One day you'll ask yourself, "Is this Andrea McDowell's blog, or Gwendolyn MacEwen's?"

A little of both, maybe. A little of both.

Let Me Make This Perfectly Clear

Let me make this perfectly clear.
I have never written anything because it is a Poem.
This is a mistake you always make about me,
A dangerous mistake. I promise you
I am not writing this because it is a Poem.

You suspect this is a posture or an act.
I am sorry to tell you it is not an act.

You actually think I care if this
Poem gets off the ground or not. Well
I don't care if this poem gets off the ground or not
And neither should you.
All I have ever cared about
And all you should ever care about
Is what happens when you lift your eyes from this page.

Do not think for one minute it is the Poem that matters.
It is not the Poem that matters.
You can shove the Poem.
What matters is what is out there in the large dark
And in the long light,
Breathing.

But

Out there in the large dark and in the long light is the breathless
Poem,
As ruthless and beautiful and amoral as the world is,
As nature is.

In the end there's just me and the bloody Poem and the murderous
Tongues of the trees,
Their glossy green syllables licking my mind (the green
Work of the wind).

Out there in the night between two trees is the Poem saying:
Do not hate me
Because I peeled the veil from your eyes and tore your world
To shreds, and brought

The darkness down upon your head. Here is a book of tongues,
Take it. (Dark leaves invade the air.)
Beware! Now I know a language so beautiful and lethal
My mouth bleeds when I speak it.

I find myself caught between MacEwen's matched poems, as she no doubt intended. As she undoubtedly was herself. I can't help but say yes to both of them.

Posted by Andrea at 8:59 PM | Comments (5)

A Poem About Poems

I'm empty of better ideas to write about today, so in honour of Poetry Month, I thought I'd inflict another one of my favourites on all of you:

Poem

Gwendolyn MacEwen (again)

It is not lost, it is moving forward always,
Shrewd, and huge as thunder, equally dark.
Soft paws kiss its continents, it walks
Between lava avenues, it does not tire.

It is not lost, tell me how can you lose it?
Can you lose the shadow which stalks the sun?
It feeds on mountains, it feeds on seas,
It loves you most when you are most alone.

Do not deny it, do not blaspheme it,
Do not light matches on the dark of its shores.
It will breathe you out, it will recede from you.
What is here, what is with you now, is yours.

~~~~~

I love this--a love poem to the Ideal of the poem. Though I think it is equally true of any artistic or mysterious endeavour; by trying too hard to understand it, by lighting matches on the dark of its shores, you lose it. The only way you can lose it. Otherwise, it will follow you everywhere.

The thing I love about Gwendolyn MacEwen is that she was self-taught. She never went to college or university. It shows in her poetry, it's unique and slightly mad and not at all the work of someone who was forcefed Shakespeare and Dickinson for four years. She won the Governor General's Award on a highschool diploma.

Posted by Andrea at 6:52 AM | Comments (0)

Sumptuous Destitution

Sumptuous Destitution
by Anne Carson

"Sumptuous destitution"
Your opinion gives me a serious feeling: I would like to be what you deem me.
(Emily Dickinson letter 319 to Thomas Higginson)

is a phrase
You see my position is benighted.
(Emily Dickinson letter 268 to Thomas Higginson)

scholars use
She was much too enigmatical a being for me to solve in an hour's interview.
(Thomas Higginson letter 342a to Emily Dickinson)

of female
God made me [Sir] Master--I didn't be--myself.
(Emily Dickinson letter 233 to Thomas Higginson)

silence.
Rushing among my small heart--and pushing aside the blood--
(Emily Dickinson letter 248 to Thomas Higginson)

Save what you can, Emily.
And when I try to organize--my little Force explodes--and leaves me bare and charred.
(Emily Dickinson letter 271 to Thomas Higginson)

Save every bit of thread.
Have you a little chest to put the Alive in?
(Emily Dickinson letter 233 to Thomas Higginson)

One of them may be
By Cock, said Ophelia.
(Emily Dickinson letter 268 to Thomas Higginson)

the way out of here.

~~~~~

I don't know why I'm reading so much poetry lately (you're going to see more of it, by the way, tomorrow). There are stacks of poets beside the bed, George Elliot Clarke and Anne Carson and Emily Dickinson and Gwendolyn MacEwen and William Blake.

Long-time readers will have seen this one before. It's one of my favourites, from her book Men in the Off Hours.

I don't know what's so sumptuous about this. 'Barren' seems a better descriptor. Destitute feels about right, though. I feel as locked and silenced as a tomb. A thousand things I'd like to say. Nothing safe.

Your opinion gives me a serious feeling: I would like to be what you deem me.

I'm not, though.

In the meantime, I'll be scavenging thread.

Posted by Andrea at 9:58 AM | Comments (2)

(Friday) Poetry Blogging: The Witch in the Glass

I haven't done any poetry blogging in months, but I found this one recently and loved it, so here it is for your edification (that's a joke):

The Witch in the Glass

By Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt


“My mother says I must not pass
Too near that glass;
She is afraid that I will see
A little witch that looks like me,
With a red, red mouth to whisper low
The very thing I should not know!”

