Gay Allison: a feminist and a poet

To finish off Poetry Month, a lovely occasion: a poetry reading at my library. Stratford is jam-packed with artists, and this one, Gay Allison , is a poet who has worked in the literary field for many years. This is a quick bio, as it appears on our library website:

Gay Allison was born in Saskatchewan and grew up on the prairies. She has lived in Saskatoon, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Toronto. She has an M.A. in English, and taught all Grade levels in schools across Canada. She has been fiction editor of The Canadian Forum, poetry editor of Waves and is founding editor of Fireweed. She is also a founding member of the Women's Writing Collective, and is on the Advisory Board of Tiger Lily, a magazine by women of colour. She was a poetry instructor for "The Women and Words Writing Retreat" in Vancouver in 1991. She conducts poetry workshops across Canada as well as in the Brunswick House B&B. She evaluates manuscripts and works with writing students on an individual basis. She lives in Stratford, Ontario

I'd like to share the opening poem from her 1986 collection, The Unravelling.

Holding the World

My mother unravels a sweater
And dyes it green
a pile of wool
at her feet
in the shape of butterflies
released from cocoons
and ready for flight

When she moves her chair
the threads shape into waves
that resemble the horizon
of a Saskatchewan sky

My father slams the front door
enters the kitchen with shirts
that need fixing
She gathers them in her lap
in the shape of a globe
She could be holding the world

Selections from Johnston

The Essential George Johnston / selected by Robyn Sarah
Erin, ON : Porcupine's Quill, c2007.


This is the first volume of a new series by Porcupine's Quill, called "Essential Poets" in which, they say, an attempt will be made "to offer the best possible introduction to preeminent figures in Canadian poetry."
This one has been edited by Robyn Sarah (one of whose poems I've shared this month) and includes a wonderful preface in which she discusses his art, and suggests that his poems are most appreciated when read aloud. I'm interested in this volume both because Johnston is one of those 'Preeminent Figures' and because of his tie to Stratford. Both sets of his grandparents lived in Stratford, and this book tells us
"many family members were employed in the Grand Trunk shops. His maternal grandfather, a locomotive engineer, is said to have entertained himself on the job by reciting Milton over the roar of the engine."
Isn't that an amazing image? It made me smile. George Johnston was very well known for his teaching and translating -- notably of the Icelandic sagas and of Faroese poetry. He was also a marvellous poet in his own right. Here is an example of his original phrasing:


Firefly Evening

Heft of earth, under;
evening's heft, thunder;
evening of fireflies;
thunder in western skies.

Airs through windows yet
and through the downstairs let
that over pastures come
thunder from.


And another, a little more traditional:

Age

Peace, all but quite,
Jeanne talking to her cat
whose eyes are shut,
tail tip stopped, all but.

Pretend sleep
on an uncertain lap
with the familiar voice
quoting cat sense.

Age, that in its clutch
bears the spinal itch,
makes hind-quarters weak
and stomach sick,

also rounds the purr
rounder than ever before,
and brings pretend peace,
peaceful almost as peace.


Try to find this slim collection; it is a joy to read!

A Stratfordian poet; not Shakespeare

Jane Urquhart is probably best known for her many novels, however, she is also a poet. She is also a Stratfordian, so in celebration of my current home town and of poetry month in general, I'll share one of her works. And to see how poetry plays into her fiction writing, take a look at this lovely interview from a few years ago.

Her husband, artist Tony Urquhart, collaborated with her on her first book, a limited edition (531 copies) of a book of poetry, I am walking in the garden of his imaginary palace : eleven poems for Le Notre. (Panoramas by Tony Urquhart. -- Toronto : Aya Press, 1982.) Copies of the 140 first-state books are going for an average of $530 these days. Nice!

Her first novel was Whirlpool, set in Niagara Falls, about a family of undertakers. The story was based on elements of her husband's family history specifically the existence of Morse & Sons Funeral Home in Niagara Falls, the oldest run family funeral home in Canada. It was well received critically -- now even considered a classic. This theme did not get used up with the novel, however; she was fascinated by Adeline, her husband's grandmother, who had kept a notebook with details of all the bodies fished from the river, which the undertakers then became responsible for. One section (The Undertaker's Bride) from her 1982 book of poetry, False Shuffles, is made up of poems based on Adeline's life.

Here are a couple of those poems, although I can't get the spacing quite right, due to the un-poetic nature of Blogger.

The Limit of Suspension

On three small scraps of paper
grandmother writes
how the suspension bridge
fell down

how the cotton wool
crash

pulled her from
starched sheets to the
lung-stopping chill
of the january night

how her shoes squeaked
in the snow

and looking at the
suspension bridge

lying
broken-backed against the ice
like an injured dragon

grandmother
must have wondered at
each of her magic crossings

but writes here
only
the suspension bridge
fell down
and it did make a noise.



Between Brothers

A fight starts
in a moment

travels all around the
yard

and ruins roses

involves two or three
dogs who
scare the goldfish

deeper in the pond
a fight speaks of
heat or play
or boredom

a fight lasts an
instant or an afternoon

and always finishes
with the loser in the trough
shaking his head like an animal

(the water scatters
through the vision of
his startled sisters
suddenly blooming
at the kitchen window and

grandmother shouting
as she dries the edges of
her hands

all around her apron).

On selling one's books

Here's a sonnet - just one more, I swear I'll move on soon - but here's one which I could not resist posting. It's a bit melancholy for any bookish person to read, even now. It was written in 1841 by book collector William Stanley Roscoe, which just goes to show that obsessive book lovers never change. I do like the final line, with its suggestion that heaven entails being able to converse directly with all the great writers who have gone ahead. That's my idea of something heavenly!




On Being Forced to Part with his Library for the Benefit of his Creditors

As one who destined from his friends to part,
Regrets his loss, yet hopes again ere-while
To share their converse and enjoy their smile,
And tempers, as he may, affliction's dart --
Thus, loved associates! chiefs of elder art!
Teachers of wisdom! who could once beguile
My tedious hours, and lighten every toil,
I now resign you; nor with fainting heart --
For pass a few short years, or days, or hours,
And happier seasons may their dawn unfold,
And all your sacred fellowship restore;
When, freed from earth, unlimited its powers,
Mind shall with mind direct communion hold,
And kindred spirits meet to part no more.

