Pure

...is a word that appears a few times in Gerry Gilmore's review of Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos by Michio Kaku. (Thanks, T)

I wonder if Gilmore, a professor of experimental philosophy, expected the reader, after slamming into his use of "pure thought", to happily accept his take on the term "pure" in the following paragraph as if it were a perfectly deployed airbag. Last night I hit that "pure thought" hard and I didn't walk away from it.

Pure. Flood Improvisation by Vasilii Kandinskii is an example of what he calls pure painting, " . . . a mingling of color and form each with its separate existence, but each blended into a common life which is called a picture by the force of the inner need [necessity -- A.B.]." These words and paintings are expanding the portable universes I've been carrying around, heightening the preoccupation.

Two Men Contemplating the Moon

...an oil by Caspar David Friedrich will end a day of contemplating, a day of moons. Two men and me a little ways behind them. In my dreams I hope I'll see my face in the same light.

300 Tang Poems

...from 618-907, the golden age of Chinese poetry, started off as a collection of 310 poems. More have been added. This site contains 320 poems. Unfortunately, I can only view the translations right now.

Tonight I've been looking for portable universes. I actually found one earlier today in my inbox. Portable, yes, but as I returned to it again and again I discovered that it's a universe expanding, the words galaxies receding from each other. It's truly beautiful.

The Literary Wittgenstein

...is a book I didn't know about until tonight. (Thanks, T)

May Day

...is a poem a day in May blog, a project of Polly Washburn and Ariel Gordon. I love things like this.

Portable universes

...are what Yang Lian calls the ancient poems in Poems of the Masters: China’s Classic Anthology of T’ang and Sung Dynasty Verse, translated by Red Pine. Portable universes. The paragraph containing these words is quite brilliant.

The voices

...that Jeff Derksen says are "spun out to the margins" are voices that keep finding my ear. My waiting ear. I found this essay and more in Mark Truscott's latest post.

Database Imaginary

...is an exhibition currently showing in Regina that looks at digital information.

I've been gazing

...at "The Feminine Gaze in Notorious and The Paradine Case" by Elizabeth Abele, an analysis I found via this page on Pre-Raphaelite women, the male gaze, and the work of poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti. I gazed at Daniel Chandler's "Notes on The Gaze" for quite some time as well.

I want to thank everyone

... who came out to help me celebrate the launch of More Than Three Feet of Ice on Thursday and Friday, and I want to thank everyone who emailed! Thank you!

The buzz around the texts from Oxyrhynchus

...is questioned in this ars technica article. (via Hassenpfeffer, who has been following this story)

Poetic imagination

...is the topic of this post by Michael Hoerman. (Thanks, T)

Poem of Joys

...yes, I'll end the day with "Poem of Joys" by Walt Whitman. I've been meaning to count its exclamations.

Tomorrow night I will launch More Than Three Feet of Ice. Tonight we hung the show and tested the video and sound. The space works great.

Speaking of life drawing

...here's "Never Underestimate the Power of Life Drawing", an article by Glenn Vilppu, instructor at the American Animation Institute, Walt Disney, Warner Bros., etc.

Here's The Vancouver Life Drawing Society.

An old-fashioned habit

...is not how I'd describe life drawing, but this article is really more about a community stripping down to the basics to do what artists do. (Thanks, G)

William Blake fumbled

...and bungled? He knocked out his mistakes? Imagine that. (via Bookninja)

Incidentally, in my new book there's a poem called "Cabin Fever Symptomatology: Yet Another William Blake Dream".

A good question from Canada

...opens the Poets Q&A with Robert Creeley. Further down the page Creeley is asked to compare his work to that of John Ashbery.

Overlord

...is the title of Jorie Graham's new book. The sample poem was not what I expected.

Well down the page on Poets Q&A, Graham talks about Overlord and what she thinks about the label "accessible."

Literary magazines

...introduce me to the work of new-to-me writers and to recent work from familiar names. As I said in a recent discussion on Bookninja, they play an important role in my purchasing decisions. However, e-zines and literary blogs have greater influence on my choices these days. Tips from these internet sources followed by a quick search on the author mentioned have led to some of my best reading experiences of late. Unfortunately, samples of work by lesser-known authors can be hard to find. I thought making magazines available online would address that problem, but, as Rob Budde and Kelly Wintemute indicate in "The Immaculate Retrieval: The Search-Ability of Canadian Literary Magazines", it's not that easy.

The Tennis Court Oath

...by John Ashbery arrived. I read the title poem and was surprised by what I found. It's nothing like the poem I was sent earlier this month. Mind you, The Tennis Court Oath was first published in 1962, so any difference should come as no surprise.

In her essay "Normalizing John Ashbery", Marjorie Perloff says "Ashbery attained almost no recognition prior to the publication of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, published in 1976 when the poet was fifty." Almost no recognition? Really? I'd like to see that more fully explained. Perloff refers to "the Establishment" in the same paragraph. I think the problem is this: I still don't have a good sense of the Establishment.

Here's The Tennis Court Oath, the famous sketch by Jacques–Louis David.

