just another dead poet

grammar- back to basics

So, my new job that I will be starting in a few weeks requires that I copyedit author’s manuscripts. In an effort to ensure proper preparation (and also due to the fact that I always over-prepare in an effort to fend off anxious night/daymares about impending doom & failure…) I’ve decided to get a head start on some grammar exercises using Maxine Ruvinksy’s Practical Grammar: A Canadian Writer’s Resource, along with helpful tidbits on the ‘net like this one.

It’s odd to note that the only reason I have fairly upstanding grammar skills as it is, is solely due to my passion for reading. I don’t remember spending a whole heck of a lot of time on grammar & punctuation in school… and once I got to University it was just ‘assumed’ that you knew the rules, exceptions, etc… when —in reality—some professors claimed to be far less than grammatical masters. So there is a great potential that even if, like me, you hold a Master’s degree in English Literature— you’ve been making and re-making the same mistakes your entire life with no one there to catch them. 

I would suggest this book to anyone who desires to “abandon the strategy of guessing” to improve his/her writing, and demystify the ‘rules’ of a language that seems to come as second nature. 

the grand tour

the ferry ride is the best part of my day. I get to watch the city yawn & scratch her eyes, and on the way home the lighthouse on George’s island winks at me.

I recently started working across the harbour in Dartmouth. As a born-again optimist, I have discovered it holds a kind of sad beauty, but I’m also constantly overwhelmed by a grotesque and almost osmotic sense of the entire city having been forgotten or discarded although it lies so close to the bustle and (dare I say) growth of Halifax. I know every city has an ugly sister, but I’ve decided to try and pay more attention to my surroundings & get back to writing poetry. Or, as one more eloquent as myself once said — “get two birds stoned at once”.

Here’s my first offering, written today after being at work without having done anything for about 6 hours. In the simplest sense it is about my walk to work.

The grand tour

Vacuum cleaners named for kings

grimace in the shop window, unclean

draped in some amber casing

like fossils.

Relics of homes with carpets,

woven tapestries and rugs hugging corners.

Everything is for rent,

sale, trade;

abandoned, re-made

like some fold-up carnival

night carries away.

Men toss their first

cigarettes at 7:50, labour ready.

Dragging heads,

heavy they look past me, eyes

husky blue like shards

of glass. 

Margaret Atwood asks good questions.

My girl Margaret Atwood’s at it again with her newest release “In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination” — allowing her inner geek to take up the pen to pontificate over everything from Batman to Victorian literature. My favourite passage so far is a rambling tangent of questions about my favourite meta-literary concept, storytelling:

“…do stories free the human imagination or tie it up in chains by prescribing ‘right behaviour,’ like so many Victorian Christian-pop novels about the virtues of virtuous women? Are narratives a means to enforce social control or a means of escape from it? Is the use of ‘story’ as a synonym for ‘lie’ justified, and if so, are some lies necessary? Are we the slaves of our own stories—our family narratives and dramas, for instance—which compel us to re-enact them? Do stories optimistically help us shape our lives for the better or pessimistically doom us to tragic failure? Do they embody ancient tropes and act out atavistic rituals? Are they essential to us—part of the matrix of our shared humanity? Do we tell them to show off our skills, to unsettle the complacent audience, to flatter rules, or, as Scherazade the Queen of Storytelling did, to save our own lives?” (41).

the fall- things i’m excited about

pumpkin pie

cold nights

orange & purple sunsets

crunching leaves beneath my feet

scarves (although I attempt to wear these year-round—like comfy little neck blankets)

book basking in the rays of the late afternoon sun, letting the Atlantic breeze turn my pages for me

squash soup

black skies and bright stars

watching my breath turn to smoke

dark beer

poetry competitions

keeping eachother warm.

bring back the cyanotypes!

The other day (last week?) I stopped in to see local photographer Graham Ward’s show “Camera Obscura” for which he created his own camera (obscura) using glass plate negatives and all the chemicals. Funny how now that we’re ‘blessed’ with all of these new technologies designed for making things ‘easier’ we discover that the quality is lacking and we strive (as artists, as people) to make things more difficult for ourselves. quality over quantity every time. that is why i work only with a film camera. Graham you have me beat.

His photographs are living fairy tales. Not the cute kind, but more like fables or parables. Stories you’d tell your children to scare them into staying inside but also the kind that make them want to enter the dark woods at night just to see if they can make it out alive.

Just read a passage from “House of Leaves” (yes, I’m still reading it…) that reminded me of my experience of viewing these photographs:

“I went outside. Tried taking in the billions of stars above, lingering long enough to allow each point of light the chance to scratch a deep hole in the back of my retina, so that when I finally did turn to face the dark surrounding forest I thought I saw the eyes of a billion cats blinking out, in the math of the living, the sum of the universe, the stories of history, a life older than anyone could have ever imagined. And even after they were gone—fading away together, as if they really were one—something still lingered in those sweet folds of black pine, sitting quietly, almost as if it too were waiting for something to wake” (509).