Summer Reading Again: A little Joyce

I seem to recall that most every recent summer (minus perhaps this one) CBC radio has run a little challenge to its readers to pick up and get through all of Joyce's Ulysses. Sadly, no, I haven't read or even opened his masterpiece. But I thought it rather appropriate to read something by Joyce to make my summer reading list at least respectable. So I picked up Dubliners.

For that small percentage of readers out there who haven't heard about this brief collection of short stories, Joyce paints through his pieces in this book the day-to-day lives of the working class of Dublin in the first decade or so of the last century. It is important because Dubliners tells stories that everyday working class people experienced (or could have experienced). This is a nice change give the more modern day obsession with the cult of personality/praise of the rich that seems to float through the works of regularly praised writers such as Rushdie and yes, Dan Brown. What Joyce shines through with is his ability to illustrate the everyday in a manner that engages the reader and propells oft ignored voices and experiences.

Moreover though, Dubliners shows writers the way to write economically and successfully at the same time. I know that many MFA programs push for higher page counts (mainly for the reason of forcing the budding fiction writer to get the mechanics of composition through physical memory). As an off-shoot of this, writers sometimes forget that you can accomplish a lot with a little. Joyce shows us in this collection that shorter fiction can work and do so wonderfully.

Catching up with some Hockey Poetry and Henry Miller

I know I've been off the whole blogging thing for awhile. This Norwegian summer language immersion has been rather intense and has afforded me little time in the way of posting. It's been a good summer of reads nonetheless. I recently finished Tropic of Cancer, the class by Henry Miller. I had been pestered for sometime by a writer friend of mine in Seattle to read it. What can I say other than he was right. Miller can get a little far gone with the obscenity at times. Thing is that just have to hold on and he works you through those moments to a nice shared mental space with narrator. For those of you not aware of the entire Tropic of Cancer story, it is a first person narration on an expatriot American writer in early twentieth century France (but more specifically Paris). The book was banned for many years in the US. But such has not been the case for sometime now. Regardless of history, Miller does a great job of placing us in his narrator's head. Think of it as proto-HST picaresque. It's an interesting balance against Hemingway's Moveable Feast.

Secondly, I recently finished Randall Maggs' Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems. I've typically had issues finding solid literature about hockey or centred on the hockey world. This particular collection seems to answer that problem. Maggs teaches at Memorial University in Newfoundland. He does some very nice work here bringing poetry to the hall of fame goaltender Terry Sawchuk's life. There are some very memorable pieces in this collection, most specifically "The Back Door Open Where She's Gone to the Garden" and "Long Memories." I have to admit to a soft spot for well written poems set in and around Windsor and Detroit. It's a nice piece of work and I highly recommend it as a great summer read.

Recent Reads - Coyote's Bow Grip

I recently found myself staring at the Canadian Lit stacks on the ninth floor of the Wells' Library and came across a smallish novel set in Alberta. I do find myself quite interested in literature with a strong sense of regionalism/place. I grabbed the book, thinking that it might help me with a poetry series I was building on words and the Canadian landscape. I didn't get around to reading Ivan E. Coyote's Bow Grip (Arsenal Pulp Press 2006, ISBN 1-55152-213-6), until almost a month after the whole poetry series was completed for class.

The book won a ReLit award in 2007 and was the first novel for Coyote. Ostensibly, Bow Grip is about a Drumheller, AB car mechanic who is trying to get over a divorce and the loss of his father through developing the hobby of playing cello. Bow Grip contains a certain amount of alluring quirkiness that really helps to pull the reader in. The narrator is strong enough to pull us through his odyssey from rural Alberta town to Calgary and place into a world on the outskirts of "successful" urban life. The characters that inhabit the world of this book are notably and recognizably working class. There is a familiarity in them that is welcoming and embracing.

The single biggest downsize to the book is that it just doesn't seem to linger on scenes or characters enough. It's short, only 217 pages, and seems to need another 100 pages or so just to fulfill the promises afforded by the strong set up of characters. There does seem to be some loose ends that need to be tied up, or closed off. As a writer and a reader, I feel that everything that appears in a work should be there for a reason. I don't always feel that Coyote pulls some of these threads into any sucessful meaning. The most notable of these in the novel is the presence of a french waitress whom Joey's (narrator) friend Hector is trying to set him up with. She appears for a scene and then simply disappears, never thought of or seen again.

All in all though, this is an interesting book and quick read. If anything, Coyote's Bow Grip is a solid way to start off your summer reading.

Happiness is a Good Short Story

Such being the case, May is National Short Story Month. Now get out there and read some short fiction. I'd recommend the journal Short Story. Not just for the title, they honestly do put out some nice work.

Things here in Bloomington are lovely moving along towards summer. The campus has emptied out and now we have plenty of elbow room on the streets of this fine town. The chill air of college town America is one of those rewards year round residents get in the summer. I'm milking it now, reading up on Snyder and Hayden while tending to our garden. The realness of life away from academia is a wonderful breath of air after a semester of literary criticism and over blowing ivory tower issues.

