The Poet's Phrase Book

The struggling poet needs some help deciphering all the rejection letters that they will be receiving in the course of their career. To this end I have started to compile a Phrase Book to clarify some of the editorial jargon that they will be puzzling over. Here are a few choice editorial responses and their true significance:


Unfortunately we have chosen other work for this issue.

Translation: Unfortunately for you, but fortunately for us.

Since we run a small publication only a tiny portion of work sent to us is accepted, and many fine pieces end up returned merely because of our sizable submissions.

Translation: Your sub has been moving from slush pile to slush pile until we could get enough undergraduate assistants to return to sender.

I want you to know that your work has been taken under careful consideration…

Translation: We didn’t even open the envelope.

Sorry to say that after much discussion and close reading we have decided against the work.

Translation: The editorial staff crumpled up your submission and played waste-paper basket one-on-one with it.

We get a lot of high quality submissions & can only take the few that really hit us right.

Translation: We get a lot of high quality submissions but yours isn’t one of them.

We apologize, both for the tardiness of this response and the fact that we will be unable to use your submission at this time.

Translation: We’ve been using your submission as a coaster for the past ten months. Actually, the coffee stains have improved your poetry.


While we did enjoy reading your work, none of the poems seemed a good fit for the journal.

Translation: We laughed until our sides hurt when we read your poetry.

I think they're accomplished poems, but they don't quite fit the aesthetic I'm going for with the journal.

Translation: I wouldn’t publish these poems if they were the last poems on earth & you were the last poet alive.

Thanks for your interest, but I'm all booked up and am not taking any unsolicited manuscripts.

Translation: I don’t publish on the basis of talent; I only publish poets that are family members, friends and people that I’ve slept with.

Many thanks for sharing your talents with us, and very best wishes for placing this work elsewhere.

Translation: Please don’t submit your crap here again. The editorial staff has an ongoing bet that it’ll never see the light of day.

We're sorry to say that it does not suit our current editorial needs, but we wish you luck with it elsewhere.

Translation: You’re joking…right?

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)

Marcelle Lender Dancing the Bolero in “Chilpéric"
1895 - 1896
oil on canvas,
145 x 149 cm
(57 1/8 x 59 in.)
























At the Moulin Rouge,
1892/1895
oil on canvas,
123 x 141 cm
(48 7/16 x 55 1/2 in.)

Watch What You Say

Richard Wilbur

A Measuring Worm


This yellow striped green
Caterpillar, climbing up
The steep window screen,

Constantly (for lack
Of a full set of legs) keeps
Humping up his back.

It’s as if he sent
By a sort of semaphore
Dark omegas meant

To warn of Last Things.
Although he doesn’t know it,
He will soon have wings,

And I, too, don’t know
Toward what undreamt condition
Inch by inch I go.


------------------------------------
source - The New Yorker - 04/02/2008

Believe it or Not - It's Two For Tuesday

Your Musical Score

You couldn't imagine Easy Rider set to Beach Boys music now could you? A good musical score simulates and/or forms a symbiotic relationship with a visual series of images. A musical backdrop can of course also be used effectively with the spoken word.

If you were to liken your poetry to a musical genre and match it in its intrinsic elements of poetry to a specific form of music, artist or even song(s) what might that (those) be? So let's say for the sake of comparison that if you were to choose 5 songs; pieces and/or artists which would best approximate your poetic sensibilities and style which would they be? If possible post them in You Tube form.


Introspective



Socially Conscious



Surrealistic



Brooding


Cynical



--------------------------------------------------------------------
Obviously, I've limited myself to Rock & Folk as genres. You might explore other musical forms of expression. Anybody else want to take a shot at this be my guest.

Addendum: I had originally tagged - Sam, Collin, Brent, Robert, Shann & Justin (whenever he comes back from hiatus) just to name a few - but I'd like to see quite a few bloggers' response to this. Too many to list actually.

