Being Here, Thisness, and Human Appropriation

      

      Thisness, or often called Haecceity in academia, is the true essence of a thing. However, we cannot truly know the thisness because of how we channel the precision of language into the arbitrary naming of things.

......Yeah I know, I know. That’s existentially vague to the extreme. Just bear with me please; I just finished reading Tim Lilburn’s essay “How To Be Here?” from his book “Living in the World as if it Were Home”. I am still having trouble trying to wrap my head around all of this. *sigh* Alright, alright. Here we go.

      So, in regards to the wilderness, the poet Tim Lilburn states how language can easily dilute the thisness of the natural world due to the appropriation of the human mind! … And.. and.. uh.. Lilburn takes the filtered lens of human sight which perceives and defines the natural world under these appropriations and attempts to unfilter it!... But wait.. he does it through... LANGUAGE?!?! WHAT

My brain hurts

Ok, ok calm down. Just relax…

Tim Lilburn is well known for his "eco-poetry", sharing similar ideas to that of Don McKay. Much like McKay, Lilburn tackles the applicability of human language and attempts to discredit its way of apprehending the unknown wilderness into our known understanding. However, unlike McKay, who takes an approach of poetic attention, Lilburn goes deeper and takes a contemplative approach; he enters a state of wordless contemplative thought, and then translates the instantaneous moments of inward glimpses into poetry (words!) For example, one time Lilburn dug a hole in the ground, covered it with hay, and buried his head under it... So yeah, all you folks that like to take walks in nature for inspiration, try burying yourself in it instead.

Doing poetry right.

      Take for instance his poem “Contemplation is Mourning”; the entire core of it is thisness. He talks about the human world and the non-human world, and how we become alienated from the latter through human appropriations like society, history, etc. It’s a very prolific poem. 

Looking takes you so far on a leash of delight, then removes it and says 
the price of admission to further is your name. Either the desert 
                                                                                    and winter 
of what the deer is in herself or a palace life disturbed by itches and 
                                                                                                 sounds 
felt through the gigantic walls. Choose. 

Light comes through pale trees as mind sometimes kisses the body. 
The hills are the bones of hills. 

      Instead of an appropriative knowledge – an almost solipsist vision of human eyes – of our surroundings, Lilburn takes part in a different kind of knowing that is steeped in ontological principles, realities and the simple existents of things… You know, I guess it’s more like an unknowing of things... 

      Back on topic! The thisness of a thing can be sensed, to an extent, through the vision of the contemplative eye, not the appropriative one. The latter vision is in fact an inattention to the world, while the former can truly come closer to discerning thisness. The world truly becomes an odd and unreachable place once this frame of mind is practiced. I really cannot put it any more simply than this; and after I read Lilburn's essay "How To Be Here", I realized that neither can he:

      “Consciousness walks across the land bridge of the deer’s stare into the world of things. This is knowing… There is only wild seeing, the feel of it unimaginable: I am seen straight through… but cannot say how I am seen” (Lilburn 3-4)

From the Bottom of your Bottom - Found Poetry is More than Words.

If you want to know anything about Atlantic Canadian Poetry, it seems you need to dig a LOT deeper than Wikipedia. RM Vaughan, giving him a search results in a dismal paragraph that randomly ends in “he is openly gay”. Thank goodness both has a website and frequently checks and replies to his emails.

RM Vaughan is a Canadian Poet who is from St. John New Brunswick. He was born in the year 1965. He has his Masters of Arts in English at Univeristy of New Brunswick. He now lives and works in Toronto Ontario, he has written many poetry books and chapbooks of his own such as A Selection of Dazzling Scarves and 96 Tears (In My jeans). He has also been included in many anthologies both nationally and internationally. He has been nominated for the National Magazine Award, the William Kilbourne Award, and the ReLit Award (as the author bio of his new book Compared to Hitler: Selected Essays says: always the bridesmaid).

RM Vaughan

Now I was provided with the essay “Reuse and Recycle: Finding Poetry in Canada” by Shane Rhodes. This Essay is a description of found poetry and some poets within Canada who practice the art of found poetry. When I first read RM Vaughan’s work I was wondering how in heck I would use this essay as a way to look at one of his poems because his poetry does not seem to be the idea of found poetry that many of us carry; however, this changed when I reread the essay and stumbled upon this quote”

“[F]ound poetry should probably be seen more as a technique with varying levels of application than a poetic sub-genre.”