Donne sonnetteering

One more from the pen of John Donne; this is a selection from his cycle of Holy Sonnets. It was written after the death of his beloved wife, Anne, who died in childbirth with their 12th child.



Holy Sonnets: Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt


Since she whom I lov'd hath paid her last debt
To nature, and to hers, and my good is dead,
And her soul early into heaven ravished,
Wholly in heavenly things my mind is set.
Here the admiring her my mind did whet
To seek thee, God; so streams do show the head;
But though I have found thee, and thou my thirst hast fed,
A holy thirsty dropsy melts me yet.
But why should I beg more love, whenas thou
Dost woo my soul, for hers off'ring all thine,
And dost not only fear lest I allow
My love to saints and angels, things divine,
But in thy tender jealousy dost doubt
Lest the world, flesh, yea devil put thee out.


John Donne

Sonnet Week nearly Donne

Following Shakespeare both here and in life, here's a selection from John Donne (1572-1631). This is a familiar one, as are so many of his lines to our modern ears -- lines such as:

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

No man is an island.

(although both of these lines come from his sermons rather than his poetry)

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Shakespeare for Teens

The Loser's guide to life and love / A.E. Cannon
HarperCollins, c2008. (read as ARC)
Available June 24
(hmm, is releasing this book on Midsummer's Day really a coincidence?)

Since I'm on the track of Shakespeare at the moment, I thought I'd share a bit about this book, a YA novel I recently read through the HarperCollins First Look program. It's inspired by A Midsummer Night's Dream; the original play is not strictly adhered to, but this story has captured the magical, mixed-up feeling of MND.

It has 4 primary characters, Ed, Scout, Quark and Ellie. Ed is the main character, the one which the story revolves around, although it is told in alternating first person and epistolary (email, mostly) chapters. Ed gets a summer job at Reel Life Movies, where his strangely awe-inspiring boss Ali can not seem to find him a name tag. So Ed ends up wearing a former employee's name tag, reading "Sergio", for nearly the entire summer. He starts to become Sergio-like, with increased confidence and flirting ability. He meets the new girl in town Ellie (a gorgeous blonde) and begins a tentative relationship with her, based on his introduction of himself as a Brazilian, Sergio Mendez. Meanwhile, his best girl friend, tomboy Scout, is suffering from her secret crush on him. Ed's best guy friend, astronomy nerd Quark, suddenly becomes interested in girls, and crushes on Scout. If you know A Midsummer Night's Dream, you'll know how these mixed-up crushes resolve themselves. With the help of Ed's Oberon-like boss and his Titania-inspired wife, the right people end up together. The famous "End of Summer" backyard party held by Ed's boss Ali is a particularly lovely scene; it is wonderfully drawn, expressing the magical theatricality of Shakespeare's play effectively within a modern setting.

I enjoyed this book -- first off, anything inspired by Shakespeare gets my interest. But this was a good story of itself, with normal teen characters; no creepily adult, strung out, super rich kids in this one. I particularly enjoyed the character of Scout, a tomboy with a secret predilection for regency romances -- trying to hide this embarrassing fact made for a few funny moments. Ed and Scout are more fully drawn than Quark and Ellie, and I would have preferred the book to be just a little longer to get a better feel for those two, but overall it was nicely balanced. I liked the story's initial idea, that of Ed's personality changing because he was presenting himself under a different name. The author was apparently influenced by her son's experience in a summer job where he wore a name tag emblazoned with "Sergio" -- read about it in her own words to find out more about why and how she came to write this book.

So although I can't honestly state that this was a YA novel which completely stunned me with its brilliance, I did enjoy the sweet, cleverly amusing take on a Shakespeare classic. Also, I love the cover. So gorgeous, and so suitable.
Recommended for younger teens and for any-aged Shakespeare aficionados.

Shakespeare II

Shakespeare is just too big to be limited to one day, so here is another of his sonnets. I like this one because of the way he plays with his own name and all its varied meanings:

Sonnet 135

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy will,

And 'Will' to boot, and 'Will' in over-plus,

More than enough am I that vex thee still,

To thy sweet will making addition thus.

Wilt thou whose will is large and spacious,

Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine?

Shall will in others seem right gracious,

And in my will no fair acceptance shine?

The sea all water, yet receives rain still,

And in abundance addeth to his store,

So thou being rich in will add to thy will

One will of mine to make thy large will more.

Let no unkind, no fair beseechers kill,

Think all but one, and me in that one 'Will.'

I also want to point out that I reside in the town which is home to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. This year, they've opened the season with a preview of my absolute favourite play, Hamlet. (only wish I could have gone!) I will see it before the season is out.

Celebrating Shakespeare's birth by opening the season -- and launching the new and improved theatre gift shop and café -- is, I think, a lovely idea. Even if you're too far away to come and see anything, you can pop over to their website and watch a ton of webcasts about each of the plays and investigate the current crop of actors (including my favourite, Brian Tree).

and Happy Birthday Shakespeare

It's William Shakespeare's accepted birth date today; so here's a sonnet from the master. I don't have the brain power to write a full post on Shakespeare today, but you can get more than your money's worth by going on over to the Sheila Variations to read her incredibly detailed examination of Shakespeare's first folio and of others' statements about good old Will.

Sonnet 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Shakespeare

Happy Earth Day!

Happy Earth Day to all... here's a sonnet to celebrate!

A SONNET FOR THE EARTH

WHEN I am weary for delight and spent,
Even as a bird that tries too long its wings
Will nest awhile amid the grass and sings,
So I drop downward from the wonderment
Of timelessness and space, in which were blent
The wind, the sunshine and the wanderings
Of all the planets — to the little things
That are my grass and flowers and am content.

Or if in flight my wings should beat so far
From the kind grass that is so cool and deep
That it must poise among the winds on high —
Yet will I sing to thee from star to star,
Piercing thy sunshine, and will always keep
A song for thee amid the farthest sky.

Anna Hempstead Branch [1875-1937]

(from Shoes that danced and other poems)

Another way to celebrate: with a Book Giveaway!