Two For Tuesday

Bobby Fischer (1943-2008)

Bobby Fischer died on Thursday at 64, leaving behind a legacy as one of the greatest chess players the world has ever seen.

Call for Submissions

NōD Issue 8 -- The Viral Issue

Call for Submissions

Deadline: March 1 2008
E-mail submissions to nodmagazine@gmail.com
This issue is viral-themed; send work that is parasitic, replicative, related to computer viruses, sickness or epidemics.


subscriptions 12$/year (for individuals w/in Canada)
contact us via e-mail or mail check to address below
(please make checks payable to NōD magazine)

--
NōD Magazine
Department of English, University of Calgary
2500 University Drive N.W.
Calgary, AB
T2T 1N4
nodmagazine@gmail.com

Mona Lisa's True Identity Revealed

The real identity of the Mona Lisa has been revealed, a group of German academics says. Experts at the Heidelberg University library found notes scribbled in the margins of a book, dated October 1503, that they say confirm what many art historians have long thought to be true: Lisa Gherardini, the wife of the wealthy Florentine merchant Francesco del Giocondo, was the model for Leonardo da Vinci's legendary portrait, Reuters reports. According to the experts, Agostino Vespucci, a Florentine official and an acquaintance of Leonardo, wrote the comments, which mention that the artist was working on three paintings at the time, one of them Lisa del Giocondo's portrait. Art historians are hailing the discovery as a breakthrough. "There is no reason for any lingering doubts that this is another woman," Leipzig University art historian Frank Zoellner told German radio. "One could even say that books written about all this in the past few years were unnecessary, had we known." (Artinfo, January 15, 2008)

------------------------------------------------------
source NY Art Magazine

Two For Tuesday

Retro-Minded

Those of you that read this blog on a regular basis may have noted that I have been posting an inordinate amount of classic rock lately. It has been my experience to have music & the writing of literature creatively intertwined. Glad that some of you have noticed and enjoyed this retrospective of some of the music that I first listened to in my formative years. I have of course just touched the peak of the iceberg.

As a teenager I had a considerable vinyl collection which has been depleted over time by trade-offs for books etc... with friends, lovers & other strangers. However, I still have a decent 33 LP collection that I am transferring to mp3 format with this gizmo:
























Ion USB Turntable

Product Features & Specifications

• Professional quality turntable connects to your PC via USB
• Classic styling with included smoked plastic dust cover
• Rip your vinyl directly to MP3 or WAV format
• Easily move your recordings to iPod or burn them to CD (Free iTunes software download required)
• Ships with Audacity software (compatible with PC and Mac) for removing clicks, pops, and other undesirable characteristics of vinyl
• Audacity supports high-speed recording, then returns music to original playback speed
• Audacity software includes ability to export to WAV and MP3
• 33.33 and 45 RPM playback speeds
• Supports the recording of 78 RPM records through the included software
• RCA line outputs with built-in pre-amp allow direct connection to your existing audio system.
• Plug and Play USB compatibility with both Windows (XP, 2000, Vista) and Mac OS X
• Packaged with all necessary cables to interconnect with both a computer and stereo playback system

So I will be incorporating in my blog a series of posts high-lighting these albums and some of the tracks on them.

"Sitting" on the "Peace Train"

Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007)

Poetry in Vitro - Vol 3, No. 8

-------------------------------------------------
*Well - if you missed it & you didn't miss much - it's nice to be writing something again in any case...

Season's Greetings

23rd

Wedding Anniversary

Don't Want to be a Canadian Idiot...

Back by Popular Demand - Two For Tuesday

Nicola Verlato (1965 - )

The Best For You Is Absolutely Unattainable: Not Being Born, Not Being, Not Being Anything,
2005,
oil on canvas,
244x283cm,























The Stairway To Heaven,
2003,
oil on canvas,
250x180cm

Twisted,

2007, oil on canvas,

34x26 cm,

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

more of his work is available here

Getting Some "Kinks" Out

Rock's Poet Laureate

Montreal's Leonard Cohen is on his way to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Cohen was announced as an inductee Thursday. A panel of 600 industry figures selected the five acts to be inducted at the annual ceremony, to be held March 10 in New York. To be eligible, artists must have issued a first single or album at least 25 years before nomination.
Cohen, 73, went from acclaimed poet to a folk rock icon with "Suzanne" and "Dress Rehearsal Rag" in the late 1960s, making him a big part of the singer-songwriter movement.

