Harrison and Davey

I’m a person who requires a regular dosage of the mental health
supplements, phanopoeia, logopoeia and melopoeia. Ordinarily
I’ll read a review(increasingly hard to find) or an advert more
likely, on the Poetics Listserv, in APR, Geist, BC Bookworld,
Poets & Writers, NYR, the Globe and Mail or even occasionally
The NYT Book Review which over the past two decades sees to
have completely abdicated its responsibility to provide critical
attention to poetry(what a sentence!), of a recently published
book of poetry. I’ll know immediately whether or not I need
that particular medicine and I’ll go seeking to acquire same.
Occasionally tho, poetry I never knew was available (or written)
will sneak up on me, surprising and delighting me. Such was the
case last year when I was staying at the Cancer Lodge(10th & Ash)
for five weeks receiving a daily zap of radiation to shrink the
colorectal tumour making it easier for the surgeon to remove.
I couldn’t walk very far(4 blocks/urban, a kilometer/rural), so I
was happy to find the Book Warehouse was only a block and a
half away. I’d walk over every couple of days to see what I
could afford or justify squandering my limited resources on.
I felt like I’d hit the jackpot when I found Jim Harrison’s
Saving Daylight and Frank Davey’s Back to the War on the
same day, both for less than either’s new price.
Jim Harrison is one of my favourite US American fiction
writers. I’ve been reading his poetry since the 60’s when his
first book, Plain Song, was published. Saving Daylight Copper
Canyon Press(2006) is Harrison’s eleventh book of poetry and
the best yet. It’s brilliant, funny, true Buddhist writing in the
tradition of Snyder, Kerouac and Kyger. Without a hint of the
overserious pomposity of too many contemporary roshis, it’s
playful and profound. It ought to be required reading for eleventh
graders preparing to grasp the uncertainties. I want to quote every
poem, perhaps these two will suffice to pique your interest:

Cabbage

If only I had the genius of a cabbage
or even an onion to grow myself
in their laminae from the holy core
that bespeaks the final shape. Nothing
is outside of us in this overinterpreted world.
Bruises are the mouths of our perceptions.
The gods who have died are able to come
to life again. It’s their secret that they wish
to share if anyone knows that they exist.
Belief is a mood that weighs nothng on anyone’s
scale but nevertheless exists. The moose
down the road wears the black cloak of a god
and the dead bird lifts from a bed of moss
in a shape totally unknown to us.
It’s after midnight in Montana.
I test the thickness of the universe, is resilience
to carry us further than any of us wish to go.
We shed our shapes slowly like moving water,
which ends up as it will so utterly far from home.


Night Dharma

How restlessly the Buddha sleeps
between my ears, dreaming his dreams
of emptiness, writing his verbless poems.
I almost rejected “green tree
white goat red sun blue sea.”)
Verbs are time’s illusion, he says.

In the stillness that surrounds us
we think we have to probe our wounds,
but with what? Mind caresses mind
not by saying no or yes but neither.

Turn your watch back to your birth
for a moment, then way ahead beyond
any expectation. There never was a coffin
worth a dime. These words emerge
from the skin as the sweat of gods
who drink only from the Great Mother’s breasts.

Buddha sleeps on, disturbed when I disturb
him from his liquid dreams of blood and bone.
Without comment he sees the raven carrying
off the infant snake, the lovers’ foggy
gasps, the lion’s tongue that skins us.

One day we dozed against a white pine stump
in a world of dogwood and sugar plum blossoms.
An eye for an eye, he said, trading
a left for my right, the air green tea
in the sky’s blue cup.


I’d encourage you to request your local library acquire this
handsomely published work of genius and imagination.
If anyone’s reading in the next millennium, they’ll be reading
some of these poems.

Since the days of Tish magazine, Frank Davey has been one of Canada’s most important and prolific writers. Of all of those poets being geniuses together (Bowering, Marlatt, Reid, Hindmarch,
Kearns, Wah, Dawson and Matthews) Davey seems to be the one
with the greatest sense of composing a book rather than a collection
of poems. Back To The War Talon(2005) which took him thirty years to conclude is a recreation of his childhood during the second world war.
Concisely and precisely he limns his family in the convincing vernacular
of the time. A vivid recreation, one of his best, full of his understated
intelligence and wry humour.

