Punch Like a Poet

2006-12-05T16:43:00.000-08:00

Why not?

Thought I'd swing by and announce to the world (or at least to the tumbleweeds and dust bunnies that inhabit this long-neglected blog) that Fanny's visa interview has been scheduled for January 18th, which means that we'll hopefully be heading for Texas (for good) in early February.

While I'm logged into blogger might as well post some of what I've been working on the past few months. A couple of poems:

WRITER'S BLOCK

He waits for his tongue
to ignite. Above his head
birds turn south again.
The television leaves nothing

unexplained. He distracts himself
with cheap beer, crushes
the empties against his forehead
like a linebacker

proving himself to the moon,
while the pumpjack
across the highway bobs
like a drinking bird,

and when it whistles
the dark, liquid bones
of prehistoric fish
swim up out of the ground.

SEATTLE SONG

Gray morning scowls through airport
windows and in the gaps between
buildings. The rain is never
not falling. Coffee breeds like a warm,
welcome disease. Harbor cranes
are enormous orange horses at the water.
Lichens sprout on wood roofs.
The coughing traffic comes down
with something. Five hundred feet in the air
tourists dine and rotate while the homeless
sleep in every bus depot like maniac
sports fans. A man in a football jersey
going to Alaska and gut fish. The drunk
beside him roadied for Marty Robbins
until the sumbitch stole his woman.
And my Jamaican cab driver hammers
the dashboard with a fist and fulminates
against the police. Even de cops
in Mis'sippi gib me less shit, man,
he says, turning to look me in the eye.
That's outrageous, I tell him.
That and this weather.

2006-06-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

Poem

Hot off the presses. Any bits where it's unclear or incoherent? And I'm still not sure about the ending; can't decide if it's too glowingly sentimental. Your opinions on all these questions are actively solicited.

MESQUITO

Though mesquite meaning the tree and mosquito
meaning the insect with an oil derrick for a nose
come out unrelated in the spelling, at least
in Abilene when we said them they matched,
sanded down to rough equivalence
by dialect: mesquito for the bug, little tree,
like abuelito for little abuelo, dear
grandfather in the Spanish overheard in kitchens
and convenience stores. Mesquito, tiny
buzzing mesquite, cursed and slapped
like the crooked, water-sucking trees that ranchers
swatted off their land with backhoes, a bite
like the three inch thorns I learned to avoid
when climbing the gnarled granddaddy
that hunched and creaked beside our trailer
as if forever climbing out of bed. Mesquito,
drag racing the circuit of the ears, whine
and whisper like wind through feathered leaves
in the highest branches. Mesquito, swarms
at dusk chasing us inside, air full of ruckus
and a softening light that graveled the driveway
with the thin shadows of trees growing
darker, darker, as the lights came on inside.

2006-06-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

Recent books

My apologies to the ten or so of you who stop by here every day. As you probably know I haven't been that interested in the blog lately. Don't worry; I'm not going to do anything rash like deleting it, but posts won't likely become less scarce in the forseeable future.

I do want to take the time to recommend a couple of books. The first is called Organic Housekeeping, by Ellen Sandbeck, and is exactly what the title indicates: how to keep your home clean and sanitary without the use of chemicals. She discusses all the different ways that chemicals and housekeeping practices can make your home toxic and then explains how to do it right. Interestingly enough, whereas going organic with food means spending more, organic housekeeping means spending a good deal less: virtually all cleaning tasks can be taken care of with baking soda, white vinegar, and hydrogen peroxide. And you won't be drenching your house in the known carcinogens that make up most household cleaning products.

One hint: skip the first chapter. It's all about organizing, and isn't nearly as funny, useful, or engaging as the rest of the book.

The other book is The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. We've read a fair bit of his in the last year; I'm working on A Place of My own and Fanny has read both that and Second Nature. Dilemma is on a level of it's own, though. Subtitled "A Natural History of Four Meals," the book is an (successful) effort to figure out exactly what we eat. The first meal is a cheeseburger and fries from McDonald's, which leads to an investigation of corn and the modern food industry (corn, as it turns out, is the main ingredient in the majority of the food we eat). He goes to factory farms, to slaughter-houses, discusses the history and evolution of the corn plant. The second meal comes from Whole Foods, and the related discussion does a good job of robbing Big Organic of much of its luster (although it is still arguably a better and more healthy alternative to the mainstream food industry). He also spends time on a sustainable family farm in Virginia, which gives him his third meal (and a intruiging glimpse into other ways that we might feed ourselves). Finally, he hunts and forages a meal in the forest, which provides a nice end to the book and some interesting reflections on the relationship between culture and food.

This is a book that cannot be read without a serious re-examination of the way one eats. It did not, however, strike me as particularly polemic or slanted--this is simply a journalistic inquiry into what exactly we eat. If the answers to that question are disturbing or offensive--well, all the more reason to ask the question.

(P.S. Michael Pollan is also an extremely readable stylist. Even if I had completely rejected the book's findings I would have enjoyed the reading of it. So go to the library already.)

2006-05-20T14:40:00.000-07:00

Poem

SPAGHETTI WESTERN

No frying tomatoes stain the air with their fragrance.
She's gone. The apartment door swings open.
His backfiring Vespa parked against the curb below.
He learned Italian to make conversation with her mother
and she's gone. Every scrap of furniture too.
He lights a cigarette, imagines her dark haired cousins
carrying everything down the stairs for her, probably
singing some vulgar medieval folk song where a woman
leaves her dumb foreign husband. His dog's dead too,
curled like a closed parenthesis on the living room carpet.
The hot sun bleeds on the rooftops. Water glitters
like a fever in the bay. He throws his cigarette away
into the street. Cobblestones older than the great-grandfather
of the man who founded the town in Kansas where he was born.
Nothing left in the apartment but sunlight. Scattered
newspapers, broken pasta in the bottom of a drawer.
A tinny radio in the bedroom playing punk rock
in a local dialect he can't quite catch. Two weeks later
when he tracks her down in Salerno she'll swear
the dog was alive, howling as she left and he'll believe her.
But now he curses her in both their languages, lights
another cigarette. The DJ introduces musica americana
and plays Hank Williams. So lonesome he could cry.

2006-05-18T15:18:00.000-07:00

Green houses and other diversions

Lately (as in the last two weeks) I've been devouring a series of books on various green/low-energy home construction techniques. This covers a lot of ground--everything from passive solar design to composting toilets to rainwater catchment systems. Fanny and I intend eventually to build our own house, and right now my lack of job or educational responsibilities allows me the freedom to learn as much about this as possible. The ideal home would be a zero-energy house--it provides for its own energy, water, waste disposal, and climate control. Lots of fascinating stuff--probably too geeky and detailed for me to talk much about on this blog, but if anyone is interested in these sorts of things don't hesitate to chat me up next time we talk. The goal is to learn enough through research and workshops to be able to do as much of the actual construction ourselves as possible. And I'll make a standing offer now that when the time comes anyone who shows up to lift straw bales or dig holes will be treated to burgers and beer (Boca and wheatgrass for more enlightened readers).

In other news, we're slogging through the visa process for Fanny. Right now the first stage of the application is off at the Dept. of Homeland Security. We're hoping to have it back in the next couple of weeks so we can submit the second half of the required paperwork.

I've also been turning my poems "Speed" and "Rainboy" into kids' stories, as well as getting the Seamonster story back on track and coordinated with Carrie, who is doing the illustrations. These all seem to be coming along nicely.

Not a whole lot of poetry of late, but lots of other productive activity. And tomorrow I turn 27, which is a good age. Divisible by three and all. If you want to send me something send money to a charity instead. I recommend Canadian Food for the Hungry.

2006-05-05T15:16:00.000-07:00

Dead Man Plug

Roger Jones over at PoBiz has some nice things to say about my chapbook. Dr. Jones was one of my Creative Writing profs at Texas State and the faculty advisor on Persona, the student literary journal I worked on for a couple of years. Most of what I know about the formal craft of writing I picked up in his classes, so it's heartening to get his professorial thumbs up.

2006-05-01T00:20:00.000-07:00

Poem

LAWNMOWER MAN

Halfway through the back yard there's a growl
and kachunk. The whirling grass-wet blade
snarls out the back of the mower like a trained dog
off its chain and chews through his ankles. He crawls
bug eyed with panic through the half-finished manicure
of his lawn. The back porch looms like a sea-cliff.
Cut grass sticks to his face. Even as he swims
his scrabbling hands tell him how the lawn's begun
to grow again. He'll swear he heard it laughing.

(4/30/06)

2006-04-27T20:28:00.000-07:00

Poem

This latest is a sort of adaptation of or reaction to the fable of the blind men and the elephant. You should go read the John Godfrey Saxe poem, the most well known version of the story (at least in the Western English speaking world). I've seen it attributed to Rudyard Kipling as well. At any rate, it's the poem I had in mind while writing mine. I'm interested in whatever critical feedback you have. Any bits with awkward phrasing or where the speaker's identify is unclear? There's more dialogue and characters here than I've worked with before, and it's tricky keeping them all straight without burdening the poem with lots of "he said/he replied."

SIX BLIND MEN AND AN ELEPHANT NAMED GOD

The elephant's asleep in a corner
of the room. Six blind guys walk in
feeling their way along the walls.
One of them picks up a telephone,
says Hey, it's God. On the telephone?
another asks. No, he is the phone,
only he's not a phone. He's God.
Bullshit, says the second guy. He waves
a coat rack and says This is God.
He held me up just now when I tripped
on him and nearly fell. Bless his name.
Relax, a third man says, come sit down.
I found God. He's a sofa set. No
he's not, another says. He's this clock;
he ticks off perfect time. Listen
to the whisper of his miraculous gears.
Where? the other blind men ask.
Over here on the wall. Behind
the elephant. There's an elephant?
How did we miss that? They stumble
over the elephant to hear the clock.
The elephant wakes up, rolls over
on the telephone. It disintegrates
with a crack and helpless jing.
You stupid pachyderm! the first man
screams. You broke God! He kicks
the elephant in the eye. The elephant
dies. You know that wasn't God,
the second man says. The elephant?
No, the phone. God's this coat rack,
remember? I'll show you God,
the first man says. He grabs the coat rack,
cracks open the second's head.
Bright blood spatters the walls, the dead
elephant, the five remaining blind men.
Who did that? asks the third guy.
God did, says the fourth. Praise
the sweep of his calibrated hands.
That wasn't God, says the fifth man.
I found God just now under the coffee table.
No you didn't, replies the sixth.

(4/27/06)

2006-04-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

Rabbits, et al

It's probably rather poor form to break a week's silence with a post about bunny rabbits, but that's precisely what I'm going to do. Perhaps the unbearable cuteness of this post will atone for my last, which doesn't seem to have raised nearly as much riotious laughter as I'd hoped.

The University of Victoria, where I have been taking classes the last two semesters, is overrun with rabbits. Hundreds of them. And not wild, rangy Texas jackrabbits either. These are bunnies. Cute button noses, fluffy fur, heartbreaking watery eyes. Walking to class in the early morning you pass dozens of them littering the lawns and landscaping on campus. They hop around, nibbling on grass. Most of them are so used to students you can walk within feet of them without drawing a reaction. Although the baby rabbits that have appeared in the last couple of weeks are more skittish about strangers.

It's like going to school at Watership Down, although I have trouble imagining these little guys as violent or as vicious as the rabbits in Richard Adams' book.

Speaking of school, this morning I took my last final of the semester, which (if my calculations are correct) should be the last final exam of my undergraduate career, not counting the two correspondence Spanish classes I still need. Huzzah!

And, just for kicks, here's a panoramic shot of downtown Victoria and the Olympic range across the water in Washington, taken a few weeks ago from the top of Christmas Hill near our house.

