me. That poem on the fridge was like garlic on the door. Again, Robert was writing about himself as a little boy dealing with his drunken mother; I was remembering myself as a helpless girl dealing with my drunken father, but our stories were similar. He had been where I had been: “And the days churned by, /navigable sorrow.” He told it in a way I could not articulate and that was how he provided medicine for me. I get it out every Christmas, and many other times during the year.
Only recently have I discovered Gwendolyn MacEwen’s poems, which strike me with the clarity and depth of one of those 
bell bowls at yoga class. “A Breakfast for Barbarians” and “Dark Pines Under Water” are two poems written in my nursery rhyme years, which, for reasons as yet unknown to me, speak directly to the inner layer of who I am. Some healing is going on in my unconscious. “There is something down there and you want it told.”
George Elliott Clarke, himself a writer of many healing poems, told me, “Writing is not healing for the writer, but for the reader.” Dear Reader, read with your hungry heart until you find the poetic voice speaking the nourishment you need. And especially if you’re from a small town, and even if you aren’t, read Louise Glück’s new book A Village Life.
Marie Howe’s book is What the Living Do, and Robert Hass’ is Sun Under Wood. “A Breakfast for Barbarians” was published in the book by the same title (Ryerson, 1966) and is out of print but old copies are around. “Dark Pines Under Water” was published in The Shadow-Maker (MacMillan, 1969.) They are both in the new edition: The Selected Gwendolyn MacEwen (Exile Classics, 2007).
April 4, 2010
A Moral Dilemma
This morning whilst out on a quest for hot-cross buns, my husband brought me home a moral dilemma. He’d found Don’t Tell the Grown-Ups: Subversive Children’s Literature by Alison Lurie in a box on the sidewalk, and he thought (quite correctly) that I’d like it. The only trouble was that it’s a Toronto Public Library book and it hasn’t even been discharged.
So, what to do? The book is stolen property, but I feel removed enough from the scene of the crime that I could let myself get away from profiting from it. But what kind of scoundrel allows a theft from the public library to go unrighted? Though would returning it cause undue paperwork for overworked librarians? I’ve looked this book up in the system, and there are eleven other copies– which don’t seem to include this one. Perhaps they’ve accepted that it’s gone for good, and so who am I to challenge that? If I decided to take it back anyway, where exactly would I take it? This book is from the Toronto Library’s “Travelling Branch”, which (I think) means I’d have to go chasing after the bookmobile…
April 1, 2010
Good things come in gorgeous packages
Poetry collections are some of the most beautiful books in my library. They have gorgeous cover designs, seductive embossments, such carefully chosen fonts, wonderfully fibrous paper that sets off the white space, cut with such crisp edges. A lot of this, I think, is because so many of these books come from independent presses and reflect the care that these presses put into each detail of their books.
My all-time favourite cover design is from Alison Smith’s Six Mats and One Year (from Gaspereau Press), whose cover is is divided into rectangles like a six mat tatami room. I’ve got a thing for running my fingers along the octopus legs on Jennica Harper’s first collection The Octopus and Other Poems (from Signature Editions). I love the bird on Kerry Ryan’s The Sleeping Life (The Muses Company), the girl on Laurel Snyder’s The Myth of the Simple Machines (No Tell Books), I love how The Essential PK Page is like a bouquet of pressed flowers (from Porcupine’s Quill), and that tree from Susan Telfer’s House Beneath (Hagios Press), sprawling, gnarled and rooted.
It’s shallow, I know, to love poetry for its packaging, to covet books as objects, but I can’t help it if I do. It’s only the beginning of the story, of course, but it’s an important part, and it’s fortunate that so many poets and publishers think seem to feel the same.
Honestly, e-books will never hold a candle.
April 1, 2010
Poetic April Begins
We’re going to be celebrating April here at Pickle Me This in a most poetic fashion, and brilliant plans are afoot– poets have been generous enough to contibute “Poetry Primers”, to allow some of their work to be posted, and stay tuned also for a poetic interview, for lots of book reviews and discussions. I’m going to be reading collections by Michael Lista, Kyle Buckley, Laisha Rosnau, and others. Laisha will also be one of our featured poets, along with Susan Telfer, Jennica Harper, Kerry Ryan and Rebecca Rosenblum (yes! she contains multitudes).
If any other poets or poetry fans are up for taking part in any way (writing primers, posting poems, and whatnot), do get in touch. Unless you’re the teenage version of me, in which case *nobody* wants to read about that pain that “cuts life a knife”, okay?
