‎”It’s as if poetry were a virus, and school exposure a mass vaccination program. A small dose in elementary school, a booster in high school, and you’re immune for life. The tiny minority who contract the virus from the vaccine can go onto university programs and learn, from senior fellow-carriers, how to keep it under control through a regimen of critical theory.”
—Robyn Sarah (in “Little Eurekas”)

Cover photo by fellow poet, photographer, and mathematician Robin Susanto.
Introduction by Aislinn Hunter.
And here is the back cover with blurbs by Tim Lilburn and Cathy Ford.

Hope to see you there.

• Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram
  Wednesday, August 31, 2011, 7:30pm. @ Canadian Memorial Center for Peace, 1825 W, 16th. Tickets: $10 (call 604-737-8858 to get your ticket).

I heard of him first through his book The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. I am still working my way through it. Not because it is hard to read, but because it is so full. Here is what The Spirited Review writes of the book.

And here are some quotes form the book:

“The life-world is the world of our immediately lived experience, as we live it, prior to all our thoughts about it. … reality as it engages us before being analysed by our theories and our science.”

“Our spontaneous experiences of the world, charged with subjective, emotional, and intuitive content, remains the vital and dark ground of all our objectivity.”

“Language is not a fixed or ideal form, but an evolving medium we collectively inhabit, a vast topological matrix in which the speaking bodies are generative sites, vortices where the matrix itself is continually being spun out of the silence of sensorial experience.”

“To touch the coarse skin of a tree is thus, at the same time, to experience one’s own tactility, to feel oneself touched by the tree. And to see the world is also, at the same time, to experience oneself as visible, to feel oneself seen.”

“From the magician’s, or phenomenologist’s, perspective, that which we call imagination is from the first an attribute of the senses themselves; imagination is not a separate mental faculty (as we so often assume) but is rather the way the senses themselves have of throwing themselves beyond what is immediately given, in order to make tentative contact with the other side of things that we do not sense directly, with the hidden or invisible aspects of the sensible.”

—from The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, by David Abram (1996)

So I have been thinking, catching thoughts buzzing in my head lately: something about our attention, something about awareness, where we places it, something about consciousness, something about who has more of it, who has less, about being and not.

I am also currently reading The Philosophical Baby: What children’s minds tell us about Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life by Alison Gopnik.

Much of what scientist are showing/proving/ investigating now around children and their minds works for me. It is always pleasant to find what I observe and intuit in my poetic investigations on the topic is getting its scientific underlining, hems, and buttons.

The other day in a small group of enthusiastic writers/readers I admitted that I do not read too many novels (hence I did not feel adequate in the novel discussions afoot). One person turned to me and asked “You don’t read much…?” That could have been a question, or an unfinished sentence, since in fast conversations among numbers of people threads get dropped and picked up with the speed of lightning, which can also be quite refreshing…
but I was stumped, do not remember answering….

So perhaps this could be the answer. But I cannot define all the directions in which I read. Sometimes we guide our reading. Make choices perhaps imposed from outside. At my best, with my reading, I do not follow too many outside guidelines. Maybe, I have the psychology of a bee, following lines that I cannot always explain why I am drawn or compelled to read this or that book. Or what dance got me here. But I know I am on the right track when honey is made.

Sometime we have to read by stepping barefoot on the grass. Digging our toes in the earth. Sitting by a tree in the deep shade of the wood where the last sunbeam reminds you to worship the light. Or sometimes we read by growing things. So there are many many ways to read. And there is so much to read and so little time.
Back to pollination and cross-pollination.

…The shift was seismic. My confidence waned, but my curiosity sprawled.

…Stories aren’t about things. Stories are things.

…Stories aren’t about actions. Stories are, unto themselves, actions.

…The goal isn’t to represent an experience, but instead to create a piece of art that is itself an experience.

…The idea of a writer “wanting” to do something in a story unhinges me. At best, such desire smacks of nostalgia and, at worst, it betrays agenda.

…And writing what you know is knotted up with intention, and intention in fiction is always related to control, to rigidity, and more often than not, a little solipsism. The writer seems to have chosen an event because it illustrates a point or mounts an argument.

…And if empathy is important to fiction, compassion is invaluable. Compassion is empathy on steroids.

