Lectures on Expanded Poetics

Poetry in Vitro 1.2

Shaving With Occam's Razor

teleported to a distant galaxy....

Poetry in Vitro - 1.1

Etude en Sommeil

gone...to the Poetry Repair Shop.

Happy Birthday Mr. Dylan!

If You're in the Montreal Area on Tuesday - Check Out : " Writers Out Loud " - 'Nuff Said!

Upon Seeing The Space Allotted to Poetry Books in The Largest English Bookstore in Montreal!

There I stood in front of the poetry section. I had spent the last half hour walking up and down the stacks of different forms of Literature looking for this spot of hallowed ground. "Spot" being the operative word here. What I saw before me, at once stupefied and sickened me. This poor excuse for a collection of poetry books rendered me speechless. Yes it did indeed include some of the giants of poetry: Neruda, Rilke, Whitman, Eliot, ... etcetera. But it was lacking in so many ways. There were no poetry guides or reference books. Although I did see a copy of "Poetry for Dummies". How apropos! Furthermore there were no new volumes of upcoming poets.

There was a time when the Poetry section occupied much more of the bookstore's realestate. What had happened is obvious. For a time, I stood there pouring over a volume of Billy Collins hoping to find some levity in the situation. Reading for the umpteenth time: "The Trouble With Poetry". Still chagrined I walked out onto St-Catherine Street into the damp undertow of worker-ant activity.

Hello... Is There Anybody Out There?

The Sound of These Whales is Mighty Sweet

Nic Sebastian's Whale Sound arose from an "... idea ..to record and post readings of a range of contemporary poems, selected through a mixture of solicitations and submissions (self- and third-party).

The recordings are posted, archived and indexed on her blog, and Whale Sound is also available as a free downloadable iTunes podcast. Links to poem texts available elsewhere online are posted, but no text is posted on the blog itself.

Whale Sound also accepts third-party submissions made on behalf of other web-active poets."

She says "...in a recent blog post on the project, I find that reading other people’s work aloud is the most tender and respectful, and also the most careful, way to engage with it. I hope you will join me in this continuing celebration. "

All this blogger can say is check it out. Her vocal renderings of other poets' work are amazing.

Poet Searching for Online Poetry Workshop

Yeah, that's right. Once again I'm looking for a place to hang my on-line poetic hat. Most of the places I used to frequent have gone "The Way of all Flesh". Anybody have any suggestions? I'm all ears....really. Oh... and I promise to be more active than this guy!

Taking out the Shears & Doing Some Pruning.

I've changed the blog's template and have pruned away links that no longer functioned. If there's something I've missed drop me a line.

On Responding to the Question: "Why Have You Abandoned Poetry?"

I have received in the course of the last several months open e-mails inquiring why I had stopped posting on this blog and more importantly why I had stopped writing and being an active member of the on-line poetry scene. The truth is that I had not abandoned poetry. Rather, poetry had until very recently abandoned me. No longer did the music of poetry spill into my everyday life. I had become oblivious to its calling. Whereas, before, the urgency of ars poetica would boil and bubble into my very essence, it had now become a footnote to my existence. This did not seem or feel right. Then there was the need to mourn my recent losses. Perhaps the time has come for renewal.



The Something
Charles Simic

Here come my night thoughts
On crutches,
Returning from studying the heavens.
What they thought about
Stayed the same,
Stayed immense and incomprehensible.

My mother and father smile at each other
Knowingly above the mantel.
The cat sleeps on, the dog
Growls in his sleep.
The stove is cold and so is the bed.

Now there are only these crutches
To contend with.
Go ahead and laugh, while I raise one
With difficulty,
Swaying on the front porch,
While pointing at something
In the gray distance.

You see nothing, eh?
Neither do I, Mr. Milkman.
I better hit you once or twice over the head
With this fine old prop,
So you don't go off muttering

I saw something!

In Memoriam - Carmela Bruno (1926 - 2010)

OSTEO - PARADIGM

In a world of perfect bones,
there is no room for hairline fractures,
hip replacements or herniated disks.
Prostheses are non-existent; bones
do not snap like bread sticks
or wear down like soapstone.

My mother can still squeeze my hand
till my knuckles run white and our thumbs
become one. She does not fixate on yellow
biohazards or aluminum walkers. She studies
how long the water will take
to course through irrigation ditches.

In a world of perfect bones,
long after cicadas turn silent
and the calabrian heat subsides,
my mother walks about
on that five foot high retaining wall
that separates her from her garden.


-----------------------------------------

Better Late Than Never

April is the cruellest month...mixing
Memory and desire. (T.S. Eliot)

For those of you whose memory serves them right, this blog was once brimming with poetry. Whether or not these poems had/have any real intrinsic literary value, I leave to your judgment. I have not been writing with the frequency that I once did. But then again I state the obvious.

