Last week I bought a blue sweater. A man was holding a plastic bag about to be torn in two. Three legs posed past a curtain. A metro transfer bent beneath the weight of two successions of outgoing mall patrons. I bought yarn that day.

I'm knitting a blue blanket.

I've had to begin knitting the blue blanket three times now. Today is my third try. I keep missing stiches and making holes. My stiches are too tight. The holes are large enough to poke a finger through.

Today I realized just how winter it was. In the winter you can't see a blue sky. In the winter the body draws a blue line.

It spreads like a disease.

poem in progress

"fig tree"

you look like any other tree      but your fruit
lopping off
thick root branches
big pendulous earrings
like giant green rocks
      not yet ripe
      for plucking

leaves that could belong to other trees
    (in tree comparison surveys
not particular
but in growth    exceeding all others
in tunnels
in curves

taciturn conversationalists

I picked four and hid them in my purse
brought them to Canada
turned them with flour and sugar

There were at least a dozen round examples
                                                                   of our love

and I ate them all

December is here

I'm busy with exams right now. Wish me luck.

Montreal is cold cold cold.

To keep warm:

Roy Kiyooka
D.G. Jones
Judith Fitzgerald
Daphne Marlatt

Toronto Small Press Book Fair

Spring 2005

I'm still sorting through the goods I grabbed at the fair last spring. Things are still in boxes (a move will do that to you). But here are some pix I randomly snapped here and there.



Back of the church, where all the cool people hang. Well, I was there anyway.


The weather that day, just atop the church:














I stayed at one of TO's college dorms, so small and prison like. Great space to write. We should all have a week in the slammer.

More Spicer

Got some Jack Spicer books from Concordia's library. Exciting that they have some.

1) A Book of Music
2) After Lorca

I ripped straight through A Book of Music. My favorite lines so far, from the poem "THE CARDPLAYERS":

The moon is tied to a few strings
They hold in their hands.

And later, in the poem "CONSPIRACY":

A violin which is following me (...)

It follows me like someone that hates me. (...)

Or is it really a tree growing just behind my throat
That if I turned quickly enough I could see
Rooted, immutable, neighbouring
Music.

And since I'm here, I have to include the final piece in the booklet of 14 poems. I like to swim, but only in an empty pool where I can swim languidly, and reach quickly the edges, as deep water scares me so. I love the rope imagery here, and the length--maybe play with the length of a swim/ocean; boundary against boundary. Lover against love/love against lover. "A BOOK OF MUSIC":

Coming at an end the lovers
Are exhausted like two swimmers. Where
Did it end. There is no telling. No love is
Like an ocean with the dizzy procession of the wave's bounderies
From which two can emerge exhausted, nor long goodbye
Like death.
Coming at an end. Rather, I would say, like a length
Of coiled rope
Which does not disguise in the first twists of its lengths
Its endings.
But, you will say, we loved
And some parts of us loved
And the rest of us will remain
Two persons. Yes,
Poetry ends like a rope.


So I decided just now to write some reaction to this piece. Here it is.

*

boundary against boundary
length begets length

remainders filed away
      lover against love

      (love against lover)

in the first scenes of it
mere ankle depth
there is cause for causation
      (models and models of them)
to kill
or to be died
     (I killed him
      I died him

there is a room full of scientists
forcing determiners
determinates
down the mouths
into the throats
of rats

men are safe today
only the poem will survive

*

The little collection was published by White Rabbit Press in 1969, San Francisco. It is an edition of 1800 copies (yowser!) and printed on a typescript, which is deliciously tactile. I ran my fingers over the red lettering of the capitalized titles of each poem and of the name Jack Spicer embossed on the first entry page into the book that looks something like this:

     A BOOK
  Jack OF Spicer
      MUSIC

I want to begin making precious books. Something really hand held significant. Something to brush your palm against, or, your face. Imagine a room full of small pressers smoothing books to their cheeks. It should be done. Feel what's between the covers. I also have to investigate where to get my hands on some printmaking equipment. I used to do that sort of thing, and I want to get back into it. Use some of the cuts for book covers and the like. Etching too. I miss that anxious still while staring into a bath of pure acid eating away at your impression. ha.

More to write, but god this post is already long enough.

Ok, one more thing. I'll elaborate later, but so far "After Lorca" seems fucking brilliant. In fact, I don't even know who published the damn thing, only says "printed by Marco Polio for the Government". ha. Ooh, this will be fun to read. What a character that Jack must have been.

Late Nite Thots

Is it odd that I encourage my young pup of a brother to stay away from the affluent influence of over-drugging, then suggest he hide his pot in a shoe on his plane ride? (Which I discovered from my secret scientist government worker friend is not a wise thing to suggest. To hide one's pot in one's shoe is a mistake. Should instead hide in checked baggage, that way one can defend the finding of it should one be found out.)

I've been informed. My brother, luckily, had safe passage to the north pole. He is somewhere near Greenland. Further than I've ever been. Such little discoverers we are.

I really should be sleeping

But I'm not.
So, doing some looking into my past. I worked at a little place called Snider Mountain in Sussex N.B. in my youth. Summer job at a kids camp. Ranch, in fact. I slept in a cloth covered wagon. No kidding. Lotsa horses to make me sneeze too. Wish I had room to keep a horse. In Montreal, imagine.

Anyway, also peeked into a city I used to live in. Fredericton N.B. Went to high school there, oldest h.s. in the English commonwealth, they told us. FHS (interesting fact about the school on their "facts page": In 1883, Bliss Carmen (the famous poet) was an assistant teacher at F.H.S.). I used to sit at his grave and write teenage thoughts. Neat. Thought I'd check out the goings on in F'ton too. Seems they have a pothole problem. Aw, the maritimers are so up front about their issues, god love em.

This is where I'm from, where me family lives: Hillsborough N.B.--in Albert County. We have a railway. Yep, I'm a country girl. Miss the hell out of that place.

This is not poetry

I swore I'd never talk about my cats on this blog, but hell, these pictures are just too damn cute. I discovered a black and white/sepia filter on my camera the other day, and just went to town. So, whatever.

(This is real life. Hey, maybe this is poetry.)

As scene

the parks are empty
we didn't raise them right

As herd

what's left to do,
our mouths full of words