I nodded in agreement to this stack of paper before me. Of course! Found poetry isn’t really a genre in and of itself, and it can be seen in many different angles. I also connected this with a quote from Louis Dudek that was included in the essay:

                “[S]ignificance appears inherent in the object.”

So when I found 96 Tears (In My Jeans) I understood what they meant. Found Poetry doesn’t have a specific form; it is not only newspaper and a Sharpie. 96 Tears (In My Jeans) is found in a chapbook by the same name from Broken Jaw press. The entire poem is 96 observations, and the memories attached to those observations, that Vaughan has about this old pair of jeans that are falling apart. To date this poem, it was copy written in 1997.

1

just over the kneecap, left side, sucking cock on

the floor at the Barracks.

2

at the point where the zipper meets the waist

button, digging at myself, I guess.

3

inseam, lower left nut pouch, from sitting with

my legs open all summer on porch steps and

park benches.

4

frayed pocket hem, lower right end, provocative

standing and ceaseless rucking around for

change.

5

worn thin under the buttom cup of the right ass

cheek, getting spanked by an older guy in some

highrise on Carleton.

6

cuff on left leg, caught in a bike chain, no sexual

overtones.

This poem is full of good laughs, great imagery, and heartfelt moments. Vaughan paints a picture of his life at the time beautifully, thanks to the holes in his jeans. He has found poetry in his jeans, which means that you can find poetry anywhere.

                So, go on! Go find your poetry. You will probably find it where you least expect it, after all it's more than words.

The Truth Goes on Solving Nothing – A Conceit

 In her article The Truth Goes on Solving Nothing – A Conceit by Aislinn Hunter starts off with the idea of “fixity”, which is the collection of bare bones facts that a memory is constructed out of. She uses the example of remembering a picnic – the fixed aspects of that memory; what you brought, or how much it cost. Each one of these facts collect together and form the memory of the picnic, but every person who attended that picnic is going to remember it differently. Later in the article, Hunter likens this experience to a group of people listening an orchestra play at the same time. Hunter, who likes the violin, listens closely to those parts and walks away with an impression stacked heavily with the sounds of the violin; in her own memory she may forget entirely about the oboe, even though she witnessed it too.

Hunter also points out a fun party trick the brain pulls, where it will actively try and make sense of fragments or inaccuracies. This works out really well for storytelling, as the brain actually wants to make the leap in logic for there to be some kind of narrative. She uses the example of Seamus Heaney's poem called “Lightenings” that she reads over and over again to illustrate this. The poem describes a ship appearing in the air and dropping an anchor to that hooks onto the altar, and she claims to be able to envision the church, and the monks, and even the anchor even though she’s never seen anything like it before.

Language has the power to enable that in us, to let us construct things we’ve never seen or experienced, or to help us connect things we’ve never thought about to things we don’t notice anymore. This is something that Don McKay’s poem “Setting the Table” does for the common household items knives, forks, and spoons. Each section is titled off with the object it’s going to go on to describe, which conjures up a nice familiar image. Nice sturdy eating implements, you’ve probably got a drawer full of more than you strictly need right now. McKay immediately starts to de-familiarize them. The fork is a “touch of kestrel”, a type hawk, renowned hunters. Already your empirical memory of what a fork is gets distorted by the new image of a prey animal, and your brain is working to reconcile the two images. Personally, I have the image of a fork hovering over a plate, and seeking out the best selection of food and then diving down to spear its choice. Then as you read the next line you learn it isn’t really the fork he’s talking about - “a touch of kestrel/ of Chopin, your hand with its fork”. You are the hunter, the fork is your weapon, and you elegantly hunt (perhaps dance) after your prey. In the space of two lines the image shifts around, and your brain will shift with it because it wants to make this coherent. Your brain wants reconcile your previous conception of a fork and string it together with the hunter, and the composer. This is the mental equivalent to orienteering. The reader will be able to run the course so long as the poet has it set up.