How Could I Forget...

...what happened 27 years ago

on December 8th?

Film Divas

Bob Dylan Revisited

Sam is in the process of posting 5 great Dylan songs on his blog. I figure that most of us have a few Bob Dylan song lyrics bobbing about in our memory banks. They harken us back to a time, place or stage in our lives. Most of the lyrics are as relavent today as they were at their inception. Here are a few of my favorites: --

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

10) Ballad of a Thin Man (Highway 61 Revisited:1965)

Well, you walk into the room

Like a camel and then you frown

You put your eyes in your pocket

And your nose on the ground

There ought to be a law

Against you comin' around

You should be made

To wear earphones

Because something is happening here

But you don't know what it is

Do you, Mister Jones?

9) When I paint my Masterpiece (1971: Bod Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. 2)

Oh, the hours I've spent inside the Coliseum,

Dodging lions and wastin' time.

Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle,

I could hardly stand to see 'em,

Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb.

Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory,

When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese.

Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody

When I paint my masterpiece.

8) A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall (1963: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan)

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?

And what did you hear, my darling young one?

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin',

Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world,

Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin',

Heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin',

Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin',

Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter,

Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley,

And it's a hard, and it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard,

And it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall.

7) Gotta Serve Somebody (1979: Slow Train Coming)

You may be an ambassador to England or France,

You may like to gamble, you might like to dance,

You may be the heavyweight champion of the world,

You may be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You're gonna have to serve somebody,

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord

But you're gonna have to serve somebody.

6) Highway 61 Revisited (1965: Highway 61 Revisited)

Well Mack the Finger said to Louie the King

I got forty red white and blue shoe strings

And a thousand telephones that don't ring

Do you know where I can get rid of these things

And Louie the King said let me think for a minute son

And he said yes I think it can be easily done

Just take everything down to Highway 61.

5) It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) (1965: Bringing it All Back Home)

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

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards

False gods, I scuff

At pettiness which plays so rough

Walk upside-down inside handcuffs

Kick my legs to crash it off

Say okay, I have had enough

What else can you show me?

And if my thought-dreams could be seen

They'd probably put my head in a guillotine

But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

4) Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (1971: Bod Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. 2)

When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez

And it’s Eastertime too

And your gravity fails

And negativity don’t pull you through

Don’t put on any airs

When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue

They got some hungry women there

And they really make a mess outa you

3) It's All Over Now Baby Blue (1965: Bringing it All Back Home)

You must leave now, take what you need, you think will last.

But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.

Yonder stands your orphan with his gun,

Crying like a fire in the sun.

Look out the saints are comin' through

And it's all over now, Baby Blue.

2) Down in the Flood ( 1971: Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits - Vol. 2)

**No Video**

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

Crash on the levee, mama,

Water's gonna overflow,

Swamp's gonna rise,

No boat's gonna row.

Now, you can train on down

To Williams Point,

You can bust your feet,

You can rock this joint.

But oh mama, ain't you gonna miss your best friend now?

You're gonna have to find yourself

Another best friend, somehow.

1) Masters of War (1963: The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan)

You that never done nothin'

But build to destroy

You play with my world

Like it's your little toy

You put a gun in my hand

And you hide from my eyes

And you turn and run farther

When the fast bullets fly

On Poetic Rationalizations:

No contemporary poet is famous, but some are less unfamous than others. That’s because the poetry world, like most areas of American life, has its own peculiar celebrity system — ... The problem is, poetic stardom is an unpredictable business. Good writing doesn’t guarantee a reputation; bad writing doesn’t guarantee oblivion; nor can grace, money or nimble careerism entirely explain why Poet X reads to overflowing auditoriums, whereas Poet Y reads to his cats. Maybe it’s simply the case that, as William Munny remarked in “Unforgiven,” “deserve’s got nothing to do with it.” ...

