aquafit

I've received a number of thoughtful and generous emails and letters from readers of my book, and I've treasured them all. One of my favourites so far came from Vancouver-via-Ottawa-via-Netherlands-via-Germany-via-England poet Christopher Levenson, which included a poem Chris had written in response to my poem "Old Men at the Community Pool", which in turn was written in response to the epigraph to Wallace Stevens' "Evening Without Angels" by Mario Rossi: the great interests of man: air and light, the joy of having a body, the voluptuousness of looking.

Chris has agreed to let me share the poem here - hopefully it can inspire another poem by someone and keep the chain going:

Aquafit

Some antique ritual:
for an hour in the enormous sunlit pool
I am an anonymous token male
among a score of large elderly ladies
swaying like lily pads
to the pounding disco beat.
Our eyes are fixed on the instructor,
whose arms and legs lithe as a Hindu goddess
are showing us what to do.
Like trainee astronauts
we follow her in slow motion,
shedding our pounds, toning our muscles,
relishing weightlessness.


- Christopher Levenson

Photo Source

unforgettable

I saw a friend reading Still Alice by Lisa Genova recently. This was the blurb on the cover.  Amazing.

ride them like a horse

Student: How do you go about writing a poem?

Robert Frost: Well, first something has to happen to you. Then you put some words on a piece of paper and ride them like a horse until you have a poem.

Student: I think I should set myself a program and write two, four, even six hours a day, whether I feel like it or not. Do you think that’s a good program?

Frost: It sounds like a good program. I’m sure it’ll improve your handwriting.

Student (angered): I’m serious.

Frost: I’m serious, too. You want me to give you the truth wrapped in a bundle so that you can put it under your arm and take it home and open it when you need it. Well, I can’t do that. The truth wouldn’t be there anymore.

- Robert Frost, whipping up some bust-posing banter at the Harry Ransom Center. You can read the article the quote comes from here. Thanks to Don Share for pointing this out.

the solid or rickety stage you stand on

I am grateful to have come to poetry as a woman and as a mother, joyfully connected to the reproductive rhythms of the living earth, fearfully awakened to the possibilities of the future, the environmental dangers we now face on a global scale. The heroic maternal practice of intimate, daily caring of growing children, with very little social support, while at the same time competing with less-encumbered colleagues in the professional arena, taught me strength and courage to wrestle with the pervasive despair of our time, to reach beyond the fashionable postmodern stances of irony and exposé and shared narcissisms toward more intersubjective, recreative, reparative strategies to confront the daunting challenges of our age.

There is mystery at the heart of poetry: people want to know the recipe, but there is none. There is what Don McKay calls "poetic attention," to the beauty and ugliness, joy and suffering, of everything around you, there is the heightened attentiveness to sound, rhythm, image, breath, spacing. The grand struggle with form, the impossible leap between the blood, the wild heart, rooted in primitive, fantastic memories and sensations and dreams and desires, and the page in front of you, the here and now, the material world in front of you, the solid or rickety stage you stand on.

- Di Brandt, in her afterword to the book Speaking of Power: The Poetry of Di Brandt.

omg v125pc ebd

Tomorrow (September 1st) is the "early bird deadline" to register for the Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference.

If you haven't heard about the conference yet, I commend you for keeping away from electronic media all summer. Otherwise, you are probably already well aware that "v125pc" is the honking-big term-ending project for outgoing Vancouver Poet Laureate Brad Cran. Running over four days in mid-October (full schedule here), mostly out of SFU Harbour Centre, it will feature a whole lotta poets and cost a whole lotta coin to attend (by poetry standards, that is). We're talking $129 for students and low-income, and $179 for you high-rolling normals out there. This makes taking advantage of the early bird deal, which cuts $30 off both rates, all the more important. So if you're keen, get registering people!

I'm not sure if I'll be attending the full conference. It's difficult for me to justify the cost considering that the majority of the poets either live in Vancouver or visit often enough (and give free readings when they do). That said, it will be hard to stay away from a few of the individual readings (it's $20-$25 to attend a single session). Some samples of the great readings that will be happening:

October 20th, 4:30 pm
Barbara Nickel
Chris Hutchinson
Carmine Starnino
Stephanie Bolster
Reading and in conversation with George Murray

October 21st, 2:45 pm
David Seymour
Matt Rader
George Murray
Ken Babstock
Reading and in conversation with Carmine Starnino

October 22nd, 10:30 am
Steven Heighton
Christopher Patton
Elise Partridge
Sue Sinclair
Reading and in conversation with Gillian Jerome

And on top of all that there is the Friday Keynote reading with Don McKay, Fanny Howe and Martin Espada!