If you'd like to win a copy of The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming! as a part of your Earth Day celebrations, go on over to Andi's giveaway at Tripping Toward Lucidity and take a look. You have a couple of days yet; it will drawn for on April 25th. It sure looks like a good one to win!

A hundred sonnets, or more

The Exile's Papers: the duplicity of autobiography, Part One / Wayne Clifford

Erin, ON : Porcupine's Quill, c2007.

This is the first volume in a projected 4 volume set of sonnets -- yes, that's right, four volumes of them. Wayne Clifford has been writing sonnets for the past 25 years and has begun gathering them up to produce these volumes. His sonnets adapt the form, using vernacular and modern rhythms; some are very successful and some are not so much to my taste. But the effort is truly inspiring. Here's what he has to say about the sonnet form itself:

Since the sonnet was first defined into English by another, more convincing lord -- Surrey -- about 500 years ago, it has acquired turns and springings and enough washings, foldings, stretchings, twistings and shrinkings to have its sizing leak out to the chaos that reclaims us all. As a hairshirt, it's become as pliant as any vestment for covering an ass in a day busy about money- earning, kid-care, mate-talk, and household chores. Books are again being written about the sonnet, its strategies explained by degreed, tenured and funded experts. Anthologies of its examples are being compiled. Young writers are unafraid to use it. And, because, as form-muse for the responsive craftsman, the sonnet demands clean lines to the thinking it takes in, convincing volume for the feeling it embraces, purity of each whole-at-once `Wow!' that intuition pulls from its commodious sleeve, the making of a sonnet honours a long, an historical, conversation held wherever fine English is spoken.

That's his erudite opinion of sonnets, and he's certainly written enough to have worked out his thoughts on them. I've made varied approaches to poetry over the years, and the one or two sonnets I attempted were painful -- and unfinished. The poetry I wrote in high school (which I recently rediscovered in an old notebook) is so hideously typical of a 16 yr. old misfit, it makes me cringe but also laugh a bit. Still, no-one can make me share it; I don't want to scare away every reader... If you're interested in reading even more about GOOD Canadian poetry (not mine), try the Northern Poetry Review, which I've discovered just lately, for poems, reviews and interviews.

But speaking of good poetry, back to Wayne Clifford, who is collecting up sonnets written over the length of his career; and sonnets are the subject here, after all! I'll share one which is slightly self-reflexive:

The Reader, of Course, Makes the Poem

If, unlike yours, her limitations mean
she can't step thru the looking-glass of page,
so, lacking depth, her lucky guess must gauge
what part of her your reading makes out seen
enough to trick your trust that no obscene
Utmost writes you for amusement, your cage
invokes, like hers, such hopes you're forced to wage
against your mortal lamentations keen

With what conviction can your walk-on lines
declaim against the orbits of the sun
when what you speak must die out from those minds
whose breaths will call yours leaking gases,gone.

You're one among those clever apes she's heard
trying to coax some meaning from the word

~Wayne Clifford

Life is a Sonnet

I mentioned a few days back that I like poetry which uses formal structures. It's amazing how many poets have worked with one of the most popular forms, the sonnet. I first heard Madeleine L'Engle compare life to a sonnet in A Wrinkle in Time:

Mrs Whatsit: It is a very strict form of poetry is it not? There are fourteen lines, I believe, all in iambic pentameter. That's a very strict rhythm or meter, yes? And each line has to end with a rigid rhyme pattern. And if the poet does not do it exactly this way, it is not a sonnet, is it?

Calvin: You mean you're comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it?

Mrs Whatsit: Yes. You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.

She was such an erudite author, she may have been quoting someone else, but that is where I first heard this comparison, and I'm as fond of it as I am of L'Engle herself.

There's a week of sonnets coming up, and who better to begin with than Madeleine L'Engle. This is one of her sonnets that I'm most fond of, as it's richly romantic and yet gives a sense of the fleeting impermanence of life and love.


You are still new, my love. I do not know you,
Stranger beside me in the dark of bed,
Dreaming dreams I cannot ever enter,
Eyes closed in that unknown, familiar head.
Who are you? who have thrust and entered
My very being, penetrated so that now
I can never again be wholly separate,
Bound by shared living to this unknown thou.
I do not know you, nor do you know me,
And yet we know each other in the way
Of our primordial forebears in the garden.
Adam knew Eve. As we do, so did they.
They; we; forever strangers: austere, but true.
And yet I would not change it. You are still new.

Epitaphs

I have an old paperback copy of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology (1915) which I like to read bits from every now and again. It's a fascinating collection of short poems, all stories of the dead and gone citizens of Spoon River, delivered in their own voices. It offers an intriguing take on perspective; the dead tell the truth about their lives, but what they focus on in the short monologues allowed them is not always what you might expect. Some people have secrets which died with them, and are now revealed -- but only to the reader, not to the other inhabitants of Spoon River. It's a melancholy experience reading them one after another, but very worth doing. It makes me start to wonder: what I would say if allowed one short page to sum up my life; what would matter to someone no longer of this world? It's an endlessly attractive book, shown by the many permutations it has seen -- it's become a stage play, a radio adaptation, and inspired many songs, including a multimedia cantata (which you can hear excerpts of on the composer's website).

Here are a few examples:


Petit, the Poet

SEEDS in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel—
Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens—
But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Ballades by the score with the same old thought:
The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished;
And what is love but a rose that fades?
Life all around me here in the village:
Tragedy, comedy, valor and truth,
Courage, constancy, heroism, failure—
All in the loom, and oh what patterns!
Woodlands, meadows, streams and rivers—
Blind to all of it all my life long.
Triolets, villanelles, rondels, rondeaus,
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics,
While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines.


Lucinda Matlock

I WENT to the dances at Chandlerville,
And played snap-out at Winchester.
One time we changed partners,
Driving home in the moonlight of middle June,
And then I found Davis.
We were married and lived together for seventy years,
Enjoying, working, raising the twelve children,
Eight of whom we lost
Ere I had reached the age of sixty.
I spun, I wove, I kept the house, I nursed the sick,
I made the garden, and for holiday
Rambled over the fields where sang the larks,
And by Spoon River gathering many a shell,
And many a flower and medicinal weed—
Shouting to the wooded hills, singing to the green valleys.
At ninety-six I had lived enough, that is all,
And passed to a sweet repose.
What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you—
It takes life to love Life.