For those of you who still read this blog on the off chance that there might be something to glean from recent entries - I offer you this. I have ceased to be fixated on publication in book format of my poetry that has appeared in literary magazines. I would like at this point, in light of the fact that this is April and the month that we have set aside to celebrate poetry, to present to you a retrospective look at my published poetry -- for the duration of this month.

In order to make amends this first installment offers five poems (April 1st - April 5th):




Old Keyboards

My daughter likes to tie old keyboards
to my chair, as though to tether

the words to their source. They orbit
my sphere where tropes unite.

The cables interconnect my thoughts
to the hub from which she suspects all

must emanate and that I am the harbinger
of the - Truth is - she is my compass.

---------------------------------------------
first published: fall 2002 – Another Toronto Quarterly



A Marmot in the City

A marmot in the city seemed odd,
like Bermuda shorts in a Canadian winter;
yet there it was in the tomato patch,
between the rock garden and scotch pine.
It sniffed at a San Marsano ready to be picked,
but settled for shoots of parsley.

It seemed uncertain as it ate; the new kid
in class, all our eyes on the back of its head.
Then one morning my wife noted its form
among the forget-me-nots,
I went out to inspect and it scampered
into a hole burrowed beneath our landing.

Days later our youngest complained
about an odor emanating from its lair.
The S.P.C.A. came but couldn't dig it up;
so there it lay sepulchered,
a lone carcass in its tomb. What if
others crawled inside to their demise?

I imagined that a future archaeologist
might excavate the site and think
that this primitive culture buried their pets
in a communal plot close to their hearths.

What were Neanderthals at Le Moustier
really thinking as they buried their dead
in the caves of Les Eyzies' shallow pits,
a boy's remains surrounded by wild goat horns?

-----------------------------------------------
Winter 2003 – Verse Libre Quarterly V: 3 e: 1

Her Particular Disposition

Inviolate, in her satinette housecoat
her arm's secrets safely hidden, she walks
him to the door, the broken screen reminds
her of a room and of time spent at the wall
of ignorance at the hospital's psych wing.
Don't forget tomorrow's session with Dr. Marx.

She nods and allows anxiety to seep
through the careful presentation of self;
derailed by the exhaustive effort, she runs
her fingers raw across the screen's
ragged edge. Smiles him out, lips pursed
to snap her pupils into a dance.

He hears the door's lock click behind him,
as he steps out from under the eaves
and off the stoop, between the dank
sedges on an uneven walkway, looks
back over shoulder to see her beneath
the light, behind the door, her face
pressed against the torn mesh.

----------------------------------------
April 2003 – The Breath E-Zine



MELTDOWN

He stepped past the police cordon,
put on the mandatory surgical gloves,
pulled out his notepad and pen
and considered why,
they had asked a poet
to visit the scene of a crime.

The force of the explosion had strewn
about human parts. The cadaver's pride
was on the commode. His vanity
hung by the mirror. The libido sat
exposed on the loveseat. Gobbets of guilt,
were hidden in denial behind the door.

But most telling, his stupidity
was splattered on the wall
behind the writing desk in particles
of dura mater and blood. And there
in front of the corpse was the culprit:
a journal of love poems in the victim's handwriting.

------------------------------------------------
September 2002 - Electric Acorn #13

ONE HAND CLAPPING

What is the Sound of a Single Hand? When you clap together both hands a sharp sound is heard;
when you raise the one hand there is neither sound nor smell...

Hakuin Ekaku Zenji (1686-1768)


She speaks to me - a foreign movie
without subtitles; a dubbed version
of an English feature - snippets of dialogue
recognizable amid aphasic speech. Audio
and visual feed out of sync in dyslexic pattern;
the face familiar, the words incomprehensible.

It is in the eyes that I read her meaning,
double projectors they impress
on cognitive screen. Imploring her
to slow the reel of words, she shrugs,
breathes deeply and retraces her steps;
rewinds the sequence of gibberish through
dysfunctional dendrites and starts over.

Unexpectedly, there is a freeze frame,
the spool unravels and all goes blank.
She attempts to splice severed synapse
of film; grabs an HB pencil with balled fist,
scribbles and pushes the pad towards me
with the lead firmly implanted into the paper:

When I speak, it feels like I'm one hand clapping.

-------------------------------------------------
March 3-9, 2003 - Poetry Super Highway

This has got to Mean Something.... Right?

I made it onto the following list:

"30 Awesome Poetry Blogs You Aren’t Reading Yet".

Get this. I'm described as follows:

"Nick is a lovable Canadian poet."