So if you're interested in taking it all in, make sure you register ASAP. If you decide to pass on registering, maybe we can listen in by an open window together?

last chance to win my book

The deadline for the Goodreads contest to win a free copy of The Other Side of Ourselves is midnight tonight. You can enter here.

I'll be giving away three books, and as of this writing 750 people have entered the contest. If you don't like those odds, as a special offer to silaron readers I have arranged a deal with your local bookstore to guarantee you victory in the contest. It will only cost you $18 + all applicable sales taxes. To enter simply go in to the store and say you'd like to "order in" a copy of The Other Side of Ourselves. That's the password for the secret deal. If you're lucky they might have some contest copies in stock and you'll be able to walk away with yours right then and there.

Don't say I never did anything for you, faithful readers. Whichever route you choose, I wish you luck!

end of the road

We've arrived at the fifth and final entry in my East Coast trip literary report. This time we're going bronze. And busty.

We'll start in Quebec City, whose BPC (Busts Per Capita) rate must be the highest in the country. Did you serve as a politician in Quebec at any point over the last 400 years? You get a bust. Did you fight for freedom against colonialism/racism/sexism/the English/the Americans/complex carbohydrates? You get a bust. Have you ever voted for the Bloc, or once ironically worn a Bloc button at a house party? You get a bust. A poet? You might just get a bust, people.

Here are a couple examples. First, a monument bonding Quebec City and St. Petersburg using the poetry (and enlarged metal heads) of Émile Nelligan and Alexander Pushkin:

And second, me doing my best Dante impression next to Dante doing his best Mrs. Butterworth impression:

On to New York, for the obligatory Hotel Chelsea shot. Lucky Brendan Behan, you get to be the meat in a Schuyler/Cohen sandwich:

But Gertrude outdoes them all, relaxing in Bryant Park:

Last on the New York leg of the trip is the Harlem YMCA, which doesn't have a plaque or anything, but darn well should, considering how many leaders of the Harlem Renaissance stayed there (most notably Langston Hughes, who is honoured at the nearby Schomburg Center, as I blogged about here). C'mon New York, make it happen!

And to close things off, one statue from Toronto. This one is for you, National Post:

That's it! It only took me three months to summarize a three week trip. And I thought writing my first book in eight years was fast!

you put everything into it that's needed

The Paris Review: We’ve heard that you don’t give readings from your own work. In America, this has become a business for poets. Do you enjoy attending the readings of others?

Philip Larkin: I don’t give readings, no, although I have recorded three of my collections, just to show how I should read them. Hearing a poem, as opposed to reading it on the page, means you miss so much—the shape, the punctuation, the italics, even knowing how far you are from the end. Reading it on the page means you can go your own pace, taking it in properly; hearing it means you’re dragged along at the speaker’s own rate, missing things, not taking it in, confusing “there” and “their” and things like that. And the speaker may interpose his own personality between you and the poem, for better or worse. For that matter, so may the audience. I don’t like hearing things in public, even music. In fact, I think poetry readings grew up on a false analogy with music: the text is the “score” that doesn’t “come to life” until it’s “performed.” It’s false because people can read words, whereas they can’t read music. When you write a poem, you put everything into it that’s needed: the reader should “hear” it just as clearly as if you were in the room saying it to him. And of course this fashion for poetry readings has led to a kind of poetry that you can understand first go: easy rhythms, easy emotions, easy syntax. I don’t think it stands up on the page.

- Philip Larkin, in interview with The Paris Review in 1982. You can read the whole thing here.

steer clear of english

Paris Review: Would you like to give any advice to young writers?

Peter Levi: Yes. Steer clear of the writing departments of universities. Steer clear of English. Learn foreign, preferably dead languages, but learn them properly. Do not be a wastrel, don’t just hang about the world. Poetry is about life. The quality of your poetry will be the quality of your life. And you can’t regulate that by a knob. Read. Get or get near a very good library. Take more notice of Randall Jarrell than you do of any academic critic. Don’t spend time attacking other writers. Dig to the bottom of your mind, and don’t give two damns about publications.

Writing is like breathing or it ought to be. One’s got to write poems. Like one has to go to church. Not out of social duty, or because there’s any pressure on one to do so. Not even out of reaction to people who say one shouldn’t do so. But just because of some decent, natural good behavior. One might as well go on with it.

- Peter Levi, in interview with The Paris Review in 1976, just after Levi had left the Jesuit order to get married. You can read the whole thing here.

it goes without saying...

but my wife is awesome. She whipped up this painting one day, featuring the text of my poem "Early Rain" (fulltext of the poem here, or you can click on the image below and read it straight off the painting):

It's already been sold to someone, so don't go thinking you can snatch it up. If you ask nicely, though, she might be up for custom orders...