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
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Monday, January 04, 2010
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.
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.
Monday, December 07, 2009
Monday, November 30, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
When is a Poetry Workshop not Really a Poetry Workshop?
It was with great expectation that I attended, at long last, my very first real-time poetry workshop moderated by a local poet. The course description on the site of the organization offering this workshop depicted a poetic experience devoutly to be wished. It incorporated a criteria which was and still is of intense interest to me -a consideration of the complexities of publication.
I admit that I had anticipated a cathartic experience in light of the fact that my muse and I had become estranged as of late. I suppose that it did not help matters much that my only experience with poetry workshops has come on-line. Yes it is true that my initial encounters with on-line workshops were with poetry boards that were so saccharine-imbued in their literary criticism that it sickened one's literary sensibilities to have to entertain some of the poetry and crits that were forwarded by the local board members.
What purpose - pray tell - does sugar-laced critique serve? It is my humble opinion that it serves no one. Just as it might be argued that the deconstruction and dissection of a poem ad infinitum also does little to assist in the editing process if it is without purpose and/or constructive direction.
Still what transpired in the real-time workshop is an eventuality that I should have logically anticipated. Obviously, it is much easier to be more forthright on-line where there is a very different form of interaction between members. Face to face confrontation is more unnerving an enterprise. To look into the whites of their eyes and tell them that their poetry just doesn't cut it is much easier said than done.
There is much less at stake in an on-line confrontation than in a real-time one. It is a more liberating and less inhibiting feeling to know that by implementing a click of a mouse the poetic interlude is quickly concluded and a possible literary altercation is avoided.
I was clearly taken aback when my critique of a poem which was by no means intended to be malicious or caustic in nature was construed as such by one of the workshop members. The poet in question did not immediately confront me but then proceeded to attack the poetry I was work shopping at every turn. In actuality, I prefer to receive in-line critiques that meticulously point out the elements of poetry that don't work in a particular poem in question. But obviously said critique must be couched and/or based in the objectivity of the concrete and not the subjectivity of the abstract.
I admit that I had anticipated a cathartic experience in light of the fact that my muse and I had become estranged as of late. I suppose that it did not help matters much that my only experience with poetry workshops has come on-line. Yes it is true that my initial encounters with on-line workshops were with poetry boards that were so saccharine-imbued in their literary criticism that it sickened one's literary sensibilities to have to entertain some of the poetry and crits that were forwarded by the local board members.
What purpose - pray tell - does sugar-laced critique serve? It is my humble opinion that it serves no one. Just as it might be argued that the deconstruction and dissection of a poem ad infinitum also does little to assist in the editing process if it is without purpose and/or constructive direction.
Still what transpired in the real-time workshop is an eventuality that I should have logically anticipated. Obviously, it is much easier to be more forthright on-line where there is a very different form of interaction between members. Face to face confrontation is more unnerving an enterprise. To look into the whites of their eyes and tell them that their poetry just doesn't cut it is much easier said than done.
There is much less at stake in an on-line confrontation than in a real-time one. It is a more liberating and less inhibiting feeling to know that by implementing a click of a mouse the poetic interlude is quickly concluded and a possible literary altercation is avoided.
I was clearly taken aback when my critique of a poem which was by no means intended to be malicious or caustic in nature was construed as such by one of the workshop members. The poet in question did not immediately confront me but then proceeded to attack the poetry I was work shopping at every turn. In actuality, I prefer to receive in-line critiques that meticulously point out the elements of poetry that don't work in a particular poem in question. But obviously said critique must be couched and/or based in the objectivity of the concrete and not the subjectivity of the abstract.
The upshot is that I have come away from the experience having gained no insight and having no real inclination to do it again. I would very much like to hear from those of you who have had a positive experience in real-time workshops in order that I might entertain the thought of dismissing this interlude as an aberration.
Saturday, November 14, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
Monday, October 05, 2009
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Reprise: Jane Mead
Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make
----------------------------------------------------------Jane Mead
Jesus, I am cruelly lonely
and I do not know what I have done
nor do I suspect that you will answer me.
And, what is more, I have spent
these bare months bargaining
with my soul as if I could make her
promise to love me when now it seems
that what I meant when I said "soul"
was that the river reflects
the railway bridge just as the sky
says it should-it speaks that language.
I do not know who you are.
I come here every day
to be beneath this bridge,
to sit beside this river,
so I must have seen the way
the clouds just slide
under the rusty arch-
without snagging on the bolts,
how they are borne along on the dark water-
I must have noticed their fluent speed
and also how that tattered blue T-shirt
remains snagged on the crown
of the mostly sunk dead tree
despite the current's constant pulling.