After all, as Donald Justice once said, “there may well be analyzable causes behind the oblivion some good writers suffer, but the causes, whatever they are, remain elusive.” Still, if the causes of a lack of recognition are unknowable, the causes of recognition are equally obscure — which means that luck can always turn.

------------------------------------------------------------------
David Orr : "On Poetry Words of the World" - Sunday Book Review - New York times
via Jilly's Blog

Nick's Picks

From - "The Last Waltz" (1978)

Daniel F. Gerhartz (1965 - )

Hind's Feet

Oil on canvas

96 x 72 inches

(243.84 x 182.88 cm)

You Know....

I was about to take down yesterday's post. It sounds angry and frustrated to my ear. But then I thought about it and realized, albeit the tongue-in-cheek quality of it in some places - it's quite accurate a response to some of the e-mails that I received regarding the paucity of my recent publications or lack thereof.

However, I keep a record of my submissions as a folder in my Outlook. After tallying up the number of submissions versus acceptances for 2007 - this is what I have come up with:

Magazine Subs: 7 -

Chapbook Subs: 2 - MIPO Chapbook contest which Christine Hamm deservedly won & Kitchen Press (There are several still pending from late 2006 )

Acceptances: 2 - Nod Magazine 6th Issue & fourW eighteen Anthology

Nominated: For the Best on the Web by Edward Byrne from Valparaiso Poetry Review

These are admittedly some rather pathetic figures and a far cry from the number of publications that my poetry has enjoyed since 2003 when I had 21 publications. But all variables do not remain equal.

We are close to a year's end that has had some severe personal consequences. January of 2007 my wife and I were involved in a legal battle regarding our family business. Thankfully we won and our permit to run said business was not revoked. February 9th 2007, my father was struck down and killed as he was crossing a busy Montreal intersection. The driver that hit him was making a legal u-turn. He had just celebrated his 60th wedding anniversary. My mother, who suffered a stroke in 2003 was deemed mentally and physically unable to minister to her daily needs. A long and heated battle with my sisters to not have her removed from the residence which my father and I had put her in ensued after his death. My wife's ongoing battle with thyroid cancer reared its ugly head - when during a routine ultrasound a lump was found in her neck. Thank God it turned out to be nothing. She's going back for a full body scan in January 2008.

As you know if you are a regular reader here I do not as a rule write about my daily personal life or predicaments. This isn't a diary. And these are not excuses as to why I have not been submitting more or publishing or devoting more time to my poetry and to this blog. If my poetry has suffered and languished - well then so be it! Perhaps I should not be saying this here and in these circles - but there are more things under heaven and earth ....than poetry.

And...NO!

• The old creative juices have not dried up - there never were any to begin with. I have been winging it all along. I have it on good authority.
• I have not given up on the prospect of publishing my poetry in the form of chapbooks etcetera - not by a long shot...
• If you're an editor & you have not received a submission from me...I just haven't gotten it out of the gate recently. Don't worry you'll have ample opportunity to tell me my poetry isn't quite right for your publication or any publication for that matter.
• I still love poetry and read it extensively. I'm just not blogging about it as much. Mea culpa!
• If you've stopped reading my blog...Then what the hell are you doing here!
• If you're wondering why you don't see me anymore on poetry workshops online critiquing...It's not because there isn't a will, it's because there isn't a way. My work/personal life has taken a front and center stance recently.
• If I haven't been posting comments on your blog as of late...count yourself lucky
• If you think my poetry sucks big-time --- tell me. Go ahead---It'll probably spur me on to write better.
• If you consider my poetry as not being marketable and think that I'm gonna stop writing any time soon...think again!
• I will not brown-nose in order to get my poetry published - I'm still idealistic enough to believe that it will get published on its own merit.
• If you find me offensive, pedantic and boorish...you ought to know that those are my better qualities.
• I don't have an M.F.A. - but that doesn't mean that I'm poetically illiterate.
• If you have anything constructive to say - I'm all ears...

