It's a byootiful Canada Day in the Blabber . . . er . . . BloggerHood.
Right off the top, it brings us quidditious pride and pleasuredom to get down to class facts root-a-toot-tooting our horn of dartlin' doozie delights announcing the publication of Dusie 10, a distinctively distinguished Switzerland-based online journal / e-book of discriminating standards and fundamentally sound production values, bien sûr (xspecially when it comes to consistently stellar entries of the first magnitude bedazzle-dancin' around artists Adrian Göllner's plus Danny Hussey's lovingly executed complementary visual contributions). Dusie 10's makers and shapers go the distance proving the sky's no limit in this abso-obvo extraordinary enterprise showcasing brand-spangly brill-thrill selections from comets the calibre of George Bowering (pictured above), Emily Carr, derek beaulieu, Monty Reid and Monika Kidd to shooting stars comme Lainna Lane El Jabi, Kim Minkus, Joe Blades, Pearl Pirie, Asher Ghaffar, Sharon Harris and Sandra Ridley plus your humbled Moodith jitter-sloggin' along the Milky Way, the odd broad most conveniently accessible on Canada Day to grant permission to reproduce "Que Besa Sus Pies, Que Besa Sus Manos" (© 2009-10 Judith Fitzgerald):
The delicate gorgeosity of your vital words, each shimmering with irresistible possibility, barely containing the truth catching in one's throat, such exquisite intensity, the blackness each repudiates, porous with damage and longing, indelibly sorrow- streaked in one transparent universe where knives of knowledge carve wide swaths through history, luminous among moon's slow-dawning curves, now arcing to pull you towards the radiance of darkness serrated, swallowing pain, gasping for air in those shadowed chambers of the heart yielding to the contours of thinking skin in the perfect syntax of stone and aether, grasping the universal finality language's liquid purity salvages almost anything but that, solves all conundra but that, that which you cannot overcome, that cacophony of time wound up, ground down, astounding in its irrefutable injury; the circus of our love, its amusement-park attentions spanning a millennium of, ultimately, swift midnights (where the hands on the doomsway clock stand still an instant, stand at attention, stand ready to embrace whatever remains of a human face gone missing without a trace). Hear that? It is cold; it is lethal; and, it is threatening to break into itself in the name of answers materialising on the horizon when the sun rises to reveal dysphoria in all that splendorous glory. That? Think crux. Think matter. Think father, son, and wholly ghost-trace host. Think shatter.
Put plainly? To cement our destination here @ IOW station, Dusie 10 celebrates Made-in-Canada cut-above work from Canucks of verve, swerve and nerve (not to mention the occasionally discombrainiacal left-field curve. (Erm, I'm fixing a vicurious quizzical raised gee-whizzical I-brow stare in precisely your direction, Stan Rogal ^o)).
Bonus? Universally considered one of Cyberia's pre-eminent online poetic repositories, the Homeric Simpsonian cover of Volume 3, Number 2 ( guest-edited by "In Other Words" Planetary-Poetry-Month's 2010 Editor / Writer-in-Residence rob mclennan), subtly reminds US that CAN comedians and cartoonists indisputably own LA, Hollywood, New York, et so onnera (or, despite what similarly Canadianized Contrarian Stephen Colbert asserts, we ain't quite the ice-holes he suggests we are, particularly since he ain't never - to my knowledge, at any rate - joined The Plashing Canoe Club presided over by Leonard Cohen's Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha :))
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"Last year, Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott pulled out of the election for Oxford professor of poetry; now, the only woman standing in this year's contest, poet Paula Claire, has withdrawn in protest over what she is describing as 'serious flaws' in the election process that she believes have pushed best-known candidate Geoffrey Hill ahead of all other contenders." The Guardian's always lively and indubitably straight-shootin' Alison Flood provides readers with the scoop on this year's poop, a not-to-miss pissoffering worth its weight in with-it snarks, snaps, barks, snippets and sparks; however, given the contendahs, Claire really cannot believe her work as, well, as great as the Brit Geoffrey Hill's whose oeuvre, indeedly, ranks among that of the top eight poets populating our planet . . . One of the leading lights of the LGBT community, Lambda Literary, presents some fun 'n' stun-wondrously breath-catching words of justly deserved and beautifully written praise for a pair of recent luminous works - Unleashed (BookThug); Expressway (Coach House) - from our very own freshly minted Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere™ as well as Lemon Hound overseer), Canada's own poet, bloggadociotica and self-described bon vivant Sina Queyras . . . The Venerable Paris Review recently announced its pink-tickledness in revealing respected critic, translator and scholar Robyn Creswell's name will grace its masthead as its new poetry editor come this fall: "The Review is one of the most vital organs of American literary culture, and its poetry section has always been a place where emerging as well as established poets have their say. It's exciting to become part of a magazine that has published the whole spectrum of brilliance from John Ashbery to Amy Clampitt, from Charles Olson to [Canadian/American]Anne Carson. The Review also has an impressive history of publishing translations of the [work of the]best poets from abroad, and I look forward to continuing that tradition," enthuses Creswell . . .