Burn Down the Barn

Charles G. D. Roberts wrote both prose and poetry, and is often referred to as the Father of Canadian Poetry. This gentleman offered inspiration and assistance to other poets of his time in order to get his name. Roberts was born and raised in New Brunswick, and both his brother Theodore Roberts and his sister Jane Roberts grew up to be authors as well. "But what's this have to do with barns?" I can almost hear you saying it now.

                A poem that Roberts wrote by the name of "In an Old Barn" caught my attention the instant I started to read it. Check it out here.

The poem immediately drew on my sense of peace, for the scene seems very quiet and comfortable. Things feel natural in the setting, as they’re away from the bustle of the outside world. I began to ponder however, after finishing the poem. The scenery changes to outside of the barn, and we get a view of a cold and desolate outside. The barn represents not only a sense of peace and security, but also a mental wall that we erect, blocking out all that disturbs our internal paradises.

Sometimes our barns aren't as beautiful as we once thought.

Shani Mootoo’s essay Poetry Lesson quickly began to take up much of my thought after this. Her essay speaks of how poetry is a gift when we find it without seeking it out. The paths we take in life offer us many chances of finding poetry, but many of which passes us by. We need only open our eyes to the world around us, and soon we will find our minds filled with the dancing words and emotions we call poetry.

As soon as you finish reading this, I want you to stand up, take a step outside – even if it’s the dead of night – and find something about it you love. Stand no further than two steps from your door. Guaranteed you can find something that will trigger a response. Who knows what you’ll find? The world so close around us offers us so much beauty to take in and love, but we’re all too focussed on our personal ‘barns’ to see it. Stand up, open the door, and breath your life into the world. You may just find your muse. 

The Genre of Mental Illness

Catherine Owen

''Might Mean Something'': The Genre of Mental Illness by Catherine Owen is an interesting essay. Its opening's last sentence is a quote from Anne Sexton and what her psychologist told her once she began to write poetry. ''Don't kill yourself, your poems might mean something to someone else someday.'' I sort of felt engulfed in the page after I read that. I could definitely relate because that is the reason behind why I began writing this blog in the first place, because it might mean something to someone someday.

Owen writes on mental illness as a genre. She explains how it is filtered through language and that mental illness has so many connotations: mad, insane, deranged, etc. But if it were taught somewhere in an accurate way, it could be beneficial, states Professor Amirault, who teaches the Culture of Mental Illness at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He says it's mostly seen as abnormal.

Owen's interpretation on writing mental illness is interesting: ''Writing mental illness can be like trying to describe dreams.  Incomprehensible at times, almost untranslatable, missives projected from a real hazy, dim, full of ragings, rife with supposedly illogical rituals or symbology.'' She then goes on to say that people outside of the nightmare don't understand and go on as if nothing happened. This is incredibly true! No one but the person who had the dream will completely understand. People outside of the nightmare often write people off with labels, while the people suffering through the real-life nightmare fear public burdens and judgement.

The connection between creativity and mental health issues is brought up. Ren Powell says, ''The more severe the mental illness, the greater the creative ability. [Yet], mental illness is not seen as an advantage.  It's not something an established, serious writer puts on her CV." Poetry/prose writing is a way to unleash the noise from within the soul of someone suffering something. It is therapeutic.

Pryal's Four Techniques of ''Mood Memoirs'' is touched on within Owen's essay.  First, the writer apologizes and defends/justifies their project, secondly they explain their moment of awakening to the existence of their illness, thirdly they bash bad doctors, and lastly they make claims to others suffering from mood disorders in hopes of making things normal.

I found these techniques all too relatable! When I first wrote my blog on mental health awareness (rockland92.blogspot.ca), I felt the need to defend and justify it, I explained my moment of awakening and the claim to other sufferers in order to normalize it. I didn't, however, bash doctors.

Finally, Owen says that if mental illness is indeed a genre, it's more of a range of genres through prose (with rational examples) and poetry (more conducive writing).

She ends her essay with this insightful quote from Phillip K Dick:

''The first thing to depart in mental illness is the familiar.  And what takes its place is bad news because not only can you not understand it, you also cannot communicate it to other people. The mad man experiences something, but what it is or where it comes from he does not know.''