Yes

Poetry in Vitro - Vol 3, No. 7

The Fear of Open Faces

Hell is other people!
--------------------------- Jean Paul Sartre


Tonight they gather to his credit; drink
to his name. Laughter hangs on the clothesline
of his liquored breath. He notes the first increments:

preliminary steps towards the scaffold
where disdain for the social is built;
the crawl down a fire escape
away from the flame of open spaces --
the burning skies of free discourse.

Trapped in that place between
agoraphobic alibis and the embrace
of the dramaturgical. He feels suffocated
by intrusive faces and the pungent smell
of Homo Sapiens Sapiens - Humanity twice removed
would suit him fine right about now.


------------------------------------------------------
first appeared – Spring 2004 – Snow Monkey

NōD Fundraiser

NōD is thrilled to announce its first fundraiser!


NōD Fundraiser - November 22nd
7:00-10:00pm Weeds Café



Help publish the University of Calgary's undergraduate magazine! Come out to Weeds Café Thursday evening for an amazing set of readings, tasty coffee & tea, and prizes. Admission is by donation, but includes a voucher for a free coffee & a treat!


Featuring Readings by:

Jonathan Ball
derek beaulieu
Christian Bök
Sina Queyras
& others!


Event Details:

Thursday, November 22nd
7:00pm-10:00pm
Weeds Café
1903 - 20 Avenue NW *


Admission by Donation*

How to I get to Weeds?

Take the C-train to Lions' Park Station; walk North along 19th Street and turn left onto 20th Ave. It is about 1 block down 20th ave (you'll pass the funny little Edelweiss building). It is less than a 10-minute walk from the Lion's Park station.


Contact: Bronwyn and Ian - nodmagazine@gmail.com

NōD Magazine
Department of English,
University of Calgary
2500 University Drive N.W.
Calgary, AB
T2T 1N4

What I am is What I am - Are You What You Are or What?

The Poet as Non-conformist

The first occasion that I can remember where I questioned the poet’s role in society was in my exposure to the caricature of the poet in early sitcoms. Inevitably the poet was portrayed as a beret-donning bohemian beatnik. It was both comical and derogatory a depiction. I envisioned poetry as a means to an end – usually some form of social activism – rather than an end in and of itself.

That the poet is seen as critical of society and his/her role therein stands to reason. Questioning the social construction of reality would seem to be consistent with the image of the poet as eccentric, outsider and rebel. “The romantic figure of the poet-rebel has pervaded our conception of poetry for almost two centuries: …evok[ing] pictures of reckless young men/[women] in uncompromising pursuit of individual self-expression revolting against conservative morality, political oppression, authoritarian rule and personal insincerity. The romantic view of the poet as tormented outcast even survived the rise of realism and naturalism in the second half of the 19th century.” (Mathias F. Adelhoefer)

This romantic image of the poet always intrigued me. Perhaps it was because I could never really embrace the fashion in which society was forged by the “haves” leaving the “have-nots” in the lurch. Questioning the social paradigm one finds oneself in is a sane way of looking at life in my book. Clearly, in order to gain insight into an otherwise monolithic social entity the poet must exercise detachment from the socially compromising roles that they must assume in society. This aloofness allows for some startling observations vis a vis this commonality - providing just the right rhetorical fodder.

Have today’s poets lost this detachment? I’m not sure. But it does appear that many of today’s poets are - by trying to become established becoming the establishment. Are we as poets just feigning the outsider role? Are we quick to join the established order at the drop of a beret? Perhaps Adelhoefer was right in saying that “in the West the belief in the power of poetry as a decisive social force has all but evaporated…”


-----------------------------------------------------------------
excerpts from: Thoughts of The Times: Poetry--A Cultural Dinosaur?
By Mathias F. Adelhoefer

First published in: The Korea Times, Seoul, Korea, 17 June 1993, p. 6.