“Alack for all your mother’s care!
A bird of the air,
A wistful wind, or (I suppose
Sent by some hapless boy) a rose,
With breath too sweet, will whisper low
The very thing you should not know!”

~~~~~

I will admit that I'm not quite sure what to make of it.

(Which is why I'm writing this--I want to puzzle it out.)

The poet, SMB Piatt, has apparently long been considered a "minor" American civil-war-era poet; but there is some movement afoot to resurrect her. Now, I am not an expert on poetry; but there is something in this piece that makes it difficult for me to accept it as the work of a "minor" poet. It is almost Blakean (and here is where Jane Dark will correct me, if needed) in its apparent simplicity of structure and the complicated symbolic core. What is "the very thing she should not know?"

From one article: "As reveiwers frequently complained, Piatt is a subtle writer, subtle enough sometimes to make Emily Dickinson look like she wields a two-by-four."

Yes.

In any case, on the surface, the point seems fairly obvious: the narrator of the first paragraph, a young girl, has been warned by her mother not to take notice of her appearance. More specifically, not to be aware that she is beautiful. This is the "very thing I should not know," which she will learn from "a little witch" in the mirror--in other words, herself.

And this is where it gets interesting. Her reflection is a little witch? Her mother told her this? Why is it that she must not be aware of her own attractiveness?

And then the second verse--who is its narrator? I don't think it's apparent, except that it's intended to be someone older and wiser. And his or her message is stark: something will tell her. She will learn from other people, from their reactions, perhaps from a boy, that she is beautiful--and then what?

Twelve lines--but look how much is packed in!

There is, for instance, the question of why she should be unaware of her beauty. Will it damage herself, or others, or both? What is at stake? Is it simply modesty, or is there something deeper going on? It doesn't seem likely to be just modesty--the reference to "your mother's care" is almost tragic--but even if it is, what does it mean that a social more is so important to young girls of a certain station? There is, foremost, a commentary on gender roles here: not only the emphasis on modesty, but the sense of danger from transgressing and the hopelessness of being able to adhere to this code.

And then--a witch?

Of course, witches have been used as symbols of the dangers of female power, especially that form of traditional female power founded on sexuality (traditional, that is, in the sense that for many centuries or millennia it was the only form of power women were supposed to hold or wield). So her reflection is a witch--malevolent, evil and magical--that will ruin her by telling her that she is beautiful. But ruin her how?

What is even more confounding is that all of this comes from her mother. It isn't jealous rivals telling her she's stuck up, or desirous boys, or even older men. It is her mother, presumably someone who is considering her best interests. Her mother tells her that her reflection of her own beauty is a witch that will ruin her. Which makes me think of Chinese mothers in the era of foot-binding, crushing the bones in their daughter's feet so that they could join the elite.

(What, you thought they just grew that small within the wrappings? No; the toes were bound to the bottom of the foot and the girl was forced to walk and dance, by her mother, no matter how much she screamed, so that the bones would break; and then the foot would be bound down tighter again and the process repeated until the crushed and mangled limb was as small as possible.)

And isn't it similar? Here is a mother who is deforming her daughter emotionally so that she can fulfill a societally mandated feminine role and achieve success within it. (Not saying it's the same--but that in both cases you have a mother purposefully damaging her daughter for her own material good.)

All of this in one verse of a short poem of a "minor" poet.

Posted by Andrea at 7:59 AM | Comments (5)

VI. i

The Imperial Rose Garden and its plush jungle flora
	Imitate what Sappho loved -- this red, blushed
Majesty, cascading dastardly in patchwork patterns
	That mirror triangulated, assassins' gunfire.
Magenta, scarlet, fragile pink, noir, and white,
	The roses mass perplexingly complex in tinge--
Like a political party of Machiavellian intent.
	But forget policy! Enjoy rouge-gorgeous air,
Smelling also of perfumed decay like a bordello,
	That stench of bedsheets after coitus
(Rank sweat and drool, ointments and condiments),
	Amid dog hair strewn like strychnine to scare off
Impresisonable deer, and the light sluicing down
	Like loose juice, a strew of drenching spunk.
Jewels of insects glitter amid the pulp and juice
	Of russet pears, sapped, crushed, but teeming 
Also with maggots as fierce as asps. Nearby, bees
	Burrow into the gragrant, pouting vaginas
Of impious flowers, dousing themselves with nectar--
	Delicious, sopping--until they resemble
Lavishly lolling lovers, busy with queynte-moistened
	Faces. Leave them and go down the plank walk
Among the elephant grass (or Norfolk reed) to spy
	The dead railroad bridge--all rusted iron and 
Rotting wood, a Canuck Stonehenge, a paean
	To Confederation's steady decay. Look! A gang
Of crows parliaments the telephone lines. They are
	Like honourable members nodding stolidly
At each other, "ahem"-ing and "amen"-ing about
	Their ingenious and eternal pension plans.
The sky is sapphire broken by grey-white shards,
	But the ground stinks of dying apples, berries,
Smelling much like March and April with their vernal
	Muck. A mosquito zeroes in among shadowy, 
Gold-streaked, man-tall, zebra glass clusters, while I'm
	Watching bulrushes salute overbearing
Sky-fucking trees such as the Populus Caroliniana
	(or Carolinian Poplar), which looks nine-storeys
High, at least four-feet thick, and now, where this ink
	Is smudged, that reckless mosquito lies wrecked.
I pass a pond, no fresher than it was three years ago
	(Unlike the fresh ejaculation of a line),
Mid-September, in Annapolis Royal's Historic Gardens.
	Hear the fizz of the mini-waterfall--as quiet
As lethal flowers that have no scent. Here is a new
	Dragonfly, navigating purple-blue among 
Green-and-gold lily pads and lofty, saw-grass spears.
	Time is aging, time is aging, and is ageless,
While tree limbs rake upward like algebraic formula,
	Composing a jazz of randomness--just like
Our never-finished lines, leaping from direction
	To direction: a vers libre architecture.
Again, now the reek of rot under a thrusting tree--
	The scraggly, straggling, bedraggled arches
Of a flouncing, hydra-headed tree. The sun mirrors it,
	Launching arrows of light, lancing, almost,
The obdurate, darkening clouds, as it surrenders
	To the puny daggers of incensed mosquitoes,
Jabbing us like pens jab paper, pricking, pricking,
	Until ink runs like blood.

The poet is, the poet is,

	A gardener in a graveyard.

by George Eliot Clarke, in Black

Posted by Andrea at 7:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Two O'Clock Creek, by Bruce Hunter

All that summer couldn't understand
in the morning as we drove through
dry boulder wash, the matter-of-fact sign nailed
on a creekside spruce:
TWO O'CLOCK CREEK
-- and no water anywhere.

Me twelve with Uncle John on patrol
in the forestry truck.
Him hungover and with that temper,
you didn't push the obvious.

But that sign taunted me.
As first ranger in the district
he named things factually like an explorer:
Abraham flats after a Stony chief
The map men kept that one,
thinking it Biblical and it was, in a way.

But each afternoon, driving back, sure enough
at two o'clock, there was a creek
roaring cold under the wheels.

Finally, a week before school and the city, I asked,
a prairie boy baffled by the magic of water
appearing anywhere, and on time.
John smirks, swings the Ford
into the ditch and around,
a madman on his way to a holy place.

I hang on as we climb, boulders boil in the fenders.
Double-clutching down in to first
onto a horsetrail, then straight up on foot,
a pika whistling at us. Beginning to wish
I hadn't asked about that sign.

Over the alpine meadows
a plateau where mountain sheep startle
at the two of us covered in dust.
He draws his pipe across the foot of a glacier
tipped from the distant sky, a white glory
scooped into the sunslope
in a sheltered cowl of rock.
John points to a green waterfall
spilling over the lip.

Here sky meets land
and water is hard as rock this high
and liquid ice to the tongue and our aching feet.
Where all the rivers begin,
the Whitegoat, the Bighorn
after the sheep behind us.
Headwaters of the upper Saskatchewan
I knew from schoolroom maps,
coursing down to Hudson Bay
with canoes full of coureur de bois.

Below us, blonde grass riffles on Kootenay Plains,
clouds jam the chute the weather comes through
where the Kootenay descended to barter the Cree.
Up here the wind howls cold.

And I saw how a few hours of daylight
warms the ice to a trickle that becomes a torrent
in the glacier's pit. The mystery of rivers
is that they come from somewhere
between earth and sky,
wrung by the sun from clouds and wind.

But when night comes, Two O'clock Creek sleeps,
the waterfall waits frozen, and all the years
since I learned how rivers are made
this is the place I come to in my dreams
between the highest point of land and the sky,
so I can drink from the clouds.