The Village Atheist

YE young debaters over the doctrine
Of the soul’s immortality,
I who lie here was the village atheist,
Talkative, contentious, versed in the arguments
Of the infidels.
But through a long sickness
Coughing myself to death
I read the Upanishads and the poetry of Jesus.
And they lighted a torch of hope and intuition
And desire which the Shadow,
Leading me swiftly through the caverns of darkness,
Could not extinguish.
Listen to me, ye who live in the senses
And think through the senses only:
Immortality is not a gift,
Immortality is an achievement;
And only those who strive mightily
Shall possess it.

Solie's Newfoundland

Lest I leave you with the impression that Karen Solie only discovers poetry in other works, I'll share one of her own creations which I like. The title perhaps needs explanation for non-Canadians. Due to the oddity of time zones, Newfoundland -- at the end of the country -- runs a half hour later than elsewhere. Canadians are well accustomed to the tag line after programs on CBC radio: listen at 9:00 central, half hour later in Newfoundland.
And here's the poem:


Another Half-Hour Later in Newfoundland

Evening rises up. Hello. Apparently,
this thing still works. Old midway ride.
You've been on the shadow side
for hours watching crucial bolts fall off
and someone adrift at the switch.
How can we sleep through this? The creak
of struts that keep us equidistant
on the frame, from the hub, hot oiled
centre of the wheel, its eternal present
tense. Up top at noon you recognize
the common sense of parallel lines
as I harbour doubts about the inherent
strength of materials. Factoring in an act
of God, I miss the point completely.

~Karen Solie

Found Poetry

Does anyone else enjoy a dose of "found poetry" once in a while? It's always interesting to see where you can find it; looking at things in light of possible poetry really opens my eyes when I'm feeling too focused on the trivia of making a living.

Over at Wikipedia, "found poetry" is defined as "the rearrangement of words, phrases, and sometimes whole passages that are taken from other sources and reframed as poetry by changes in spacing and/or lines (and consequently meaning), or by altering the text by additions and/or deletions."

A famous incidence of found poetry was in William Whewell’s "Middle Treatise on Mechanics":

"And hence no force, however great,
can stretch a cord, however fine,
into a horizontal line
that shall be absolutely straight."

Most modern found poetry does not necessarily rhyme or scan, however unintentionally. There is more of a poetic sense being discovered in language used in a prosaic, non-literary text. Many of these found poems spring from scientific or instructional texts. There is quite a fine collection of found poems based on science and math textbooks in a recent book by Karen Solie, Modern and Normal. (Brick Books, c2005) I'll share one of these later, but I also want to point out that there are also crafters who think of found poetry like collage; they produce altered books by cutting up and repasting text to form something new. I like this example from zine writer Katie Haegele -- she had found a 1948 Boy Scout handbook, and got right to the cutting and pasting.

One line from the boyscout book said: "With simple means and using your own personal measurements, determine a height you cannot reach and a width you cannot walk." This writer was being literal, of course, warning the scouts to know their physical limitations before they braved the wilderness. But the poetic readings of a line like that go much deeper...One of the lines goes, "Call loudly for help if you are alone, and keep on calling." Good advice indeed. But when there's poetry everywhere, are you ever totally alone?

If you think you'd like to give this a try yourself, look at this essay on types of found poetry and some examples. There is also an entire blog devoted to this subject, called what else but 'found poetry'. They share traditional found poetry as well as spamku (haiku made using the subject lines of spam emails). Have fun!



From Modern and Normal:



Found : Problems (a meditation)

from Meteorology. 6th ed. Richard A. Anthes. New Jersey : Macmillan, 1992.

How pure is the typical raindrop? Explain why there is some truth
to the proverb "It's too cold to snow".

Is the dark side of the moon illuminated by earthlight as we are by
moonlight?

Wind power has long been used to do a very minor portion
of people's work. This is not too difficult to understand.

Is it practical?

What other factors, for example, characteristics of the wind,
have not been considered?

In which sense does the vortex turn over your bathtub drain?
Is the earth's rotation responsible? Would you expect any rotation
if your bathtub were on the equator?

Consider the magnitude of forces.

Some proverbs state that physical appearances of certain insects
and animals is an indication of future weather.
Do you doubt their validity?

How would you classify the mean or standard lapse rate
in the atmosphere as far as stability is concerned?

Why does smoke rise? Explain your answer.

~ Karen Solie

An Enchanting April

As poetry month is April, I want to share a little of one of my all-time favourite books, Elizabeth Von Arnim's Enchanted April. It's an exquisite book (and reissued by Virago, for we Virago fans) and one that I've read numerous times. The movie was one of those exquisitely balanced screenplays, following the book closely, and perfectly cast -- some of my subsequent favourite actors were in it. Von Arnim had a gentle sense of humour in this book, and I especially love the character of Lottie (pictured on the book cover here).There's a section near the beginning when Lottie (Mrs. Wilkins) and Rose (Mrs. Arbuthnot) are interviewing another lady as to her suitability for joining them in their rental of an Italian villa for the month of April. Mrs. Fisher is a respectable widow, and:

"she seemed to be absorbed chiefly in the interesting people she used to know and in their memorial photographs, and quite a good part of the interview was taken up by reminiscent anecdote of Carlyle, Meredith, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, and a host of others–her very abstractedness was a recommendation. She only asked, she said, to be allowed to sit quiet in the sun and remember. That was all Mrs. Arbuthnot and Mrs. Wilkins asked of their sharers. It was their idea of a perfect sharer that she should sit quiet in the sun and remember, rousing herself on Saturday evenings sufficiently to pay her share. Mrs. Fisher was very fond, too, she said, of flowers, and once when she was spending a week-end with her father at Box Hill–

"Who lived at Box Hill?" interrupted Mrs. Wilkins, who hung on Mrs. Fisher's reminiscences, intensely excited by meeting somebody who had actually been familiar with all the really and truly and undoubtedly great–actually seen them, heard them talking, touched them.