2006-04-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

Unsettling revelations

This morning I woke early and drove to the local White Spot (sort of Canada's answer to Denny's) to eat a hot breakfast and look over my notes before my Linguistics final at nine. Not long afer I sat down in my booth a middle aged couple came in and slid into the booth adjacent mine. The booths were seperated by the sort of frosted plastic partitions common to diners and restaurants everywhere. These partitions don't actually block much sound, but they do create an atmosphere of privacy.

I could hear the couple talking but didn't initially pay them much attention, as I was busy memorizing the rules for triconsonantal graphemes in classic Egyptian heiroglyphs and other such linguistic arcana. Slowly, though, I became increasingly aware of their conversation:

The man sounds like a standard-issue conservative Canadian gentleman. He speaks with a slight Ontario accent. (Note to Texans: the Ontario accent is what y'all think of as Canadian: "aboot" for "about" and so on.) When I become aware of the conversation he's explaining something about the previous morning to his wife/girlfriend. Seems there had been some kind of unusually passionate encounter. They don't give any details (for which I'm rather grateful--middle aged sex is something I'm perfectly happy to ignore until I myself am middle aged and--hopefully--having sex). The woman refers to being tired afterwards, and feeling giddy and lightheaded, and even says that it had been years since she'd felt...and here she drops her voice so that I can't hear what she hadn't felt for years.

Buddy asks her if she remembers how hard she laughed when she was sitting on the dresser. She says, "Oh yeah. I couldn't stop laughing." He asks her a couple of other questions about what she remembers. How she got such a burst of energy later in the morning? How time seemed stretched? "Oh yeah," she says. "I thought it was already the afternoon but it was only ten in the morning."

At this point I'm starting to get suspicious. I'm also not paying the least bit of attention to Gelb's unilineal theory of the evolution of writing systems.

He drops his voice and whispers to her for a minute. I can't hear what he's telling her, but she it makes her laugh.

Now he says, "I knew we both had the day off, so it seemed a good time to try it."

Try what?

He says, "It usually takes six to eight hours to wear off."

"Oh yeah," she says. "I felt normal again in the afternoon."

"I knew you wouldn't want to go along if I asked you," he tells her. "It only took a little bit in your food."

"That's too funny," she says.

Somewhere in the middle of all this I realize I'm listening to the man in the next booth explain to his woman that he'd slipped her a hallucinogenic drug. Why? So that she'd sleep with him. And what does she do? She laughs.

"I wanted to tell you," he says. "I knew you'd like it. It was a lot of fun, eh?"

"It sure was. That's too funny."

It certainly is.

EPILOGUE: I came home after my test and told Fanny the story. She also laughed, then fixed me with one of her patented Do-Not-Eff-With-French-Canadian-Women gazes.

"Don't you get any ideas, mister."

2006-04-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

Updates, etc.

(1) The Priests are moving back to Texas. We've always planned to do so eventually (say, three to five years down the road), but in the last month have decided instead to move this summer. I won't burden anyone with the blow-by-blow of our rational for the relocation, but the gist is that it makes more financial sense, we'll be able to afford a house much sooner (which isn't ever going to happen in the overheated Victoria real estate market--$300k to even start looking), it'll be easier moving and settling in to a new place now than when we have kids, and (most importantly) we'll be closer to family. My people are all in Texas, and even Fanny's parents in Montreal will be a thousand miles nearer than they are right now. We'll be settling somewhere in central Texas; specifics depend on how the job situation unfolds.

It's been interesting thinking about this, as I've come to realize this is the first time in my life where my location depends on employment and not vice versa. In the past I've always had non-work reasons (school, family) for living in a particular city. Work has depended on where I live. But no more.

(2) Final exams are going on right now. I've got linguistics (History of Writing Systems) tomorrow, and a couple of ethics classes (Survey of and Bioethics) next week. After that the only thing between me and graduation are a couple of Spanish classes, which I hope to finish by correspondence this summer. It's only taken me 8+ years.

(3) Recent reading material includes Kazuo Ishiguro's latest, Never Let Me Go, and Mark Noll's A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada. Ishiguro is best known for his novel Remains of the Day, which was made into a well known movie. Of course, I haven't seen it or read the book--NLMG is the first novel I've read of his. I can't recommend it highly enough. Nor can I say much about it without giving too much away. Think Brideshead Revisited meets Brave New World. It's set in a sort of alternate contemporary England, and in many ways stands as part of a dystopian tradition (Brave New World, 1984, Farenheit 451, etc.) But NLMG is unique in that it focuses on the characters, and especially on Kathy, the narrator. The dystopian elements are an integral part of the story, but are important only because of their effect on these characters. In short, the novel doesn't read like allegory or socio-political tract, a failing of most novels of this genre.

Noll's History of Christainity seems to be a pretty good overview of what the title would indicate. I find myself wishing for more detail in many places, but the book already clocks in at over 500 pages, so I can understand why he's as perfunctory in places as he is. At least his chapters have extensive bibliographies. Have wanted a copy of this since I first read The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.

(4) Received notice from Borderlands a few weeks ago that I've got a poem in their upcoming 25th issue anthology. Some of you might remember that last year they published my poem "Because This Could Be Sunrise." Well, in celebration of their first 25 issues they're printing an anthology comprised of two poems from each issue. "Sunrise" was one of the two from issue #24. So (to quote Mr. Dynamite) that's pretty sweet. They don't have the new anthology up on the website yet, but mailed contributor copies last week, so it should be officially released soon.

2006-04-08T17:39:00.000-07:00

ANIMAL CONTROL

One night the neighbor's dog jumped
the six foot fence he'd built for her
and trotted home the next morning
grinning, smeared with blood
and feathers. Later in the day
the owner of the chickens
came around. After that he hung
an extra three feet of chicken wire
above the fence to keep her in,
so she dug beneath the fence
and terrorized the cows across the road.
He tied her to a tree. She chewed through
the rope. He chained her. She howled,
ran in perfect circles all day,
rubbed her neck to bleeding. He staked her
tight so she couldn't run. She turned sad
and mean, barked through the night,
bit him when he tried to feed her.
So he muzzled her. Still she growled,
a long threat rolling and unrolling
at the bottom of her throat, and when
the men in gray jumpsuits came
and dragged her into their van, straps
winched tight around her legs, she hissed
and flashed her eyes, muscles bunching,
imagining their blood, I guess.

(4/8/06)

2006-04-07T11:29:00.000-07:00

Dust & Light

Victorians should come check this out tonight. I'll be reading (if you missed the reading last week I'll be doing stuff from the book again tonight). If that isn't reason enough to come, there'll be art by a lot of local and regional artists and music by Matthew Davidson. Entrance is by donation. Doors open at 7. More info at the link.

2006-04-03T21:34:00.000-07:00

Book launch recap

Saturday night was the book launch for Dead Man. Thanks to the promotional efforts of James Kingsley and everyone at the Place we had a good turnout. Matt Bingham was there and has this to say about the evening. Much appreciation and general kudos to James, Matt, Randy, Doug, Colin, and of course Fanny. And thanks to everyone who came out and bought a copy. The book will continue to be available for order via the links at the right. There's also a few copies for sale at the Place on Sunday nights (see Dave Booth in the cafe afterwards).

Bald head with pre-reading cafe.

Haha! I'm blocking the exit! You can't escape!

Crap. He's blocking the exit. We can't escape.

High on poetry. No, really.

2006-04-03T20:40:00.000-07:00

A quote

"You hate America, don't you?" she said.
"That would be as silly as loving it," I said.

--Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

2006-04-01T11:08:00.000-08:00

Take that, technology!

Many moons ago in the days of my youth, when my bicycle and I would rove the wind-swept highways and byways of west Texas, there were these things called pocket calculators. I know they're still around, but lo these many years ago they represented, along with the original 64-bit Nintendo system in the living room, the most advanced bit of electronical engineering in my possession. Perhaps you remember these? And perhaps you remember in particular a set of three keys (MRC, M-, M+) that appeared on nearly every such calculator of this era. Those three keys absolutely befuddled me. I knew they somehow caused the calculator to remember a number, and I could generally get the calculator to perform this function. That was it, though. I couldn't for the life of me figure how to make the calculator forget, nor could I make the remembered number useful in an equation. Furthermore, as I didn't know exactly what reactivated said number, I calculated in the fear (well, maybe not fear) that at random and unpredictable moments it would leap out from behind the little black 'M' in the corner of the tiny screen and render my multiplications and divisions inaccurate.

(Not that this would have been a bad thing. Middle school boys use calculators for the same reason they use anything else: to tell dirty jokes. I won't disgust you with specifics, but trust me that it can and has been done.)

Until this morning. I brought out the little blue Texas Instruments calculator to calculate current grades in my classes. In the process I bumped the M+ button. When the little M lit up on the side of the screen I chuckled over my confusion of years past. Then my eyes grew wide. The whole system came to me in a flash, in a Magic Eye Poster moment. MRC stands for Memory Recall. I tried it out. It worked. M- takes the number out of memory, but only when the remembered number is displayed. This worked too. I played around for awhile, remembering numbers and then forgetting them, recalling them to use in equations or working the equations without them while they sat safely in memory. The whole time muttering at the calculator, You little bastard. You knew I'd get you someday. Who's pushing the buttons now?

2006-03-31T20:54:00.000-08:00

Haiku

A last leaf falls
into still water, shakes
reflected mountains.

The first phrase of this one feels a little too much like a haiku, if you know what I mean. But I still like the image. May need to let it sit for awhile.

2006-03-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

Chapbook update

Went down to the printer today to proof the first copy of the chapbook. It looks quite nice. Despite being less than thrilled with the quality of service at Island Blue Printing I'm very happy with the book. If all goes as planned we should have the printed books by the weekend. Everyone cross your fingers...

(p.s. If you want to pre-order a copy and haven't yet you can go to rathersmallpress.blogspot.com and do so.)

2006-03-16T17:21:00.000-08:00

Haiku

These mountains falling
into sky, indistinct and
gray like distant rain.

I'm not entirely sure how to explain my recent interest in haiku. I wrote quite a bit of it after graduating high school but hadn't revisited the form in six or seven years. The best theory going is that I'm cleansing my system after all the drama of editing and revising the chapbook (which we took to the printer today! hooray!). The poems in the book are pretty idea-heavy, after which the simplicity of the haiku form feels like an absolute relief. I know virtually nothing about it beyond the syllable count and some vague notion of the underlying spiritual theory. So I don't know what's good and bad. Beginner's mind, beginner's mind...

2006-03-15T16:21:00.000-08:00

Haiku

My love goes walking,
comes home breathless, full of names
for birds and flowers.

2006-03-13T14:11:00.000-08:00

Haiku

The flowers lasted
weeks past what we thought they would
and died this morning.

2006-03-13T12:00:00.000-08:00

Fun with Google

Following in the footsteps of Matthew over at Theoloblog.

"Daniel Priest"

Daniel Priest is also a documentary film maker in Florida. The only film I uncovered was 24/7. Interestingly enough, I got an email from this DP a few weeks ago after he googled his name and came across me. Funny stuff.

Daniel Priest also did mixing and audio production on Nazareth's Homecoming: Greatest Hits Live in Glasgow. I suspect this is the same DP responsible for the soundtrack to the super short film "The Karmic Wheel of Doo Doo", which you should take five minutes to watch.

Daniel Priest is a doctor in rural Papua New Guinea.

Daniel Priest operated a carding factory in northern Wisconsin during the 1840's.

"Punch Like a Poet"

PLAP is listed on Blogshares and is currently valued at ~$4500. I don't know what this means. But $4500 is always cool.

