— One of the most useful things I’ve read lately comes once again from the book Faith, Hope and Carnage , a conversation between Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan. Cave speaks about the loss of his son, as a condition that infuses everything. He hopes that in the records he has made, that there is “an audacity in the face of things, a kind of reckless refusal to submit to the condition of the world.” It…
— I’ve been thinking about the dead a lot lately. Trying to count them up, in a way. You get older and you have more of the dead around you than the living most days. You know them better and you keep knowing them, the dead, even though they don’t know you back. Sometimes I forget who’s gone, and my writer friends, I talk to them in their books where they live on. — Last week I talked about…
— I’m not a major film buff or anything like that, but who doesn’t enjoy a good classic film? You might remember how I love the film Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders and how that led me to Perfect Days , which I also love. And because the universe is generous sometimes, I was led from these films to being asked to look at Young Ali . ( Trailer ). Anyway, we recently watched A Special Day, 1977 ,…
— This past week reading Franz Wright’s Axe in Blossom , his last poems and fragments. A fragment: “I hear the axe is in bloom once more.” Which will remind you of Kafka: “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we…
— I’m just going to carry on here in this sort of unconnected notes form. The times seem to call for it or at least my attention span does. — I read a poem lately that went straight to my heart: Poetry Itself Is a Kind of Sunlight by Yanyi Believe me, poetry itself is a kind of sunlight No substance has been found anywhere in the cosmos That can break the wings of poetry. Here’s a chance at last…
— On repeated play this week, Lana Del Rey’s version of Don’t Let me Be Misunderstood . (Compare to Nina Simone, 1964 ). Not sure why this song is hitting me so hard, but I'm a LDR fan so maybe that’s enough of a reason. We’re all just souls whose intentions are good. We’re trying our best at a weird and difficult time. — We watched Peter Hujar’s Day last night. I loved the bloody whole slow thing…
— I remind myself that one needn’t pay too much attention to things like the existence of Meta Glasses , but at the same time, as someone who has been reading about the male gaze, reading John Berger, Sontag, WJT Mitchell, Barthes, you name it, forever, I can’t not think about this moment. Very little, by which I mean nothing, to redeem this invention, but there will be a lot of fodder for anyone…
— Listen, I wonder, whose silence are you? O, o, o, o. — Let’s begin with a poem by Thomas Merton: In Silence Be still. Listen to the stones of the wall. Be silent, they try to speak your name. Listen to the living walls. Who are you? Who are you? Whose silence are you? Who (be quiet) are you (as these stones are quiet). Do not think of what you are still less of what you may one day be. Rather be…
— I had this memory of taking photos of a murmuration in Rome. I know we witnessed a couple of them, but I also thought I had a photo or two of the birds in a twilight sky. Can’t find any. Spent an embarrassing amount of time looking. And then, as well, I wanted to look up an Auden poem, and couldn’t find the book on my shelves for hours. I had imagined it as larger, the spine a different colour.…
— One of those books I own and will never let go of is Mickey Rourke and the Bluebird of Happiness: A Poet’s Notebooks by W.S. Di Piero. In some ways, it doesn’t look like much, it’s a slim volume, but some of the thoughts it holds have changed me, helped me, opened me up. The style of writing, the form, these too have been useful. — I’ve quoted from it before at length, but today this: “ The…
This one goes out to all the Li-Young Lee fans out there. If you’re not one, you should look into that ;) Here is a previous post I wrote titled The Hum of the Universe where I quote him, if you’d like to start there. And it’s the time of year you might like reading “ From Blossoms .” This week the thing that I read which kept me Alive (as opposed to just living) was the transcript of an interview…
All week I’ve had a book with a broken spine cracked open in my study. (Which could be how it came apart in the first place). It’s a well-loved book, as so many of mine are, and becoming more beloved all the time. This is Another Beauty by Adam Zagajewski. I’ve been doodling in the mornings, with and without words. What can I say, it’s the therapy I can afford and there are worse methods to get…
Okay friends, I think it needs to be stated that none of the photos on my wee blog are AI, none of the words are either. When I quote something, I’m usually typing it out while eyeballing it in a paper book. And I’ve usually underlined it and dogeared the page it’s on. So that’s where we’re at. It’s fine. We’re making it happen amiright? Firstly, dig Heraclitus: “Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen…
— I don’t think my desk or study has been messier. I keep meaning to tidy it up, make a plan, figure out what to do with the accumulation of books. And I will but I wonder if subconsciously the books that are piling up are an encouragement, a comfort. There are all these amazing books still being written that I am excited to read. I feel like I need to read them! So the books are shoring me up a…
— I missed last week here, and in the mode of Julia Childe, I won’t apologize. Being Canadian though, it’s hard not to say sorry :) — Article I’m reading this Sunday morning before dashing around to get ready for work, is “To Share is Your Duty” by Hermion Lee at New York Book Review . (I signed in for the one time free read). — Virginia Woolf on Montaigne from the above: “He wishes only to…
Several years ago in Rome, I took a photograph of a piece by Joseph Kosuth, titled, The Gift . In other places it’s titled Ex-Libris (Wittgenstein’s Gift) . As someone who has been reading, thinking about, writing about, (in my book Calm Things for example) returning to The Gift by Lewis Hyde almost my entire life or so it feels these days (well since my undergrad days) my eye was immediately…
— Let’s start this little ramble off with some notes and quotes on photography. (The photo in the header and the one below were both taken in this month of April in my city, Edmonton). — One of my new favourite books is Sofia Samatar’s Opacity . She talks about the writer Mieko Kanai, “who wrote about an impossible photograph, a photograph-as-collection that could contain “all the fascination that…
Last year, about this time, I was reading Jason Guriel’s On Browsing and so when I was recently in Audreys Books I saw On Book Banning by Ira Wells from the same Biblioaisis series, Field Notes and immediately picked it up. Couldn’t have come at a better time. You might have heard about my province’s desire to ban books in public libraries ? Happily the Coalition of Alberta Public Libraries is…
No better place to go for thoughts about hope than to Rebecca Solnit . Her latest, The Beginning Comes After the End , is going to be indispensable to keeping our heads, I think. In it she quotes Anand Giridharadas: “I see then that this is both a very dark time and, potentially, a very bright time. It’s important to hold these truths together. When I look down at the ground of the present right…
I cannot tell you how taken I am by Theresa Kishkan ’s The Art of Looking Back . I have read an advanced galley, but you can pre-order online or at your favourite indie. Honest, vulnerable, insightful, poetic, authentic, meditative, are all words popping into my head as I prepare to win you over to this book. It’s also uncomfortable in parts as it asks questions in a consideration of a life…