Mrs. Fisher looked at her over the top of her glasses in some surprise. Mrs. Wilkins, in her eagerness to tear the heart out quickly of Mrs. Fisher's reminiscences, afraid that at any moment Mrs. Arbuthnot would take her away and she wouldn't have heard half, had already interrupted several times with questions which appeared ignorant to Mrs. Fisher.

"Meredith of course," said Mrs. Fisher rather shortly. "I remember a particular week-end"–she continued. "My father often took me, but I always remember this week-end particularly–"

"Did you know Keats?" eagerly interrupted Mrs. Wilkins.

Mrs. Fisher, after a pause, said with sub-acid reserve that she had been unacquainted with both Keats and Shakespeare.

"Oh of course–how ridiculous of me!" cried Mrs. Wilkins, flushing scarlet. "It's because"–she floundered–"it's because the immortals somehow still seem alive, don't they–as if they were here, going to walk into the room in another minute–and one forgets they are dead. In fact one knows perfectly well they're not dead–not nearly so dead as you and I even now," she assured Mrs. Fisher, who observed her over the top of her glasses.

"I thought I saw Keats the other day," Mrs. Wilkins incoherently proceeded, driven on by Mrs. Fisher's look over the top of her glasses. "In Hampstead– crossing the road in front of that house–you know–the house where he lived–"

Mrs. Arbuthnot said they must be going.

Mrs. Fisher did nothing to prevent them.

"I really thought I saw him," protested Mrs. Wilkins, appealing for belief first to one and then to the other while waves of colour passed over her face, and totally unable to stop because of Mrs. Fisher's glasses and the steady eyes looking at her over their tops. "I believe I did see him–he was dressed in a–"

Even Mrs. Arbuthnot looked at her now, and in her gentlest voice said they
would be late for lunch.

It was at this point that Mrs. Fisher asked for references.

To celebrate the wonderful loopiness that is Lottie, I'll just share a quick poem by Keats for our delectation -- perhaps Mrs. Fisher would have been familiar with it!

The Human Seasons

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man:

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring’s honey’d cud of youthful thought he loves

To ruminate, and by such dreaming high

Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings

He furleth close; contented so to look

On mists in idleness - to let fair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,

Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

December 30, 1816.

John Keats

Canadian Images

South of North : Images of Canada / Richard Outram; drawings by Thoreau MacDonald
Erin, ON : Porcupine's Quill, c2007.

Because of connectivity issues yesterday, I could not post a poem. So today, in recompense, I will post two, from this recent publication I received from Porcupine's Quill, and enjoyed very much.

From the publisher:
For this collection of uncommon plainsong, editors Rosemary Kilbourn and Anne Corkett have chosen poems and illustrations by a poet and an artist who both recognized that simplicity and restraint are among the most difficult of achievements in art...Thoreau MacDonald was the son of J.E.H. MacDonald [of the Group of Seven]. Outram had long admired MacDonald's drawing, and Thoreau's spare, evocative pictures drew from Richard a different aspect of his wordsmith's craft.

This collection is a posthumous gathering of Richard Outram's poems. As the subtitle suggests, it presents poems which capture images of the countryside. Collecting these poems together with the straight-forward black & white drawings of Thoreau MacDonald was a stroke of genius, as the two complement and support one another beautifully. This is a lovely book, showing perhaps the fact that these two artists' vision is very similar, that both were concerned with the world around them. The whole book, both poems and illustrations, gives me the sense of a subdued and pensive observer reflecting on the countryside. The poems are mainly brief ones, capturing a moment's vision of something either visually striking or emotionally resonant. I enjoyed being able to read a few at a time and then let them sink in. It's a beautiful collection and I'm very pleased to have read it. An interesting tidbit about the title: Thoreau MacDonald's father, J.E.H., was an absorbed reader & writer as well as a painter, and had a volume of poetry published posthumously, called West by East. What a lovely echo this is.

Here are the promised TWO poems! First, a gorgeous image:

Brightness

Having survived the nightlong
lances of ancient starlight,
the batter of velvet moths,
woven between the veranda's
elaborate zinc gingerbread
and the pale lilac, the ragged
orb-web at first morning
has captive for one immortal
instant the trembled theorem
of water-beads, the sun's
slant white rage.

And another, eminently suitable for our poetry month:

Shining April Morning

Old snow, grainy, deep in the swale
pointing the terra-cotta dogwoods,
the clumped cinnabar-green alders;

and snow left in the curved furrows,
leaving the sloped field ribbed with
black welts, brilliant with wet glint;

water-trickle everywhere, the day
polished in bright spring light. Crows,
raucous, slant into the sun's dazzle.

A Musical Interlude

I've been listening to an amazing feature on CBC radio all day today; it's called "Nine in 9", and is featuring Beethoven's 9 Symphonies, one after another, with commentary provided before each one by Vancouver Symphony Orchestra conductor Bramwell Tovey. It's wonderful, and you can go to the CBC site to find it and listen to it yourself if you are a Beethoven fan; you can even download each and listen when you can. The VSO performs them all, and it's a great 9 hours of listening!!!
(**Update: you can download the Commentaries from the CBC site, and the 9th is available in concert. But it is quite easy to find performances of Beethoven's Symphonies if you wish to listen to one after you've heard the commentary.)

The discussion of the emotional elements of Beethoven's music put me in mind of a poem by one of my favourite poets, Wallace Stevens. Dorothy has just mentioned Stevens, spurring me to dig up my old collected works to read through again. Here's one which talks about emotion and music:








Peter Quince at the Clavier

I

Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,


Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music. It is like the strain
Waked in the elders by Susanna;


Of a green evening, clear and warm,
She bathed in her still garden, while
The red-eyed elders, watching, felt

The basses of their beings throb
In witching chords, and their thin blood
Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.


II


In the green water, clear and warm,
Susanna lay.
She searched
The touch of springs,
And found
Concealed imaginings.
She sighed,
For so much melody.

Upon the bank, she stood
In the cool
Of spent emotions.
She felt, among the leaves,
The dew
Of old devotions.

She walked upon the grass,
Still quavering.
The winds were like her maids,
On timid feet,
Fetching her woven scarves,
Yet wavering.

A breath upon her hand
Muted the night.
She turned --
A cymbal crashed,
Amid roaring horns.

