Author: admin

Newfoundland is, or was, full of interesting people.
Like Larry, who would make a fool of himself on street corners
for a nickel. There was the Russian who called himself
the Grand Duke, and who was said to be a real duke from somewhere,
and the woman who frequently accompanied him on his rounds.
Doc Hanks, the sawbones, was a real good surgeon
when he wasn’t completely drunk, which was most of the time.
When only half drunk he could perform decent cranial surgery.
There was the blind man who never said anything
but produced spectral sounds on a musical saw.

There was Walsh’s, with its fancy grocery department.
What a treat when Mother or Father
would take us down there, skidding over slippery snow
and ice, to be rewarded with a rare fig from somewhere.
They had teas from every country you could imagine
and hard little cakes from Scotland, rare sherries
and Madeiras to reward the aunts and uncles who came dancing.
On summer evenings in the eternal light it was a joy
just to be there and think. We took long rides
into the countryside, but were always stopped by some bog or other.
Then it was time to return home, which was OK with everybody,
each of them having discovered he or she could use a little shuteye.

In short there was a higher per capita percentage of interesting people
there than almost anywhere on earth, but the population was small,
which meant not too many interesting people. But for all that
we loved each other and had interesting times
picking each other’s brain and drying nets on the wooden docks.
Always some more of us would come along. It is in the place
in the world in complete beauty, as none can gainsay,
I declare, and strong frontiers to collide with.

Worship of the chthonic powers may well happen there
but is seldom in evidence. We loved that too,
as we were a part of all that happened there, the evil and the good
and all the shades in between, happy to pipe up at roll call
or compete in the spelling bees. It was too much of a good thing
but at least it’s over now. They are making a pageant out of it,
one of them told me. It’s coming to a theater near you.

Notes on the Poem
In 2008, the Griffin Poetry Prize judges observed in their citation for John Ashbery's winning Notes from the Air collection that:

"The YOU the author makes reference to is ME, the transcription being rendered, paradoxically, by a poet who eschews autobiography; thus the I as well as the YOU names the reader."

Let's not cheat and see if we can google if John Ashbery ever visited or lived in Newfoundland. Let's also not assume one way or the other that John Ashbery visiting or not visiting Newfoundland specifically is the point of the poem. Let's not even assume that John Ashbery considers himself personally part of the first person plural voice of the poem. So ... does that mean that "we" refers to us? 

Does it matter if we lived or didn't live in Newfoundland? If we did and John Ashbery's account of life in and the people of Newfoundland is false in fact or spirit, what then? If we didn't live there, is John Ashbery suggesting that we would admire or find bewildering our maybe real, maybe not neighbours and friends? Either way, can we still admire and yearn for this whimsical utopia where:

"But for all that
we loved each other and had interesting times
picking each other’s brain and drying nets on the wooden docks."

Does that same sweet-tinged reminiscence actually mock those interesting people, such as the half-inebriated cranial surgeon who probably shouldn't be picking anyone's brain, so to speak? Well ...

"We loved that too,
as we were a part of all that happened there, the evil and the good
and all the shades in between, happy to pipe up at roll call
or compete in the spelling bees."

At how many levels is John Ashbery having us on (where the "us" might or might not include Ashbery himself) and gently tweaking all of us? While he's teasing us, it seems he's simultaneously celebrating what is unique in each interesting person, but still coheres them as a community and as part of life's rich pageant ... "coming to a theater near you."