Truth be told, I do read poetry year around, but I welcome April and the chance to allow it a little bit of extra attention. Because appreciating poetry demands plenty of attention, and often less than I tend to grant it, modern life being what it is (ie rubbish). Poetry is slow, poetry is precision, poetry demands you to note every syllable, every sound, senses attuned. Poetry is demanding, which is not the same as difficult, and any poem worth its weight in demands will be infinitely rewarding. The way a few words can open worlds wide and wide.
What I want to make clear over the next month is that poetry has popular appeal. If you’re not into poetry, it’s only because you’re not looking in the right places, and note that not being into poetry is sort of like not being into novels (and we all know those people are perfect idiots).
If you do love poetry, then I am glad we’ll be able to celebrate together, and for the rest of you, I hope you’ll be won over by the time May’s flowers are in bloom.
March 31, 2010
Books in Motion #4
A book in motion for every leg of last night’s journey to the meeting at Literature for Life. The almost-not-awkward, soon-to-be-handsome young man riding east on the Bloor-Danforth line. He’s reading David Adams Richards’ Mercy Among the Children. The young woman in fabulous boots getting off the southbound train at Yonge Station carrying The Bell Jar. And then the man beside me reading The New Yorker eastbound on the Dundas streetcar. Which isn’t a book in motion, I realize, but the streetcar was crowded and everyone was being terribly private about whatever novels they were reading.
March 30, 2010
On community
I joined Twitter about a month ago, and I’m still not quite sold. First, twitter vocabulary makes me cringe. It also gives me a window into a whole host of things going on that I’m not a part of, so I feel left out, and I probably liked it better when I didn’t know what I was missing. That said, it is the best way to get links to great content, and I really appreciate that. Some people manage to be consistantly hilarious in 140 characters. Interesting to note that my favourite people to follow tend to have columns in major newspapers– either they’re terribly good with words, or they have more free time than the rest of us.
The point of Twitter is community, though Twitter is not so much where the action takes place, but it can point you in the direction of the places where things are happening. And because there are a lot of these places, Twitter becomes very useful.
Julie Wilson’s Book Madam and Associates is in full swing: “a collective of publishing and media professionals who love bright ideas and have been known to have a few of their own.” She’s just announced her crew of associates, and the group of them managed to pack an Irish pub last Thursday night. The Book Madam has also just announced her online Book Club’s first pick: Amphibian by Carla Gunn. It’s like Oprah, but with less conflict with Frey and Franzen.
The Keepin’ it Real Book Club has yet to come down from their Canada Reads: Civilians Read high. (And okay, I’ve just read their latest post in which I was referred to nicely. Which I didn’t plan, but I still like it. Community sure has its good points). Newest side project is “Books in 140 Seconds”, which is a whole Book Club meeting in 140 seconds. They read Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld to start things off: check out the first video here. (Aside: I hated Prep, in case you’re wondering, and didn’t come to love Sittenfeld until American Wife.)
The KIRBC has also got behind the Toronto Public Library’s amazing Keep Toronto Reading campaign. 99 reading journals are currently floating around the city, they have a Books We Love promotion with readers doing video pitches, and many other events, online and otherwise.
March 29, 2010
Barbara Pym again
It sounds like I’m being cutesy, but it’s true: something had been a little “off” around here, reading-wise, and it dawned on me that the problem was that I hadn’t read Barbara Pym in ages. So I’ve got on that with Some Tame Gazelle, her first published novel, which she started writing whilst a student at Oxford, proof that she’d been turned onto middle-age spinsters early.
Also, aren’t these Moyer Bell editions quite lovely? The prints call Persephone Books to mind, though of course these aren’t quite as artful, but they’re also ridiculously inexpensive. I love them.
Though I know exactly why I love Barbara Pym, I can think of all kinds of reasons why I might not– she’s never written an opening scene that didn’t involve the vicar or the curate (and I don’t even know what a curate is), not to mention that Jane Austen comparison (because I’m not really so crazy about Jane Austen myself). The last Pym novel I read was Unsuitable Attachment (which was the fourth Pym novel I’d read) and I finally saw the Austen comparison, in that so much of her plots are to do with couplings.
With Pym, however, the couplings are merely an excuse for everything else, rather than ends in themselves. And everything else is usually absurd, funny, understated and surprising. With a great degree of subtlety, she deals with adultery, homosexuality, loneliness, friendship, spirituality, marriage and sexuality, which is a surprising array for a writer who’d been dealing with spinsters since adolescence. I love her narrators, and their English reserve, and the story we glimpse around this. And yes, I love the tea. Always, the tea, and the irresistible bookishness.
Barbara Pym is charming, delightful, splendid, and so smart. Now that I’m reading her again, all is right with the world.