One important note to pass along. READ THIS (out of Montana State University) has lost its last founding editor with the graduation of Cheryl Knoble. Cheryl served as Editor in Chief since the start and really was instrumental in turning the vision of poet john d powers it a reality. It was a great run. One that I'm sure the next generation of editors at READ THIS will carry on nicely. There should be a new issue out in and around Bozeman as I post this. The website has yet to update its electronic version. Congrads Cheryl on the great run and welcome to post-graduate blues. I doubt it will be the last the Literary world hears from her.

May Dispatches

Time has been at a premium over the past few weeks with the Spring semester here at IU wrapping up. One the upside, I've managed to wrap up a small poetry collection concerned with lexicography and the Canadian landscape. All totaled, its about twelve pieces that explore the ways in which language (Canadiamisms), history, culture, and the landscape of Canada are meet. There is a more to do in this vein, and perhaps I'll spend the summer looking into either converting it into a cohesive chapbook or larger enterprise. It was fruitful exploration. A couple of the pieces are out for consideration at a couple of literary publications. I'll be sure to keep any updates as to future publication here. These lit journals are our life blood, so we have to support them.

I've also been diligently working away at the academic-side of life here at IU. My present interests are pulling me into the studies of Christopher Marlowe and his use of "the other" as distraction in the Jew of Malta. I'm still using the Marxist goodness I learned at Trent under Kulcheski and the Native Studies program. Greenblatt has been rather central to the topic thus far. Either way, I'll try and post an excerpt from the piece later this week as it gets closer to completion.

Other than that the garden is coming in nicely despite the fact that sun has been a rare vision in the past couple of weeks here in Bloomington. No swine flu in sight and the front porch has become a welcome addition to our writing/reading space.

Snyder, Stein, and the hints of Summer

I've been AWOL for the last week or so, just trying to figure out some final project material for this semester. Fiction workshop has been a no-brainer in terms of finding a project, but the other two have been slipping in and out of consciousness for sometime now. I feel as though that academic stream of me has fallen hopelessly behind me. This is not something I really I'm at all upset about. Yes, it is true I have a not so faint disgust for Ivory Towerism. That's the problem with these academic pieces. Who is really meant to read them? Well, some might say the same for poetry, right? Probably those that write academic pieces. Is this all starting to seem circular?

Back onto course, I've started a series of poems about words, meanings, and the power of the Canadian land. I'm only about five poems into the series, but things seem to be taking a nice shape thus far. I would never have figured a cento created from site passages of the Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles would be so much fun to construct. You might say it was like the composition of dictionary itself. I hope to have a nice solid series poems that could be converted into a chapbook.

I have had to fuel this poetic explorations. I've found myself searching the canyons of the Wells' Library for material in recent weeks, and ended up with a considerable collection of works by Gertrude Stein and Gary Snyder. The Snyder thing shouldn't be such a huge surprise, given my recent attempt at short fiction piece guided by his work (The Light Upon the Bridgers). The fiction piece is resting (as all work must before revision or deletion). But I've found some of Snyder's collections quite helpful to get the ball rolling. I just finished Axe Handles in one sitting. In totality it wasn't off his best works, but there are always strong points to any given work. This one does have many. The best I could say is read it. It has much to do with Snyder's back-to-the-land homesteading in Northern California. If any thing its a great way to look at the world after the collapse of our very recent hyper-capitalist world. Yes, it is possilbe, even for a poet and Zen master, to live without diversified stocks and bonds and a brand new H3 in the manicured driveway.

I'm using some of Gertrude Stein's surrealist poetic sequences to look at new ways of talking about a world, I might only have a surface level connection with at best. I'm still working to decode and then recode some of her words. They can get a little disjointed. With summer so close and baseball season all ready on hand, they might also provide an interesting may to look at the divine game.

The Thunderstorms of Spring

Yes, it is true. We've been having a good number of them in recent days. Most of the town has gone to flowers and the long hard days of February seem to be nicely behind us. I've been rather behind updating this page. This has as much to do the effects of teaching, grad school, and general outside reading load that might be a tad bit too heavy for my own sanity. The best way to learn to write better is to read those you admire most. I might be taking my advice too liberally.

I forgot to report that Zaum 13 is out. It really is a nicely designed journal (I'm quite taken by the cover)and has some pretty cool things going on inside. My poem "Misplaced Nashville Skyline" appears in it. There are lot of solid poems in the journal, along with art work, that make it worth picking up for a read.

Work continues in earnest on a new poetry series looking into the lexicographical connection between Canadians and their landscape. Being from Ontario might make this just a biased as most of the critics out there would assume it to be. There is a long list of unique Canadianisms that could make for some interesting explorations of the power of the performative and words in our relationships to the world around us. I've been looking pretty hardcore in the history of OED this semester and this series will undoubtedly bear much of its success (or failure) to that study. My most recent short story is actually my longest to date. "The Landscapes of Hubert Pineau" is in its early draft stages and details the son of an artist and his search for a fatherly legacy on Pelee Island. There will be more to report later.