I'm also linked by these blogs which I haven't yet linked:
clabs.org/blogki
Something Katy

2006-03-13T11:39:00.000-08:00

New Blogs

Fanny, whose Weeds of Contemplation have been overrun by weeds of indifference during the past year (pretty much since I showed up in Canada, actually) has started a new blog, Mockingbird Knits, dedicated to her latest obsession. She's got a couple of posts up already, both of which promise good things to come.

Matthew is initiating a new arts journal in his capacity as Director of Arts and Worship at Saanichton Bible Fellowship. Go submit to Common Saints.

As alluded to in the last post, Rather Small Press is a small chapbook-oriented press that Fanny and I have undertaken to run. Dead Man is the first of hopefully many. No plans yet to actively solicit additional manuscripts. We would, however, be interested and willing to work with poets who already have a strong vision for their book and mature, well developed poems.

2006-03-10T11:18:00.000-08:00

Pre-order Dead Man

My new chapbook Dead Man is available for pre-order over at Rather Small Press, the imprinture under which we're publishing. Expect delivery around the first of April, which also happens to be the date of the launch party here in Victoria at Solstice Cafe. More information is posted over at RSP. Check it out.

Also, as there have been questions, the term "chapbook" just refers to a short book of not much more than 20-25 pages, generally poetry, printed in short runs. I have no idea where the word comes from.

2006-03-07T18:59:00.000-08:00

Jack Gilbert

Roger posted over at Pobiz that Jack Gilbert's collection Refusing Heaven has won the National Critics' Circle Award. While I haven't read it, his earlier collection The Great Fires was a wedding present and has been much enjoyed by Fanny and me for several months now. I'm typing out a few of my favorites here; you can find some more over at Plagiarist. I especially recommend "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart."

1953

All night in the Iowa cafe. Friday night
and the farm boys with their pay.
Fine bodies and clean faces. All of them
proud to be drunk. No meanness,
just energy. At the next table, they talked
cars for hours, friends coming and going,
hollering over. The one with the heavy face
and pale hair kept talking about the Chevy
he had years ago and how it could
take everything in second.
Moaning that he never should have sold it.
Didn't he show old Hank? Bet your ass!
The Fourth of July when Shelvadeen
got too much patriotism and beer
and gave some to everybody
down by the river. Hank so mad because
I left him like he was standing still.
Best car that ever was, and never should have
let it go. Tears falling on his eggs.

A Stubborn Ode

All of it. The sane woman under the bed with the rat
that is licking off the peanut butter she puts on her
front teeth for him. The beggars of Calcutta blinding
their children while somewhere people are rich
and eating with famous friends and having running water
in their fine houses. Michiko is buried in Kamakura.
The tired farmers thresh barley all day under the feet
of donkeys amid the merciless power of the sun.
The beautiful women grow old, our hearts moderate.
All of us wane, knowing things could have been different.
When Gordon was released from the madhouse, he could
not find Hayden to say goodbye. As he left past
Hall Eight, he saw the face in a basement window,
tears running down the cheeks. And I say, nevertheless.

Prospero Dreams of of Arnault Daniel Inventing Love in the Twelfth Century

Let's get hold of one of those deer
that live way up there in the mountains.
Lure it down with flutes, or lasso it
from helicopters, or just take it out
with a .30-30. Anyhow, we get one.
Then we reach up inside its ass and maybe
find us a little gland or something
that might make a hell of a perfume.
It's worth a try. You never know.

Going Wrong

The fish are dreadful. They are brought up
the mountain in the dawn most days, beautiful
and alien and cold from night under the sea,
the grand rooms fading from their flat eyes.
Soft machinery of the dark, the man thinks,
washing them. "What can you know of my machinery!"
demands the Lord. Sure, the man says quietly
and cuts into them, laying back the dozen struts,
getting to the muck of something terrible.
The Lord insists: "You are the one who chooses
to live this way. I build cities where things
are human. I make Tuscany and you go to live
with rock and silence." The man washes away
the blood and arranges the fish on a big plate.
Starts the onions in the hot olive oil and puts
in peppers. "You have lived all year without women."
He takes out everything and puts in the fish.
"No one knows where you are. People forget you.
You are vain and stubborn." The man slices
tomatoes and lemons. Takes out the fish
and scrambles eggs. I am not stubborn, he thinks,
laying all of it on the table in the courtyard
full of early sun, shadows of swallows flying
on the food. Not stubborn, just greedy.

The Lord Sits With Me Out In Front

The Lord sits with me out in front watching
a sweet darkness begin in the fields.
We try to decide whether I am lonely.
I tell about waking at four a.m. and thinking
of what the man did to the daughter of Louise.
And there being no moon when I went outside.
He says maybe I am getting old.
That being poor is taking too much out of me.
I say I am fine. He asks for the Brahms.
We watch the sea fade. The tape finishes again
and we sit on. Unable to find words.

2006-03-03T09:53:00.000-08:00

In lieu of class

My bioethics professor didn't show this morning, so I'm jotting a quick update instead of scribbling notes about ethical issues pertaining to the allocation of scarce health care resources. It's an interesting class, especially for the contrast between the Canadian system where health care is treated as a right versus the US, where it's treated as a commodity. We'll see what Stephen Harper has to say about all this.

An aside for Canadian readers: my professor makes an interesting point about the proposed two-tier health care system. The problem in the public system is a shortage of personnel. Therefore, allowing a parallel private HC system will not alleviate the pressure on the public system. It will instead exacerbate it, because it will draw off already limited doctors and nurses.

Change of subject. Victorians, mark your calanders and spread the word about a chapbook launch party at Solstice Cafe the night of Saturday, April 1st. I'll be reading from my new collection Dead Man, Fanny will read some of the poems she's been working on for the last little bit, and Matthew Davidson will (I think) be playing songs on his guitar. Dead Man will be available for purchase. I hope to have a Paypal site up in the next week so those of you in Texas and other places that aren't the greater Victoria area can order a copy.

2006-03-01T15:09:00.000-08:00

Poem

Sorry it's been so long without a post. I've been working on the chapbook instead, which is all but finished at this point. More information on that later. Here's a newly minted poem for you (the first stirrings of which occurred a mere hour and a half ago).

ANATOMY OF LANDSCAPE

The rough snowdusted shoulders
of mountains. Jagged teeth, we say.
The Olympic range stretched across
the south, knobby as a spine. Round hills
settled on the land like breasts,
or like a forehead, furrowed. Valleys
green, taut as a belly. Fingers of land
holding hands with the ocean.
Prairie flat as a sleeping man's back.
A river in Texas named for arms.
The Mississippi flexing like a leg,
glinting white under moonlight.
Martian craters shaped like faces.
Footprints of lakes trailing through
northern Manitoba. Ribs of a sea cliff
on the Oregon coast. Forests thick
as hair. Dirt the color of blood.
Banks of a creek. Pair of lips.
A clear tongue between them, laughing.

2006-02-21T15:52:00.000-08:00

Book sale score!

Last weekend Fanny and I made our way to the annual Times Colonist Book Sale. The TC is the local newspaper. They sponsor a big book sale every year, the proceeds of which benefit charity. Books are provided by donation from the community, which comes through in fine form--there were something like 300-400 thousand books crammed into an empty furniture store. One dollar for paperbacks, three for hardcover. We stayed for over an hour and whittled our finds down to these:

In Cold Blood (Truman Capote--we saw the movie a few weeks ago), The Chosen (Chaim Potok), Texasville, Terms of Endearment, & The Evening Star (Larry McMurtry), Deliverance (James Dickey), Houseboat Days (John Ashbery), All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy), If the River was Whiskey (T.C. Boyle), The Good Earth (Pearl Buck; hardcover), For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway; hardcover), Raise High the Roofbeaf, Carpenters/Seymour:An Introduction (J.D. Salinger), The Brothers K (David James Duncan), Mother Night (Kurt Vonnegut), The Quiet American (Graham Greene), Journal of a Solitude (May Sarton), The Gulag Archipelago (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn), A Place to Come To (Robert Penn Warren), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon), and A Strong West Wind (Gail Caldwell; hardcover).

I'm starting with the Chabon, which Michael recommended several years ago. Quite funny. All about comic books and escape artistry. Fanny's reading the Caldwell, which is a just-published memoir of growing up in the Texas Panhandle. We think we must have gotten our hands on a reviewer's copy or something--it was just in the books section of the paper a couple of weeks ago.

2006-02-15T18:01:00.000-08:00

New music

Wanted to give a heads-up that my dad's band JamisonPriest has a new album out, available for purchase at their website as well as at Village Records. I haven't heard it yet (still waiting for a copy to find its way north...hint hint) but am going to hazard a recommendation anyway. Quite enjoyed their last album, We Called Ourselves Poets, and word on the street is that the new one is even better.

2006-02-14T18:52:00.000-08:00

V-Day

Actually took these last Thursday. But they make sense today, too. These were taken the day after our six month anniversary.

Beauty and the Besmirchment.

Looking southwest at sunset. The closer mountains are Canada; the further are the U.S.

My beautiful wife.

2006-02-10T10:41:00.000-08:00

Great days

Little darling, it's been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it's been here
Here comes the sun,
Here comes the sun, and I say
It's all right
The Beatles

The sun's been out the last few days here in Victoria. I didn't recognize it at first; we've had unceasing clouds and almost daily rain since mid-December. The day's are getting longer again too, the days slowly lasting more than eight hours. I've been getting off the bus early on the way home just for the pleasure of walking. Yesterday Fanny and I went down and sat by the water for awhile at Cloverdale Point. I changed the oil in the car. The cherry trees are blossoming downtown. We found a small branch full of blossoms that had broken off during a windstorm. It's sitting in a pitcher of water on our kitchen table now.

I doubt that this will last, but for the moment it feels like spring. It's been a nice respite. I'm used to more variety in my weather: to quote Steve Earle, "They say in Texas the weather's always changing." Stable weather is nice when it's sunny, but when it turns bad you start wishing for a shorter climate cycle.

You don't like the weather in Abilene? Just wait fifteen minutes. You don't like it in Victoria? Wait three months.

2006-02-06T10:21:00.000-08:00

How to read a poem, pt. 1

There's an art to it. It isn't a difficult art, and it doesn't take long to become proficient, but it's not quite the same as reading anything else. It's also not quite the same for any two people, so feel free to add to or subtract from this list.

First of all (and most importantly) read the poem out loud. It doesn't have to be audible, but pronounce the words of the poem to yourself as you read them. Read it slowly enough to process it as a heard text rather than a read text. Imagine yourself reading the poem out loud to yourself, if nothing else. Poetry is auditory; poets obsess over how things sound, over the spoken pulse and flow of the language. You aren't getting the poem if you don't take time to listen to it.

Give the poet the benefit of the doubt. Assume that everything in the poem is the way it is by design. This won't always be true, but if you don't make this assumption you'll end up passing judgement on poems and poets that you simply didn't spend enough time with.

The flip side is to remember that you don't have to like or appreciate every poem you read. Roger Jones made the comment in a class I took that he (a teacher of poetry) liked only one out of every four poems or so that he read in journals. He's more generous than I am (or maybe he just reads better journals). But learn to recognize the difference between, "I don't like that poem," and "That's a bad poem." Not that there aren't plenty of bad poems...

Take note of your reactions to the poem. Does a particular spot give you trouble? Why is that? Read the poem and come back to these spots. There may be a reason that they're difficult. Pay special attention to things like verb tense shifts and rough grammar. Why are the line breaks where they are? Does a line carry a different meaning if you read it by itself rather than continuously with the surrounding lines? That's a trick poets use a lot.