Yes, somewhere in my mind there must
be the image of a sky blue T-shirt, caught,
and the white islands of ice flying by
and the light clouds flying slowly
under the bridge, though today the river's
fully melted. I must have seen.
But I did not see.
I am not equal to my longing.
Somewhere there should be a place
the exact shape of my emptiness-
there should be a place
responsible for taking one back.
The river, of course, has no mercy-
it just lifts the dead fish
toward the sea.
Of course, of course.
What I meant when I said "soul"
was that there should be a place.
On the far bank the warehouse lights
blink red, then green, and all the yellow
machines with their rusted scoops and lifts
sit under a thin layer of sunny frost.
And look-
my own palm-
there, slowly rocking.
It is my pale palm-
palm where a black pebble
is turning and turning.
Listen-
all you bare trees
burrs
brambles
pile of twigs
red and green lights flashing
muddy bottle shards
shoe half buried-listen
listen, I am holy.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Monday, September 14, 2009
In Praise of an Older Woman
Standing on the prow of the Zephyr - a cruise ship ferrying us down the East River past Ellis Island toward that looming statue that personified acceptance to my grandfather before me, it occurred to me how much New York had changed since the last time that I had been here. Juliani had done a bang up job. Times Square was no longer that lewd man in a trenchcoat that said, "Come here, I've got something to show you." The Big Apple had cleaned up its act. It no longer was the city Mick and the boys sung about in "Shattered":
Dont you know the crime rate is going up, up, up, up, up
To live in this town you must be tough, tough, tough, tough, tough!
You got rats on the west side
Bed bugs uptown
What a mess this towns in tatters Ive been shattered
My brains been battered, splattered all over Manhattan
Uh-huh, this towns full of money grabbers
Go ahead, bite the big apple, dont mind the maggots, huh
Shadoobie, my brains been battered
My friends they come around they
Flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter, flatter
Pile it up, pile it high on the platter
Talk about a changeling - I was amazed at the transformation. Hopping on and off the tour bus I couldn't help but note the change. It might still be full of money-grabbers, but it had a different overall feel. The kids enjoyed the vacation soaking in the tour-guide information and sights and sounds like that child at the candy-store or should I say M&M's store. They posed with the wax figures at Madame Toussaud and ate in Little Italy's restos. They shopped on Canal Street and took in a Broadway show and didn't skip a beat. The only thing they complained about on the trip was that it was over too soon and that Montreal seemed slow-paced in comparison. Even my wife was excited during the stay and wants to revisit a revamped Gotham City.
It got me thinking - what must have been going through my grandfather's mind as he got off the ship on Ellis Island and looked over his shoulder at the figure that had travelled from France to grace North American shores.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Louise Bogan
Baroque Comment
From loud sound and still chance;
From mindless earth, wet with a dead million leaves;
From the forest, the empty desert, the tearing beasts,
The kelp-disordered beaches;
Coincident with the lie, anger, lust, oppression, and death in many forms;
Ornamental structures, continents apart, separated by seas;
Fitted marble, swung bells;
fruit in garlands as well as on the branch;
The flower at last in bronze, stretched backward, or curled within;
Stone in various shapes: beyond the pyramid, the contrived arch and
buttress;
The named constellations;
Crown and vesture;
palm and laurel chosen as noble and enduring;
Speech proud in sound;
death considered sacrifice;
Mask, weapon, urn; the ordered strings;
Fountains, foreheads under weather-bleached hair;
The wreath, the oar, the tool,
The prow;
The turned eyes and the opened mouth of love.
---------------------------------------------
From loud sound and still chance;
From mindless earth, wet with a dead million leaves;
From the forest, the empty desert, the tearing beasts,
The kelp-disordered beaches;
Coincident with the lie, anger, lust, oppression, and death in many forms;
Ornamental structures, continents apart, separated by seas;
Fitted marble, swung bells;
fruit in garlands as well as on the branch;
The flower at last in bronze, stretched backward, or curled within;
Stone in various shapes: beyond the pyramid, the contrived arch and
buttress;
The named constellations;
Crown and vesture;
palm and laurel chosen as noble and enduring;
Speech proud in sound;
death considered sacrifice;
Mask, weapon, urn; the ordered strings;
Fountains, foreheads under weather-bleached hair;
The wreath, the oar, the tool,
The prow;
The turned eyes and the opened mouth of love.
---------------------------------------------
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
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