On Thursday I got caught up on my journal.
I had a can of
tuna with some salsa and potato chips for lunch.
In the afternoon I
started printing poems for the Poetry Master class. We had been instructed in
the syllabus to provide fifteen copies of two poems. Since one of my poems was
2 pages long that meant printing 45 pages on 30 sheets of paper. That’s more
printing than I’ve done in years. From the third class on we will be in groups
of five we’ll have to bring 6 copies of three poems and so we will only have to
provide 18 pages for each class.
Before leaving I
changed the batteries on my back flasher. I’d never done it before on this one
that Nick Cushing had given me a year ago. I’d expected this one to be as hard
to change as the others that I’ve had, which I’d often have to pry open with a
screwdriver and sometimes partially crack the plastic. But this one was quite
easy.
It was a fairly
cold ride downtown and on top of that people were passing me a lot. I made sure
that my tires are firm so that can’t be the problem. Something has to be wrong
with either my bike or me.
My class is in
Northrop Frye Hall, which is the last address on Queen’s Park Crescent East
where it finishes being split by the park and becomes just Queen’s Park.
When I found my
classroom on the second floor it was full of people. At first I thought they
were there for creative writing as well but it turned out they were all
leaving. I went looking for the washroom. I found a women’s washroom but the
only other washroom was an all gender accessible washroom. I don’t know how to
lock the door in those washrooms because I can’t tell the difference between
the lock button and the assistance alarm.
I sat in the
classroom and did some writing. After a while I began to worry that there was
some mistake because no one was there. Usually on the first day of a course
people come early.
At about ten
minutes to eighteen o'clock an attractive woman named Sanna arrived. Although
class is listed as going from 18:00 to 20:00, U of T classes don’t actually
start until ten after the hour, so by that time almost everybody was there.
There were supposed to be fourteen students in the course but it seems that
Albert Moritz enrolled one more at the last minute. There are twelve women and
three men.
When Albert
started the class he apologized for interrupting people’s conversations. He
said that the main means of education is talking to each other and that he’s
probably just getting in the way.
He explained some
of the requirements of the course and said that he wants students to forego
saving the trees and to provide one-sided copies so that there is room to write
on the other side. He commented that if only poets were killing the trees then
the trees would be doing just fine.
He said that we
should confine corrections of other people’s spelling to our written comments
and use our spoken comments for broader issues, unless the punctuation is vital
to the poem, or if someone is being idiosyncratic in their use of punctuation,
in which case one can point out if someone’s punctuation is not consistently
wrong.
On whether or not
to only write when inspired he said that making oneself write doesn’t hurt but
it is artificial.
He said that it’s
always good to bring fresh poetry but we can also bring older poems that need
work.
I brought up
something Albert had written in the syllabus about a goal being for the poet to
begin to write concertedly. I asked him why that was important. He answered,
“Maybe it isn’t.” I wondered if he was talking about one developing a style. He
answered that a Modernist would call it a style while a Romanticist would call
it a vision but at times they come so close that they merge.
He told us that
thinking about the professional side of poetry is often a source of anxiety and
horror. Should I send my stuff out? Will it be accepted? Would it matter? Would
anyone read it anyway? He referred to “warring lunch tables in the cafeteria of
the poetry high school”. He suggested that we should become aware of the poetry
prizes and of who has been nominated. He added that we should also note who
hasn’t been nominated.
He passed out a
pile of poetry magazines for us to take with us. I got Vallum: Contemporary
Poetry, which must be from two or three years ago because it has an interview
with George Elliot Clarke just after becoming our Parliamentary Poet Laureate.
Albert read a poem
called “poetry Reading” by Anna Swir – “ … The telephone rings. I have to give
/ a poetry reading … a hundred people … I am supposed to tell them / why they
were born …”
Albert asked me to
read my poem first but just as I was about to start, Matthew wanted to use the
washroom. Albert decided to wait till he got back so there would be no
interruptions. I read “The Street Sucks the Sandman’s Bag” –
My eyes
are pans that sift the river of the street
for
anything that shines.
Everything
passes through me,
I’m a fixture in the plumbing
I filter
everybody’s emotional trash,
I’m the
bend in the pipe
that the
shit has to pass,
and
though I do find gold
you know
it aint the kind
that
makes me worth a lick of a woman’s time.
I make a
smash with this uptight-rope circus act
I do upon
this bench.
I’m an ambidextrous lighthouse
warning
every side at once
to
maintain a safe distance.
cause
they would scrape like a rasp upside of my mind
like the
curious stares
of many
passers-by
that like
the leaves of fall
that
scratch along the road
will only
serve to satisfy a dying itch.
I’m in
the cold because it serves much more comfort
than
lonely heated rooms.
