the word cannot be so weighty

My only observation of Canada that I am mystified about is the political correctness, which makes people use words to hide their thoughts instead of to express them. I am still struggling to learn how to be politically correct! In the Yoruba world, there is a proverb which says that the "word" - as a unit of discourse - cannot be so weighty that you have to dissect it with a knife. The moral is that no idea can be so sensitive that we must dissimulate about it and refuse to address it. The refusal to let things get bottled up is what informs my critical poetics.

- Amatoritsero Ede, in interview with George Elliott Clarke in the Summer 2010 issue of Arc.

Amatoritsero, I'll take your cue and not bottle this up: the Black Stars lost yesterday and I'm a little heartbroken (heartcracked? heartchipped?). We're going to keep the Black Stars poetry party going at OGOV for one more week, anyway. This interview in Arc actually helped cheer me up a bit. Any piece that recommends great African poets (like Leopold Senghor, David Diop and Dennis Brutus) to Canadian readers seems to have that effect on me!