Canada Lit.:

 

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.”