Charles Simic

The Initiate

St. John of the Cross wore dark glasses
As he passed me on the street.
St. Theresa of Avila, beautiful and grave,
Turned her back on me.

"Soulmate," they hissed. "It's high time."

I was a blind child, a wind-up toy . . .
I was one of death's juggling red balls
On a certain street corner
Where they peddle things out of suitcases.

The city like a huge cinema
With lights dimmed.
The performance already started.

So many blurred faces in a complicated plot.

The great secret which kept eluding me: knowing who I am . . .

The Redeemer and the Virgin,
Their eyes wide open in the empty church
Where the killer came to hide himself . . .

The new snow on the sidewalk bore footprints
That could have been made by bare feet.
Some unknown penitent guiding me.
In truth, I didn't know where I was going.
My feet were frozen,
My stomach growled.

Four young hoods blocking my way.
Three deadpan, one smiling crazily.

I let them have my black raincoat.

Thinking constantly of the Divine Love
and the Absolute had disfigured me.
People mistook me for someone else.
I heard voices after me calling out unknown names.
"I'm searching for someone to sell my soul to,"
The drunk who followed me whispered,
While appraising me from head to foot.

At the address I had been given.
The building had large X's over its windows.
I knocked but no one came to open.
By and by a black girl joined me on the steps.
She banged at the door till her fist hurt.

Her name was Alma, a propitious sign.
She knew someone who solved life's riddles
In a voice of an ancient Sumerian queen.
We had a long talk about that
While shivering and stamping our wet feet.

It was necessary to stay calm, I explained,
Even with the earth trembling,
And to continue to watch oneself
As if one were a complete stranger.

Once in Chicago, for instance,
I caught sight of a man in a shaving mirror
Who had my naked shoulders and face,
But whose eyes terrified me!
Two hard staring, all-knowing eyes!

After we parted, the night, the cold, and the endless walking
Brought on a kind of ecstasy.
I went as if pursued, trying to warm myself.

There was the East River; there was the Hudson.
Their waters shone like oil in sanctuary lamps.

Something supreme was occurring
For which there will never be any words.

The sky was full of racing clouds and tall buildings,
Whirling and whirling silently.

In that whole city you could hear a pin drop.
Believe me.
I thought I heard a pin drop and I went looking for it.


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

A Long, Long Time Ago

Remembrance

W. Bouguereau

"Le Jour Des Morts" - (1859)

You Wanna See Something Really Scary?

10. "Eraserhead" (1977)David Lynch's cult classic is the closest thing to being stuck in a nightmare: Not much makes sense, but you get the feeling that nothing is quite right. Lynch employs dinners that walk off the plate, eerie silences that become deafening and an infant that makes Rosemary's baby seem cute and cuddly. So chilling it's damn near unwatchable.

9. "The Exorcist" (1973)The real terror of "The Exorcist" may not involve Satan and possession, but the helplessness of a parent trying to save a child. Of course, a ton of harrowing special effects and director William Friedkin's somber respect for the supernatural subject matter doesn't hurt either. It's horror for grown-ups.

8. "Halloween" (1978)John Carpenter's film is blamed for the rash of slasher films that destroyed the genre in the '80s, but "Halloween" possesses a style and intensity that most of its copycats lack. From the opening sequence -- when we see through the eyes of little boy Michael Myers as he stalks and murders his sister -- onward, the film relies on suspense rather than sensationalism. Our fear is caused by what might happen rather than actual events, as Carpenter spends a good amount of time in darkness, making us see things that may or may not be there.

7. "Don't Look Now" (1973)Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie head to Venice to forget the tragic accidental death of their child. However, it's impossible to forget when the dead child keeps reappearing. Nicolas Roeg's labyrinthine film is rich in dreamlike atmosphere and works on a purely psychological level: It disorients, frustrates and builds to a horrible climax, reminding that tragedy can never be forgotten ... and neither can this film.

