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Saturday I was going to go to a barbecue, and then I got a wickett sunburn at the Moss St. Market, and decided to discuss poetry instead. ( Here is the result. )
Here then, begins my entirely unfair and biased survey of contemporary Canadian poetry and the relationship of my work to it.
ABSTRACT
Contemporary Literary Canadian Poetry appears to be: not that good.
SAMPLE
I purchased:
SubTerrain: Strong Words for a Polite Nation (Issue 43)
Speakeasy: A Literary Look at Life (Spring 2006)
Vancouver Review (Number 9, Spring 2006)
Literary Review of Canada (Vol. 14, No. 4, May 2006
This selection was neither random nor orderly. They just seemed like the best bets. I'll discuss the specific poems I read in these magazine at a later date, such as after I get some sleep.
PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
The documentary voice is almost universal. True or not, specific incidents are recounted like anecdotes. Often the form is prose poem, though sometimes there are line breaks, but the voice is generally distanced and neither emotional nor imagistic. Often it relates an incident or observation we might typify as "gritty". By which I mean: potentially disturbing, but feeling oddly derivative.
[Note to self: Blame Al Purdy?]
( Some thoughts on the gendering of published writing. )
A thesis: these approaches, documentary and memoir, reflect the current popularity in prose writing of memoir and creative nonfiction.
( Some thoughts on documentary and memoir poems. )
( I will tell you the secret thing I hope for. I want to be wounded by a poem. )
I want to learn from a poem how to write honestly, so honestly that it humiliates me, because the poem is so much stronger than I am.
This contemporary documentary voice could be useful to me. It could help sharpen and focus what I write. It isn't the thing I'm really looking for, though. I want to find poets who can hurt me with their truth.
{rf}
Here then, begins my entirely unfair and biased survey of contemporary Canadian poetry and the relationship of my work to it.
ABSTRACT
Contemporary Literary Canadian Poetry appears to be: not that good.
SAMPLE
I purchased:
SubTerrain: Strong Words for a Polite Nation (Issue 43)
Speakeasy: A Literary Look at Life (Spring 2006)
Vancouver Review (Number 9, Spring 2006)
Literary Review of Canada (Vol. 14, No. 4, May 2006
This selection was neither random nor orderly. They just seemed like the best bets. I'll discuss the specific poems I read in these magazine at a later date, such as after I get some sleep.
PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS
The documentary voice is almost universal. True or not, specific incidents are recounted like anecdotes. Often the form is prose poem, though sometimes there are line breaks, but the voice is generally distanced and neither emotional nor imagistic. Often it relates an incident or observation we might typify as "gritty". By which I mean: potentially disturbing, but feeling oddly derivative.
[Note to self: Blame Al Purdy?]
( Some thoughts on the gendering of published writing. )
A thesis: these approaches, documentary and memoir, reflect the current popularity in prose writing of memoir and creative nonfiction.
( Some thoughts on documentary and memoir poems. )
( I will tell you the secret thing I hope for. I want to be wounded by a poem. )
I want to learn from a poem how to write honestly, so honestly that it humiliates me, because the poem is so much stronger than I am.
This contemporary documentary voice could be useful to me. It could help sharpen and focus what I write. It isn't the thing I'm really looking for, though. I want to find poets who can hurt me with their truth.
{rf}
