nothing against art garfunkel

nothing against art garfunkel
but i’d sucker punch the guy
if i ever got the chance,
really rattle his skull and
send what’s left of his
ridiculous, frizzy hair
skittering into the air

and even though some say
he is nothing more than
a tick engorged with
paul simon’s blood, he
wouldn’t deserve the
beating, not in the least

i mean, all he did was
move his lips a little after
paul’s and in so doing
created the greatest harmony
the world’s ever heard
which hardly makes him
a parasite, instead the
lesser half of a symbiotic
relationship, few of which
are entirely equal (long-
beaked birds tirelessly
picking bugs off the
backs of hippopotami –
suction-lipped fish clinging
to the underbellies of
indifferent sharks)

perhaps talent arrives
bloated and lumbering
at birth, the birds swarming
to sustain themselves
off of it, or instead talent
is found in the toiling
and it is the primeval rhythms
that we shape our mouths
to consume

but it hardly matters
either way, symbiosis
being a crutch of the
beasts, the animals that
cannot sustain themselves
inside themselves

and art garfunkel’s
career is the echo of
someone else’s song –
ringo banging pots and
pans in his basement –
it is a reminder of
something primitive
and pure and vital that
we muffle deep inside

a voice which echoes
our joys and sorrows –
repeats them, one octave higher –
asks us to listen

a thing which i cannot
mute with my fists so
instead i dream of punching
art garfunkel square in
the face and watching
him fall helplessly
to the ground.


- from the 2007/2008 issue of Acta Victoriana

a theatre of special interests

As soon as powerful new methods began to dominate English departments, the poet-critic gig lost its prestige. Literary criticism for the general reader — the sort championed by poet-critics — took on a belletristic odor; no matter how formidable the close reading, it would now exist on the margins of a more sophisticated cogitating...
Standing on postmodern ground for their higher surmises, academia outgrew aesthetic evaluations; artistic merit, as a concept, became an ideological fairy tale. What eventually filtered down to street level — if the industry-wide outbreaks of shock at negative reviews are any guide — was a hypersensitivity to strong opinions and the taste-correcting urge lurking inside. Show us somebody dedicated to sifting out the best from the merely good, and we’ll show you somebody with a hidden motive. As a result, the poet-critic lost the gig altogether. Criticism by poets, once the conscience of the art, is now exposed as a theatre of special interests...

-Carmine Starnino, from "The Plight of the Poet-Critic" in the May 2008 issue of Poetry.

new mag

Fellow HAP volunteer Taryn Hubbard, whose work was recently featured on the Antigonish Review's website, is branching out and co-founding her own print lit mag: Hacksaw.

Their first submission deadline is June 15th, and you should send them something.

They have this really classy looking .pdf ad with all the details, but I have no way of posting that here. Instead, here's the not-so-classy-looking blog link and a picture of a retired pro wrestler.

This lit mag is Jim Duggan approved!!!

end of the line (for now)

Battling with the launch of the sonnet anthology Jailbreaks for your attention on Tuesday night will be the last edition of Memewar's Short Line Reading Series. Here are the details:

This final evening of the season features readings from Ashok Mathur (The Short, Happy Life of Harry Kumar), Sachiko Murakami (The Invisibility Exhibit), and Aaron Vidaver.

When?: Tuesday, April 29th (6:30 - 9:00 PM)
Where?: The Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir)
How Much?: Free

precisely the problem

Piere Poilievre, Conservative MP: Frankly, Dominic is jumping up and down today with the conspiratorial fervour of someone who has just solved the Kennedy assassination...what we are talking about here in reality is the equivalent of divvying up a restaurant deal and adding the GST to each individual tab.

Don Newman, CBC Politics Host: Alright, Dominic, what do you have to say to that?

Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal MP: Don, it’s a nice analogy. The only problem is that the people who were, in fact, receiving these invoices weren’t at the dinner. The Conservative candidates, Elections Canada believes, weren’t in the restaurant, they weren’t even waiting in the bar for a table, Don. So they’re dividing up a restaurant bill...

Poilievre: They had the meal!

LeBlanc: ...amongst people...they’re dividing up the...Elections Canada says they didn’t in fact eat the meal...

Poilievre: They did have the meal.

LeBlanc: ...that’s precisely the problem.

- our beloved representatives discussing the Conservative ad scandal on Thursday, April 26th's edition of Politics.

jailbreaks

Zachariah Wells has edited together a new book: Jailbreaks: 99 Canadian Sonnets. It looks nif-tay. It'll be launched on Tuesday, April 29th at 7 PM at Our Town Cafe (245 Broadway). Readers will include Zach, Crispin Elsted, Nancy Holmes, George McWhirter, Lyle Neff, Barbara Nickel, and Anne Stone.

I'll be coaching soccer, sadly, so I won't be able to make it...you must go in my stead...

bridge over garfunkel's philtrum

Man, that's a hell of a mustache ol' Art's been growing...isn't it?

The poor guy can't do anything on his own. I have a poem about this mustachioed gentleman entitled "nothing against art garfunkel", which just came out in the new issue of Acta Victoriana, a lit journal out of Victoria College (U of T).

I first came across Acta Victoriana while looking for an online version of "Concerning Ms. Atwood" by Al Purdy for a review of Atwood's latest collection which I was writing for The Peak.

I haven't gotten my hands on a copy of the new issue of Acta, yet, and I'm not sure if they'll be publishing things online, but if they do, I'll be sure to post the link here [update: I've posted the poem - you can read it here].

why do neat things have to be $38?

rob mclennan has highlighted on his blog a new collection of essays on Al Purdy from U of Ottawa Press entitled The Ivory Thought: Essays on Al Purdy. It's one result of the 2006 conference on Purdy held at the same University. Other than the cover image (which makes me think that "the ivory thought" is not a swan, but instead some sort of rapidly-multiplying parasite), the price tag, and the fact that it's probably unavailable just about everywhere, it looks good.

Speaking of good books being unavailable, I found out a few days ago that Magpie Magazines is closing. It's been ugly for independent booksellers in Vancouver for quite a while, and keeps getting uglier...and now the Drive is down to one bookstore offering new books...

Everything at Magpie is 50% off, though they've nearly been picked clean already. When neat things are no longer $38 they move pretty quickly, it seems.

the momentary retardation of time's erosions

Don McKay and Ken Babstock discussing the relationship between lyric and narrative poetry:

Don McKay: You know those structuralist diagrams where they have lyric going up one axis and narrative going up the other, that makes some kind of crude sense to me. It's a radical simplification, but narrative's going along historically - "and then, and then, and then" - the lyric can at any point leap out of it, with an implied eternity.

Ken Babstock: The eternal moment.

DM: "Now it's fit to die because we'll never get beauty like this again" - lyric attempts to pause there, but I think even while doing that there's a implied gravity. The narrative goes on to the next day. The meditative approach acknowledges this: that one moment will inevitably lead to the next. We accept mortality instead of fighting it off.

KB: That's the diachronic - being locked in time.

DM: I guess. Whatever the lyric aesthetic is, it probably has something to do with the momentary retardation of time's erosions, just for a moment. The narrative acknowledges, "Yes, it is just for the moment, now we're getting back into the flow, so fasten your seat belt."

- from Where the Words Come From: Canadian Poets in Conversation, Ed. Tim Bowling, 2002.

the dead, dead children were worth it!

The new Vancouver Olympics theme, by Geoff Berner. Take a listen here, and be sure to pass it along to fellow Olympics fan(atic)s everywhere!