Who's the speaker (the person--not the poet--actually saying the words of the poem)? Someone embedded in the action of the poem? An observer? Is there an "I" in the poem? What picture of the speaker emerges from their word choice and tone? How reliable a reporter do you think they are? Why? What's their attitude towards the subject matter of the poem? Why are they telling you this?

That's more than enough to start with. If you can't keep all that straight at once just focus on reading slowly and audibly, pay attention to your reactions and assume that there's a reason for everything in the poem (and then think about what that reason might be). These'll take a long way towards appreciating poetry as poetry, rather than as oddly formatted prose.

2006-02-05T13:46:00.000-08:00

Overdue for an oil change

Sometime in the last 24 hours my site meter crossed the 10,000 mark. I suppose this is a milestone of some sort.

I also learned that Punch Like a Poet is mentioned on Billy the Blogging Poet's blog. He's doing a sort of survey of poets who blog, and seems to have come across this site. So, Billy, thanks for the mention (and thanks to Katy, who brought the feature to my attention).

Also, for those of you on Myspace.com, I've got a profile now. Myspace.com/punchlikeapoet.

2006-02-04T16:23:00.000-08:00

News and a revision

Sometime last winter I was seized with the notion to publish a small collection of poems for Easter. The idea was to polish up all my bleak, depressing poetry about Jesus, Easter, the Incarnation, etc. and release them together. Then I fell in love with a Canadian and spent my energy and creativity over the next months charting trans-continental road trips, planning weddings, and filling out various immigration paperwork. This year, however, I'm not nearly so distracted, and so intend to have something for you by late March. I've been working on revisions and cajoling my wife into editorial work on my behalf. (She's quite an editor, among many other things.) Don't have any idea yet how it's going to come out, but barring some unforseen crisis it'll at least exist. We're releasing it under the "Back Porch Books" imprinture and will probably cost in the neighborhood of $5/book plus shipping for those who don't live in Victoria.

This is why the revisions of older work. These are what I've been working on lately. The finished project should have 10-15 poems. The poem below, Self Portrait After the Resurrection, will be in for sure. "The Jesus Tortilla" will probably be as well. Others that have been on the blog in some form or another are Burning the Body, Kingdom Come, Paschal Song, The Dead in Jazz, Good Friday After the Altar Call, and Possible Worlds (possibly). Most of you haven't seen Christ Among the Rocks, When They Crucified My Lord, Miracles at Cana, Stapling Christ, or Trinities. The list is still pretty tentative, but should at least whet some appetites. Here's a sample.

SELF PORTRAIT AFTER THE RESURRECTION

He puts his fingers where the soldiers
pounded in the nails and later pried them out,
and runs his hand along the seam
where the spear broke through. He cries

My Lord and God. An hour later he looks again.
And again. And. He stares all afternoon
at the wounded hands, the holes like ruined eyes,
until Christ says Jesus, man, they're only scars.

In camp he curls up farthest from the fire.
He strains to hear Christ's voice above the pop
and smoke but falls asleep instead and dreams of hands
but in his dreams the hands won't open.

2006-01-28T13:02:00.000-08:00

Old poem revised

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE JESUS TORTILLA

When I found Christ's face in the supermarket
burned into a tortilla I didn't phone the newspapers
or hang it in the nave of a church behind glass
illuminated by candles and camera flash. Hid it
in my cart instead among canned, secular vegetables
and paid cash. Then drove home, where I dipped it red
in a jar of salsa, let it burn and cool my tongue and asked
good Lord, make me more than a photographer.

UPDATE 1/30/06

Here's the previous version of the poem for comparison, as per Jonathan's request.

THE JESUS TORTILLA

This morning in the wilderness
aisles of the supermarket I spied Christ's face
burned across a tortilla canvas.

I nestled it among the canned,
secular vegetables and disposable
gallons of milk, took it home;

dipped in the shockingest red
salsa I chewed it carefully, eyes closed:
I didn't take it to the papers

or hang it under glass in a church
to light the candles of the faithful
or the cameras of the merely curious.

I prayed with each bite to be more
than a photographer. I prayed
to eat death and the life everlasting.

2006-01-24T11:37:00.000-08:00

An hour of America
plus, Canadian federal politics through Texan eyes

Sunday I spent an hour in America.

No, seriously. I won't bore you with the beaurocratic details, but for reasons related to my student visa it was necessary to take the ferry across to Port Angeles and back again. The whole experience was rather strange. The trip was conceived maybe 18 hours before I stepped on the ferry. Walked around a block or two of Port Angeles, stopped and had a cup of coffee and a bowl of soup. Thought to myself I could get a job here. Just fill out an application, show them my Social Security Card. No hassle, no hundreds of dollars in fees and forms. Of course, my wife would not have been the least bit happy about such a decision, and I'd rather be with her anyway. Then I climbed back on the ferry and returned to Canada.

These legal hoops grow tiring. I still can't believe how damn difficult it is to permanently relocate to another country. And the sad thing is that coming from the U.S. to Canada is probably about as easy as it gets, immigration-wise. A bit of advice--whenever possible, be born in the same country as your wife. Don't let seperate nationalities stand in the way should it come to that, but all other things being equal its a hell of a lot easier to have the same passport as your significant other.

In other news, yesterday was federal election day here in Canada. Stephen Harper's Conservative party unseated Paul Martin's government after something like 13 years of Liberal government. My observations on the whole process for the edification of my Texas readers (Canadian readers feel free to correct me).

Canadian politics is dominated by two parties, Liberal and Conservative (also called the Tories--seems to have been consolidated out of a variety of conservative/Western regional parties several years ago). There are, however, two additional parties that have a substantial presence in the House of Commons (compare U.S. House of Representatives). The first is the Bloc Quebecois, which exists only in Quebec. The other is the New Democratic Party (NDP), for whom I would have voted had I been eligible.

Regional tensions seem to determine quite a bit of Canadian politics. First, there's the French/English thing. Since the sixties Quebec has developed a strong cultural and political identity. There have even been a couple of referenda on Quebec independence, the latter of which (in '95) only failed by a percentage point or two. Quebec is one of the most populous provinces, and so while the Bloc only runs candidates in Quebec it still manages a big chunk of votes in the House of Commons (51 of 308, as of last night I believe). Quebec has 75 ridings (Canadian term for electoral district), so 2/3 of the province voted with the Bloc. Which is actually less than in recent elections.

There's also the East/West thing. Ontario is by far the most populous province in the country, which means it traditionally dominates national politics. It's also the most liberal/Liberal. Contrast the western provinces, which are politically and socially more conservative, and where the Conservative party is strongest. British Columbia is less this way than Alberta (the Texas of Canada), but still elects a lot more Conservatives than Liberals.

Anyway, there's been a growing sense of disatisfaction with the Liberal governement over a series of scandals and a sense that the Liberal party has come to take its power for granted. This came to a head back in November, when the House of Commons called a vote of no confidence.

This was (and is) all very interesting to me. One of the many differences between the Canadian and U.S. systems is that the government is headed not by an independently elected executive, but by the leader of the political party that gets the most seats in the House of Commons. The government is the legislative branch. There is an executive, the Governor General, but she's appointed by the Queen or King of England and doesn't seem to do much (this is due to the fact that Canada evolved into nationhood, like most of the British empire, rather than rebelling, like the U.S. did).

To put this in U.S. terms, imagine that the Speaker of the House of Representives is also the President. Now call him the Prime Minister instead. Add stronger party loyalty, and four parties with seats in Congress, and you're Canadian.

The Conservatives didn't win a majority government, though, so we have what is called a minority government, which means that Stephen Harper has to negotiate with the other parties to govern. It also means that we'll probably have another election in the next couple of years rather than the "usual" four or five year election cycle. I put "usual" in quotes because this is the same situation we just had--Paul Martin's government was minority as well. A minority government is open to a vote of no confidence should the opposition parties collaborate, which brings up an early election.

Fascinating stuff for this American. I'm interested to see how Harper puts together his government. But for now I've got to get to class.

2006-01-20T10:37:00.000-08:00

His reading log

Sean just unveiled a new project of his, a free online reading log available at http://www.myreadinglog.net. Lets you keep track of books you've read and want to read, as well as compiling statistics. Want to know how many pages you've read in a year? There's also feeds available that allow you to post your information on a blog or website. Check it out.

2006-01-18T10:53:00.000-08:00

Poetry and autobiography

(Warning: wonky poetic technicalia ahead.)

Randy's comment on the last poem, "A Perfect Posture," have touched off some thoughts I'd like to put down. People have a lot of different expectations or insights into what happens (or ought to happen) in a poem, and it's interesting to see how these change the way one approaches a specific poem.

Randy wrote, "I found it warmly autobiographical. I think I would find it dishonest if something substantial did, in fact, 'happen' in this poem."

Interesting.

(For the record, Randy, I'm not talking dirt on your comment. It's an entirely legitimate observation. It also happens to make for a great digression on my part.)

There is, of course, an autobiographical element to the poem. I wrote this because I have memories of this sort, of fumbling into some kind of understanding of prayer at about this age. Which age, you might ask? Well, that's a tricky question.

The memories associated with the poem are from our family's attendence at a Baptist church we started attending when I was in third grade--eight or nine years old, I think (since both of my parents read this blog they can correct me if I'm off).

So the kid in the poem is eight or nine years old, right?

Well, no. See, the kid in the poem doesn't have an age. His only age is what the poem tells you--old enough to no longer be coloring during the service. It isn't just that you don't know his age--he doesn't have one. He only exists in these twenty or so lines. He ain't me.

Autobiographical information is a mixed blessing when it comes to literary texts. People have a tendency to read something they know about a writer's life back into a text, to insert information into the text that simply isn't there. The church in the poem isn't a Baptist church. The kid isn't nine years old, and the poem isn't set in west Texas, even though all of these statements are true about the writer's experiences that led to the poem.

Any (halfway decent) poet allows details into poems for the sake of the poem, not for the sake of her memoir. This is something that happens frequently in undergraduate writing workshops. Someone brings in a poem based on a personal experience (which is itself a little silly--every poem is eventually based on personal experience). Criticisms are made (you should take the bridge out, you should change the number of people in the scene, you should change the color of the flowers, etc). The writer responds, "But that's how it happened!" As if fidelity to autobiography carries artistic merit. It happened a certain way in life. It can happen in the poem however you decide to write it.

Poetry (at least of the 21st century lyric variety) isn't journalism. It doesn't exist to tell what happened. John Dewey in Art as Experience (great book, btw) describes the artist's experience as the raw material of art. If my poem is a house then my memories are the bricks, boards, cement, etc that go into building it. But I arrange them however I want. (Quick postmodern aside--they are always arranged. Some arrangements may attempt straight history more than others, but they never flow directly from the world through memory to the page.)

There's another quote that makes the point more succinctly: "Never underestimate the creative potential of the lie." I think it's James Dickey, although it might be William Stafford. Dr. Jones, if you read this I heard it in one of your classes.

There is of course the possibility that the poet will choose to be autobiographical for personal reasons, which is fine and entirely acceptable. But that's an extra burden she places on herself. The poet has no obligation to be factual about things, because poetry as such isn't concerned to report (at least not in the strict journalistic sense). Poetry is concerned to create aesthetic experience (the aha! feeling you get when a piece of art, poetry, fiction, music grabs you--if you've had one you know what I mean), which is another matter entirely and sometimes demands distortion. When painters want to create a sense of distance they create arbitrary points on an imaginary horizon and draw their lines pointing in that direction. It's a distorition. Characters further away are made shorter than those close to the viewer. We take these for granted, but it took artists centuries to develop tricks to make the viewer think he's looking at something with depth. Likewise with poetry.