6. "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" (1974)A group of annoying teens make a wrong turn on a road trip through Texas and encounter the most dysfunctional family imaginable. It's a teen exploitation flick shot like a documentary. Wonderfully grim, mean and inhumane, director Tobe Hooper's debut doesn't spill much blood, instead opting to giddily, relentlessly torture and chase its audience (much like Leatherface treats his victims) for 80 minutes. It feels like days.

5. "Nightmare on Elm Street" (1984) Before dream-killer Freddy Krueger became a quipping pop-culture reference, he represented the most twisted monster unleashed on the public since Halloween's Michael Myers. Seeking vengeance by slicing and dicing the children of the parents who murdered him, Freddy scared the hell out of Cineplex audiences. His on-screen entrance remains terrifying, as does much of director Wes Craven's surreal, smart and shocking masterpiece.

4. "Suspiria" (1977)"Suspiria" is a full-on sensory assault by Italian horror master Dario Argento, the cinematic equivalent of an anxiety attack. A poor American ballet student arrives in Europe and Argento berates her with weather, grisly murders, a possible coven of witches, his virtuosic camera, and possible the freakiest score ever conceived (by the director himself). The plot barely makes sense, so just let it terrorize you.

3. "Night of the Living Dead" (1968)A group of kids get trapped inside a farm house by an endless stream of flesh-eating zombies. Sounds silly, but director George Romero takes his simple premise and redefines the genre with a shoestring budget. The amount of sadistic gore, the claustrophobic tension, the rising levels of hysteria and an increasingly deflated awareness that a happy ending is impossible make this a nasty classic. There is no hope here, only suffocating terror.

2. "Repulsion" (1965) Director Roman Polanski did more horror afterward, with "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Tenant," but this -- a menacing, nightmarish profile of one woman's descent into madness -- may be his most realized effort. Catherine Denueve embodies sexual repression as a young woman left alone in her apartment -- and to her deluded fantasies -- for the weekend. The film is nearly silent, creating a mounting mood of dread. Try watching it alone with the lights off and see how long you last.

1. "Psycho" (1960)Alfred Hitchcock's blueprint for contemporary horror: More than just a film, "Psycho" was a cultural slap in the face. Censors wanted to ban it, while screaming audiences couldn't get enough of it. Hitch employs all of his tricks -- shifting audience sympathies, killing off the main character halfway through the film and a ton of macabre humor -- but more importantly he makes the horror internal. Norman Bates isn't a monster in the classic sense; he suggests that the greatest evil can lurk beneath the quietest, most pleasant surface.

"Chill October" - John Everett Millais - 1879

Some Pics From the B.Day Bash

With my wife Aurora.



With Aurora & a Crouching Elizabeth.



With Aurora & Carmen.

Yesterday It Was My Birthday

Over the hill but not too far away!

fourW18 Book Launch

The fourW18 Anthology book launch takes place on November 10th in Wagga Wagga & Sydney Australia on November 17th. Wish I could be there with you guys. Best of luck to Sandra Treble and the staff on the launch. Thanks for choosing my work to appear in this anthology. Cheers!

An Open Book

These are the top 106 books tagged “unread” in Librarything. The rules:Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your TBR list.


Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22*
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick*
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The Historian
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of cholera
Brave new world*
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein*
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula*
A clockwork orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984*
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels*
Les misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye*
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance*
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit*
In Cold Blood
White teeth
Treasure Island*
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers


-------------------------------
Gee!... Who came up with this list? I can think of at least another 106 books which should be on the list.

The Futility of it All

I've just been reading the Futility Review and am amazed at all the fine poets that you will not be finding there. Apparently their rejection rate is 125%. With my luck I'll probably get accepted. .... Jeff Bahr has all the details here.

T.S. Eliot

La Figlia Che Piange

O quam te memorem Virgo ...


Stand on the highest pavement of the stair—
Lean on a garden urn—
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair—
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise—
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers.
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.