For Karen Solie, The Star's intrepid Publishing Reporter, Vit Wagner, expresses his approbation that "[t]e Saskatchewan-bred Toronto-based poet has added Ontario's $10,000 Trillium Book Award for Poetry to the $75,000 she earned earlier this month as the Canadian winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize. She won both awards for Pigeon, her third collection of poems" (KudoS, KS!) . . . Speaking of award recipients, "IOW" also salutes Novelist Michael Crummey ( Galore), Historian Jonathan F. Vance ( A History of Canadian Culture), Dramatist Michael Nathanson ( Talk), Poet Tom Dawe ( Where Genesis Begins) and Bookland Press Emerging Writer Award-Winner Rachelle Delaney ( The Ship of Lost Souls) on their respective snaggings of the prestigious Canadian Authors' Association's honours . . . Seeking not-to-be-missed poetry with a twist? Look no further than Poetry, Prosecco & Pasta from Diaspora Dialogues: Over a trio of Thursdays this month at Grano Restaurant (2035 Yonge Street @ Davisville), this dynamic not-for-profit (quickly gaining critical and popular acclaim) invites you to join Molly Peacock (July 8), Erin Mouré (July 15) and Daniel David Moses (July 22) for an intimate dinner complemented by both readings and moderated conversations . . .
Yep! Here come the winners and runners-up of this year's Bulwer-Lytton down 'n' dirty over-the-top writing dishonours (including a pair of proudly romantic Canuck schmucks :), namely Toronto's Paul Chafe ( "Trent, I love you," Fiona murmered [sic] and her nostrils flared at the faint trace of her lover's masculine scent, sending her heart racing and her mind dreaming of the life they would live together, alternating sumptuous world cruises with long, romantic interludes in the mansion on his private island, alone together except for the maids, the cook, the butler, and Dirk and Rafael, the hard-bodied pool boys.) and Bedford's Jonathan Blay (whose up-running entry I leave for you to discover on your own) . . . In The New Republic, Rochelle Gurstein ponders the perils of progress to thoughtfully incisive effect: "What about all the beautiful things that new technologies will take away from us?" . . . For those who need to know, "Thrill Seeking Leads to Workplace Affairs," at least as far as The Times of India's concerned since, well, "[Ex-Canadian Penguinian David]Davidar wrote [Lisa]Rundle personal emails, read poetry to her and they exchanged gifts from time to time. Throughout this friendship, Davidar would ask Rundle if she liked the attention he was paying her and she indicated she did," said a statement June 21 by Peter A. Downard of Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, a leading Toronto-based law firm that has been engaged as litigation counsel on behalf of Davidar. Hrm. Wonder what poetry he read to her? (I mean, I hope he had some values and chose selections from Penguin volumes only, for crying out loud :).) Lessee . . . The Penguin Book of Limericks . . . A Cup of Poetry . . . The Penguin Book of French Poetry: 1820-1950 . . . might all do the trick, n'est-ce pas?
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Notable Quotable: Our contemporary Shakespeare, poet, novelist, artist, filmmaker, stand-up comedian, composer, producer, singer and songwriter non-pareil Leonard Cohen who, as some among us well remember, turned down the Governor-General's Award for Selected Poems: 1956-1968 at the age of 34, said a little more about the logic underscoring his decision for the first time a while ago: "You know," he told me in a tone rumbling between deference and defiance, "Piaf! Je ne regrette rien! At the time, it [the refusal of the award]was considered an unpatriotic act, something that it was never meant to be. It was simply a spontaneous gesture of that time in that place. It felt right. I don't regret it. Still, I am sorry it was misinterpreted as an unpatriotic act because it wasn't; but, I don't feel badly about it. Not at all."
(Hat tips, Leo, Jack & Susan Tennant and Jean Baird.)
(Photograph of George Bowering, "CanGeezer at Giza," © 2010 Jean Baird. Exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Used by permission. All Rights Reserved.)