#Canadian Poetry

[orchard-bliss]

Anne Michaels, from The Weight of Oranges; “Depth Of Field”

[theaskew]

You Have the Lovers, a poem by Leonard Cohen, from Leonard Cohen: Selected Poems, 1956-68 [Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1969]

[gennsoup]

Spoons, however: there are no spoons in Nature, or not on animals. We imitate ourselves. Here, let me help you: two cupped hands.

Margaret Atwood, Table Settings

[canadachronicles]

"In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie, In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields."

--In Flanders Fields, John McCrae

[big-gay-demons]

From 'This Wound Is A World' by Billy-Ray Belcourt.

[crystalclaire]

Oh spring, my heart is in my mouth

“Ode” by Karen Solie, from The Road In Is Not The Same Road Out

[manwalksintobar]

Elegy // Leonard Cohen

Do not look for him In brittle mountain streams: They are too cold for any god; And do not examine the angry rivers For shreds of his soft body Or turn the shore stones for his blood; But in the warm salt ocean He is descending through cliffs Of slow green water And the hovering coloured fish Kiss his snow-bruised body And build their secret nests In his fluttering winding-sheet.

[mywifeleftme]

361: bill bissett & The Mandan Massacre // Awake in Th Red Desert

Awake in Th Red Desert bill bissett & Th Mandan Massacre 1968, See/Hear Productions (Bandcamp)

(From “mor memoreez uv marvara reel konversaysyun,” scars on the seehors, Talonbooks 1999)

That’s a sample of how poet bill bissett’s writing looks on the page, phonetic and arbitrary, intuitive and free, while also checking the reader from taking any word for granted. The poems are frequently conversational in tone, but the way you have to sound out his writing to understand it means the reader's cadence ends up replicating the idiosyncratic singsong way bissett speaks. The 84-year-old remains a one-of-a-kind live performer, doodling all over the line between spoken poetry and song. He croons nonsense lullabies and pastiche ragas, shakes a maraca, intones mantras until their familiar words lose all their sense, even dances a little. It’s funny—I wouldn’t recommend his writing to someone unfamiliar with the avant-garde, but I would confidently take just about any open-minded person to see one of his shows. He has the affect of a holy fool or a joyful monk, and basically anything he does makes more sense in the context of his corporeal presence.

Back in 1968 though, bill was a wild young man, and Awake In Th Red Desert, his LP with backing “band” Th Mandan Massacre, is full of noisy freakouts and some patience-testing explorations. The Massacre includes four percussionists, some trained (jazz drummer Gregg Simpson) and some not (poet Martina Clinton, bill’s then-partner); electric guitar; two flutes (one a toy); and cutting edge Buchla Box synthesizer by the otherwise unknown Wayne Carr. Response to Red Desert has been pretty mixed—one of its Bandcamp uploads even warns, “Please preview the tracks before downloading. There are no refunds.” I suspect many listeners don’t make it past the first side of the record, which often sounds like what it is: clattering free improvisations around bissett’s sung or shouted recitations. On the flip though, things mellow out for some fascinating minimal synth explorations, bissett doing his visionary thing on a haunting electronic field (see “fires in the tempul”). “she, still and curling” is particularly freaky, Carr making sinister cricket noises with his Buchla, tape of bissett’s voice chopped up into hypnotic loops, layered and manipulated till it sounds like a collage of short wave radio transmissions. The ramshackle noise of the early tracks eventually returns on the awesome “now according to paragraph ‘c’”: bissett reads what (initially) seems like a found text that gets weirder and bolder as the poet works himself into a lather, the Buchla’s bleak tones tattered by the percussion squad’s stiff beat.

I snagged this off Montrealer Alex Moskos, who oversaw the reissue for Massachusetts-based avant-garde label Feeding Tube, and getting this thing back out there has clearly been a labour of love for him (the production quality is impeccable; great explanatory liner notes too). Are there 500 people who want this record? I’m not sure. But for fans of bissett, sound poetry, freaky music, and early electronic, this’ll be of interest. One idea: tell people Awake was the work of a solar death cult leader from the Pacific Northwest who disappeared during an eclipse and they won’t be able to keep the damn thing in stock.

361/365

[poem-today]

A poem by Robyn Sarah

Blowing the Fluff Away

The sprig of unknown bloom you sent last fall spent the long winter drying on my wall, mounted on black. But it had turned to fluff some months ago. Tonight I took it down because I thought that I had had enough of staring at it. Brittle, dry and brown, it seemed to speak too plainly of a waste of friendship, forced to flower, culled in haste.

So, after months of fearing to walk past in case the stir should scatter it to bits, I took it out to scatter it at last with my own breath, and so to call us quits. —Fooled! for the fluff was nothing but a sheath, with tiny, perfect flowers underneath.

Robyn Sarah

[peachynm]

[ammonitetestpatterns]

erin mouré, furious, anansi, 1988.

[orchard-bliss]

Anne Michaels, from The Weight of Oranges; “Turning Twenty-Three”

[laikacore]

in sudbury, they have red dirt

by the side of the road where the weeds grow

between my toes at the edge of the lawn

where the grass isn’t enough.

on prince edward island, they have red dirt

nobody remembers my childhood like i do

when i look down and see over and over again

the great red rocks on the side of the highway

the great red dust across the dirt road

the fade of the soil into the sand

the lapping of the lake at the dock

the endless eye of the ocean.

where i am is nowhere i’ve been before

nowhere i may be again

but for now i’m here

and beneath my feet, they have red dirt

mineral of the memory by laika wallace

[gennsoup]

you make me wanna slow dance under moonlight and snowflakes hand tangled in your hair led down into heartbreak and hope

Tenille K. Campbell, I want to taste your language

[canadachronicles]

"ABOVE the weary waiting world, Asleep in chill despair, There breaks a sound of joyous bells Upon the frosted air. And o'er the humblest rooftree, lo, A star is dancing on the snow. What makes the yellow star to dance Upon the brink of night? What makes the breaking dawn to glow So magically bright,- And all the earth to be renewed With infinite beatitude? The singing bells, the throbbing star, The sunbeams on the snow, And the awakening heart that leaps New ecstasy to know, - They all are dancing in the morn Because a little child is born."

--A Christmas Song, Bliss Carman

We're not quite there yet, eh? But I thought of this poem when we were decorating the house the other day, and Mum found the "little child" in question, which had been missing from our Nativity Scene for at least the past three Christmases, for I was sure we had lost it!

[smpalardyartlife]

'spirit of the night' by sm palardy