Catherine Owen is a poet from Vancouver and her essay is from the 4th edition of Poetry is Dead 2013.
Poetry is Dead website : http://poetryisdead.ca/
Catherine Owen website: http://www.catherineowen.org/#!

Poetry/music video tribute to her deceased husband: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Q6IRWZ6RY

The Benefit of Accidents

Personally, I believe staying in the same place for extended periods of time, living in a form of stasis, is bad for writing – eventually you’ll start writing in circles, only writing “what you know”. 

It’s best, and beneficial, for some to get out of their comfort zones, travel, and experience new things for inspiration. Not only does getting out there expose you to a new plethora of experiences, but it also allows yourself to be subject to contingency – or accidents.

This is what the author of my essay, Jonathan Garfinkel (“By Accident: A Young Writer’s Life”) believes. He is the author of one book of poetry, Glass Psalms, and three plays, Walking to Russia, The Trials of John Demjanjuk: A Holocaust Cabaret, and his most recent play, about a divided house in Jerusalem (inspired by a story he heard and then his own experiences), Blind.

Jonathan Garfinkel

By the advice of a dream-apparition of Margaret Atwood, Jonathan flew to Mexico and began staying in his friend’s cabin to begin his writing career – though it didn’t start off as easily as he had hoped. However, one day, he went outside to turn on the propane, not realizing it was already on, and almost killed himself by lighting a cigarette and triggering an explosion that made him temporarily blind. This freak accident “opened a door inside [him]” and shortly after, he wrote his first good poem. By not opening up himself to experience this accident, Jonathan may have never become a functioning writer.

Steve McOrmond

My poet, Steve McOrmond’s poem, “The Hypochondriac Flies to Mexico”, I believe, also employs this idea.

It is a poem about a person who is afraid of becoming ill entering what they think is the worst place to be: a confined space with dozens of people – an airplane. He repeats the line, "The plane is sick." and personifies the actions of the plane with sickly phrases like its "feverish chills shudder" and describes its hatch as "a stopper in a test tube of plague." The speaker's nightmare becomes more and more real in their mind as they see people "wheeze[ing]", "sob[ing]" and, the most terrifying of all, using the washroom – though they are only seeing what they want to see to make the nightmare come true. Though it is unclear who the speaker is and who they are speaking to, one can assume that due to the circumstances brought on by the fear, they reveal to who they are speaking to that they love them – something they may have not done if not in this new situation, pushing them out of their comfort zone.

Hey, maybe it’s a stretch. But, apparently, Mexico is a popular place for writers to visit and/or write about.

Here's a random Mexican guy.

The Marriage of Metaphor

            Lately, on my walks home from class, listening to the songs on my iPhone, I can’t help but feel a little depressed about the music I’ve been listening to. (And not because it’s all a sap fest. Promise.) It’s because lately, I’ve been thinking about metaphors and how they work in the songs I listen to and the poetry I read and try to write. How do you clearly, interestingly, and honestly, write out your world for a poem? It’s hard.

            The essay I read, “Orpheus Recalling Eurydice” by Anne Simpson, was all about metaphors and how poets encounter and experience them. The author had a really neat point at the very start of the essay: that “We ourselves, are meaning.” Essentially, that “when we mean something, it’s like going up to someone…we go up to the thing we mean.” Metaphors, Simpson states, begin with the familiar and then shifts into the unfamiliar. This exchange allows the poet and the reader to challenge the familiar and nakedly expose it.

            Michael Crummey, a poet originally from Newfoundland, starts his poem “Capelin Skull” in the familiar, describing hundreds of thousands of fish washed up on a shore. He then sinks into the unfamiliar, illustrating the beached fish as survivors of a shipwreck. The waves he writes about take on the quality of a bus, stuffed with “passengers bound for oblivion/ limbs and heads hanging recklessly/ through the open windows.”

            In her essay, Simpson writes that metaphors are a marriage between imagination and creation: that the job of a poet is to make that marriage work. Crummey makes that marriage work in an effortless, natural way.  