As for you, world –
you’ll have become small, and round, and lavender-coloured: ode
to the ewer, the comb, the water cooler.
And you? You lived in a place which was once a town,
you’ve seen it on maps before, others loaded ships
as in a dream: mood, appetite, memory, learning –
the demands seemed endless, all marsh-lights and loveliness,
the final estimates for the real world
or these propositions, for instance, which are sometimes true.
Indeed such unconscious concentration is possible,
in the neon light of early spring
and later, those evenings no longer fully spring
yet not quite summer either,
when the scent pulls back into the flower
and blackbirds bathe among violets,
half aspect, half unreal, in the slow rain of leaves.
Day after day, some days not returning,
and the boughs painted with light green lichen,
the detailed pink of the flowering apricot –
don’t go there unless to banish yourself,
because you are banished, beech,
oak, birch, and yew, among the hazel woods
of the elder world, where feathers flash
among the branches and hide in the darkening varnish
and history becomes the history of bad ideas,
a gloom of rotten nuts and nut-skins,
bitter paper. And tonight
the half-light in which paper glows –
walls, porticos, arches, places (who lived there?),
the print invisible, and the ocean sounding
all night long, clavicle to vena cava,
clavicle to vena cava,
it’s not a description.

Notes on the Poem
In "Solstice", Roo Borson swoops from the vast and worldwide to the small, personal and intimate. Is the effect dizzying, clarifying, or somewhere in between - and is that a satisfying and elucidating poetic experience?

The collection from which this poem is taken, Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida, is described in the Griffin Poetry Prize judges' citation as "a poetic journal of mortality". Certainly, how much more intimately mortal can you get than a contemplation of the internal human anatomy - the vena cava (veins) and blood flow back and forth from the heart to the extremities? How much tinier can you get than the precious minutiae of nature's fine details, from seasons balanced delicately one against the other, to:

"the boughs painted with light green lichen,
the detailed pink of the flowering apricot"

But greater forces are wiping towns off maps or shipping them elsewhere. "[H]istory becomes the history of bad ideas." Does it all make the reader feel small in the broad context of things, fragile and insignificant in the midst of oceanic and gargantuan forces, or somehow integral to a grand flow of things in nature and the universe that are echoed in one's own bloodstream?

Deer, a jackrabbit the size of a motorcycle.
– Tim Lilburn

Hit quick, the road-wasted stag
fell like the sick sorrel horse
we hunted by syringe
in a 3 x 5 pen. His fallen
figure-skater sprawl
drew out our awe, lying
on his own canvas of blood,
iron tailings from a ran-down mill.
Overcoated men with leather bags
of tinctures and bitters
couldn’t bring him around.
Witnesses stood, arms crossed,
afraid their hands might reach
for the debris of muscle guyropes
knifed by the blunt bumper of an SUV.
Looking aside I saw
a young woman come out
of the woods and work
her way through the crowd,
coming to rest in a kneel
at the buck’s breast.
We moved to halt her
but she heeled us with one hand
while the other slid to his snapped
sapling crown. She rubbed her fingers
gently down his brow, grappling his snout
to bring his half-yard of neck right round.

Notes on the Poem
In "Making Sure", Jeramy Dodds strikingly juxtaposes horror with reverence and kindness. What does that extreme clash of words and images achieve?

Sadly, collisions between the natural and manmade worlds are both commonplace and frequently at nature's expense. Strangely, the collisions on a grand scale might not always register with the individual, but the one-on-one collisions are often brutal, intimate and profound. Dodds captures this with succinct power in the encounter between stag and SUV.

Even in the midst of gruesome calamity, Dodds finds perverse beauty in the felled stag's "figure-skater sprawl" and "canvas of blood." Perceiving the situation in that way probably reflects both the beholder's literal shock in the moment, but perhaps is also a tribute to the gorgeous animal upon reflection much later.

Dodds forges a series of successive images, most tellingly of gestures, that tell the story in swift but ultimately merciful strokes. The witnesses with their "arms crossed" convey fear and futility. As the young woman appears and is "coming to rest in a kneel", it is as if she is going to say a prayer - her attitude is worshipful and respectful. How the young woman "heeled us with one hand" illustrates grace and determination (and the "us" quietly acknowledges that the narrator is one of the fearful who doesn't know how to respond to what the "blunt bumper of the SUV" has rendered). Her following gestures are shocking and tender in rapid succession.

With the poem's last abrupt image, the poem's title then comes into both focus and sharp relief. The young woman has made sure to finish what others have been unable to confront. It's troubling, but conclusive and compassionate.