A. F. Moritz: The New Poet Laureate of Toronto

            On Thursday I got a message on Facebook from my Poetry Master Class professor Albert Moritz, with whom I’ve been friends for a long time. The message was a link to the news that he has just been appointed Toronto’s new poet laureate. It couldn’t happen to a nicer and more talented guy.

            I worked for a lot of the early part of the day on getting caught up on my journal. In the late afternoon though I had to put that aside to prepare for my creative writing class, as I still hadn’t read and critiqued the poems of the other members of my group.

            Vivian’s poems continue to be over-worded.
            Blythe’s poems are so short that it’s hard to critique them because when a poem has less moving parts there is less that can break.

            Margaryta’s poems are still well written but hard to decipher, even by her.

            I had planned on completing a new poem based on a conversation I had with a Nazi online but there was no time. Since I hadn’t submitted any of my very short poems I decided that I would make a page consisting of two tanka, one haiku and a short western poem and present it as having the weight of one poem. I printed five copies of that plus five copies of “Unwashed Memory” and another five of “Waves”. I had to leave quite a bit later than usual but got to class right on time. I shook Albert’s hand and congratulated him for his appointment as poet laureate, but told him, “But I’m still poet laureate of Parkdale!” He laughed and said he would check Parkdale off his list. Someone asked what he plans to do as poet laureate. He says that one idea he has is based on the fact that there are two hundred languages spoken in Toronto. He would like to find poems in as many of Toronto’s languages as he can and post them with an English translation as well as perhaps a poem from the tradition of that language’s homeland.

            Our group had its first session in the third room down the hall. It’s another classroom with that annoying conference seating that I have to break up every Monday and Wednesday.

            The young women in my group don’t like to bother reading poems before they are critiqued because they think it takes too much time. But we ended up sitting around for half an hour at the end and just chatting, so there would have been plenty of time.

            Of my poem “Memo to the Heart of Insecurity”:

I guess I put too much faith in my own perspective

I guess I should have helped with this tower of babble you erected

because it’s blown to bits

like an exploded box of Post Alphabets

and I stand here surveying the strewn debris

and marvel how you spelled “love”

so many ways

each one so emptily

I can hear you there in surgery pruning the stems of your dreams

while in this lounge I wait with my reality bursting at the seams

It’s twisting its branches

advancing like an army of crippled dancers

braiding and choking so wildly unabated

I sit here aswim in my mangled charm

both silent

and contented

Now emerging from the surgeon’s I can see you hold the scalpel knife

and your pierced and hammered armour was cut and dented from inside

You’re both holding your ground

and retreating in a tail chasing turn around

while sequestered inside of

your high transparent fortress

is a slowly imploding battlefield

and several

bleeding soldiers

And all your will is spent in maintaining that sanctuary

and to fortify its walls against the onslaught of my staring

But what can I do

against the magnetic pull of your solitude?

When confronted by a face

of such wounded defiant splendour

I cock my gun

I shout out “Charge!”

I run to you

and I surrender

            Both Blythe and Margaryta liked the lines: “and marvel how you spelled “love” /

so many ways / each one so emptily”.

            Blythe thought, “in surgery pruning the stems of your dreams” is an unclear metaphor.

            Vivian said “bursting at the seams” is an overused phrase.

            Of the line “It’s twisting its branches” Margaryta wondered what “it” was. I thought it was obvious from the line before “while in this lounge I wait with my reality bursting at the seams” that “it” is my reality.

            Of the lines “Now emerging from the surgeon’s I can see you hold the scalpel knife / and your pierced and hammered armour was cut and dented from inside” Blythe still didn’t get the surgery metaphor and how it suddenly changed to a fortress metaphor.

            Vivian thought that the rhyme of:

“You’re both holding your ground

and retreating in a tail chasing turn around” was too contrived.

            Both Vivian and Blythe liked the ending.

            Margaryta said of the whole poem that there is an ambiguity and mystery about it that she likes but that she thinks I could make it a little clearer.