It’s just
where my life escapes me,
Do I even
have a choice
of get
away cars or routes?
Do I make
things happen from this pivotal place
or just
weakly mimic
some kind of female strengths?
It seems
mostly women
can make
events happen
even when
they’re sitting in one place alone.
Now a guy
that I’ve seen but I hardly know,
invades
my Space here at my sidewalk home
& the
storm of his conversation
keeps
droning
on and on
and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.
and when
anyone sits with me on this bench,
my static
journey begins to tailspin
and the
tumour of their presence
starts to
drain upon my life again.
He makes
me less handsome
by
association and
my aim is
deflected by his invasion
of the
shooting gallery where I perfect my endless, endless, endless, endless stare.
This
talking man’s become a blemish
on the
face of my spaceman vanity.
I know
that he’s schizophrenic,
yet those
psychiatric drugs
just seem
to plug his sanity.
and then
Victoria responds
to my
psychic mayday,
just to
leave me on a lonely limb until payday.
She saved
me from this guy
but I
should’ve realized
she won’t
do anything for free.
I’m convicted
of shyness
when my
clumsy heart gets tangled up inside my mind,
but maybe
that restriction
is what
holds me back from serving any institution time.
The
projector light of sunset
shoots a
golden beam
above my
aisle-way seat,
while
theme music of evening
begins
slowly moving in upon the gentle sunset breeze.
I pour
time into space
as I wait
in the street
for just
one kind word
or else
anything sweet
to fall
from a woman’s mouth
so I can
swing on home upon its memory.
After hearing my poem Albert decided
to change the format for our second class. The plan had been for each of us to
hand out a second poem and then write comments in response to share next week.
Now he said that people should comment on my first poem and everyone else’s
first poems instead. The second poems that we brought could be saved for when
we split into small groups.
Jenny read a prose poem about
finding a dying bird and there were a couple of nice uses of “weight” and other
words that mean “weight”. She talked of wanting to move its weight inside her
body sounded like she wanted to deal with its dying by giving birth to it.
Alyson had a poem dealing with her contempt
for religion with a couple of nice ironic phrases. The kind that often end up
as band names.
Lara had a poem that was about a
Mediterranean holiday that sounded like it might have been also a university
field study program. She used small stanzas with very short lines and this
created a sense of claustrophobia and simplicity at the same time. In
describing the crashing of waves she came up with a phrase that had a wet
musicality.
Emily had a poem about healing and
comparing scars to stones dropped to find your way back through your life.
Arin had a poem about
disconnectedness that comes together in the end.
Sanna’s poem had a visual element.
The title was the first line but still separated and other words were distanced
from one another, though when she read it aloud there was no distance. I think
if she’s going to put space on paper then there should be space in the sound.
There was a nice reference to throats and to swallows and how throats swallow
but that both throats and swallows sing.
Nicole read a poem comparing willow
roots to one’s own roots.
Neither Matthew nor Andrew, the only
two other guys in the class, had paper copies of poems but they had them on
their phone and so Albert said we would take a ten minute break while they
emailed the poems to him and he went to his office next door to print copies.
I’m sure it was only a coincidence that only men were unprepared.
Albert said nice things after each
person’s poems.
I passed the time by doing some
stream of consciousness writing:
When we
are together we know we are lost
because
we don’t know each other any more
than
ourselves and so we die by the way
we talk,
we chatter, but the chatter is not
supposed
to mean anything all together
We don’t
blame ourselves until we find
our
missing loss and then it is too late
to
communicate.
We don’t
fly with our wings but we flap a lot
We are
sore until we know we are heels
The word
reflects until it dulls like a bull-bell
a
well-wall, a wind-war, askew or not an aptitude appetite
A lot of these people are fourth
year students and I think some are master’s students.
Other than visiting the library, this
is my first time at Victoria College.
Everyone was engaged in conversation
except for Alyson and I, who were both writing at opposite corners of the room.
The break was a little over fifteen
minutes. Albert came back with a bottle of Smart Water.
Matthew read a piece that had a lot
of rap elements but with some fun rhymes. He wrote about enjoying getting drunk
and picking up girls but there was a sad undercurrent referring to his
childhood that it seemed could have been conveyed better by changing the style
in the middle.
Julia had a silly poem about the
meaning of life perhaps to convey the uselessness of trying to find a meaning.
Margaryta read a poem about fruit
juice and god and said that those who believe in vitamins tend to believe also
in god the father.
Blythe had a poem about being
ignored by someone while with them. The best line was asking if there was a
blackhole behind her.
Albert commented that Blythe’s name
is not that common anymore but that there was a beautiful actress named Blythe
Danner. Blythe knew that Blythe Danner is Gwynith Paltrow’s mother.
