i should run for president
but life is good already.
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I quickly come down from my lofty heights,
my friends are talking about charlie sheen
and never do i hear philosophy
or poetry mentioned.
When i scream
the trees ignore me
and the neighbors
are barely cognizant
Canada Rocks.
I do not read of the devastation in Japan.
Earthquakes happen.
Yesterday we bought bottled water;
for the truck and the condo.
The stock market will crash
and libraries will come
under increasing pressure.
You will not be able to think;
you will be too busy…god speed
keeping others informed,
to the ongoing events, of your life.
Your decisions will be the best of the worst.
(pomes and philosophy will have smaller and smaller sections (at Chapters))
This is by design.
Novels: I still think of Atwood and of course, Munro.
Poetry: Purdy, Layton, early Atwood, Brian Brett come to mind.
Experimental: Billy the Kidd and Bill bissett.
Short stories: MacLeod
Plays: Robertson Davies
Post Modern: kroetsch and copeland?
Sell Outs:
the fire is on, a chinese woman sings from a spinning disc, the pork has been marinated in dijon honey mustard and is in the oven.
the forest mostly silent until a few days ago is splashed with the noise of migratory birds…which i find reassuring.
This afternoon we visited two old friends who live at the top of a mountain in a cabin heated by wood, lit by kerosene, food warmed over propane.
i didn’t know, how young he was, when he tells me, he is 73; his wife is younger.
The trees were loud, with wind and the sun was shining; even if i had a billion dollars i could not spend it.
empty
flags in the wind,
Buddha over water
a blue bird broke,
a leg in rough play
should i put him down?
it cannot get better,
things have changed.
The two
are on a hunger strike
protesting the quality of food
well not really the quality
but variety…they are tired
of the same old seeds.
The editor of The Walrus John Macfarlane writes in his notes,
i am not misanthropic, but i have decided that the only appropriate response to the vacuous popular culture in which we now subsist is anger or laughter.
The camera has shaped our sensibilities, and the camera sees but doesn’t think.
its insouciance works against the operative principle of a democratic republic. Such a government requires a high degree of literacy, a sense of history and at least in North America an ethics derived from the syllabus of the Bible.
None of these carry any weight in the Kingdom of the Eternal Now governed by the rule of images.
The noise of the crowd drowns out the voice of erudition, and gives rise to the notion that the arts are elitist and therefore undeserving of government support.
William Hutt says the arts are parklands for the mind, places we go to refresh our sensibilities, our sensitivity to other human beings and other kinds of experience
which is important in a brutal landscape where the lowest common denominator rules.
Francis Bacon: “a man’s character either runs towards herbs or weeds; therefore let him seasonably water the one and destroy the other.”
In the book “Sir Vidia’s Shadow” the author V.S. Naipaul is portrayed as an eccentric genius who is anal retentive, sleeps with hookers, is an adulterer, pretty well a wife abuser, not to mention contributed to his brothers early death.
It is called a literary friendship…
but if literature is defined as a piece of art then this work cannot be considered in that genre…it is a polemic piece that wishes to situate the student above the master.
Paul Theroux is an American who writes smugly as a grumpy tourist
Vidia is more settled in the outsider position…
regardless of opinion they were both men who dedicated much of their lives to writing…of course the cult of personality has extended to books…and perhaps the Americans are running out of ideas or maybe they never had any…joking…
Canadian Literature
it would appear near impossible to make a decent living at poetry in this large northern country…grant writing and prizes would be the aim…and judges would have to swayed at cocktail parties and receptions
fat chicks from creative writing courses don’t turn my crank.
At universities your not allowed to say that…it’s called “fatism”…and is also known as bullying…
so what is the point of literature in this age of spectacle and surfaces?…when the art becomes the commercial…the trees don’t give a fuck.