…Writers may enter their stories through literal experience, through the ground floor, but fiction brings with it an obligation to rise past the base level, to transcend the limitations of fact and history, and proceed skyward.

…I say fiction is an act of courage and humility, a protest against our mortality, and we, the authors, don’t matter.

I have discovered these are valid points for poetry as well.

Here are also 50 writing tools (via Cool Tools). Summed up in one of those cheat sheets format. You can print them on one sheet of paper. 50 of them. Like those sheets I would put all the math formulas that I could not remember for tests. Good reminders.
Then after the test, misplace, displace, and forget.

My essay is titled It’s Like Telling People You Have Rats and Forgetting to Qualify Them as Pets: A Poet’s Journey and you will find it on page 187.

ABSTRACT
How do I take my place as a learner, parent, educator in the fractal, multifaceted, kaleidoscopic process of being and becoming? How to negotiate the forces that pull us and push us in different directions? Or, how I discovered I am a poet, and survived to tell of it.

You can read it electronically in a PDF version or you can also have a print copy if you wish.
I thank the editors Mary Stewart and Lynn Butler-Kisber for including this essay in their journal. Also thank you to the peer-reviewers for their kind comments.

Hope you enjoy it. Feel free to let me know what it stirs.

Here is another view of It from freelance writer and editor Christina Shah:

‘It’ is that window, that urgent bright day which reminds us of the possibilties that call us, if only we’re willing to step out from our four walls. Each page of ‘It’ is a dynamic meditation, a burning juxtaposition, a study in inner tension. ‘It’ is brave– Elza gently takes the reader’s hand, and, with her trademark sense of humour asks the critical questions in a compassionate, high-spirited way. The result is the reigniting of that fundamental spark of wonder that exists within all of us. Elza is both teacher and student in this beautiful epistemological exploration.

Thank you, Christina for taking part in It and being part of It. Thank you for sending this along.

If you live with It you will also find how mischievous It can be. Next thing I know, It is in the lavender between the two little pine trees we have been growing from seed. My son brought them home from kindergarten. He will be going into grade six this September. Another way to measure time. A way to slow down time. A way to forget to measure. And the book of It has already befriended these two survivors and is not coming in, even as it begins to rain.

What do you wish for today?

Here is a quote for the day that came in with the Southeast Review Writer’s Regimen. I signed up for the month of June. You get a prompt everyday to writer to and a bunch of other things like interviews, podcasts, riff words, quotes. So there is lots to pick from to be inspired.
I thought I would do a lot more. But it has been another crazy, head-spinning, busy kind of month.

So don’t ask. This is day 29 and I have only managed a few pieces. But I get a cool quote each day with it. And I know a friend of mine who is doing a much better job with the writing part, so that makes it worthwhile. (Oh, and I still have two more days to make up for it.)

“A really great piece of fiction for me may or may not take me away and make me forget that I’m sitting in a chair. There’s real commercial stuff can do that, and a riveting plot can do that, but it doesn’t make me feel less lonely.

There’s a kind of Ah-ha! Somebody at least for a moment feels about something or sees something the way that I do. It doesn’t happen all the time. It’s these brief flashes or flames, but I get that sometimes. I feel unalone — intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. I feel human and unalone and that I’m in a deep, significant conversation with another consciousness in fiction and poetry in a way that I don’t with other art.”

—by David Foster Wallace

Love the intro to the interview, Mike: Welcome back to Q&A, my ongoing series of interviews with authors I like, special Conflict of Interest Edition. I admit I rarely will bother to write about someone I do not like. There is plenty of that already. (But I also do not get paid to write commentary or reviews, nor for most of my writing.)

I am always curious how a poet thinks about poetry, what fuels their passion and commitment to it. What I like to find is a match between what the poems do and say, and the philosophy of the poet. (No, not explaining their poems. I mean the roots that nourish and grow their poetry).
Which is the case with Rob. I find his honest and open approach does service to poetry. So does his dedication to his work. I enjoyed his book and count on seeing and hearing a lot more of Rob in the years to come.
Here is an excerpt from the end of the interview:

Perhaps more helpful here would be my thoughts on the ideal poem. For me, the ideal poem gives pleasure immediately on first reading. What that specific pleasure is is not overly significant; what matters is that there is pleasure first. As Robert Frost said, “A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom,” to which W.S. Merwin added “And it will never end in wisdom if it doesn’t begin in delight and continue in delight.” Both ring true to me.