            Of my poem “May Basket”:

Growing up in rural New Brunswick was like being exiled from my dreams in a low security prison for which the warden was boredom. But within its walls of distance, age and frozen progress no one followed me around and I had the sweet freedom of benevolent neglect. Looking back on how I was allowed to wander by myself when very young into the cedar forest seems like I once had the ability to fly. I caught bright sunfish in the quicksand lake behind my friend’s house. I laid on my back on a swaying truckload of hay while watching meteorites fall. I saw the northern lights shimmer icy pink and hum like a transformer in the sky. I remember the snow: how deep the powder when the crust broke beneath my feet. It delighted when fresh but I was impatient for its death every spring. How culturally starved our little low-hilled, wooded humdrum pocket of nowhere seemed. But there were little traditions that shone through, like the now forgotten ritual in May of parents making baskets out of brightly coloured tissue paper for boys and girls to hang on the doorways of other boys and girls and then to knock, which signalled the receiver to come out and chase down the giver with a kiss. 

            Margaryta commented, “Such a good opening line” but she thought the ending begged to continue and unfold the story more. Blythe disagreed and thought it was a very good ending.

            Vivian really liked “I laid on my back on a swaying truckload of hay while watching meteorites fall. I saw the northern lights shimmer icy pink and hum like a transformer in the sky.”

            Of my poem “Dancing Signature”:

I thought my daughter was my son

until she turned twenty-one

and she told me

"So I'm a woman.
Any questions?"

I said “That’s quite a surprise

and I support you like always

but tell me

for just how long have

you known your gender?”

“Since I was five years old

but before two years ago

I thought that it

was impossible

so I surrendered”

We don’t judge our children’s gender when they’re in the womb

So why would it make a difference when they’re in the room?

We often change our names

to suit our changing selves

What business is our gender name to anyone else?

Gender forms the intimate skeleton of who one is

Every gender is as unique as a fingerprint

With seven billion genders

decorating this world

there’s no one else with your exact blend of boy and girl

It’s not our job to tell our children who they should be

but help them find a place to nurture their identity

Who gets to name their gender?

Who gets to say who they are?

It’s just them that have been there

It’s their dancing signature

We talked of what she would do next

She was moving to Quebec

and I told her

“Well, I’ve lost a son

and gained a daughter”

            Vivian wrote in general “Yay!” but she wondered what “exact blend of boy and girl” means. I told her that I think that gender is a swirl of various blends throughout one’s being that in each person is as unique as a fingerprint. I said, “In some ways I might be more feminine than you are.”

            Margaryta thought the last stanza seemed negative but I told her that’s exactly what I said when my daughter came out to me and she told me it was a good attitude to have.

Margaryta wondered if the term “dancing signature” is an actual term. I told her that it’s my own invention.

I chatted with Albert for a while after everyone else had left. He asked if I was enjoying the course. I told him I was but the younger students don’t get some of my references. I told him how they didn’t know that a “fin” is a five-dollar bill even though I’d been so clever with the double meaning. He said that another woman had once used “a honey” in a poem but the younger students didn’t get that a honey is a lover. I told him that I submitted a short poem for next week that they probably also won’t get: “It would be a gas / if you would do me a solid / and buy me a liquid”. He agreed that they might not get “do me a solid” but he thinks “a gas” is universally understood. We’ll see.
            I congratulated him again for his appointment to poet laureate but he added, “except for Parkdale”. I told him he could have close diplomatic relations with Parkdale. He said, “I’d like that!”

It was such a cold ride home that I was reluctant to stop at Freshco, but I needed some potato chips because I hadn’t had time to boil a potato before leaving for class. The grapes everywhere are in bad shape these days but I got a bag of the firmest black grapes I could find. I also got two half pints of blueberries, a pint of strawberries and some orange juice.

I heated a small chicken leg and some gravy and had them with a bowl of potato chips while watching a recent episode of The Big Bang Theory.

Spoiler alert!

The story begins with Will Wheaton doing his Professor Proton show with Sheldon and Amy as his guests to explain to children their potentially Nobel Prize winning physics theory. It just got more and more complicated. Another guest arrives and it’s William Shatner. Sheldon gets so excited he throws up all over him. Later they learn that Will has a weekly Dungeons and Dragons game at his house and Shatner, Karim Abdul Jabar, Kevin Smith and Joe Manganiello are regular guests. Shatner has to put a dollar in a jar every time he makes a Star Trek reference. Leonard is invited to be part of the game but he has to keep it a secret. He is so excited that he tells Penny and she tells the girls because they all love Joe Manganiello from his role as a sexy stripper in the film “Magic Mike”. The girls want in on the game but when Will finds out that Leonard blabbed he bumps him from the game. He lets the girls come though. Shatner tells Penny, “I like your moxy!” She says, “Awww! And I like your grampaw words!” The girls promise to keep the game a secret but Will decides to teach the boys a lesson and takes a selfie of all of the guests at the game to send to the boys.