Historiography

...fascinates me. A history is shaped. I like to get a sense of those who do the shaping.

I spent the day rereading Northern Visions: New Perspectives on the North in Canadian History. The epigraph on page 8 of More Than Three Feet of Ice is taken from the introduction to this book.

This evening I read "How Historians Complicate Things: A Brief Survey of Canadian Historiography" by Margaret Conrad. In this essay Conrad claims "with the appearance in 2001 of Northern Visions: New Perspectives on the North in Canadian History edited by Kerry Abel and Ken Coates, a northern historiography had come of age." 2001. I got the book hot off the press, so I guess I was at the coming-of-age party and didn't know it.

After I reread Italo Calvino's words on exactitude and his words on quickness, I will rest my eyes.

Festina lente

...is Latin for hurry slowly. Festina lente. I will pin those words to my board. Within sight. I found those words in "A Dog's Nose of Receptiveness: A Calvinoesque Reading of Don McKay", a fairly lengthy essay by Brian Bartlett in The Antigonish Review.

On this Italo Calvino site I found this bit on genius and this bit on the opaque. For some reason the slow roll of molasses comes to mind. The carton's open mouth. Inside, the brown belly barely moving.

The Random Highbrow

...competition is officially underway. I cannot resist competitions like this.

Where I'm Calling From

...is a story I read for a short fiction course I took halfway through my BA. It was my introduction to Raymond Carver's work. Tonight, after reading a story that focusses on Carver as poet (via Bookninja), I pulled out The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, which served as the text for that course, to see if the short bio actually mentions his poetry, and sure enough it does. Carver, a poet! Clearly my memory had pitched that piece of information. Anyhow, on that page I caught sight of Tiny, one of the characters, and read the passage, stopping at the mention of duck hunting. That's when I remembered Carver's Saskatchewan connection.

Silliman's New American Poetry

...reading list is a dream. It covers everyone from Ginsberg to Ashbery, O'Hara's Lunch Poems included.

Tonight I saw

... Ham Sandwich perform "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night", a play by Tim Kelly.

The piles of tires

...under Urban Mines on Edward Burtynsky's website bother me. In fact, most of the work on his site bothers me. It's meant to. Burtynsky and his work are the subject of a story in today's Globe and Mail, a story I found via Said Like Reeds or Things.

My own environment-oriented photographs will meet the public soon, carrying related contradictions.

Lunch Poems

...by Frank O'Hara was added to my wish list today after a writer, in his comments on Ashbery, said he thinks O'Hara was the superior poet.

Both were part of the New York School of poets, a group of poets I obviously don't know much about. In the opening paragraph of Ashbery's tribute to O'Hara, he says he had to convince Kenneth Koch, another member of the New York School and another poet whose work I have not read, to admit O'Hara. I guess I should add Koch to my reading list as well.

Out of the varied poems unearthed in my search on O'Hara, the one in "The Sanity of Frank O'Hara" by Thom Gunn, the last tribute on the page, was the most moving. I read "To The Harbormaster" several times. Unfortunately, the poem is not in Lunch Poems. That means a collected or selected is in order as well.

More Than Three Feet of Ice

...came in on the bus tonight. It's a beautiful book. The cover and design are incredible, the font and paper perfect. I can't believe it's mine. Here is More Than Three Feet of Ice.

It will be several weeks

...before the older Ashbery titles I ordered show up. This evening, after reading some brief comments on the book, I searched and found this poem from Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror and followed the link to Francesco Parmigianino's Self-Portrait, the painting to which the poem refers. That expression is so familiar. It's a face looking back at its youth.

Read the last sentence

...of this NY Arts Magazine article, then go back and read the rest.

Yes.

Good storytellers

...are fascinating to watch and listen to, but try as I may to study their techniques and see what makes them so effective, I always get caught up in their stories and carried away from any objective stance. Today I ran across Kevin MacKenzie, the SWG's Storyteller-in-residence in "Storytellers celebrate Andersen's birthday" in the Star Phoenix. Last fall I had the pleasure of introducing Kevin MacKenzie's "Tell It! An Introduction to Oral Storytelling" workshop at the SWG conference. In the workshop I gained a better understanding of storytelling and what makes the good storytellers so good. That night I saw him in action. I was determined to focus on his technique, but he immediately had me hooked and ultimately lost in the story.

Three more Ashbery

...poems here in The American Poetry Review. I wonder if they're from Where Shall I Wander?

The Sixties in Canada

... is showing at The National Gallery.

Speaking of the 1960s, The Paris Review's DNA Interview Index is a great online archive, including interviews of Robert Creeley, Aldous Huxley, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and many other prominent authors of the time.

My latest birding column

...in Route North Roots is on the street and online.

This edition of the magazine features a collaboration between New York writer Elias Kulukundis and Flin Flon composer Mark Kolt.

I'm happy to say one of my poems has been set to music for a different project and will be part of a Kolt production in 2006.

Here

...is a poem by John Ashbery. A poet sent it last night. Perhaps it's time to add Ashbery to my collection.