~~~~~

Just catching up a little.

There's nothing I really want to say about this one, except that I love the idea--the images, and the story behind it.

Posted by Andrea at 8:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Blue Light of the Neutron Pool, by Diana Brebner

All the generations of me go up with you,
past Petawawa and the military convoys,
past Chalk River, Deep River, Rolphton, and
the rivers of nuclear power, past the
quiet churches: Our Lady of the Snows,
St. Andrew's Among the Pines, and the spires
in Mattawa where we turn. This is when
we are most together, driving the highways

that lead to our wild places. In an old car,
loaded up with: packs, boots, a borrowed
canoe, we go up to Kioshkokwi, leaving
the city and the everglowing sky behind,
hoping to see the darkness in each other,
the black joy of an empty night, the little
cries of the hidden stars as they become
visible and beloved. When we were leaving

Cally shouted "Have a good trip" and then,
unexpectedly, "We love you." So many people
are left behind, the ones who will not,
or cannot be with us. I bring them with me
and carry their eyes, old lamps in the dark.
Who are we to travel over water to the
islands of pines and spirit? Portaging in
mystic green worlds, the red leaves warning,

the winter coming, and wading small rivers,
leading the canoe in the turbulent waters,
I remember my friends and take their peace
with me. And you, constant man, who changes
shape with the days, with the weather: raven,
brother loon, river merganser, holy fish
as you leap in the water, companion, silent
comrade; be assured, I could never leave you.