I guess they haven't met me... yet. ;-)


Sincerely,
Your lovable Canadian Poet

Attack of the Hallmark People

They mean well. Most of them are very erudite and articulate under normal circumstances. But, somehow, give them a picture of a Carebear or a kitten holding a heart (not on its sleeve) but in its paw and they start handing out Hallmark Card blingee thingees like condoms at an orgy or an olympic village.

Now I knew when I signed up for this Facebook gig that it wasn't going to be a "Blog-like" commitment. But...Hey my facebook wall isn't your refrigerator door where you can post all your thingamajigs. At least not without my say so.

Yeah...Yeah! I know that Facebook is the "post-its" of the internet age. So what should I expect? How about a little respect. If you've got something you want to put up on my wall or profile or whatever just gimme a shout first. Otherwise I will remove it without any further notice. Turnabout is fair play.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Poetry in Vitro: Volume 4; Number 3

Architecture of Youth


Coming soon to a poetry journal near you!

Sitting

Reflections of a Lesser Poet

So it's that time of the year again..isn't it? It's a time for taking stock. It's a time for introspection. A time to reflect on the direction or misdirection that our life is taking. The fact that this is the first few days of a new decade only exacerbates the sense that we must give pause and seek a place where we can contemplate.

In the course of my life, the past decade was a very eventful one to say the least. It was the decade in my life where I rediscovered poetry and began writing my own verse with the intent and purpose of publication. Between 2003 - 2007... I was published in some 50 odd venues. It was a period where I finally made it into print in reputable poetry journals. I had finally employed my affinity for poetry to some end culminating in poems that I still feel resonate with me and thankfully several editors along with a few readers to boot.

It was a decade that saw me move back (to Canada) from Europe after a brief sojourn there that had been intended to be of a more permanent nature. I realized during my time in Italy and France that I was more Canadian than Italian. I came to understand that being Italian by birth did not ensure that one was Italian by nature. I had suffered from culture shock while I was abroad and reverse culture shock when back in Canada. The move back was bound to rearrange my life just as the move to Europe in 1995 had left its irrevocable imprint on my persona.

But this decade was also fraught with tragic loss. In 2003 my mother's stroke for all intents and purposes took her away from us. Gone was the strong matriarchal figure that we, as her children, had come to love and respect for over seven decades. In her place we found a changeling – someone we were hard pressed to rediscover. A person who was unable to communicate her needs let alone her innermost thoughts. My father was hardest hit by this terrible turn of events as he had lost his life long companion. He now found himself her caretaker as she had become wheelchair bound and unable to perform the simplest of tasks.

My father's death in February of 2007 was the last in a series of events which took it's toll on my life. The brutality of his death at the hands of an errant driver while he was crossing a busy intersection on foot all but took away any motivation I had to carry on perfunctory and non-perfunctory tasks. Still, the bitter irony of this turn of events was not lost on my battered sensibilities. Here was a man who had left his home to start a new life in Canada. He had wanted something better for his four children. Then in his golden years, when his children had found their niche in Canadian society, he was determined to spend his final years in the land that had given birth to his culture. He returned to his patria in the 90's only to find himself (a decade later) alone and dying on a cold pavement in a city he had deemed he would not return to. My father had never acclimated to the cold of Canadian winters. Nonetheless, he succumbed to his injuries before he reached the ICU and died in much the same manner that he had come to this country – alone in the throes of winter - without being comforted by the family he worked so hard for.

It was a decade that saw my wife afflicted with thyroid cancer and now – thank God - cancer free. It has also been a decade of fiscal loss. The near closure of a business and livelihood that employs my wife and I due to legal litigation which fittingly never got to court as there was no basis for it in the first place. Thank God for that.

Yet here I am – limping into the second decade of a new millennium with very little fanfare and even less to show for it. However, unlike Jimmy Stewart in, "It's a Wonderful Life" – I appreciate the miracle of our existence and the series of improbable events that gets us to this point in our lives. I thank God every day for my wife and daughters. I am truly blessed. I am thankful for my talent in art and poetry. I wish that I had been a musician but realize that I have not pursued this end to its logical conclusion and thus have no one else to blame but myself.

There are challenges ahead of that I am sure. I have not published my poetry in the form of a book yet and that is another shortcoming. Mea culpa! But surely had not my train of submissions and the publishing of my poetry been derailed by personal upheaval it might be logical to assume that I should have attained this goal. There is the challenge of work shopping my poetry and reading it to an open audience to reap the benefit of instant feedback. This too is devoutly to be wished. Hopefully the workshop experience of 2009 will not be repeated. Are my expectations too high? I'll let you be the judge of that.

Here's to wishing you all much health, peace and prosperity in this new year and decade. Let us all ply this "sullen craft". Let us all write feverishly into the next ten years and damned be him or her that first cries, "Hold, enough!". May all your verse ring true.

Celebrating an Anniversary

Two For Tuesday