I wrote a poem years ago called "Movie" which is "about" driving home from a movie. My sister and I had gone with some friends to see The Royal Tenenbaums in a theater in Austin, and there was a certain quietness in the car on the way home that I wanted to capture. The first draft of the poem had four characters in the car, as had been the case in coming home from the Tenenbaums. The poem was too unwieldy with four characters, however, so in subsequent drafts I knocked off a couple and made it just two. The sharper contrast between two people made for a more poignant quality.

Now, to get back to the comments on Perfect Posture. Randy said, "I think I would find it dishonest if something substantial did, in fact, 'happen' in this poem," responding, I assume, to Sean, who said, "ending it with "he's decided" still feels curiously anticlimactic -- like nothing actually happened over the course of the poem. At least if he stayed with the same verb tense ("he decides"), we'd get to be witness to that decision. I guess that happened earlier, though -- it just seems an oddly insubstantial note to end on."

Sean's right. "He's decided," is anti-climatic, and deliberately so. Changing the verb tense right there (always pay attention to tense shifts!) disassociates the reader from the action in the poem. The speaker steps back from the kid in the pew a little bit. The kid's convinced about this new method of prayer. The speaker? Not so much.

Randy's right too, although I do need to qualify his comment, which links the autobiographical aspect of the poem to the honesty of the poem. That isn't the case--whether or not I ever sat in church and prayed as a child has nothing to do with the way this poem works. The quality he's referring to (I think--I'm sure we'll hash this out over breakfast tomorrow) as honesty comes not from the failure of anything substantial to happen. Remember, a kid has just figured out that God lives in his head! And if he holds his head just right he can talk to Him! That's about as Big as News gets. The failure of anything to happen is at the level of the speaker, whose report of the scene betrays some doubts about it. This is percieved as honest. To grossly oversimplify, the aesthetic experience here is not the experience of the kid. It's the experience of witnessing the kid and knowing better.

Thanks again to Sean and Randy, whose permission I have not sought for the use of their comments, and to everyone who leaves feedback. Anyone have comments on this?

2006-01-13T11:31:00.000-08:00

New post

Not here, but over at Weeds of Contmplation. After much urging my lovely and talented wife has broken her lengthy silence. Go read.

2006-01-07T18:30:00.000-08:00

Quebec Recap

We flew out of Victoria early in the morning on December 28th and arrived in Montreal in the middle of the afternoon. Despite having done a fair bit of travel by air during the last three years I'm still amazed at the thought of shooting across an entire continent in a morning; every time I fly I think of settlers a hundred and fifty years ago taking months to cross the Great Plains. Unoriginal thoughts, sure, but persistent. How different the experience of land and distance is when traveling by air versus car--no vertical sense in the plane, no enclosure in the landscape like there is on the ground. Of course, even when traveling earthbound the interstate differs from state highways and backroads, and those differ from bicyling or hiking.

Guy and Francyne, Fanny's parents, met us at the airport and drove us back to their house on the south shore of Montreal. We opened presents (scored a digital camera, which explains the presence of pictures in this post) and went to bed early. Toured Montreal the next day and took some pictures from the top of Mount Royal, as well of the Oratorio, an enormous church built during the last century.

The major themes of the week were snow (more than I've ever seen) and French (more than I've ever heard). The visit began and ended in Montreal, which is a bilingual city (though French dominates). We spent three days up in and around Quebec City, though, where no one speaks English, including the fifty some-odd members of Fanny's extended family who I met. Fortunately her parents are both familiar enough with English for us to get along. And there was beer at all the family gatherings, which is of course the universal language. We also spent an afternoon in the historic parts of Quebec City, which was (I think) the original French settlement in North America and has what is purportedly the oldest street on the continent.

The highlight of the visit as far as I'm concerned was the final night, when Guy and I watched the Rose Bowl and I instructed him in the ways of college football and the love of the Longhorns. He showed me my first complete hockey game the night before, a Canadiens/Penguins match, so we're even. Cultural exchange at its finest. The story gets even better--the next day Fanny and Francyne went out for a last round of shopping before we had to leave for the airport. She found (in Montreal, mind you) a belt buckle with a longhorn head in front profile against a bunch of flowers that very well might be roses. If she'd found it the day before I would've taken it as a sign; as it is, we've embraced it as the celebratory Texas Championship belt buckle (which probably cost about one fifth as much as any official belt buckles minted for same occasion).

Here's some pictures of the trip.

Ice and snow on trees on Mount Royal.

Montreal from Mount Royal.

Ferry crossing the St. Lawrence at Quebec City. Notice the ice on the river. This was new to me. Call me a gawking provincial if you must, but I'd never seen a frozen river before.

Street in the lower city in Quebec City.

Nice shot of some condos in Stoneham, north of Quebec City, where we stayed with some of the family. I can't get over those icicles.

Guy, myself, Fanny, and Francyne ring in the New Year in traditional Quebecois headdress. No really.

This was one of many games we played with the larger family on New Year's Eve. It was sort of like Hot Potato, only instead of a potato we passed around a bag full of idiotic hats, and if you got caught holding the bag when the music stopped you had to fish around in the bag and find something to wear.

2006-01-06T16:17:00.000-08:00

41-38

Fanny and I got in from Montreal last night. I might post more about the trip to Quebec later, but for the moment I want merely to gloat about Texas' win over USC in the Rose Bowl on Wednesday. Our first national championship in something like 35 years, and the best football game this (not particularly knowledgeable) fan has ever seen. Had the special pleasure of watching it with my father-in-law, for whom the game was an introduction to college football. Hook 'em Horns.

2005-12-27T10:13:00.000-08:00

2005 Reading List

As best as I can recall...

Fiction
Stone of Farewell, Tad Williams
Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut
Close Range, Annie Proulx
Texas, James Michener
The Last Picture Show, Larry McMurtry
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
Life of Pi, Yann Martel
The Brothers K, David James Duncan (re-read)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, Mark Haddon
A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toewes
Rockbound, Frank Parker Day*
The Double Hook, Sheila Watson*
Barometer Rising, Hugh McClennan*
They Shall Inherit the Earth, Morley Callaghan*
The Second Scroll, A.M. Kline*
Swamp Angel, Ethel Wilson*
By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, Elizabeth Smart*
Selected Stories & Selected Plays, Anton Chekov*

Non Fiction
Cash: The Autobiography, Johnny Cash
Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger
Hard Scrabble, John Graves
In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas, Larry McMurtry
Dakota, Kathleen Norris
Canada, A People's History (can't remember the author)
The Polysyllabic Spree, Nick Hornby
The Way of the Heart, Henri Nouwen
The Way of the Pilgrim, Anonymous
Another Beauty, Adam Zagajewski

Plus quite a bit of poetry, especially that of Andrew Hudgins, Mark Jarman, Dave Smith, Jane Kenyon, Adam Zagajewski, and Czeslaw Milosz.

The over-arching theme of the year seems to have been baptism in Canadiana and nostalgia for the homeland.

* read for class

2005-12-14T13:44:00.000-08:00

A question

I want to post here with more regularity, but have been feeling aimless and uninspired for topics to write about. Furthermore, I'm trying to post less poetry, as I've been doing lots of submissions to journals/reviews/etc. Near as I can tell posting poems here actually counts as a form of publication, which technically means I shouldn't be sending them out.

So here's your chance: what sort of thing do you want to read? And those of you who feel the urge to respond "Whatever you want to write about!" please refrain from saying anything. Specific topics or questions only, please.

2005-12-12T16:17:00.000-08:00

Poem

THE DEAD DON'T GIVE A DAMN

i.

It's not the dead we hear after midnight,
dragging themselves through the attic,
drunken raccoons. They're not

the ones who appear when summoned
in the mirrors of darkened bathrooms
or who spell our names in spilled flour.

They don't care if we find the murderer
or the box of coins in the backyard
or even if we know how much they loved us.

Not the dead. They lie composed
like finished songs for anyone to sing,
their many crises resolved

or unresolved. Whatever. They've waited
long enough to lie down undisturbed
for longer than a single night.

They're not coming back. Not ever.

ii.

No--it's our children and their children
and so on nested into each other

like Russian dolls, restless
in their incorporeality as kids behind
the curtain at a school play, lined up

waiting for bright lights, a stage, applause.
They look over our shoulders,
shake their translucent heads at our mistakes.

We know they're there, remember perching
with them on our own parents' heads,
promising to be much better. And now

we've let them down, shown ourselves
mortal, which is why they shift the furniture
while we sleep, swirl freakish lights

in midnight woods. So we'll remember
we were going to fix everything.
How we were going to be perfect.

2005-12-09T15:37:00.000-08:00

A History of Poetry, pt. 1

Not "the" history of poetry. "A" history. My history; or, how I came to the folly and craft of the writing of poems.

During sophomore year of high school a friend of mine, one Aaron Winter, wrote the last three lines of Matthew Arnold's "The Buried Life" ("And then he thinks he knows/The hills where his life rose/And the sea where it goes") on the chalkboard in Nate Monroe's English classroom, where some of us would hang out after school. It was probably in reference to a girl. We did a lot of writing on chalkboards for the sake of young and unrequited love in those days. It was during the same semester I scrawled my devotion to an unwilling young cheerleader aquaintance of mine on many a chalkboard. Fortunately I did so in Latin. Extremely poor second year Latin I might add, so that even if someone schooled in the classics had happened by they would have been unable to translate my complaint.

This is what we did in Latin class when we weren't deciphering Caesar's account of the Gallic wars ("Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres...") or the first lines of Virgil's Aenead (Arma virumque cano Trojoae qui primus ab oris"). We'd figure out sweet, sexy things to say to women, or perversly scatalogical things to say to each other. Or we'd just translate R.E.M. lyrics.

We didn't go on many dates. At least I didn't.

But back to Matthew Arnold. After looking at the tail end of Buried Life for a couple of weeks curiosity got the best of me and I hunted it down. I'll save you the trouble--read it here. I read it compulsively for weeks, loved everything about it: the rhythm and immediacy of the language, the way he took a pretty complicated discourse and made it rhyme. Most of all, though, I loved the subject. Sixteen years old is a pretty great time to come across a poem whose basic thesis is, "We're all alone and isolated from other people, but sometimes when we're with someone we love we don't feel alone and isolated any more, and it's pretty cool." I liked the poem enough to forgive words and phrases like "limpid eyes," "Alas!" and the repeated use of the word "breast" in reference to male anatomy. For someone barely old enough to drive, this is saying a great deal.

So how well does the poem stand up now? There's some aspects of Arnold's style that drive me nuts--the obvious rhymes, the contorted syntax. The sharp dichotomy he draws between Ah! the maddening world and Ah! love our tender respite reads as fairly juvenile now, and not nearly as insightful or striking or original as I remember. But I still read the poem with pleasure.

At sixteen, of course, I wasn't going to music or poetry for pure aesthetic pleasure or for an appreciation of artistic merits. Like anyone that age I was looking for something to explain and legitimize my turbulent emotional life, and it didn't matter if it was Matthew Arnold or Matthew Sweet. Of course, that also meant that when I started writing poems myself (which happened around this time) the results would be pretty ugly. And forlorn. Oh so forlorn.

Coming soon: Up all night with J. Alfred, and Flashback: Reciting Frost and Longfellow in Fifth Grade

2005-12-09T14:56:00.000-08:00

New blogs

I've recently become involved in a couple of new group blogs. The first, Poasis, intends to wrestle with issues pertaining to Christianity and the Arts, Christians in the Arts, the Arts in Christianity, etc. This a follow up of sorts to the Telling the Truth Conference I participated in a couple months ago.

The other is a reincarnation or transmigration or something of Socrates' Front Porch, which Michael Moreland and I founded lo these many years ago. My good friend Jonathan Hunter of Way of the Tiger fame has with our permission appropriated the name to use for his new undergraduate philosophy blog. Other than myself the participants are all University of Texas philosophy students, and will no doubt kick the ass of my logic all the way from First Principle to In Conclusion.

Should also give a shout out to Matt Bingham, who rants, raves, and recommends all manner of things Canadian and otherwise over at Home of the Bing.

2005-12-05T00:24:00.000-08:00

Poem online

Just got word that my poem "Foreign Policy" is online in the latest edition of Red River Review. A much earlier draft of this poem appeared here at some point in the last year and a half. You can read the shiny new other-website version here.

2005-12-04T12:47:00.000-08:00

There's something very wrong with the world

I might've been in Kindergarten, though I'm not sure. We moved back to town when I was five or six, and it happened while we were still living in the trailer north of Abilene on a narrow quarter acre of land. Our trailer faced the road; the back side of the property, abutting a field, had an old barn or house in an advanced state of falling-in. Our driveway was white caliche gravel that, with age, had begun to take on the color of the surrounding dirt. Approaching cars made a distinctive crunch turning in off the county road.

The Merritts* were a family from church. Our church home during the early eighties was any one of a series of non-denominational, quasi-charismatic churches that flourished, fought, split and vanished in and around Abilene during that time. The Merritts were white trash. Ignorant, needy people. I knew that even as a child; my mom was friends with Moira, the mother of the family, and her son Donald was my age, so we spent a fair amount of time together. There was something strange, something vicious about the kid. He gave off the same vibe as a guy I later knew in middle school who bragged about running over cats with a lawnmower.

We were playing out in the front yard one day while my mom and Moira were inside. Front yard in July or August meant drought-split dirt marked with weeds and a few stunted mesquite trees. Temperatures in the nineties at least. We had my red plastic baseball bat out, swinging disinterestedly at a softball.

Grasshoppers were everywhere, and enormous. That summer was particularly bad for them. They could grow as long as two inches; they'd swarm up out of the yard you when you walked to the car, landing on your clothes, making a nasty mess whenever you stepped on one. I hated them.

After awhile Donald took the bat and wandered over by the cars in the driveway. He started smashing grasshoppers, grinning every time he brought the bat down.

I'm not, nor have I ever been sentimental about insects. I kill spiders, flies, and roaches unapologetically. I spray Raid into wasp nests without the slightest twitch of guilt. As a child I dismembered crickets and dropped roly-polys into red ant beds with a sort of scientific curiosity. The destruction of grasshoppers isn't per se something I care much about, and it didn't alarm me then.

What disturbed me about Donald smashing the grasshoppers was his grin. The kid was clearly taking a great deal of pleasure in smashing them, and it upset me in a way I couldn't have begun to express at the time. "There is something very wrong with the world," I might've said. "I don't know what it is, but his smile is part of it."

The point here is not that Donald was a sick kid who's probably serving jail time. The point is that he's in all likelihood a perfectly normal, well-adjusted adult. The flicker of savagery I saw on his face isn't different in kind from what I've felt in some degree at other times--the sharp pleasure of watching justice crush an offender, the rush that comes with exercising power, the comforting sensation of giving an insulting name to someone who's offended me, and by naming them controlling them, at least in my own minds. I'm just usually better at concealing (or justifying) the feeling than Donald.

* names changed for the sake of deceny

2005-12-02T17:44:00.000-08:00

I don't like the BCS either, but...

Congress calls hearing on 'deeply flawed' BCS

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee, charged with regulating America's sports industry, announced Friday it will conduct a hearing on the BCS next week, after this season's bowl matchups are determined.

"College football is not just an exhilarating sport, but a billion-dollar business that Congress cannot ignore," said committee Chairman Joe Barton, a Texas Republican. Barton's panel is separate from the House Government Reform panel that tackled steroids in baseball.

"Too often college football ends in sniping and controversy, rather than winners and losers," Barton said. "The current system of determining who's No. 1 appears deeply flawed."

Anyone want to bet that Congressman Barton's an SEC fan? Gimme a break. I'd like to think that our nation's legislature can find better things to with its time than this.

Don't let Dubya hear about this, though. Otherwise we'll find ourselves embroiled in a 200 billion dollar mission to "liberate" college football faster than you can say "Pasadena".

And he calls himself a Texan. And, for that matter, a Republican. Sheesh.

2005-11-11T22:53:00.000-08:00

Remembrance Day

One year ago today:

Subject: Belated Hey
Date: 11/10/04
From: Fanny Beaudoin
To: Daniel Priest

Well. I never, ever, check my weedsblog email (frankly, it doesn't get much action) but I did, randomly, today, only to find out that you've alerted the masses of a change of email back in August, and that by my not replying I may have inadvertently given the impression that I do not wish you to get in touch with me, which isn't the case. So. Hey.

I think I'll be spending more time on the computer now that I have speakers and can download Wilco tunes to listen to as I write. Ages and ages ago, you left a scrap of lyric of theirs as a comment on my blog, which has now disappeared (I think it was on my Dispatches from the Writer's Desk posting.) You wouldn't happen to remember what it was, would you?

And I really like you opera/sausage poem. It's funny and lovely and has great fast-moving movement. (Or perhaps I just happen to like sausage.) I know I've said this to you before, and I hope I don't annoy you by telling you again because it's high praise, but some of your writing has wonderful Billy Collins echoes, and, well, the world can use more of that.

I thought I would share a poem by Czeslaw Milosz that just undid me. ( I could die happy if I'd written that first line, and nothing else, ever.)

G'night.

Fanny

"A Confession"

My Lord, I loved strawberry jam
And the dark sweetness of a woman's body.
Also well-chilled vodka, herring in olive oil,
Scents, of cinnamon, of cloves.
So what kind of prophet am I? Why should the spirit
Have visited such a man? Many others
Were justly called, and trustworthy.
Who would have trusted me? For they saw
How I empty glasses, throw myself on food,
And glance greedily at the waitress's neck.
Flawed and aware of it. Desiring greatness,
Able to recognize greatness wherever it is,
And yet not quite, only in part, clairvoyant,
I knew what was left for smaller men like me:
A feast of brief hopes, a rally of the proud,
A tournament of hunchbacks, literature.

----------------

Subject: Re: Belated Hey
Date: 11/11/04
From: Daniel Priest
To: Fanny Beaudoin

I could easily be wrong, but I think it was either "All my lies are always wishes" from Ashes of American Flags or "The truth proves its beautiful to lie" from Reservations. There's a lot about lies on the album...

Either way they're a great band.

RE: Billy Collins. Interesting story about that. My first exposure to him was a CD he's got out (called The Best Cigarette; a WONDERFUL recording if you can get your hands on it). A friend played it for me with the introduction "This guy writes exactly like you." So there's some natural similarity, although even more from what I've learned by reading him. My current poet-crush, though, is Andrew Hudgins. And Heather McHugh.

but in payment for the Milosz poem here's another back at ya, with a first line that I would love to have written.

how has your life been?

--danyul

"Account"

The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.

Some would be devoted to acting against consciousness,
Like the flight of a moth which, had it known,
Would have tended nevertheless toward the candle's flame.

Others would deal with ways to silence anxiety,
The little whisper which, thought it is a warning, is ignored.

I would deal separately with satisfaction and pride,
The time when I was among their adherents
Who strut victoriously, unsuspecting.

But all of them would have one subject, desire,
If only my own -- but no, not at all; alas,
I was driven because I wanted to be like others.
I was afraid of what was wild and indecent in me.

The history of my stupidity will not be written.
For one thing, it's late. And the truth is laborious.

2005-11-06T14:37:00.000-08:00

Recommends

I'm two-thirds of the way through John Graves's Hard Scrabble. Graves is (was?) a Texan who spent some years away in Europe, taught awhile at the University of Texas, and eventually purchased a few hundred acres in Glen Rose County southwest of Fort Worth, which spread he named "Hard Scrabble." The book is a collection of writings on his land and the process of making it both habitable and profitable. Topics covered include local Texas history (both natural and social), ecology, building houses, building fences, and a handful of other topics. His treatment of the subject should be endlessly fascinating to anyone with a sense of connection to Texas, or to any patch of land--his treatment of the particulars of his property is nuanced and thoughtful enough to apply generally (I hesitate to invoke the adverbial form of "universal") to anyone's relationship to land, geography, and heritage. He writes with a pleasantly understated, self-effacing voice. This doesn't keep him from gracing the text with a plenitude of grin-inducing verbal flourishes ("Such contemporary fondness as I have for machines--a little, I admit--is cooled by the fact that they war almost totally with the Thoreauvian ideal of simplicity to which I subscribe without ever having practiced it very purely.") He also has a knack for aphorism: "Sooner or later a mood is going to commit you to something more or less lasting". He's informative, but cuts himself off before slipping into technical minutiae. One of the more enjoyable books I've read (by which I mean the actual reading is itself pleasurable, something that happens all too infrequently) in some time.

The other recommendation comes from Fanny's and my recent obsession with Six Feet Under, the HBO series that ran for five seasons before being cancelled. In brief, it's a show about a family who runs a funeral home. This is not a show for the weak of heart--it deals graphically and extensively (exclusively?) with such airy, light-hearted matters as death, sexuality, family dysfunction...it's pretty dark. And darkly funny. The writing, though, is top notch, and the characters, for all their troubles, are consistently treated with dignity. It's not a perfect show--sometimes the sheer volume of accumulated dire circumstance crosses the threshhold of even fictional belief, and some of the story lines (2nd season in particular) grate a bit after awhile. But on the whole we've both really enjoyed it. Just don't watch it with children in the room...or the neighborhood

2005-11-03T14:22:00.000-08:00

Something for the Wind

The wind woke us up this morning. It whistled, it banged against the bathroom window and bent the tall branches of the poplar in the backyard. It scattered the crowds of leaves assembled at the curb for the last two weeks.

This is the strongest wind since I've been on Vancouver Island. It knocked out power to some schools and neighborhoods here in Victoria, and (according to the radio) Tofino and a couple other towns on the west coast of the island lost power entirely, with winds gusting fifty to seventy kilometers per hour (we call that thirty-five to fifty miles an hour in the States, except in West Texas, where we call it a light breeze).

A cold wind. Hard wind. Leaning into the wind. Crouching in the corners of buildings to light a cigarette; the wind smoking the cigarette twice as fast, thin taste of cigarettes in strong wind, whistling away with the smoke before you taste. Remembering football games, squinting against the wind and the stadium lights, the Friday night wind sharp as frozen water pressing the marching band against the field. A wind that knocks you over, that charges like a linebacker when you walk around a corner or through a door, that stretches clothes against your body like flags, that blows flags taut as sails. Blowing birds out of trees, thrashing trees and the empty miles of grass north of town.

When Michael moved to Nashville after graduation he told me he missed the wind. Smoking pipes and cigars with my friend Kelly, who grew up in the Texas Panhandle, he said one of his favorite things about his new house was that it caught a lot of wind, like home. I started laughing--knew exactly what he meant.

You don't get used to the wind. Not the sort of wind I grew up with. But you get familiar with it. You can miss it, even.

2005-09-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

Poem

Curious to see how people react to this one. The title and basic image came to me a year or so ago. I haven't been able to figure out what to do with them. Thought I'd try this.

MAN AFTER DROWNING

wakes up to sounding surf,
memory empty as a white beach.

He sees the sky, storm cleared,
broad as open arms. He'll discover

sand and bright water,
but just now all he knows is death,

blue as a tropical sky,
cut by raucous birds.

2005-08-20T12:29:00.000-07:00

New Blog

Added a few links off to the side there; one in particular I wanted to point out. PoBiz is the blog of one Roger Jones, one of my professors in the English/Creative Writing program at Texas State. I took a couple of Dr. Jones's classes and worked with him during my stint at Persona (the Texas State literary journal). Pretty sure I've learned more from him than anyone else about poetry & the practice thereof. His blog's well worth the read. Poetry and related topics. Go and read.

2005-08-14T12:56:00.000-07:00

Texas, marriage, & other states of bliss

Much has come to pass since last I posted here, O my readers. There was by all reports a lovely wedding on Monday. Fanny and I were involved. We're married now. Things is good. We just finished hanging a hammock chair from a tree in our yard. The hammock was a wedding gift. The tree was not. My (ahem) wife is out there now, swinging contentedly while she finishes a book about Pablo Neruda. Later we're going to drive up to a farm & buy corn.

I don't have the energy for a full & proper writeup of the wedding and reception. I will say that we thought them a resounding success. Various friends handled all aspects of the day--food, music, preaching, photography, and everyone without exception came through in fine style. Matthew delivered the greatest toast in human history, culminating in the classic line, "Here's to French toast and Texas tea."

Lots of family and friends were in town. I met my in-laws for the first time. This could've been bad. One likes to meet one's future relatives before one starts shelling out cash for a wedding. But whatever concerns I might've had came to naught--Guy and Francyne are fun, gracious, and hospitable, and I look forward to getting to know them better (I also look forward to learning French so as to be able to get to know them better). All the Priests and Priests-to-be made it up as well--both my parents, Ed and Linda, my brother Christopher and sister Christina, as well as my dad's wife Jenni and Chris's fiance Heather. It was great to see everyone. Tempers and personalities clashed a couple of times, but no more than expected under the crowded and hectic circumstances. Friends Nate, Michael, and Devin all made it up as well.

Good as it was to see everyone, it was even nicer to get away. I trust everyone understands the sentiment. Honeymoon was at Point No Point, a nice resort/cabin thing an hour west of Victoria on the rugged and rocky Pacific coast. Equal parts sunshine and fog the three days we spent there. And then the best part--arriving back here and there being no one else in the apartment! (Well, perhaps not the best part. But this after all is a family blog.)

Our next big adventure is a trip back to Texas in October. We'll fly this time. I'm officiating at my brother & Heather's wedding. We hope to spend a couple of days in the Hill Country as well. It'll be good to set foot again in the homeland, hear people say "howdy," eat some barbeque and proper burritos. Then at the end of December we're flying to Quebec for New Year's, which promises to be one of the more surreal experiencesof my life. Myself and Fanny's entire (50+) extended family, drinking beer, insulting each other in French, and singing the most off-colour folk songs imaginable. Willie Nelson be with me.

P.S. Should anyone find themselves overcome with the urge to buy things for other people, one might scratch that particular itch here. Or here. Not that I'm dropping hints or anything. I just know how much it sucks to have an itch and not be able to scratch it.

2005-07-26T11:11:00.000-07:00

Moral support

If I'm not mistaken, my good friend Michael Moreland (formerly of Ignorant Pilgrim and Socrates' Front Porch) today begins his exams for the State Bar of Texas. It's also possible that he began them yesterday. I'm not real clear on dates these days.

Either way, I'd like to wish him luck and success in his endeavor, mostly because as a poet I need a friend who rakes in the big bucks. Can you say "wealthy patron?" Mr. Moreland, in anticipation of your successful entrance into the Legal Universe I offer the following bit of hilarity:

The devil visited a lawyer's office and made him an offer. "I can arrange some things for you, " the devil said. "I'll increase your income five-fold. Your partners will love you; your clients will respect you; you'll have four months of vacation each year and live to be a hundred. All I require in return is that your wife's soul, your children's souls, and their children's souls rot in hell for eternity."

The lawyer thought for a moment. "What's the catch?" he asked.

Salud, Walrus.

2005-07-24T15:44:00.000-07:00

Poem

CHANGING THE BATTERIES IN THE TWO-WAY RADIO

Three hours after midnight. Graveyard shift
on the psychiatric ward, the patients more sane
in dreams than the broad day. They punctuate
the narrow florescent silence of the hall
with sudden incoherence, night terror, cries
and words half-guessed like shadows of fish
seen shifting underwater. Sometimes they stumble
to their doors, eyes blank with fear and dreaming.
Chase them back to bed. Mostly though
the night shift itself's a long and red-eyed dream
of room checks and waiting in between
to walk the hall again, fourth cup of rancid coffee
gone sour on an empty stomach, turning over
the pages of a rain-swelled Augustine's Confessions.

Note the silence of the two-way radio, the long hours
filled with an absence of voices. Switch the batteries
to raise the other night shifters drowsing
on their watches. But in the clutch of seconds
before the radio squawks an answer
there's a sudden fear, cold and mesmerizing
as the darkness between stars. Not in thinking
about the voices that slipped past, hidden
under the air while the radio said nothing
about commands or calls for help, not passing on
the usual hiss and static, garbled snatches
of conversation, the overnight psychiatric in-jokes--

the night terror's instead the sudden thought
that the batteries are good, that the radio's been faithful
reporting silence all along and no one's there to hear
the check--the rest of the night shift sniffed the air
hours ago, unlocked the doors and their patients, awake
with sudden animal clarity, led them
down the hill, through the wet, halogen air
between the buildings, into town
and past, where they mixed with the city full of sleepers
who rose, eyes blank and full as frightened moons,
and left the doors of their darkened houses
swinging, lights and voices leaving town
along moonlit roads, speechless towards the ocean--

and you with your dead philosopher,
dozen patients full of nightmare, and a radio
that crackles, hisses, frets
with the sound of stars being born
ten billion years ago.

2005-07-16T19:38:00.000-07:00

Something to think about

Chapter 61 of the Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell's translation):

When a country obtains great power,
it becomes like the sea:
all streams run downward into it.
The more powerful it grows,
the greater the need for humility.
Humility means trusting the Tao,
thus never needing to be defensive.

A great nation is like a great man:
When he makes a mistake, he realizes it.
Having realized it, he admits it.
Having admitted it, he corrects it.
He considers those who point out his faults
as his most benevolent teachers.
He thinks of his enemy as the shadow that he himself casts.

If a nation is centered in the Tao,
if it nourishes its own people
and doesn't meddle in the affairs of others,
it will be a light to all nations in the world.

2005-07-10T15:52:00.000-07:00

Shameless self promotion

The news is actually a couple of months old, but I've been too busy to remember it. A few months ago I announced that I'd landed a poem in Borderlands, a poetry journal out of Austin. Well, their Spring/Summer issue is out, and my poem is in. You can't read the poem ("Because This Could Be Sunrise") online, but I'm listed as a contributor, and you blood relations of mine can figure out how to get your hands on a copy. (Non-blood relations can do the same, of course, if so inclined.) A year-long subscription (2 issues) is $18, while single issues are $12 each. A bit pricey, but if you appreciate poetry it's worth it. Many good poems (despite my presence therein). One of the other contributors of note is Cyrus Cassells, who taught/conducted my senior workshop, and whose piece "Wild to Be Seen Again" is particularly great.

2005-07-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

Poem

WAKING UP IN THE APARTMENT WITH NO CLOCKS

Day's broken say the white
curtained windows, transluced
by strong light, and your roommate
gone to work: he's a dial more primitive
in his coming and leaving
than druids watching the sun lean
across stone tables; he says
it's morning, afternoon,
or early evening. What's this frantic bird
beginning to move beneath the blanket
of still-receding sleep? What's the time?
The hour? Should you curse
and leave the building at a dead run,
still pulling on the first pair
of pants at hand, or lie
down and whisper dreams
to yourself for another
half an hour? There's no clue
in these vacant, clockless walls,
yellow with timeless light. They're simple
yes-men, nodding
to every suggestion: sure,
it's noon. Sure you'd better start
dinner. Sure coffee
would be nice. Are you running
late or early? Should you run
or walk, build a sandwich
or scramble eggs? There's no knowing
from the pictures dangled
on their nails, that hang at midnight
same as dawn or after
a midday nap, and the light itself's
the usual light, slanted through weather
and the trunks of buildings.
Not the traffic pulsing past
the window knows the time
or where it's going. Not the man
who's nearly hit in sprinting
across the street, who turns
and curses a car already gone.
He curses it again, for luck,
then checks his watch and disappears
almost at a run past the bushes
that bloomed yesterday with roses, lost in thought
already, lost in the future and the past,
in dinner, in the day's work and return
to an house full of scattered,
fading light. He nearly runs;
like a broken wing
his briefcase twitches.

(7/10/05)

2005-07-05T00:27:00.000-07:00

On foreign history books and the 4th of July

Today marked my first Independence Day on foreign soil. All day long I've been remembering that friends and family are taking the day off, grilling burgers, watching fireworks. Oh yeah--and celebrating freedom.

I celebrated by reading two thirds of a history of Canada that Fanny brought home from the library for my further cultural assimilation. Talk about surreal--4th of July, and I'm reading about the French and Indian War (known here, of course, as the Seven Years War) and the American Revolution from the perspective of the British colonies that didn't join us in our little expiriment. Our friend Michael, the other American national in our circle of friends, tells me that his British friends refer to July 4th as "Good Riddance Day." Textbooks in my public school history classes sometimes mentioned that only a third of the American colonists supported the Revolution, and that an equal number of them remained loyal to the King, but never really delved into the implications of that.

It occurs to me again that, if I'd been alive at the time, I would sure as hell not have been a patriot. I probably wouldn't have been rabidly pro-British either; I'd have stuck it out on my farm as much as possible, waiting for these damn idiots to finish killing each other over the right of the American aristocracy (Washington, Jefferson, et al) to duck their taxes.

Turns out something like 100,000 Americans were forced to emigrate to Canada or face persecution at home following the end of the Revolution. We talk a lot about veterans and national heroes who suffered for the sake of our freedom. We don't talk much about the world full of poor bastards who never asked for our problems, whose lives were (and are) turned upside down so that we could vote Democrat or Republican and still have time to make it to Wal-Mart or Target to buy Nike or Adidas, while sipping on a beverage from McDonalds or Taco Bell. Treasure your freedom, people.

Apologies. It's late and I'm feeling snarky.

Two weeks ago was St. Jean Baptiste Day, which is the day when Quebecers celebrate their not-quite-national holiday. Fanny and I went strawberry picking and listened to lots of Quebecois folk music (Fanny, if it hasn't come up on the blog yet, is Quebecois). Then Friday was Canada Day, when (as I understand it) Canadians celebrate the union of three British colonies to create the Dominion of Canada back in the 19th century. They do this through beer drinking, national anthem singing, and ostentatious display of the flag. Later there were fireworks, for which we had primo downtown rooftop spots (courtesy of the same Michael). Yesterday we threw a "celebrate the existence of your favorite North American nation" party here at the apartment. And then today, July 4th, which of course no one cares about, although I've been told if I'd gone down to the beach I could've seen the fireworks across the strait in Port Angeles, Washington.

Had a sense today of all these silly nationalistic holidays going off all year long in nations around the globe. Quebec. Canada. United States. Myanmar. Kenya. Belarus. Whatever. Everybody loves to get drunk, sing songs, and fly their flag. Everybody loves a pep rally before the football game.

Here's what I remember, though. Friday night we were shivering on the roof of the building. The launch site for the fireworks was maybe a third of a mile away, on the edge of the harbour. The bridge to Esquimalt off to our right, buildings all around showing the harbour lights in their windows. Then the fireworks started going off like a naval bombardment. We were so close. They were beautiful, filling the sky in front of us like psychedelic jewelry, then glittering back in the buildings like interstellar dust seen somehow through water. The explosions echoed through downtown; by the end the smoke had filled downtown and was drifting away to the east.

The birds, though, got out of there when the first round went off. A white seabird came around the corner of the building just above our heads. We didn't think anything of it--too busy watching the first explosion fading in the sky--until we saw another one darting between the buildings, away from the water. Turned around, and saw hundreds of birds fleeing downtown over the buildings. The noise and light were too much for them.

And they were right, of course. That's the lesson. Doesn't matter how beautiful it looks--whenever some asshole starts making explosions because he loves his country, get your butt
in motion. Walk, run, or fly the other direction. And don't look back.

2005-07-04T12:48:00.000-07:00

Recommended

Last night we watched Stone Reader. If you haven't heard about this film, it's a documentary about a guy (the director of the film, actually) who goes looking for the author of a book he bought 25 years earlier. The book is The Stones of Summer, by Dow Mossman. The director, Mark Moskowitz, bought the book in '72 on the strength of a glowing New York Times review, but couldn't get into it. He picked it up a quarter of a century later and loved it. Went to find out what else Mossman had published, and discovered not only that he had never published again, but that TSOS was out of print, completely unheard of, and Mossman was impossible to find.

The movie's about his search for Mossman, but also about why we love books and reading, and why the things that get published get published. An outstanding film. Interestingly enough, the release of the film was enough to get the book back in print. Strongly recommended for anyone who loves books, reading, or bald men interviewing literary critics.

2005-06-27T11:07:00.000-07:00

Downtown San Francisco the next day.

2005-06-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

In San Francisco we stayed at the fabulous Green Tortoise hostel. Lots of character--a bunch of hippies and backpackers crammed into a turn-of-the-century house. Here's the chandelier from our room. Much, much cheaper than any traditional lodging in the city, for sure.

2005-06-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

...and the highest point of the day, just under 10k feet. This was about five hours after Death Valley.

2005-06-27T11:01:00.000-07:00

The Sierra Nevada, headed towards Lone Pine after coming out of the desert. The drive between this point and the other side of Sonora Pass a few hours later was probably my favorite stretch of road on the trip. We don't have much in the way of photographic documentation, which is ok, as pictures would only fail to do justice to the High Sierra.

2005-06-27T10:58:00.000-07:00

One of the lower points of the day...

2005-06-27T10:57:00.000-07:00

Looking back towards Panamint Springs from Father Crowley point in Death Valley National Park. We stopped here to give Max a breather after several thousand feet of unanticipated climb and descent.

2005-06-27T10:46:00.000-07:00

After waking up in Vegas the next morning we headed west towards Death Valley. This shot's from the descent to sea level.

We stopped in Pahrump, a suburb of Las Vegas (shudder), to gas up on the way out of town. A guy behind me at the pump noticed the Texas plates. Turns out he was from Texas as well. Asked me where I was from, told me he was from Bastrop. Came to Vegas in '86 for a one year contract, ended up staying twenty years for the money (he said with a disgusted look on his face...). Still, nice to see someone else from the homeland.

2005-06-27T09:57:00.000-07:00

We stayed at Circus Circus in Vegas. Since then we've been told that this was not the right hotel at which to stay. Be that as it may, Vegas remains one of the most depressing places I've ever visited. Walking around on the casino floor alone was enough to ruin my mood. "Give us your money! Let us entertain you! Your life will have meaning if you win lots of cash!" After eating downstairs, dropping a couple of dollars in slot machines (speaking of which--addiction? I can understand getting addicted to heroin or cigarettes. Possibly even something like poker. But slot machines?), and catching five minutes of lame circus performers we were ready to call it a night. Rather than check out the Strip we went back to our room and watched Spiderman.

Please Lord, don't let me go to Vegas when I die.

2005-06-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

Hoover Dam at the Arizona/Nevada border.

I've always had a certain fascination with dams. Don't know why, but I'm the guy who watches the History Channel programs on their construction, etc. So I was thrilled to be traveling over the archetype of all dams, Hoover Dam. We didn't get to stop and do the tourist thing (they've got a pretty impressive visitor center), although if we'd known how much Las Vegas was going to suck we might've sacrificed some time there for a trip down into the dam. My excitement over this particular landmark earned me the nickname "Dam Dork" from my traveling companion.

2005-06-25T14:29:00.000-07:00

Fanny with branches and blue sky. One of my favorite shots of the trip.

2005-06-25T14:27:00.000-07:00

"Well, do you want to eat it?"

This one comes from our campsite at the canyon that night. When we got there I took my bike off Max (my car) for a ride around the campground, and didn't realize until later that I had been wearing my cowboy hat. Cut quite a singular figure according to Fanny, who was much amused.

2005-06-25T14:21:00.001-07:00

Last one, I promise. (Believe me, this is the much-edited version of the canyon shots.)

2005-06-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

Fanny and myself, blocking another killer view of the canyon.

2005-06-25T14:16:00.001-07:00

...and more.

2005-06-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

More canyon.

2005-06-25T14:15:00.000-07:00

Dead tree at the Grand Canyon.

2005-06-25T14:14:00.000-07:00

For some reason it wasn't until we started seeing signs for Los Angeles that I realized on a gut level how far I was from home, and that I wasn't going back.

2005-06-25T14:13:00.000-07:00

Shot of the mountains in Flagstaff, Arizona. Prior to this trip I hadn't realized Arizona had mountains--just assumed it was all flat desert.

2005-06-25T14:09:00.000-07:00

Dirt devil in Arizona, one of several we saw.

2005-06-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

Gas station at the Painted Desert in Arizona, on old Route 66 (the first cross country US highway, if I'm remembering correctly). We didn't get a chance to visit the Desert, unfortunately, as we were pressed for time.

2005-06-23T18:43:00.000-07:00

The Supreme Court screws up

I'm going to interrupt my belated travelogue to kvetch about the Supreme Court. This is very bad news indeed. First read about this case a few months ago, and thought to myself "There's no way the Supremes will go for that." It appears, however, that I was wrong.

As I understand it, the court has given the go-ahead to a municipality in Connecticut to seize residents' property not for some clearly public use (roads, for example), but instead for use by a private developer, on the grounds that the likely economic benefit to the community justifies the seizure.

In other words, your city can make you sell your house to Wal-Mart (or any other private developer or company) if they think it'll be good for the city. And when do municipal governments not think that new business & developments are going to do good for the city?

My only-slightly-educated first reaction is that this has the potential to turn privately held property into another easily bulldozed obstruction facing developers. Just like trees on an unimproved lot. Send the lawyers in with their backhoes, and in a few months we'll be ready to build.

I will, however, temper my alarmism with a couple of observations:

1) It's a 5-4 decision, which means one can realistically hope for a reversal in the not-too-distant future.

2) I find it highly unlikely that this will go unchallenged for very long. The ruling in this Connecticut case, while still absolutely the wrong call, is not nearly as extreme as most of the cases in which this ruling will be cited (i.e. it's more understandable to sacrifice private property to a beachfront developer to save a poverty-stricken town than it is to force homeowners to sell to Wal-Mart). And I expect we'll see a challenge on a case more resembling the latter.

Thoughts from any of my newly hooded lawyer friends would be appreciated.

2005-06-23T11:08:00.000-07:00

Taken from Interstate 40 in northwestern New Mexico sometime Sunday afternoon (after leaving Abilene on Friday). Everything after Santa Fe was new territory for me. Gorgeous, broken red landscape. We stopped for Indian Fry Bread (advertised in capital letters all along the interstate) somewhere around Gallup; turned out to be the same sort of thing as a sopapilla (for those of you with a little Mexican food experience).

2005-06-23T11:04:00.000-07:00

Back on the road, headed for the Grand Canyon. Fanny took this shot; I rather like it.

2005-06-23T11:02:00.001-07:00

Our Lady of the Blurry Flowers.

2005-06-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

Yellow rose at the feet of St. Francis.

2005-06-23T11:01:00.000-07:00

Statue of the patron saint of the St. Francis Cathedral. There's a nice little garden here beside the cathedral with a bird fountain. We sat there for twenty minutes getting a couple of good shots of birds stopping to drink.

2005-06-23T10:59:00.000-07:00

Native jewelry artists at the Palace of the Governors.

2005-06-23T10:57:00.000-07:00

Characteristic Santa Fe architecture. Nearly everything in the city is built to look like adobe. Sometimes it looks cool and authentic, sometimes it looks absurd (there's no way a four story office building can pull it off, for instance). It looks nice here, though.

2005-06-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

A little illustration on the wall of our room at the Santa Fe hostel.

2005-06-23T10:51:00.000-07:00

After leaving Carlsbad we drove north to Santa Fe. After checking into the hostel, we visited the Georgia O'Keeffe museum. I'd only seen her flower paintings, and was surprised and impressed by her landscapes. Reminded me a great deal of Marsden Hartley's New Mexico Recollections series.

2005-06-22T18:36:00.000-07:00

Swimming pool-become-garden at our motel in Carlsbad. I especially liked the hand rail. So you don't slip as you step into the garden.

2005-06-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

Sign outside Andrews, Texas. Good for Andrews.

2005-06-22T18:21:00.000-07:00

Here's Fanny at the restaurant where we ate in Carlsbad. This place served a fantastic red chili asado. She's talking on the phone (in French) to her mom in Quebec, which made for an interesting coincidence. The couple at the next table over was speaking German. How often are that many European languages represented in an evening in downtown Carlsbad? Not very often, I'm guessing.

2005-06-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

We'll start this off with a couple of shots related to the most recent poem. Here's a yucca in southeastern New Mexico north of Carlsbad, where we stayed our first night after leaving Texas. Note the blue, possible distance in the background.

2005-06-22T17:36:00.000-07:00

Pictures on the way

I'm in the process of figuring out how to put pictures from our trip up. Using Picasa/Hello, so expect a lot of individual pictures with long captions over the next day or two.

2005-06-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

A quick update

Thought I'd take this opportunity to update everyone while Fanny's out shoe shopping with my sister (Katie, bar the door). We're about to leave Abilene for points north. Things are fantastic. She's been in Texas exactly one week, and has gotten a taste of all things Texas (and I do mean a taste--Mexican food, barbeque, chicken fried steak & okra). She's also been something of a hit among all my friends and loved ones--as was entirely expected. I'm more sure than ever that this is precisely the woman with whom I want to spend the rest of my life. Could not be happier.

So--to those friends we're leaving behind in Texas--we miss you terribly and can't wait to see you again. To those friends in Canada--we'll be there in a week. Take care of yourselves, and if you get the chance say a short little prayer of thankfulness on our behalf.

2005-05-25T20:00:00.000-07:00

Family blog news

I've been remiss in not notifying the blog world that my sister started her own blog a few weeks ago. She calls it Floor Pie, which means that not only are there multiple Priest family blogs on the internet, there are multiple Priest blogs named for obscure Simpsons quotes. Exxxcccellent.

Also, my dad's been working on an interesting series of posts on Restoration theology (and his experience thereof) over at Think a Little More.

2005-05-25T19:56:00.000-07:00

One for (and about) the road

It's likely I'll be a Canadian resident before I get the chance to post here again. Just wrote this little think, sort of in response to Fanny's most recent poem. The last bit of verse you'll likely see from me for a few weeks.

PLAYING THE ROAD

Play this road
that ducks and twitches
in the falling sun
like something cast--
a thought, except
the road's a truer line
and traceable--hold a map
and almost think you've got
the long road spooled.
Almost. Now heave it back
and out, throw the hook
as far as it'll go--
catch yourself,
a city, another life,
some snapping future
you wrestle into daylight.
Hold it. Take it off
the hook. Cut it up.
Cook. Eat--
or let it go.