Ashley’s poem, which conveyed the
discomfort and sense of imprisonment of a gynaecological exam testing for a
serious problem, was quite successful. The first verse had a lot of active
verbs and the second dealt with oppressive sensual experiences.
Vivian read a very good poem that
was a list of the things she loves.
The last of the group to read was
Andrew, whose poem seemed grandiose with references to infinity and eternity.
Albert commented that the public
poems that had been read were very rich and he exampled Matthew’s poem as
having been effervescent and rude.
Albert read “Contraband” by 60s Beat
writer Denise Levertov – “The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason … God
had probably planned to tell us later … It’s toxic in large quantities; fumes
swirled in our heads to form … a wall between us and god … reason … locked us
into its own limits, a polished cell reflecting our own faces. God lives on the
other side of that mirror …”
Albert paired it with a poem from
1810 by Ch’ang Yu called “A Ringing Bell” – “I lie in my bed listening to the
monastery bell … the first tones are still reverberating … I cannot tell when
they fade … Who can tell when we escape from life and death?”
Talking about the intangibility of
our own perceptions, Albert suggested we read “Long Poem to Allen Ginsberg” but
I didn’t write the author’s name because I thought the title would be easy to
find but it isn’t.
Albert says that a poem called “Oceans”
by Juan Ramon Jimenez is about the same thing as the above poems – “I have a
feeling that my ship has struck … against something great. And nothing happens
… Or has everything happened and are we standing in the new life?”
By the same author - “I stripped
away petals in order to see your soul and I did not see it …”
Albert said that every poem that
we’d read could be published, but perhaps some refinement would be needed.
I asked id the required reading book
list is really required and Albert said that it’s just suggested. He thinks
it’s a good idea to know contemporary Canadian poetry, so that’s why he
recommends The Best Canadian Poetry, The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry and A
Book of Luminous Things. I did manage to find a download of A Book of Luminous
Things.
Albert mentioned Louise Glick, the
editor of The Best American Poetry, wrote an essay on teaching.
I chatted a bit with Albert before
leaving. One of the students said she just started taking a course called
Digital Humanities with Albert's wife Theresa, who was my professor for my year
of Academic Bridging in 2008.
As I tried to cross Queen’s Park to
go south I got disoriented in the dark and wound up going north to Bloor, so I
just headed west from there. On the way home my bike was very slow. I’d planned
on stopping at Freshco on the way home but it was so cold that I decided I
didn’t need anything badly enough to stop and take my gloves off.
When I got home I gave my bike a
quick look and discovered there’s a severe wobble in the back tire, perhaps
because of a worn out axle. That was why it’s been going so slowly. That meant
that part of next Saturday would have to be spent at Bike Pirates.
It was already 21:00 when I got home
so I just mixed half a can of chickpeas with salsa and had that with potato
chips for dinner while watching two episodes of the Big Bang Theory.
In the first story Penny makes all
the boys jealous because she’s going to meet Bill Gates. He might work with the
pharmaceutical company that employs her and so she's going to show him around.
Sheldon thinks it’s an April Fools joke because Penny’s meeting Gates on April
1. Penny lets slip the name of the hotel where gates is staying and so Leonard,
Howard and Raj hang out in the lobby until they see him. Leonard approaches
Gates and begins to cry and then he drools on Gates’s tie. Later Penny invites
Leonard to a luncheon that Gates would be attending but Leonard is too
embarrassed to g and so he pretends to be sick. Penny video chats Leonard from
the party to introduce him to gates but gates recognizes him and Leonard closes
his laptop. Meanwhile the boys decide to really April Fool Sheldon and they
keep sending him to the wrong hotel in far parts of town to meet Gates.
In the second story there is a food truck
outside of the apartment building that sells delicious pastrami sandwiches.
Sheldon loves the smell that wafts up to the apartment but he finds it so
distracting to his work that as president of the tenants’ association he makes
the truck go away. It turns out that Sheldon is the only member of the tenants’
association and so he elected himself president. An angry Leonard decides to run against Sheldon for president and
wins but Leonard realizes he’s made a big mistake because now Leonard will bear
the brunt of every one of Sheldon’s complaints.
Meanwhile Howard and Raj have found
a crashed drone. Howard fixes it and they check the video card to find out whom
it belongs to. It turns out that the owner is a very attractive young woman and
they see that she is wearing a pin from Stewart’s comic shop. Stewart
recognizes her and gives Raj her address. She is grateful to get her drone back
and gives Raj her phone number. But then when she looks at the video footage of
Howard and Raj flying the drone she hears Raj talk about how on his first date
with the beautiful owner he won’t even be wearing underwear so he can be ready
to have sex with her. She slams her laptop down in disgust.
No comments:
Post a Comment