Nellie McClung

Saw the Jesus and the Buddha
with her own two blue eyes in Ottawa.

The Buddha was on land,
came through her wall in fact
as she was meditating.
And later the same evening,
she saw Jesus
as she floated on the river
like Ophelia.

The revellers who passed her
on board the pleasure cruiser
must have seen her:
just another piece of smooth white ice
drifting on that winter river.

Nellie's white raincoat
buoyed her up and saved her life.

If she'd been wearing black,
those river fishermen
who took the name of Christ in vain &
saved her life
would've never seen her.

After seeing Buddha, she says,
she didn't think
that she could sink.

She's the only one
I've ever known personally
who ever saw them both
on the selfsame evening

That's two for you, Nellie.

Never occurred to you until later,
you might not be worthy.

That's why I stay away
from anything religious nowadays,
Nellie says,
I get carried away, you know.

Jamie Reid

jamie reid

2006 governor generals award for poetry

2006 Dorothy Livesay award winner

mother courage

mothers day

Mothers' Day Proclamation: Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

Mother's Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their
sons. Here is the original Mother's Day Proclamation from 1870, followed by a bit of history (or should I say "herstory"):

......................................

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking
with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be
taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach
them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another
country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From
the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance
of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons
of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a
great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women,
to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the
means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each
bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a
general congress of women without limit of nationality may be
appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at
the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the
alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement
of international questions, the great and general interests of
peace.

Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870

*************************************************************

Mother's Day for Peace - by Ruth Rosen.

Honor Mother with Rallies in the Streets.The holiday
began in activism; it needs rescuing from commercialism
and platitudes.

Every year, people snipe at the shallow commercialism of Mother's Day. But to
ignore your mother on this holy holiday is unthinkable. And if you are a
mother, you'll be devastated if your ingrates fail to honor you at least one
day of the year.

Mother's Day wasn't always like this. The women who conceived Mother's Day
would be bewildered by the ubiquitous ads that hound us to find that "perfect
gift for Mom." They would expect women to be marching in the streets, not
eating with their families in restaurants. This is because Mother's Day began
as a holiday that commemorated women's public activism, not as a celebration
of a mother's devotion to her family.

The story begins in 1858 when a community activist named Anna Reeves Jarvis
organized Mothers' Works Days in West Virginia. Her immediate goal was to
improve sanitation in Appalachian communities. During the Civil War, Jarvis
pried women from their families to care for the wounded on both sides.
Afterward she convened meetings to persuale men to lay aside their
hostilities.

In 1872, Juulia Ward Howe, author of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic",
proposed an annual Mother's Day for Peace. Committed to abolishing war, Howe
wrote: "Our husbands shall not come to us reeking with carnage... Our sons
shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them
of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of
those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs".

For the next 30 years, Americans celebrated Mothers' Day for Peace on June 2.

Many middle-class women in the 19th century believed that they bore a special
responsibility as actual or potential mothers to care for the casualties of
society and to turn America into a more civilized nation. They played a
leading role in the abolitionist movement to end slavery. In the following
decades, they launched successful campaigns against lynching and consumer
fraud and battled for improved working conditions for women and protection for
children, public health services and social welfare assistance to the poor.
To the activists, the connection between motherhood and the fight for social
and economic justice seemed self-evident.

In 1913, Congress declared the second Sunday in May to be Mother's Day. By
then, the growing consumer culture had successfully redefined women as
consumers for their families. Politicians and businessmen eagerly enbraced
the idea of celebrating the private sacrifices made by individual mothers. As
the Florists' Review, the industry's trade jounal, bluntly put it, "This was a
holiday that could be exploited."