Alden Nowlan and Sexy Smart People

Hey Writers! I really want to talk about Alden Nowlan’s  "A white book lies open," but first, I have to mention an essay by Robert Hass, called “Listening and Making.” The whole article discusses how a poem’s rhythm – as opposed to its content – might be able to communicate certain ideas on its own, the two most basic ideas being security and freedom. Repetition, Rhyme, and anything else associated with strict poetic form fall under security, while variation, free-verse, asymmetry, or anything else unfamiliar would be associated with freedom. Good poetry is able to use both of these worlds in order to communicate something worthwhile to its audience.

"A white book lies open" is a great example of a poem that does just that. For context, the poem opens with a pope's funeral. A white book, presumably a bible, sits open on the casket. Suddenly, the wind blows forcing one of the book's pages to stand upright for a moment before falling back into place. Nowlan then compares "our ancestors," who would have read some spiritual significance into the event, to "us," who see nothing more than the wind. 

Magic exists in not knowing, and is only limited by our imaginations. Science, on the other hand, is about ignoring imagination and filling in the blanks. By the time Nowlan wrote this poem, science had already become integral to our society and culture. With this integration came a new popular fear of looking like an idiot, making all of us more likely to forget the past and accept the new if it made us look sexy and smart. Nowlan thinks this integration came at the expense of looking for magic in the world, and while this magic may not be sexy or smart, there is some value in it.

Yeah, I'm talking to you, Science!

I think this message comes across very well, but it is not the poem's content that accomplishes this – if we only had the content to go by, I am sure the poem would preach the opposite message, that is, "haha, we are smart and our ancestors were idiots." The actual message of "A white page lies open" comes from the rhythm and the way the poem balances security and freedom. Nowlan makes the content very accessible: each stanza is one simple sentence, the lines are short, he uses small words, and the poem begs to be read at a slow even tempo – these are all very secure ways for readers to access this poem. Yet, the rhythm does not compliment this simplicity. There is no repetition or pattern in the number of beats per line, there is no consistent form, the structure is very free. This contrast between the content's security and the form's freedom is off-putting, making reader ask “what's wrong with this image.” Then everything clicks and the last line, “We call it the wind,” becomes a punch-line and the message is loud and clear.

Nowlan, Alden. "A white book lies open" I might not tell everybody this. Toronto: Clarke, Irwin &

        Company Ltd, 1982. 53. Print.

Game Winning Poetry By. Amanda Bird

By. Amanda Bird

      The ability to make a common subject original and compelling allows the reader to be involved in the poem through personal connections. Poet, Matt Robinson born in Halifax Nova Scotia writes his poetry based on passionate life experiences. Letters to a Young Poet by Maria Rainer Rilke has many suggestions about writing a good poem: things to avoid and advice for a poet that advises a reader what to look for. Robinson’s book of poetry, Tracery & Interplay meets the requirements of passionate and personal through exploring the life of a hockey lover and his days spent in the rink.

   I found the poem, Zamboni Driver’s Lament most relatable and inventive. It takes the everyday occurrence of a zamboni driver in a hockey rink and adds personal connotations, “your kids have, i’m sure/ wasted –all early morning anxious / and weak-ankled—their first impatient /shuffle-kicks and curses on me” (Robinson, 2004). The narrative we represents the idea that others have experienced similar events. Imagery and metaphors are presented for the reader to relate and visualize (Robinson, 2004).  As Rilke from Letters to a Young Poet explains, Robinson has the ability to present “hidden beginnings of something personal” through his easy-to-read word choices and metaphors representing his passion for hockey. Robinson takes overused subject and takes a risk in hope of developing a poem with relative meaning, “To go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise” (Rilke, 1993).  Rilke goes on to give advise the poets as to what others want to read, “Then try, like some first human being, to say what you see and experience and love and lose” (1993). Robinson states what he sees, which others neglect to say, “i can assure/ you—go down each night; the scoreboard’s bulbs snap and flicker, then die. but the ice it seems will always be there:” By revealing truth, meaning is explored. We all grow up but the things that we have emphasized with meaning will always be there. Robinson’s poem, Zamboni Driver’s Lament is full of truth and explores a story full of imagery to create a relationship between the poet and his readers. 