III


Soon, with a noise like tambourines,
Came her attendant Byzantines.

They wondered why Susanna cried
Against the elders by her side;

And as they whispered, the refrain
Was like a willow swept by rain.

Anon, their lamps' uplifted flame
Revealed Susanna and her shame.


And then, the simpering Byzantines
Fled, with a noise like tambourines.

IV

Beauty is momentary in the mind --
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.



The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
The cowl of winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden's choral.


Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping,
Left only Death's ironic scraping.
Now, in its immortality, it plays
On the clear viol of her memory,
And makes a constant sacrament of praise.



Wallace Stevens

Hockey vs. Poetry?

And now for something completely different... anyone who knows me knows how much I love hockey. Um, that would be, not very much at all. But, one of the great Canadian pastimes is hockey. Could the other great pastime become the reading aloud of poetry on Poetry Night in Canada, or even the writing of poetry out in the backyard? Could these two pastimes mesh?

Well, Randall Maggs might prove it to you. He meshes the two; a biography of Terry Sawchuk the hockey player as told by a poet, in Night Work : The Sawchuk Poems, (published by poetry press Brick Books) This was launched recently at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. There's even been a video made about Sawchuk and this set of poems, over at BookShorts. If you're a hockey fan, take a look.

(ps - I swear I am not talking about this because Sawchuk was Ukrainian! Really!)


Denied the leap and dash up the ice,
what goalies know is side to side, an inwardness of monk
and cell. They scrape. They sweep. Their eyes are elsewhere
as they contemplate their narrow place. Like saints, they pray for nothing,
which brings grace. Off-days, what they want is space. They sit apart
in bars. They know the length of streets in twenty cities.
But it’s their saving sense of irony that further
isolates them as it saves.

– excerpt from "One of You"

Black River

I've been discovering some Canadian poetry recently through the Porcupine's Quill Press. They were kind enough to send along Kenneth Sherman's Black River last year; my husband read it first, quite a while ago, and enjoyed it, calling it a book to "make us mindful and much more conscious of our relationship to this land and to those we share it with."

It's difficult to excerpt a poem from this lovely collection, as each piece works together to finally form one long poem. It's a meditation on Sherman's experience travelling along the Black River, meandering into musings on different historical moments and reflections on nature. Here's a sample:

38

And down below, the baby bass,

nosing, touching tentative,

their fan-like tails fringed with Japanese ink --

silk in the shallow pools.

Shadows of the hanging willow

cast over them,

shade them in the aquatic cradle

as they sway to no music,

startle and split,

then regroup

each staring into its mirror image.

What do they ponder,

suspended there like little harbingers?

Were they too

fostered by beauty and fear?

When they grow

they travel alone

in the school of their solitude,

grim-mouthed, gills kneading their being,

foraging through the frigid gloom.

~Kenneth Sherman

Worst Poet Ever

A small sampling of a poet who was a favourite of one of my best friends in university, so I dedicate it to her. Enjoy it, Susannah! :) William McGonagall was a prolific, if poor, poet who seemed to have no sense of metre or rhythm or felicitous word choice, but is entertaining nonetheless.

I chose this specific example over many, many other horrendous choices because it is faintly polar-themed, after all. If after reading this you are anxious to read the rest, wander over to a wonderful poetry site, Representative Poetry Online. You can also find hundreds of excellent poets there, even some obscure ones which were new to me.




Greenland's Icy Mountains

Greenland's icy mountains are fascinating and grand,
And wondrously created by the Almighty's command;
And the works of the Almighty there's few can understand:
Who knows but it might be a part of Fairyland?

Because there are churches of ice, and houses glittering like glass,
And for scenic grandeur there's nothing can it surpass,
Besides there's monuments and spires, also ruins
Which serve for a safe retreat from the wild bruins.

And there's icy crags and precipices, also beautiful waterfalls,
And as the stranger gazes thereon, his heart it appals
With a mixture of wonder, fear, and delight,
Till at last he exclaims, Oh! what a wonderful sight!

The icy mountains they're higher than a brig's topmast,
And the stranger in amazement stands aghast
As he beholds the water flowing off the melted ice
Adown the mountain sides, that he cries out, Oh! how nice!

Such sights as these are truly magnificent to be seen,
Only that the mountain tops are white instead of green,
And rents and caverns in them, the same as on a rugged mountain side,
And suitable places, in my opinion, for mermaids to reside.

*********

William McGonagall (1830?-1902)

A Hand-Made Future

World Made by Hand / James Howard Kunstler
New York : Atlantic Monthly Press, c2008.


I've just finished this dystopian novel, one based in a near future US when the end of oil, climate change, global pandemics, and -- can't forget-- nuclear bombs dropped on L.A. and Washington D.C. have all combined to end Civilization As We Know It. I liked the idea of this, I liked the writing style, and the first few pages drew me in. Sadly, though, it did not live up to its promise. I have to state right now that I am VERY much in the minority in my view of this book. It has received tons of fantastic reviews from all sorts of newspapers and from other writers, and the author, well-known for his non-fiction in the area of urban planning/oil supply/disaster forecasting, has a really professional and well-designed website full of fascinating information. As I have not read anything else by this author and was quite unaware of him beforehand, I can only judge this book independently as a work of fiction. And in that respect, I found it lacking.

The story begins with a stranger coming to town, a religious man who is bringing a whole settlement with him, drawing down the suspicions of the townspeople. After Brother Jobe and his followers settle into the old town high school, we meet another resident, Stephen Bullock, who has successfully turned his land into a working estate, complete with tenant farmers. Bullock sends our main character Robert Earle (with travelling companions) downriver to find a missing boat crew, thus showing us the corruption of what remains of the cities. The rest of the book then focuses on the interaction between all these characters and a group of rednecks who live up at the old town dump, excavating it for useful material and selling it at extortionate prices. All these tribes, fighting it out amongst themselves...

Robert is a former software marketing whiz turned carpenter. It astonished me how many practical skills all the white-collar men had to fall back on after the disaster -- and I do mean "men". This book is utterly and completely patriarchal. He says quite frankly on p. 101:

All the trustees were men, no women and no plain laborers. As the world changed, we reverted to social divisions that we'd thought were obsolete. The egalitarian pretenses of the high-octane decades had dissolved and nobody even debated it anymore, including the women of our town.