The new advertising industry quickly taught Americans how to honor their
mothers - by buying flowers. Outraged by florists who were seling carnations
for the exorbitant price of $1 apeice, Anna Jarvis' duaghter undertook a
campaging against those who "would undermine Mother's Day with their greed."
But she fought a losing battle. Within a few years, the Florists' Review
triumphantly announced that it was "Miss Jarvis who was completely squelched."

Since then, Mother's Day has ballooned into a billion-dollar industry.

Americans may revere the idea of motherhood and love their own mothers, but
not all mothers. Poor, unemployed rmothers may enjoy flowers, but they also
need child care, job training, health care, a higher minimum wage and paid
parental leave. Working mothers may enjoy breakfast in bed, but they also
need the kind of governmental assistance provided by every other
industrialized society.

With a little imagination, we could restore Mother's Day as a holiday that
celebrates women's political engagement in society. During the 1980's, some
peace groups gathered at nuclear test sites on Mother's Day to protest the
arms race. Today, our greatest threat is not from missilies but from our
indifference toward human welfare and the health of our planet. Imagine, if
you can, an annual Million Mother March in the nation's capital. Imagine a
Mother's Day filled with voices demanding social and economic justice and a
sustainable future, rather than speeches studded with syrupy platitudes.

Some will think it insulting to alter our current way of celebrating Mother's
Day. But public activism does not preclude private expressions of love and
gratitude. (Nor does it prevent people from expressing their appreciation all
year round.)

Nineteenth century women dared to dream of a day that honored women's civil
activism. We can do no less. We should honor their vision with civic
activism.

Ruth Rosen is a professor of history at UC Davis.
Reprinted with permission

judy copithorne

calmly

Not a flier myself are you?
(for Judy Copithorne)

Swimming pools of petroleum
Launch from thousands of capitols
Thousands of provincial towns
Millions lock their seatbelts
And bring their seats to the upright
At any moment the amount of petroleum
Sloshing above the brilliant scarlet of the cardinals
The dried blood red of the towhees breast
Above the cumulous and the curious alike
Enough petroleum to flood
100 soccer stadiums
Doing the dance momentum makes
Of molecules
Evaporation
Condensation
Ignition
Combustion
Explosion
While we snooze
Calmly thru the flight

Rachel Rose

Rachel Rose, it might be said, inherited elements of her formidable character
From our little community which she left as a fearless five year old barefoot
Daredevil. Her stepfather wrote poems, the fathers of some of her playmates
Were poets and now that she's a parent and poet herself, she's writing some
Of the most vivid poems of her generation, poems so intense they're nearly
Scary, easily passing emily dickinson's test of poetry q.v. making the hair on
The back of your neck stand up.
Elsewhere I've praised her first book, Giving My Body to Science, to the sky.
I'm happy to see, McClelland & Stewart published her second book Notes on
Arrival and Departure. Some of the personal narratives here are even more
Intense(if that's possible, nearly uncanny, the electricity passes from her to
You without diminishment. The documentary narratives are strong occasionally
Repulsive but more detached. In our age of social amnesia these might be
Considered pedagogical in their intent hoping to help us remember this
horrifying history we'd rather forget.
Lots of affection in the aggregat, esp my own fave:

Sheets

It has all gone according to plan
mine, made when I was ten. My mother divorced the man
who came to take the place of my father

everytime we drove off in her cold car
I held my breath, hoping we'd go so far
We couldn't go home please Mum, I can make you happy

By the time she'd left I'd long since moved out west
And learned to love him more, or her less
Now she comes to visit me alone, stays for a week,

Hides pots in unexpected places, cooks with too much fat
He comes for a single night, hangs up his coat and hat
And lifts his step-grandson. His face has softened with defeat,

As has her own. Each in turn asks me for news of the other
And I tell them the parts that hurt - devious daughter
The parts that prove they were right to part

But finally my intentions are pure I do not tell them how
Between her visit and his I went down
With my son on one arm, clean sheets on the other, intending

To change the bed, but the smell of the roses from the lotion my mother wears
Drifted like a rainstorm up the stairs
And I turned,

Leaving the bed as it was, awaiting his arrival
Her scent of roses a reproachful perfume, a rival
For his dreamtime, a thorn