First early hours in the north of Algonquin:
we are listening to the freight trains rumbling
on to North Bay. We see the eerie glow of
settlement to the northwest. Later, the loons
will greet us in the grey morning, the clouds
on the water. Then small rain, like a blessing,
dampens the day. A moose and her calf
browse in the shallows where our next portage

begins. We can wait. The baby canters
on the surface, confident, kickings its heels
like a small horse, and the mother, benign
madonna, watches and chews. In the forest
we will encounter silence, a man and his dog,
the cathedral green of lichen, moss, and
the emptying gothic of the columnar trees.
Winds are up at the beach at Manitou Lake;

a pair of ravens stand guard at the shore.
I, who have lived as a mind, cogito's captive,
must submit: this is a world of body and
spirit. In purity, or violence, the water
receives you, and you become it. Thunderbird
roars overhead and the drumbeats of the
spirit pound, detonations in the heart.
There is no turning back from fear, or joy,

and our moment of salutation. Every green
branch and living thing springs up, every
fish becomes a silver word. On the island
of pines, unmapped on the lake, we come
home to the animate universe, the breathing
earth. I'm alone. So, how can I explain: in all
my prayers, I am with you, and you are here.
In the morning we will walk among stones

and broken shells, naked as children, in
the living water. I will think of my friends,
the lovers and the beloved, the believers
and the quiet companions. The scientist lives
for the moment of light, to have one night
when the code unravels, or to spend a life
without politics or worry, her face alive in
the blue light of the neutron pool. My friend,

the believer, asks for enlightenment;
my friend, the painter, for vision; my
friend, northern boy, for the green country
of childhood that his heart cannot forget.
As for me, Thunderbird, I ask that you take
me with you, in a boat that crosses to the
world of spirits. I want to dance at my death,
to make a little thunder the earth will hear.

~~~~~

The melancholy is palpable, isn't it?

This is one of the most lovely poems I've ever read. It breaks my heart to know that the poet is dead--she died a few years ago, at 41--and I will not have the thrill of discovering a new book of her work in the bookstore.

She is alone; she makes it clear. So who is with her? Is it the memory of an absent lover that she can't leave behind? Is it Thunderbird, a god or spirit of death? Is it both?

I don't want to add too many words to this one. I don't think it needs it, and I don't want to dilute it. It's perfect and lovely. I will only say for the benefit of the non-Canadians in the audience that the places she mentions--Mattawa, Algonquin Park--are in the north of Ontario, in the wilderness, backpacking country. I camped in Algonquin Park as a girl. You can google the names, of course, to see exactly where they are if you want to know. I don't know if it's needed or not.

Posted by Andrea at 7:30 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

I missed Friday

But here's my one-day-late contribution to Friday Poetry Blogging anyway:

Sumptuous Destitution
by Anne Carson

"Sumptuous destitution"
Your opinion gives me a serious feeling: I would like to be what you deem me.
(Emily Dickinson letter 319 to Thomas Higginson)

is a phrase
You see my position is benighted.
(Emily Dickinson letter 268 to Thomas Higginson)

scholars use
She was much too enigmatical a being for me to solve in an hour's interview.
(Thomas Higginson letter 342a to Emily Dickinson)

of female
God made me [Sir] Master--I didn't be--myself.
(Emily Dickinson letter 233 to Thomas Higginson)

silence.
Rushing among my small heart--and pushing aside the blood--
(Emily Dickinson letter 248 to Thomas Higginson)

Save what you can, Emily.
And when I try to organize--my little Force explodes--and leaves me bare and charred.
(Emily Dickinson letter 271 to Thomas Higginson)

Save every bit of thread.
Have you a little chest to put the Alive in?
(Emily Dickinson letter 233 to Thomas Higginson)

One of them may be
By Cock, said Ophelia.
(Emily Dickinson letter 268 to Thomas Higginson)

the way out of here.

~~~~~

I love this one. Enough that I remember it and think of it when something crazy is happening in my own life. "Save every bit of thread. One of them may be the way out of here."

Emily Dickinson, of course, is a hero of many feminist scholars and poets; and this poem has clear feminist themes. Clear enough that I probably don't need to point them out; so I'll leave it at that.

What I love with this piece is the structure and the imagery. Essentially, the sturcture interweaves two poems together, one line after each line (and in the original, each of the bracketed lines is indented to make it clear that they are references of the italicized lines). It forces you to read and reread, looking for how each work comments on the other work, looking for how each line informs the line prior and the line following.

But now, to talk about the imagery, I'll put the entire first piece together, so it can be read more easily:

"Sumptuous destitution"
is a phrase
scholars use
of female
silence.
Save what you can, Emily.
Save every bit of thread.
One of them may be
the way out of here.

It's remarkable. Isn't it remarkable? So clearly and economically she lays out female silence as a construct, a labyrinth, that women are lost in; and in it, women wandering, picking up pieces of string because on of them may lead her back to the beginning, out of the labyrinth, into voice. Using the schoarly phrase, too, "sumptuous destitution," makes it so much clearer that it is positioned as an artifact, a construct--and something considered not undesirable by some men.

Her words and images and phrases so beautifully make the desperation clear.

I think, too, how fascinating it is that she chose Emily Dickinson; who wrote profusely, prolifically, but never published in her lifetime. She is a perfect symbol of women who are not silent, but who are silenced.

