April 27, 2008
Snail's pace
Today was a bit ridiculous, in that I woke up, went to brunch, and then came home and had a nap. And after that I prepared a tea-party. The whole weekend similarly low-key, mellow and pleasant with flowers in bloom and brunch on the patio. Last night was just as crazy, as I stayed home to watch Michael Clayton, and what a movie that was. That so much was going on but so little had to be explained was a wonderful for lesson for this apprentice writer.
This weekend my Emily Perkins kick continued, as I read her first novel Leave Before You Go and absolutely loved it. I’m now reading her second book The New Girl, and as I can’t find her 1997 short story collection Not Her Real Name anywhere around here, I’ve ordered it used off the tinternet, because now I’m quite sure that I can’t live without it. I also read Pulpy and Midge by Jessica Westhead, whose receptionist didn’t even have a name but whose disdain at having to cover the desk during cake-occasions was truer than life.
April 26, 2008
Unfinished encounters
On the Descant blog, I’ve written about how to talk about books you haven’t finished.
April 25, 2008
Alligator Pear
I want
scrumping.
To eat your ugly,
Avocado.
Lumpy isn’t
lumpen after all.
Just to dig
that perfect pit,
unbreakable ovum.
Your malleable
flesh. To taste
the savoury sweet;
hideous beauty.
April 25, 2008
We lay no claim…
Today’s Globe F&A essay “Degrees of Separation” is reaching towards the ideas so deftly explored by Sharon Butala in her brilliant new book The Girl from Saskatoon (read my review here). Writer Bob Levin writes, “This isn’t our tragedy, of course – it’s her family’s, her friends’. We lay no claim to it…” But then, what do we do with these connections?
The Girl in Saskatoon is currently #7 on the Globe & Mail Bestseller list for non-fiction.
April 25, 2008
Be kinder to animals
As I have been dilettanting my way through Poetic April, I was particularly interested to read Russell Smith’s piece in the Globe & Mail today: “The best verse is worth a wade through the dross.” In which Smith strikes an unashamedly elitist stance, decrying the teaching of poetry as a form of self-expression primarily. Something is lost. “[Contemporary poetry] doesn’t seem difficult at all; in fact, it seems like an exercise to encourage children to be kinder to animals.”
Smith writes, “Poetry is historically the basis of all literature, and understanding what poetry teaches us– that language can be used as flexible material, that aural and aesthetic effects can be as communicative as mere definitions can be, that words can have many meanings and that ambiguity can be powerful, indeed that lack of clarity can evoke multiple meanings– understanding all this is crucial to understanding all language and to being a better writer in any genre.”
That went on too long, I realize, but I wasn’t about to cut Smith off. Sometimes I thank goodness for the unashamedly elite, for though I am not altogether convinced by his argument– I think any sentence beginning with “Poetry is…” is inherently fallible– it makes sense to me. It’s a perspective I want to keep in mind as I approach poems through their Full House references.
I agree that a lot of contemporary poetry is bad, and admit that I’ve certainly played my role in contributing to the travesty– guilty of finishing “Poetry is…” with “line breaks.” It takes some stupid nerve to create something whose whole history you’re ignorant of, to be a writer but not a reader, to express and never listen. But this is the very worst of it, and even here, I am sure, somebody is still doing it well. I am sure that poetry gets redefined every day, and is even richer for it.
And certainly this month I have found the very best of it. There has been no shortage of contemporary poets whose work fits Smith’s criteria, poets fully aware of what “Poetry is…” or at least trying to solve the problem with innovation.
In “the dross” of which Smith speaks, still “the best verse” rises, and you can find these easily– these are the verses somebody bothered to publish books of. And even within those books, if the poetic criteria is not quite met, well then it gets us talking, and it gets us thinking, about poetry of all things, and poetry is born again.
April 25, 2008
Currently mad for
I am currently mad for Emily Perkins, whose A Novel About My Wife is soon released (and it comes dovegrey recommended). Very exciting also to announce that I will interviewing Emily Perkins in the very near future. And so I’ll be blasting through her back catalogue in the meantime: I’ve got her previous novels The New Girl and Leave Before You Go, as well as The Picnic Virgin, an anthology she edited of contemporary New Zealand short stories. Stay tuned for news and reviews.
I’m now reading Jennica Harper’s The Octopus for the fourth or fifth time.
April 24, 2008
A Big Education
“A man and a woman’s relationship was always primary. Women, your own friends, were always secondary relationships when the man was not there. Because of this, there’s that whole cadre of women who don’t like women and prefer men. We had to be taught to like one another. Ms. Magazine was founded on the premise that we really have to stop complaining about one another, hating, fighting one another, and joining men in their condemnation of ourselves– a typical example of what dominated people do. That is a big education.” –Toni Morrison, The Paris Review Interviews, II
April 24, 2008
Dear Joan Didion
Dear Joan Didion,
For though you are small
your look is fierce,
as blunt as your haircut,
the bare facts
to which you are
amanuensis.
Your stories write
your stories.
Pieces falling,
with rigid ease
you let them.
You will point
to the places.
They will land.
April 23, 2008
Since they stopped exclaiming
Since they stopped exclaiming
Panic at the Disco seem happier,
“panic” more ironic now
than eccentric punctuation had ever been.
Which reminds me of how
everything got better
when I turned twenty three
and stopped speaking in italics.
I would have been depressed too
if I’d worn that much eyeliner.
April 23, 2008
Listenings
Tonight my friend Jennie and I had the great pleasure of going to see Jhumpa Lahiri at Harbourfront reading from her new book The Unaccustomed Earth (recently read). It was a great event, fascinating to see these masterful stories are made by such a young and slightly nervous person– for me, they’re a bit richer for that, of this earth. She was a wonderful reader, reading from her story “Hell/Heaven”, and having heard it in her voice, I do want to go back and read it again.
I’ve written before about my feelings towards readings– that I’ve long found it difficult just to listen, and they force me to use un-exercised muscles. Though being bad at listening is certainly no desirable trait, and I always striving to become better at this, and some readers and some stories definitely make it easy. Of course it’s not all about self-improvement– I do enjoy readings. I like the idea of bookish gatherings, and they do make me feel better about the world in general– a whole room full of people who’ve shown up to be read to. It all can’t be so bad after all…
I haven’t mentioned yet that Michael Ondaatje was also reading tonight. I mightn’t have mentioned at all– I was there for Lahiri. But his reading was stunning. I’ve read Divisidero and found it not unsatisfying but baffling, and all the baffling stuff ceased to matter tonight when I heard the story in his voice. Perhaps his stories are meant to be told more than read, where they are just dissected, may fall apart, his images failing to withstand much scrutiny. But it was such a marked difference when I was listening, the kind of difference I’ve never really experienced at a reading. When I couldn’t perform dissections, refering to previous paragraphs, underlining points and pencilling question marks. Instead it was forward momentum, unstoppable, and I could only go along for the ride. The niggly problems didn’t stand out then, the bits and pieces, but they culminated into something larger, washing over me to cast a spell under which the story was perfectly reasonable. His last line took my breath away, and I don’t even mean it figuratively.
