Friday, June 8, 2007

Brain Candy

As you've undoubtedly surmised, I'm a bit of a bibliomaniac.
Along with my heavy dosage of contemporary poetry, and
new fiction, I'm addicted to thrillers, whodunits, detective
stories, police procedurals, crime novels, caper novels, p.i's
serial escapades. Over the past couple of years I've been
happy to discover that two of my favourites, Walter Mosely
and Henning Mankel have transcended their genres and have
powerfully entered the realm of world literature. Mosely's slender
fable The Man In My Basement is worthy of comparison with
Doesteyevsky and Atwood and the early work of Robert Stone.
Henning Mankell's protagonist in The Depths is a character
from a 21st century Conrad, part Hamlet and part Raskolnikov,
written with a lyricism reminiscent of Ondaatje.

Henning Mankell

Monday, June 4, 2007

cohen

cohen
the sweetest little song

st.ink

st.ink
his heart this big


Hornby Island by Goh Poh Seng (for Billy Little, who shared loved spots and fond friends)

Here on the headland by Downe's Point we case dreams to rise synchronous with eagles and gulls, all make-believe, egocentric, near to fanatical, else aim true to roam deep with Leviathan in the ocean's mind, free from perplexities and profundities such as bind the scheduled self Here is the arbutus grove whose trunks and branches tighten like nerves, twisted witnesses, victims of shapely winds which blow in always unseen, sweet from the south or coming cold from the north, from every direction the prevailing force of nature Wish I could emulate the arbutus slough off my thin skin as easily as these natives trees their bark from abrasion, disdain or design, unveiling the bare beauty of strong, hard wood beneath Over on Fossil Bay the rot of herring roe strewn amongst broken clam shells, dead crabs on dirty grey sand, exposed bedrock, thickened the morning air, but gave no cause for bereavement: these millions of botched birthings! And none also for the Salish, no open lamentation for a race almost obliterated without trace from their native habitat save a few totems, some evidences of middens, a score of petroglyphs of their guardian spirits carved a thousand years ago on smooth flat rock by the shore, of killer whales, Leviathans again, to guide their hunts, the destiny of their tribe. Having retraced them gently with finger tips, they now guide mine.

Halo by Patrick Herron (for Billy Little)

half of love plus half of half is halo and I don't believe in angels, no.