The second requirement is that the pleasure produces a curiosity, and a desire to re-read the poem. On subsequent readings, the poem then needs to prove layered and nuanced enough to consistently release new bits of pleasure and induce new bouts of curiosity, every reading encouraging another, accruing pleasure along the way. To make a poem that lasts like that indefinitely is probably impossible, but there are certainly some poems that are still alive for me after dozens of readings.

Thanks, Rob.

Jude inhabits her work well. It is offered in a voice that captures and invites you to listen. There is no exhaustion in these poems, despite the material they deal with.

“How does the dangerous night
accumulate in the mouth?”

(p. 11)

Struggling with bipolar illness will give you an extra doze of exhaustion from and with life.
Yet these poems are lean, pared down to their essentials.

“to this bed
I am silenced

by my reflection
in the many-eyed mirror”

(p. 13)

It is not easy to hold my attention for the duration of a 20 minute reading. I tend to drift and get distracted if the reader is not there, if the words do not turn into a speckless window I can see through. My attention was held, I laughed and listened to the end.

Jude writes about bipolar disorder, drug haze, family ties with humour and grace. In the same breath that she makes you laugh, she holds your head to the edge of this despair and grief that “pools under the tongue.” Jude’s struggle is not tucked away in the closet. It is out, it troubles.

“Chunks of me
break off. Don’t leave

me on the edge
of this knife—

I am not sure whose blood
I’ll draw.”

(p. 55)

I managed to read the book in one sitting (which was another surprise for me). I read half of it in one direction. The other half—back to front. Of course, with a few breaks in between to exhale deeply.

Jude relates that at first she documented her experience in journals. She wrote about what she was going through at the time. The poems came later out of that writing. Through stripping down to essences.

“Though it has been years,
I remember the first time we kissed.
You came like a breath
under water.
I stitched you to me
with the green threads
of my primal need.”

(p. 50)

The forward to the book is by Phillip W. Long, MD, DPH FRCP, Jude’s psychiatrist of seventeen years. He says: “Jude continued to write throughout her illness, giving a unique glimpse into the mind of a poet navigating the heights of mania and the depths of depression.”

The book is also a celebration and a testimony to overcoming. Amidst the marks and scars, is the strength of the human spirit to find humour, irony, and beauty in it all. Humour—that sure sign that some kind of healing has happened. To understand your predicament and still be able to sing about it.

“We sing ourselves back
and become once again whole.”

(p. 43)

These are poems you want to hear read aloud.
Under the music that runs like a river, there is a grief that pulls you through the eye of a needle.
Stretches you so thin that you do not know where to begin. Through this eye look at the map of this northern landscape. (No, seriously, do click here and look at the google map of understories. I love what Al has done.) These poems are destinations. Destinations with people. Portraits ripple to the surface of water, and when the water stills, ever so briefly, you catch a glimpse of the neighbours, of Berenice, the logger, or the old drunk at the end of the return line of shopping carts trying to tease 25 cents out of it (in Blessed).

Then there are “the mountains folded into the shadows” and the forest and the glaciers and the river which “wears the spectre of wet limbs”. “Go down the the river and swallow it whole” (Go Down to the River) Get it down, urges Al. Swallow this tangle of human and natural landscape because we cannot tell where one ends and where the other begins. This constant tug-of-war. And there is no telling. How can we? Gulp this river down, the whole mess of it. And find beauty there. Make it yours.

Arthur Joyce rightfully says, “Rempel proves that it’s the poet, not the environmentalist, who makes us ache to preserve the natural beauty of the world.” (see his review of 4poets (Mother Tongue Publishing, 2009))

And of course there are the crows: “even Mr. Crow frustrated that his knowledge of tools/isn’t getting things fixed?”
Of course, I would notice the crows.

“Then nothing, but the slow breathing/that is the forest and everything in it.”
Sit here, in “the slant of light in the trees/and the time it spells.” Let it wash over you.
Lie down with this sorrow that runs just under the surface of things.
Let it wash you clean.