I'm afraid I didn't buy this idea for a minute. The novel is full of these kind of patronizing references to women in their survivalist world:

p. 17: At forty-seven, Jane Ann was still [emphasis mine] a beautiful woman, with deep breasts, a slim waist, and a small behind.


p. 309: The trout liked the pool there at the junction of the two streams... It energized them and they fed more. I was impressed to discover that she knew this... I clapped my hands in appreciation. Hearing that, she finally turned around. What a sight she was in a wet cotton dress.

And a particularly egregious example can be seen in the character of Britney, a young woman with a daughter, whose husband has been killed. She quickly moves in with Robert (who is older than her father) because she feels 'safer when he is there'; she crawls into his bed, leaps on top of him and then says "You have a family now". She never seems to leave the house, rather staying home and cooking enormous meals every day, doing laundry and acting either very babyish or as if she is not quite all there. When Robert is out and about doing his manly activities as mayor, he returns home to find her sitting in bed saying submissively, "I thought you weren't coming back. I thought it was something I did". Aaargh!

Because of these attitudes, I had difficulty placing the year this was supposed to be set in. Although in tone and vision the story relied very heavily on Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon, (I could almost hear Frank beneath this text) it also implies it is very current. One of the characters says with nostalgia, "Oh, you should have known the 60's", suggesting perhaps that our adult main character did not. Robert states that when the bombs hit, they started losing tv, radio and Internet, yet other references seem to place it closer to the early 80's. He also says that when the second bomb hit DC just before Christmas, people began referring to it as 12/21. The timeline was confusing and distracted me from the story. But perhaps that wasn't such a bad thing, as a story which began with such potential turned into a manly solve-everything-by-shooting-someone, violent, distasteful, classist and sexist book. Not only do the men in Union Grove rule everything, they are also all white, although the author does throw us a bone in the last chapters by revealing that Robert is actually Jewish.

Still, the writing itself was quite competent, and the details of survival, as always, fascinated me. However, I balked at accepting his vision as either plausible or meaningful. If I want a story about a capitalist patriarchy struggling to maintain itself after nuclear war, I'll just go back to the classic Alas, Babylon. Recommended only for dystopian diehards.

Cool April Days

I enjoy poetry which succeeds in using traditional forms, such as this one, from an author who doesn't always use such formal structures. Robyn Sarah is a Montréal poet and short story writer who I discovered quite a few years ago when I lived in Montréal myself. (And what a great place to live, by the way).

Perhaps the most famous villanelle of all is Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle", but I think that Sarah also does a fine job of shaping the form to her purposes. I've always enjoyed her writing, and this poem is eminently suitable for the cool but sunny day we've had here today. Note in the fourth stanza how the repeating line is rearranged slightly, and as a result really stands out.


Villanelle for a Cool April

I like a leafing-out by increments,
--not bolting bloom, in sudden heat begun.
Life's sweetest savoured in the present tense.

I like to watch the shadows pack their tents
before the creep of the advancing sun.
I like a leafing-out by increments:

to watch the tendrils inch along the fence,
to take my pleasures slow and one by one.
Life's sweetest savoured in the present tense.

Oh, leave tomorrow's fruit to providence
and dote upon the bud--from which is spun
a leafing-out to love in increments,

a greening in the cool of swooning sense,
a feathered touch, a button just undone.
Life's sweetest savoured in the present tense,

as love when it withholds and then relents,
as a cool April lets each moment stun.
I like a leafing-out by increments;
life's sweetest savoured in the present tense.

Robyn Sarah

From: Questions About the Stars. London, ON: Brick Books, 1998

Second April

The last poem I posted was one by Mary Oliver. She has a connection to this poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay. When Oliver was a teenager, she lived in Millay's home briefly, helping to put the deceased poet's papers in order. And here is a brief April-themed poem from the melancholy pen of Edna St. Vincent Millay:

Song Of A Second April

April this year, not otherwise

Than April of a year ago,

Is full of whispers, full of sighs,

Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;

Hepaticas that pleased you so

Are here again, and butterflies.

There rings a hammering all day,

And shingles lie about the doors;

In orchards near and far away

The grey wood-pecker taps and bores;

The men are merry at their chores,

And children earnest at their play.

The larger streams run still and deep,

Noisy and swift the small brooks run

Among the mullein stalks the sheep

Go up the hillside in the sun,

Pensively,—only you are gone,

You that alone I cared to keep.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Wild poem

Here's a poem I'd like to share just because I love it so much. Hope you can appreciate it too...


Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

-Mary Oliver

Brontë or Bell, 3

We can't leave Anne out, so here's a short piece of hers about the natural world. Anne had more of a religious bent than her sisters so many of her poems address the Almighty. This one is a brief lyric of more general appeal, I think.

Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day

My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring,

And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;

For, above, and around me, the wild wind is roaring

Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.

The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,

The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;

The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing,

The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky.

I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing

The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray,

I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing

And hear the wild roar of their thunder today!

~Anne Brontë / Acton Bell

Brontë or Bell, 2

Now a poem from Currer (Charlotte). Charlotte was the driving force behind the collection of Bell poetry she and her sisters published, and as Currer Bell sent complimentary copies to other writers, including Thomas de Quincy. No record of his reply, however, or what happened to all those copies! Since the collection only sold two, yes TWO copies, any copies still in existence are probably one of those gift copies. Here's one of Currer's poems, likely influenced by the sisters being separated when they were working as governesses. They found it hard to be apart, and this expresses an attempt to keep a stiff upper lip:


Parting

There's no use in weeping,
Though we are condemned to part:
There's such a thing as keeping
A remembrance in one's heart:

There's such a thing as dwelling
On the thought ourselves have nurs'd,
And with scorn and courage telling
The world to do its worst.

We'll not let its follies grieve us,
We'll just take them as they come;
And then every day will leave us
A merry laugh for home.

When we've left each friend and brother,
When we're parted wide and far,
We will think of one another,
As even better than we are.

Every glorious sight above us,
Every pleasant sight beneath,
We'll connect with those that love us,
Whom we truly love till death!

