Disabused Realism

            I woke up Tuesday with an even worse sore throat than on Monday but it didn't impair my singing either.
            I had to work from noon to 18:00 at OCADU to finish up the two poses that I'd started the week before. Kieran let me finish a little early for both classes because he needed to talk to his students about their upcoming gallery show.
            During my breaks I got caught up on my journal and I made a comparison of Thomas de Quincey's praise of opium and Lou Reed's Heroin. It was just for my own interest.
            I was feeling dozy during the second class and during the long break I managed to sleep for five minutes. It wasn't enough but it helped a bit.
            I was told in the last half hour of my pose that I had my feet reversed from where they'd been last week. I wondered why they hadn't told me at the beginning. I guess they're experimenting with colour more than doing precise rendering.
            On my way home going west along Queen the sun was directly in my eyes but the most blinding thing was the strip of melted snow off of which I was glinting. I had to ride directly on top of this dazzling mirrored pathway all the way to Gladstone because that's all there was between the cars and what was left of the snow banks. I was actually able to stare into the sun but it’s reflection off the water was stabbing my eyes and I had to look down into the light to manoeuvre and keep myself from running into the snow on my right or rubbing against the cars on my left but it was blinding me.
            As soon as I turned on Gladstone to go to Freshco I was suddenly in the shadows and there were spots before my eyes.
            At the supermarket I bought three half-pints of raspberries, a bag of potatoes and a jug of orange juice.
            I had two small potatoes with gravy for dinner and watched The Rifleman.
            In this story Lucas and his son Mark arrive with supplies to settle into their new home. But two cowboys working for a big rancher named Jackford ride up to tell them they can’t live there because Jackford needs the land for grazing. Lucas refuses to give up his land. The men, Sam and Billy rope Lucas and drag him around. Then they steal his rifle and burn his house down.
            We learn that Lucas’s rifle has a special design for rapid firing because it has a handgrip lever that trips the trigger ever time it's pumped. The design was twelve years ahead of the historical era in which the show was set.
            Mark is dejected and declares that god doesn’t want them to have a home. Lucas tells him a westernized version of the story of Job.
            Mark has a restless night camping out near the ruins of their house while Lucas goes after his rifle. He comes to the campsite of Billy and Sam and takes the rifle back while they’re sleeping. Jackford arrives and fights Lucas for his land but loses. When Jackford finds out his men burned down a man’s house he’s pissed off and makes them rebuild it.
            That night before bed I received an email from my creative writing professor, Albert Moritz with his interim comments on my poetry:
            “The ‘for March 7’ group illustrates the excellence and variety of the work you’ve done during VIC480 and at the same time shows off the power and beauty you achieve. Yes, I'd actually say that 'beauty' is a frequent hallmark of your work, despite its frequent grit, gruffness, and foreground of disabused realism and difficult experience. ‘Memo to the Heart of Insecurity’ is a strong, original example of the ‘dialogue of self and soul' type of poem. The heart here can be the traditional symbolic heart, the biological heart, and even another person, a loved one, who is the ‘heart’ of the speaker’s life despite cantankerousness, remoteness, emotional violence, etc. It's all of these together, especially the first two, although the final one comes forward in the last stanza. The form of this poem is inventive, the rhythms marked and varied, the phrasing pungent and creative while (marvellously) remaining straightforward at the same time. About the only thing I see to ask about it is the mixed metaphor in stanza 3: the armour in stanza two turns into a whole fortress with soldiers at the end of the stanza; these are related but not the same, and the fortress is so good that I'd suggest finding a way to change the armour. As good as this is, 'May Basket' is even better: the freshness of this is highly unusual, something rarely achieved or even attempted. What's best about it is the mingling of the adult critical perspective with the child’s perspective, so that the balanced evaluation of the childhood home blends gratitude and criticism, all in truly beautiful images, rhythms and phrasings. ‘Dancing Signature’ is again a different type of poem altogether, and as good of its kind as the other two: a public poem, a performance poem, engaging a current issue, espousing a current ‘liberal’ attitude on it: a didactic poem, a preachment, as is so much current pop: rap, spoken word, etc. Your version expresses a familiar position, but with new lights and new force, with fresh expression. The drama and wit of the first three stanzas hit hard and could almost be a poem in themselves. The more relaxed following stanzas form the didactic part, and they simply have the succinct eloquence of good public poetry.
            “My favourite poems from the course so far are ‘Memo to the Heart of Insecurity’, ‘May Basket’, ‘Parkdale’, ‘Maroon River’, ‘Clear-Cutting Culture’, ‘Wave in the Air’, and the two haibun. Other poems I'd put in the category of 'almost there', for instance 'Petal and Thorn Collage on Skin', 'Failed Launch to the Rocket of the Day’, ‘The Wives of the Prophets’, ‘This is a Manner of Flight’. And of course, all of these are only in the first version that I saw, the version presented for workshopping.
            You’ve got a unique vision and style. Are you perhaps building up a Parkdale manuscript? Do you know Joe Fiorito’s City Poems? If not, I recommend a look at it. You might find in it a brother, yet in a very different style: more a descendant of W.C. Williams than of Ginsberg.”
            I’ve never had anybody say such fancy things about my unfancy poetry. I especially like “'beauty is a frequent hallmark of your work, despite its frequent grit, gruffness, and foreground of disabused realism". I'm gonna have to get Albert to write the preface to my book if it's ever published.