Posted by Andrea at 9:41 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

My Street

So I thought I'd include a poem by the writer I went to the workshop with a few weeks back, since I bought a book of his poetry and everything. I think this one is my favourite: My Street.

~~~~~

Here on this fabulous street
where I am never alone, the deaf man,
not the dumb man, wired,
my ears full of microphones:
the tick of streetcars tracking by
as a crowd gathers to enter
the fantastic purple walls of a night club.

But the show begins in the street
when Katie the barker yells:
"cock, fuckass, police"
and a man in black leather
with a steel hook for a hand
spears an apple for his girlfriend.

And between the tattoo parlour
where the bikers drill their arms
with skulls and daggers
and the window of Sister Waneita, Reader of Stars
where a tiger tabby crouches among the snake plants,
a man who resembles Karl Marx directs traffic
and curses the buses that roar back
while Jimmy and his pal Roberto
race electric wheelchairs down opposite sides of the street.

And the Portuguese huddle to mass
while a fat hooker drops into an expensive Ford
and a shirtless man driven towards somewhere
slamdances into the crowd that parts for him
as Gibson the blind guy peddles sunglesses
and whistles at all the girls
and yells: "Baby, I can smell you're beautiful."

And a man with no legs
knuckles his way on a wheeled board
then tucks it and ascends the stairs
with a swagger that has legs
into the Galaxy Donut Shop
to drink with the man with no arms
who upends a cup with his teeth.

And the beautiful man who plays guitar
with a withered hand,
the women buy his poetry and he blesses them.
On this street, the droolers laugh
at the scab-armed girl who burns herself
and she laughs back.
The cleft argue with the mute in furious wet sputters.
When we greet you on my street
we look for your wires
your scars.

-Bruce Hunter

~~~~~

I'm not up for a dissertation tonight, so I'll just say that it makes me want to go there.

Posted by Andrea at 7:18 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Bring Back Mom: An Invocation

Margaret Atwood, The Tent

Bring back Mom,
bread-baking Mom, in her crisp gingham apron
just like the aprons we sewed for her
in our Home Economics classes
and gave to her for a surprise
on Mother's Day--

Mom, who didn't have a job
because why would she need one,
who made our school lunches--
the tuna sandwich, the apple,
the oatmeal cookies wrapped in wax paper--
with the rubber band she'd saved in a jar;
who was always home when we got there
doing the ironing
or something equally boring,

who smiled the weak smile of a trapped drudge
as we slid in past her,
heading for the phone,
filled with surliness and contempt
and the resolve never to be like her.

Bring back Mom.
who wanted to be a concert pianist
but never had the chance
and made us take piano lessons,
which we resented--

Mom, whose aspic rings
and Jello salads we ate with greed,
though later derided--
pot-roasting Mom, expert with onions
though anxious in the face of garlic,
who received a brand-new frying pan
from us each Christmas--
just what she wanted--

Mom, her dark lipsticked mouth
smiling in the black-and-white
soap ads, the Aspirin ads, the toilet paper ads,
Mom, with her secret life
of headaches and stained washing
and irritated membranes--
Mom, who knew the dirt,
and hid the dirt, and did the dirty work,
and never saw herself
or us as clean enough--

and who believed
that there was other dirt
you shouldn't tell to children,
and didn't tell it,
which was dangerous only later.

Posted by Andrea at 8:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Inside of a Woman

This is a poem found in Room of One's Own vol 27:3, Canada's oldest feminist literary journal. It's long, it's a tearjerker. And I'm sorry if the formatting doesn't work well. I'm trying to find a way to preserve the line spaces and breaks that won't disallow me from using italics, but no luck yet.

Inside of a Woman
by Jackie Worobetz

1.
the swollen belly of my hard-boiled egg is cracked I realize
as I pull it from my purse

the last time I carried an egg like this
was junior high ...

we were each assigned a "little friend"
in health class
as practice for having children

I remember breaking mine
a couple days into it
can't recall how many marks I lost
though the number of stares too many to count

this poor creature
that was left with me
in my judgement for a suitable sitter

now it's four months before marriage
I am carrying home this hard-boiled egg
without a face
and still warm from the pot

we purposedly boiled one extra
while preparaing a school lunch
for Patrick's daughter
forty minutes before midnight

he rolled it up and down my spine
as I slipped on yellowed Adidas
to go home
teasing
with a quick speck of heat

2.
didn't realize my body had vacancies
until illness moved in
with its mother and stepsons
and cousin's friend's daughters
should all be evicted the noises they make

will have to put in new floors
patch up scarred walls

need to reclaim lost space
renovate interiors with tranquil colours
and fabrics that hug you in to their cushions

give doors shiny brass knobs
that like to be opened
make curtains to decorate windows

let the sun breathe
into me

3.

Thursday sometime after five
Patrick clings to me
fetal-like
on the hospital bed
a Kleenex box propped within reach
of both of our hands

this is the first time he ever lets me
see him cry
I stroke his temple
as he tells me he's sad
because we can't make our own babies

I assure him
that I'd do anything
for another version of him

we should be hopeful
since there will probably be
some artificial uteruses in five years
you never know with those scientists...

