So this is it, Lane. Not a living wake, but a celebration of all your living. And this is only the beginning. Wait until you’re dead. Susan Musgrave, editor, from You Loved Being a Stranger – 55 Poets Celebrate Patrick Lane, Harbour Publishing, 1994 There are times when I no longer know if what I […]
Tag Archives: Patrick Lane
Tonight, the Memorial for Patrick Lane (1939-2019) – This Morning, Remembering an E-Mail Correspondence from Fourteen Years Ago
April 20, 2019 – 10:39 am
The Bigness of Small Poems – # 48 in a Series – Jack Gilbert and Patrick Lane
April 18, 2019 – 3:21 pm
ALONE ON CHRISTMAS EVE IN JAPAN Not wanting to lose it all for poetry. Wanting to live the living. All this year looking on the graveyard below my apartment. Holding myself tenderly in this marred body. Wondering if the quiet I feel is that happiness wise people speak of, or the modulation that is the […]
A Unicyclist of Poems – Patrick Lane – A Poem by Paulette Jiles and also an Invite to Lane’s Upcoming Celebration of Life, April 20th, 2019
April 11, 2019 – 4:48 pm
Join the local literary & UVic communities as poets & authors celebrate the life of the late Patrick Lane. This evening of poetry and tribute to the acclaimed poet and late UVic Department of Writing professor Patrick Lane will feature readings and memorials by a number of Writing alumni, including emcee Steven Price, Esi Edugyan, […]
The Bigness of Small Poems – #46 in a Series – Crozier and Lane (and Tranströmer)
March 18, 2019 – 10:29 pm
Two exquisite, yet for me enigmatic, poems by the Canadian poets Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane, partners for more than forty years before Patrick’s death eleven days ago. This broadsheet hangs in my home office and I revisit it now again. And every time I feel happily lost in a lyric mysteriousness, much the way […]
The Bigness of Small Poems – # 45 in a Series – A Small Gem by Patrick Lane (1939-2019)
March 16, 2019 – 10:09 am
The benefit of cleaning up a chaotic office! Finding this exquisite small poem by Patrick Lane. As I remember him telling me, and here my memory may be a touch thin in places, this poem was part of a larger piece and his “Beloved”, Lorna Crozier, told him this was the poem! I appreciate the […]
Absences Gone Through Me – R.I.P. W.S. Merwin and Patrick Lane – The Bigness of Small Poems – # 27 in a Series – Updated and Revised
March 15, 2019 – 10:59 pm
EARLY ONE SUMMER Years from now someone will come upon a layer of birds and not know what he is listening for these are the days when the beetles hurry through dry grass hiding pieces of light W.S. Merwin from Migration: New and Selected Poems, Copper Canyon Press, 2005 What a great poem to celebrate […]
A Poem and a Blues Hurting Song – Haunted and Haunting Words from Patrick Lane’s Hard, Hard Days
March 12, 2019 – 5:33 pm
ASSINIBOINE Deep summer nights and you, far off, quiet in the dawn. That last morning the mute swans were on the river and I was unclean. I placed hot stones in water as you told me of the old people beside the slow current singing. If I look hard enough I believe I can see […]
The Desolate “Isness” of Addiction – A Poem by Patrick Lane
March 8, 2019 – 10:25 pm
Half-Hearted Moon Sometimes I don’t feel anything. It’s best to be with people when I do. I stare across the coke and whiskey at Jimmy and Moon. We are talking about nothing. The half-hearted night stumbles up the cracked pane and no one cares. Moon is crying and there is nothing I can do. She […]
Patrick Lane R.I.P. (March 26th, 1939 – March 7th, 2019)
March 7, 2019 – 5:09 pm
When I Sleep When I sleep the birds come to the garden With their gifts of seeds out of ice Last year’s leaves of grass lift into night. All my songs have been one song. The palm of my hand and the sole of my foot remember everything I have forgotten. The old lantern by […]
Celebrating Wedding Vows! Two Poems by Crozier and Lane
September 29, 2018 – 7:18 am
A poet friend of mine is getting married today. And in a brief text exchange she invited me to remember how I felt the day I took my vows with my wife Somae. A great reminder of that day for me and the grace those vows have brought into my life. Thank you M. And […]