    I believe that when a poet writes on a comparative subject, uses figurative language, avoids clichés, uses personal narratives, takes risks and writes for the love of writing, then the poem will breathe on its own.  Robinson does well to exemplify these items in a poem he evidently is very passionate about, “because i am always, when push comes to shove, behind glass/--seated, and away” he has given the audience his personal experience and now all Robinson can do is watch and cheer.

The White Feather

          I met an exceptional poet this week. She has passed from this world, but I had the privilege of shaking Rita Joe’s calloused and gentle hands through her carefully chosen, often translated words. Comparing them to her history, you wouldn’t know they originated from the same person—that the inspiring poems, though tinged with sorrow, were written by the Mi’kmaq woman with the tragic life story. One of her favorite analogies was that of a white feather, symbolic in their culture of compassion, love, healing, wonder, and the spirit, all things good. Writing was that for her.

            Born in Whycoconagh, Cape Breton in 1932, Rita Joe was the sixth of seven children. Her mother died when she was five, scattering the family. The next eight years were a series of one foster home after another. She experienced abuse of every kind, even from her kin. Her overwhelming craving for approval meant young Rita kept quiet about what men and women alike did to her. In 1942, her father died and she went to live in her first non-Native community. Upon leaving, Rita went to Halifax and did everything from cleaning hospitals to babysitting children, just to stay afloat.

After marrying Frank Joe in 1954, the couple had eight children, later fostering two boys, and though Frank drank much of his life, beating her and seducing other women, the couple remained very much in love until his death in 1989. Rita’s dance with words began in her thirties, when she wrote a monthly column for Micmac News. She used “native” words, writing to record her—and her people’s—true story, not the one that had been negatively portrayed for so many years up to this point. Shortly after entering her first writing contest, she was presented with an offer for publication, which became Poems of Rita Joe.

The rest is history.

She wrote about everything, except her beatings, and she gives innumerable accounts of people coming up to her in tears, sharing how her works have impacted their lives. To this day, she is called the Poet Laureate of her Mi’kmaq people.

Rita’s life and works have been made into plays (The Ecstasy of Rita Joe), a bio pic, and even a symphony by a Dutch composer, showing the far-reaching influence on those of all nationalities. In the words of Rita Joe herself: “I leave behind the memory of an orphan child, picking herself up from the misery of being nobody, moving little grains of sand until she could talk about the first nations of this land” (169).

After drinking in the sensations that made up her world, the gritty sand underneath my fingernails, smoke from a wigwam, and her resilient, optimistic spirit, I can honestly say I will never see the world the same way again—

She left a white feather in my heart.

 

Joe, Rita. Songs of Rita Joe. Charlottetown: Ragweed Press, 1996. Print. 

 

A Poet's Contribution: Ray Fraser

            Traveling from areas such as Montreal to Paris, it is fortunate for Fredericton, New Brunswick that Ray Fraser, a poet, has chosen its community as a home. Born on May 8^th in the year 1941, Fraser grew up in Chatham, Ontario. He was an average student throughout grade school, attending public schools and playing on local hockey teams. It seems that Fraser had a growing interest in sports, as he continued to play hockey, as well as football, when he attended St. Thomas University in Chatham.

          

          Fraser enrolled at St. Thomas in order to receive an art degree, and his writing career began to take shape during his third year, when he co-edited a journal entitled Tom-Tom. In the year 1964, Fraser graduated with his degree and quickly became a full-time writer. There is no doubt that his smarts and seemingly natural talent helped him to accomplish this. Now living in Montreal, Fraser created a group with a number of other writers that was called the Montreal Story Tellers; a book would later be written about this group by an author named J.R. Struthers.

            Throughout his career, Fraser has certainly published a wide variety of works. However, he does not appear to have the reputation that one with his talent should have. Having written or edited up to twenty-two books, Fraser is, although, admired by those who know of his work. He has received a number of awards, one of these being for one of his best-known titles, When the Earth Was Flat, which outlines important events from his life. Some of Fraser’s other titles include Poems for the Miramichi and The Black Horse Tavern.

            In addition to his writing, Fraser is also actively involved in his community. He has made donations to University of New Brunswick, and is also a founder of the Flat Earth Society.