I tell him...

we can make it through anything now...

4.
it's hard
washing wounds

being brave enough
to peel back gauze

and allow shower to stream

around staples

and stitches

and healing seams

the same seams
that were open six days ago

to take a crushed womb
inside of a woman

who never had a chance
to use it

5.
don't have any eggs left in me
lost them all six days ago

how many coffins
will I need
I wonder...

what if I went
to the hardware section
of the Co-op

and picked up a few
of those plastic cases
with rows of one-and-a-half inch boxes

could cut up strips of p[aper
and write all the names
I would have chosen
had they been left in me

could compensate
by decorating with Anne Geddes
and playing with the children
of everyone I run into

but, would that ever be enough ...?

6.
I was so grateful for your high-walled
antique tub

insisted on filling it
every time

to disguise pale breasts stubbly legs
the protruding shape of my belly

I didn't want you to see me as any less
than flawless

the slippery film
emphasized every crease and blemish
when I emerged reaching for a towel

I wished my hands were free
to cover my eyes

as they met yours
in the doorway

7.
wishing every day
for a new womb
as if it's some kind of contest
that I could be an instant winner

I know this body's purpose
is something else
a skin shelter a vessel
that I live inside of

know it will be tested
with different trials
throughout my life
that it's my job
to feel
to remember all of them

this is how wisdom comes
I guess
beating down challenges
and knowing what to tell others
afterwards

8.
getting a new womb
is not the same
as getting contact lenses
or a wig

not one of those things
a lady can add to herself
whenever she chooses

can't find it
in brightly-coloured boxes
on pharmacy shelves
don't think technology
has caught up to me yet
if I can't borrow one
or grow another

no, this body is meant
for other things...

9.
last night on the phone
Mother asks

if I made another appointment
since my surgery
almost three months ago

feels that she needs to remind me
I was supposed to go and see them
for a check-up six weeks after

I tell her:

I don't need an ultrasound done to show me how empty I am...

10.
Lord, I give my body to you
because I'm done trying to fix it

please give me the reason
you won't let me have babies...

why do I have to be deprived of this?
I think that I would be good as a mother
learning with babies to adolescence
and with their kids as they grow

I could be the talk-about-everything-grandma
who has her own share of stories
to prove that she lived

I need to share with Patrick
this loving process
rather than him make love
to my void solar system of insides
where babies are supposed to grow

a nine-month cycle
I will never know...

no younger replicas of him;
little boy eyes
that match the size of his heart
that five-year-old smile I see
whenever he does something
he shouldn't have

we need to hold a funeral
for those parts of me
that were separated and pronounced dead
that day in October just before five

we wouldn't necessarily have to wear black...

11.
picked up the ankle-length black dress
last night
admiring its sleeves and cotton body

knew then
as I measured it up against myself
that I couldn't wear it again

because these days
I'm allergic to black

can't handle the weight it carries
in its thoughts

I don't want to make room
inside myself
to hide things anymore...

~~~~~

I like this one, but I admit I would like it more without the ellipses. And I find it a bit long and maybe a bit maudlin. But the images save it for me--the hard boiled egg cracking as a metaphor for her inability to have children, the hardware cases with labels to have a funeral for the eggs taken out of her body, the image of illness as an unwelcome visitor and its extended family that tears up the place and makes too much noise.

Posted by Andrea at 7:38 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Anvil Island

Today's method was somewhat unusual: I pulled the last issue of Grain magazine from the bookshelf and flipped to the first poem I found that I liked. Here it is, by Paddy McCallum:

Anvil Island

When Al lets a drop of solder fall
into the valve angle-wise and fits
the cap so it sets against any possible
leak of precious fluids, he pulls
his hands away like a god who knows
the world will run without him now
and turns to me and grins and says
"There's a kind of poetry in that"

and I'm not certain where to look
for the wordless poem of action
a friend spoke of following a long fight
with a sockeye near Active Pass,
the boat punching mercilessly against
the ocean's mouth, the fish's body.
Only a god could look upon death
and say there's poetry in that

working so fast there must be
no accident, numbering stars
and sands of the sea, electrons, photons,
the whale at its crest. One god,
a thousand gods, the singular fury
of flesh leaping out of reach until
words in their stalking sequence
clutch gills, scales, the whipping tail.

I play out hooks until the tip strikes
fumble with the plug and dump it
tangled down the wrong black hole
off Anvil Island, where salmon
sleep in a perfect covenant
of day and night. They cast
their sidelong glances at my bait,
then snap it off like blades of light.

~~~~~

You know, when I say little lit mags are the places to find what's great in short stories and poetry today--I mean it. OK, some of it is not the most fabulous. But what is great, is really really great, and sometimes in a totally new and breathtaking way you would never find in a mainstream glossy publication.

So maybe for the next few weeks I'll post these little favourites from small Canadian lit mags, see if I can whet a few appetites.

Posted by Andrea at 7:09 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

London

I love William Blake.

I first discovered him in highschool, and fell head over heels with his Songs of Experience. It was the right time in my life to be introduced to a poet who confronted taboo subjects head-on, in plain language. Since then I've become a bit disenchanted with some aspects of his work--the clunky rhymes can drive me insane--but he is still one of my favourite poets.