In the evening, when we're sitting
By the fire perchance alone,
Then shall heart with warm heart meeting,
Give responsive tone for tone.

We can burst the bonds which chain us,
Which cold human hands have wrought,
And where none shall dare restrain us
We can meet again, in thought.

So there's no use in weeping,
Bear a cheerful spirit still;
Never doubt that Fate is keeping
Future good for present ill!

Currer Bell / Charlotte Brontë

Mountain Summers

Reflections on a Mountain Summer / Joanna M. Glass
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, c1974.
307 p.

This is a novel written by a Saskatoon-born author, who lived in California for many years, is known primarily as a playwright, and is soon to move to the theatre town I currently live in. That explains why my library has suddenly purchased most of her work, and of her two novels, this looked most interesting to me. The structure appealed to me: Jay Rutherford, now in his mid-fifties, is writing a book. It's the story of the defining summer of his life, 1932, when he was fourteen. While Jay's family usually inhabits a wealthy enclave of Michigan, they've built a chateau for themselves in Buena Vista, in the Canadian Rockies. He and his parents spend one summer there.

At the time Jay begins his reminiscences, he still lives in upper crust Michigan, with his wife Pat and university-age daughter Deb, who is staking out her independence by moving to an apartment in downtown Detroit. I most enjoyed the moments in the book when Jay was talking about his writing and how it fit in (or not) to his daily life with Pat. The drama of the long-ago summer wasn't actually all that interesting to me, despite its being Jay's obsession. The basic story: Jay's parents married in what could be termed a society-arranged marriage -- his mother had the money and his father the charisma. When they go to Buena Vista where there is no glittering society Jay sees that his mother Laura relaxes, and her slightly dishevelled appearance and distracted manner actually seem quite lovely. His father does not fit in in the least. Here, quite abruptly, Laura falls for a local man, a drifter who is currently head of a road gang, Winger Burns. Winger has 2 previous wives, and a son back in British Columbia and is clearly not someone interested in commitment, but Laura has fallen hard for the first time in her life. She sends her husband packing back to Michigan and he goes, after spending approximately a week in the fancy home they'd spent a year having built. The whole summer long Laura and Winger have a torrid affair, with Jay watching it all -- sometimes watching far more action than any normal 12-yr old boy would want to see of his mother, or any normal mother would display in front of her 12-yr old son, for that matter. Winger predictably leaves them in the lurch at the end of the summer, and Laura has a drunken binge and goes into a major depression. Finally they return to Michigan, where Laura is admitted to an asylum. OK, enough, the love affair was a big thing for her, we get it already. When she is released she goes home and life goes on in its detached way.

When Jay breaks from this sentimental nostalgia and returns to the present the book picks up. His wife Pat disapproves of his writing, wondering why he'd "want to air his dirty laundry in public". Pat also disapproves of his attachment to his mother, who lives nearby (though in this case I can't say I blame her). I enjoyed how the book was written. In one scene when Jay and Laura and their down-to-earth Buena Vista friends are having a picnic on the beach, the adult conversation breaks into dramatic dialogue. It only lasts about a page, but is very effective; you can see Glass' playwriting talents at that point. Another structural element I liked was a section in the present, in which two distinct scenes are titled Saturday Night with Pat and Jay and Sunday Morning with Pat and Jay. The main event of this section happens off-stage, if you will, we only read the lead-up and fall-out. It was an entertaining, successful construct.

Overall, Glass has a good narrative voice. Jay as an adult is wry and self-deprecating and his look back at his cherished summer is deeply felt. But I'm not sure I really believed Jay as a young boy. He didn't feel quite young enough or boyish enough. Despite his description of road crews, machismo, debauchery, the sexual fixations of adolescent boys, or of the relationships between fathers and sons, the voice still felt somewhat 'female' in a nebulous way I can't quite explain. I liked the book as a whole, although it did come across as very 70's in its focus.

Still, I'm glad I picked it up. Even if it is about a family of rich Americans, that summer in Alberta colours the lives of every character afterwards, both Jay's family and the Albertans they come in contact with. The descriptions of the natural beauty of Buena Vista and the very specific society which existed there in 1932 make Alberta into a character in itself. I wouldn't say I went into immediate raptures over this one, but it appealed enough to keep me reading it for a few days straight, and even a couple of weeks after finishing it, I'm still thinking about it.

Brontë or Bell?

When Emily Brontë first published her poems, she did so in conjunction with her sisters. They all took on pen names (Emily/Ellis, Charlotte/Currer, and Anne/Acton Bell). Here is one of Emily's.


Love & Friendship

Love is like the wild rose-briar;
Friendship like the holly-tree.
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms,
But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again,
And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then, scorn the silly rose-wreath now,
And deck thee with the holly's sheen,
That, when December blights thy brow,
He still may leave thy garland green.

Ellis Bell (Emily Brontë)

Patience is a virtue

A quick & funny poem from a delightful writer, Lucy Maud Montgomery. This is the 100th year since Anne of Green Gables was published and shook up the Canadian literary scene. Here's a lighter bit of doggerel from the same author. Hope it makes you laugh!

Which Has More Patience -- Man or Woman?

As my letter must be brief,
I'll at once state my belief,
And this it is -- that, since the world began,
And Adam first did say,
"'Twas Eve led me astray,"
A woman hath more patience than a man.

If a man's obliged to wait
For some one who's rather late,
No mortal ever got in such a stew,
And if something can't be found
That he's sure should be around,
The listening air sometimes grows fairly blue.

Just watch a man who tries
To soothe a baby's cries;
Or put a stove pipe up in weather cold,
Into what a state he'll get;
How he'll fuss and fume and fret
And stamp and bluster round and storm and scold!

Some point to Job with pride,
As an argument for their side!
Why, it was so rare a patient man to see,
That when one was really found,
His discoverers were bound
To preserve for him a place in history!

And while I admit it's true
That man has some patience too,
And that woman isn't always sweetly calm,
Still I think all must agree
On this central fact -- that she
For central all-round patience bears the palm.

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942)

Original text: The Poetry of Lucy Maud Montgomery, ed. John Ferns and Kevin McCabe (Markham: Fitzhenry and Whiteside, 1987): 120-21.