Or perhaps the scent became the dream itself bouquet
Of ivory wedding.roses dried upon a shelf

unlightenment

Unlightenment(learn mistake)
for David Bromige

Once I learn mistake
Is more important than intention
more effective
once I learn mistake
is ubiquitous
once I learn mistake
is inevitable
guarantee
one good mistake
deserves an utter
once I learn mistake
is eternal
once I learn mistake
is an happier instance
that one juicy good misteak
deserts an udder
once I learn mistake
has a glorious future
that success is predicated
on mistake

no mistake
no success

(success is all Miss Takes?
And the runnerup Miss Taken!)

once I learn mistake
means survival
redemption oddly

I never mad another.

david bromige

self portrait with ant

Curing Jerry
(Jerry loved trains)

hundreds of boxcars rattle and roll past the window
cars full of woodchips steaming south
cars full of linoleum and pianos chugging north
BC Rail from and to Prince George
whole lot of shaking going on
helping Jerry Pethick's Self Portrait with Ant
lose some of its marbles, his blue and green marbles
which Jim discovers on the hardwood floor
reseals to the glass and cures
on the bed beside this bed
the green blanket bed I sleep in
when I'm in
before he'll rehang it
outside la salle de bain
in the depressurization chamber
one flight up

jerry pethick

time top

Lionel Kearns

saint leonard

I've been a fan of Leonard Cohen's since before he picked up the guitar,
since I found a used copy of his then current book of poems Flowers for hitler
in a used bookstore in Buffalo New York in 1967. His novel, Beautiful Losers
made a devotee of me. The last few years I've been reading his new poems and
songs on a Finnish web site, some of his scandinavian friends put together
called the blackening pages. Over the past few years, due to some financial
shenanigans on the part of his former manager, he's had to acquiese and
release a new book and several albums to recoup his retirement funds.
While I was in the Jean Baker Cancer Lodge, Cohen's Book of Longing
was published by McClelland & Stewart and thanks to a couple of generous friends
I had it in my hot little hands in weeks and it was much better than I'd anticipated.
Poems, prayers, songs, piths and gists and drawings! Dozens of self portraits that aren't
so much a likeness as a pschological projection. It came at exactly the right time and
enabled laughter to enter the too serious realm of treatment. It fed my head and I felt
better, less alone. There's so many poems I'd love to read to you after dinner on the
bank of the river. One of my favorites is this one:

THOUSANDS

Out of the thousands
who are known,
or want to be known
as poets,
maybe one or two
are genuine
and the rest are fakes,
hanging around the sacred precints
trying to look like the real thing
needless to say
I am one.of the fakes,
And this is my story.

new titles

For a tiny community(900plus year round) I couldn't be happier
with our library's) response to my requests.
This week I've read George Bowering's latest collection of poems,
Vermeer's Light published by that workhorse of contemporary canadian poetry
Talon Books and Michael Ondaatje's brand new novel Divisadero
published by McCLelland & Stewart.
This subtle and various selection of poems written or reworked over the
past decade(96-06) might be thought of as George's "pirouette", near incandescent
virtuoso pieces demonstrating a perfect blend of wit and affection. If poetry
were a swordfight Vermeer's Light would be the equivalent of a quintuple touche.
Talon has a new bill bisset collection and a long awaited selection by
Lionel Kearns.
Divisadero is Ondaatje's most U.S. American book, the noirest of all his writing, more violence and more passion. Though Ondaatje names this book after a street in San Francisco, its easy to see why he'd choose this combination of letters. Division is the theme here, extreme separation, separation from love, separation from family,separation from sense, cleft even from memory and skills. And sadero it is indeed, lump in the throat sad, and like the marquis, no good deed goes unpunished, no hero goes unshamed. Undertones of Nathaniel West and strong echoes off Atwood's Blind Assassin. He says so much, so lyrically, with so few words. He's hawking it so be alert he might be reading in a venue near you, he's an excellent reader/storyteller and responsive to his audience, he's sincerely democratic not a haughty bone in his body and always ready to promote the works of others.