I hope that Jane Dark reads this one and offers a comment of her own on the context and current critical interpretation of this piece, because I am unequipped to do more than offer an enthusiastic "I like this!" and some words on technique. But first the poem:

In case you didn't know, his Songs of Experience are strongly anti-marriage.

The rhyme and meter in this piece are flawless. In some of his pieces he has a tendency to use visual rhymes (words which look like they should rhyme but don't actually sound the same), which I don't personally like. But not in this one.

I love how strongly anti-classist the poem is: the images clearly argue that the misfortunes of the poor and disadvantaged are part and parcel of the fortunes of the well-off. The chimney-sweeper's tears are a reproach to the church; the soldier dies for royalty.

But those are common. It's the last stanza that really gets me, where he manages to combine the exploitation of young girls, the exhaustion and drudgery of new motherhood, the costs of the prostitution trade to married women, and his political views on marriage. Is that an economy of words or what? Verbs and nouns outweight conjunctions and adjectives by a solid margin, and the last line is so perfect--such an economy of words, the verb strong and vivid, the combination of "marriage" and "hearse" unexpected and catching the reader unawares, and placing "hearse" itself in the last spot where it reinforces the poem's darkness and underlying theme of death--I could read it for an hour.

In fact, I have.

So off to work with me.

Posted by Andrea at 8:07 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

Lear of Whylah Falls

Muscular, maddened, and wrecking cornstalks,
Our Lear totters, interrogates the crows,
Keels, and rags his majesty on brambles.
Felled, green maple leaves tangle in his hair.
Imbalanced by illicit, bitter ale,
He vows he'll slog to the cold Atlantic
To sound the wrinkling and remorseless deep
That shut over the head of Lycidas,
To aquarium his queer brain in brine
Under the tumult and racket of gulls.
Let Othello sleep now. O, lay him down,
Oceaned in silk sheets and flannel blankets,
Quilts of floribunda (a glimpse of death --
The poor sadness of pine which encloses).
Twine our fallen monarch a crown of vines
And roses (he will be beautiful in death),
And wind beside the Sixhiboux and perch
On rocks and mourn for all humanity.

~~~~~

This is the last one I'm sharing from Whylah Falls. It wasn't easy to find four that worked as stand-alone pieces instead of part of the narrative, but I hope I managed to find a few that piqued your curiousity a little. It is truly a beautiful book.

Posted by Andrea at 7:58 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Accumulated Wonder

(another one from Whylah Falls)

A rural Venus, Selah rises from the
gold foliage of the Sixhiboux River, sweeps
petals of water from her skin. At once,
clouds being to sob for such beauty.
Clothing drops like leaves.

"No one makes poetry, my Mme.
Butterfly, my Carmen, in Whylah,"
I whisper. She smiles: "We'll shape it with
our souls."

Desire illuminates the dark manuscript
of our skin with beetles and butterflies.
After the lightning and rain has ceased,
after the lightning and rain of lovemaking
has ceased, Selah will dive again into the
sunflower-open river.

Posted by Andrea at 7:15 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The Lover's Argument With Shelley

(more from Whylah Falls)

Shelley, I climbed to Whylah Falls while dusk
Scattered elm and crow shadows across your crooked
Kitchen. Now, I knock on your door and lean
Inside, looking for you. Shy, scared, you twist
Away, look out your twisted window,
And stare at black opacity.
You remember a floundered lumber truck,
That heaviness that hooked Rafael's breath,
Ripped it from his stunned lungs, when his truck leapt,
Reeled, flopped, on Whylah's shaprest hill.
Gravity set his corpse awry, crooked,
Like a Picasso trick, and grave-dirt blackened
Your small, brown hands. Now, love's lies.
But, Shelley,
My love is plain; I've stripped bark from pencils,
And stoked your love with paphlets and old news.
My poems, thrown to the creek, gleam, wriggle, leap.
Shelley, the moon gapes, refuses to go away.
Let us go down by the bright Sixhiboux
And sit where thingabob uncorked his voice
And elders baptized him in snow-white robes.
Let us catch, unawares, some trout, some sleep.
Shelley, the end of this world is Beauty.

[the next is Shelley's response]

The Wisdom of Shelley

You come down, after
five winters, X,
bristlin' with roses
and words words words,
brazen as brass.
Like a late blizzard,
You bust in our door,
talkin' April and snow and rain,
litterin' the table
with poems --
as if we could trust them!

I can't.
I heard pa tell ma
how much and much he
loved loved loved her
and I saw his fist
fall so gracefully
against her cheek,
she swooned.

Roses
got thorns.
And words
do lie.

I've seen love
die.

[admit it: you want to know what happens next, don't you?]

Posted by Andrea at 8:07 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Friday Poetry Blogging: Whylah Falls, part I

Africville was Canada's largest and oldest black community, built in Nova Scotia in about 1810 and razed by the City government in the 1960s. It was a prime example of environmental racism in action--a railroad, fertilizer plants, and garbage dumps were located in it--but it was a close-knit and vibrant community that former residents mourned when they were forceably evicted and relocated to low-income government housing.

Whylah Falls is a fictionalized account of life in Africville, told beautifully and powerfully as epic poetry or (in modern terminology) a poem-novel. It is a milestone of Canadian literature, a recipient of several major poetry awards, and one of the most gorgeous pieces of work I've ever read. And today, to celebrate black history month, I'll share some of it with you, in the hopes that you will read the book yourself.

In the "Introduction to the Tenth Anniversary Edition," George Elliot Clarke writes,

In the Preface to the First Edition, he writes:

And here is the poem-preface:

~~~~~

Look Homeward, Exile

I can still see that soil crimsoned by butchered
Hog and imbrued with rye, lye, and homely
Spirituals everybody must know,
Still dream of folks who broke or cracked like shale:
Pushkin, who twisted his hands in boxing,
Marrocco, who ran girls like dogs and got stabbed,
Lavinia, her teeth decayed to black stumps,
Her lovemaking still in demand, spitting
Black phlegm -- her pension after twenty towns,
And Toof, suckled on anger that no Baptist
Church could contain, who let wrinkled Eely
Seed her moist womb when she was just thirteen.
And the tyrant sun that reared from barbed-wire
Spewed flame that charred the idiot crops
To Depression, and hurt my granddaddy
To bottle after bottle of sweet death,
His dreams beaten to one, tremendous pulp,
Until his heart seized, choked; his love gave out.
But Beauty survived, secreted
In freight trains snorting in their pens, in babes
Whose faces were coal-black mirrors, in strange
Strummers who plucked Ghanaian banjos, hummed
Blind blues -- precise, ornate, rich needlepoint,
In sermons scorched with sulphur and brimstone,
And in my love's dark, orient skin that smelled
like orange peels and tasted like rum, good God!
I remember my Creator in the old ways:
I sit in taverns and stare at my fists;
I knead earth into bread, spell water into wine.
Still, nothing warms my wintry exile -- neither
Prayers nor fine love, neither votes nor hard drink:
For nothing heals those saints felled in green beds,
Whose loves are smashed by just one word or glance
Or pain -- a screw jammed in thick, straining wood.

~~~~~

Now: If you've just read that to yourself in your head, try it once more, out loud. Listen to those gorgeous rhythms. The cadences are marvelous. It sounds like a Baptist sermon--it really does, read it out loud. The sounds, too--the repetitious ssss's that roll underneath like the tide. And the images! Dense images packed one after another with barely a breath between them.

The whole book is like that. The structure and form of each piece changes, but they were all written by a master, and if you've never read it, you must must must. Over the next few weeks I'll post a few more. Quite blatantly, I hope to get you hooked on the story so you'll want to find out what happened next. ;)

~~~~~

Friday Poetry Blogging

Posted by Andrea at 7:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

New Rule, Anne Carson

The thing you need to know is: I love poetry. I can't write it; I've tried from time to time but it all turns out self-indulgent crap, and I suppose like any craft if you try hard enough you can learn, but I don't have the passion for it to make years of patient practice seem worthwhile. But I love to read it.

I believe that language is born in poetry. Well, that and on the streets, in common usage; but poetry is the other side to that, and not one I think we can dispense with. A beautiful poem can give me something that feels like a heart attack--when the lines and meter and breaks and words and images come together and the whole thing comes alive.

So. I love poetry. And I'm really looking forward to this Friday poetry blogging thing because it's not something one gets much of a chance to indulge in everyday life. Reading it, yes; enjoying it communally, no; at least, not unless one is Jane Dark and studying poets in a graduate English program. The rest of us read poetry in private, have private ecstasies, private questions, and so on. I'm not even sure how many people to count among "us" in my previous sentence.

Poetry is the most fundamental of the word arts. All of the techniques and skills the other word arts build on--rhythm, sound, emphasis, image, and so on--find their truest form in poetry.

I'm starting myself off with a piece I love by a fairly well-known modern-day Canadian poet, Anne Carson, who not only writes beautiful pieces but also proves that poetry is something one can do on the side, as her day-job is professor of classics at a Canadian university. This one I read in her book, Men In The Off Hours. The whole book is tremendous; I'm starting with this poem because it is not only lovely, but also accessible; she's not drawing on her extensive knowledge of the Classics here. I don't feel the need I often do when reading her work to find an encyclopaedia:

~~~~~

New Rule

A New Year's white morning of hard new ice.
High on the frozen branches I saw a squirrel jump and skid.
Is this scary? he seemed to say and glanced

down at me, clutching his branch as it bobbed
in stiff recoil--or is it just that everything sounds wrong today?
The branches

clinked.
He wiped his small cold lips with one hand.
Do you fear the same things as

I fear? I countered, looking up.
His empire of branches slid against the air.
The night of hooks?

The man blade left open on the stair?
Not enough spin on it, said my true love
when he left in our fifth year.

The squirrel bounced down a branch
and caught a peg of tears.
The way to hold on is

afterwords
so
clear.

~~~~~

"His empire of branches slid against the air."

"The squirrel bounced down a branch / and caught a peg of tears."

I could read those lines alone for hours.

Yes, I'm a geek.

I'm looking forward to seeing what other people post.

Posted by Andrea at 7:29 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack