It is late October, 2012, last evening of the Vancouver Writers’ Festival. There is music in the big room already. Music made by voices. The event starts in thirty minutes but many of the four hundred-or-so chairs are already filled. The music is sweet and unique. Those particular voices. Those places in the room where […]
Yearly Archives: 2012
And Still We Sing – A New Year’s Eve Celebration of the Life and Poems of Patrick Lane
December 31, 2012 – 4:31 pm
Jack Gilbert – July 1925 to November 13th, 2012 – Sing Going Down
November 30, 2012 – 9:36 am
A great hunger lay at the heart and genius of the American master poet Jack Gilbert, who, until his last years was little known, but in spite of his low-profile, was long considered one of the foremost poets of his generation. Yes, Gilbert was a man driven by hungers but luckily for the world, he […]
Wabi Sabi
October 23, 2012 – 9:05 pm
A road in Jamaica. A need to stop. An old building. The beauty of imperfection. Of impermanence. Simply stated, this is the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi, a celebration of the imperfect, the impermanent, the incomplete. While Wabi Sabi is closely associated with the Japanese tea ceremony as expressed by Sen no Rikyu (1522-1591) it […]
An Alphabet of Poets – Z is for Zagajewski – Part Two – Try To Praise The Mutilated World
June 3, 2012 – 11:12 pm
Try to Praise the Mutilated World Remember June’s long days And wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. The nettles that methodically overgrow The abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world – You watched the stylish yachts and ships; One of them had a long trip ahead of it, While salty oblivion […]
An Alphabet of Poets – Z is for Zagajewski
June 3, 2012 – 10:45 pm
Try to Praise the Mutilated World Try to praise the mutilated world Remember June’s long days And wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew. The nettles that methodically overgrow The abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world – You watched the stylish yachts and ships; One of them had a long trip […]
An Alphabet of Poets – Y is for Yeats
May 31, 2012 – 10:51 pm
The Lake Isle of Innisfree I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee; And live alone in the bee-loud glade. And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping […]
An Alphabet of Poets – X is for Xiaobo
May 24, 2012 – 2:39 pm
Daybreak Over the tall ashen wall, between the sound of vegetables being chopped daybreak is bound and severed dissipated by a paralysis of spirit What is the difference between the light and the darkness that seems to surface through my eyes’ apertures, from the seat of rust I can’t tell if it’s the glint of […]
An Alphabet of Poets – W is for Whyte
May 17, 2012 – 8:50 am
News Of Death For Tom Charlotte Last night they came with news of death not knowing what I would say. I wanted to say, “The green wind is running through the fields making the grass lie flat.” I wanted to say, “The apple blossom flakes like ash, covering the orchard wall.” I wanted to say, […]
An Alphabet of Poets – V is for Vallejo
May 14, 2012 – 8:15 pm
AND WHAT IF AFTER And what if after so many words the word itself doesn’t survive! And what if after so many wings of birds the stopped bird doesn’t survive! It would be better then, really, if it were all swallowed up, and let’s end it! To have been born only to live off […]