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

Trompes D'Oeil - David M. Lenz

Thanks to Brent Goodman for introducing me to Lenz's work.

All the Leaves are Brown...Yeah... Maybe!

Poetry in Vitro - Vol 3, No. 3

Interrupted Discourse Between a Father & Son

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

to be continued

Charles Simic

My Turn to Confess



A dog trying to write a poem on why he barks,

That's me, dear reader!

They were about to kick me out of the library

But I warned them,

My master is invisible and all-powerful.

Still, they kept dragging me out by the tail.



In the park the birds spoke freely of their own vexations.

On a bench, I saw an old woman

Cutting her white curly hair with imaginary scissors

While staring into a small pocket mirror.

I didn’t say anything then,

But that night I lay slumped on the floor

Chewing on a pencil

Sighing from time to time

‘Growling, too, at something out there

I could not bring myself to name.

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

It's Still Life - Your's Truly - circa 1993

Oil on canvas
(18in. x 24in.)

This is What it's all About...Isn't it?

This is a reader's reaction on her blog to a poem: "A PILGRIMAGE TO L'ORIGNAL" (below) that was originally published in - July 2003 - in Thunder Sandwich # 21.

"This poem describes exactly my feelings on returning home from Japan to see my grandmother, who was so alive and vital when I left, lying in bed at 99, shrunken to a "changeling" who I could hardly recognize. When she was gone, I tried to spackle the space with my memories, but realized there were not enough to fill the large hole."

In response to your question - Have I written any other poems about my mother's failing health? Yes:


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.


----------------------------------------
Published in: August 2004 - Stirring

Response to a Reader

In January 2003, my mother had a massive brain stroke. She was in Italy at the time, living at our villa in Calabria. In the spring of 2003, she returned to Canada and spent some time convalescing in a town in rural Ontario called Orignal. This poem relates the events of the first time that I visited her in Ontario and was witness to the ravages wrought by the stroke.


A PILGRIMAGE TO L'ORIGNAL

That he that is not busy being born
is busy dying.
------------------------------Bob Dylan



The last station to cross is the dirt road
that hits harder when the long drive
comes to a halt. You hate yourself
for begrudging her even this inconvenience.

The ranch house looks lost on the five-acres
of lawn that disappears into the undergrowth
and the bifocal eyes between the slats
of a shuttered window. "So you've come,"

a voice squeaks through the screen door
which reveals curator and medicus. She leads
you to a room with closed blinds; leaves
you with the changeling on the bed. You
could never have prepared for this.

The light tumbles into the room as you pull
up the blinds; turn to examine the face
of a homeless mind - translucent
and flaccid, blackened by pain.

She opens one good eye - greyer
than the clouds that spilt forgiveness
on you - and you are lost.


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

Castles

Wanna Come up and see Some of my Sketches?

Coiffeuse (1982)




















Self-Portrait (1991)



























Soak up the Sun (1999)

Two Men Playing Briscola Before the Fireplace (2004)

Some Well-Placed Words

Posted - Monday, September 03, 2007

Why Reginald Shepherd's Post Made Me Laugh & Cry at the Same Time

While reading Reginald Shepherd's post entitled: " Working Class Hero" I came across this passage.

"...as intellectuals and artists from poor backgrounds, people who as kids knew lots of words we couldn’t pronounce correctly, because we’d only read them in books."

It describes a socialization process that (although different) closely mirrors my own. The love affair that I had (and still have) with the English language drew me to the etiology of words and ultimately to the doorstep of poetics. Words became my sole weapon against an Italian culture that I tried so compulsively to distance myself from. There have been numerous sociological studies relating to the second generation immigrant, the denial of their mother culture & the process of assimilation within the host culture. Acquisition of language is perhaps one of the first, if not most important step in the process of acculturation. After all language & culture are so closely linked - that the mastery of a language along with the all important knowledge of its semantics & idiomatic expressions often renders an immigrant - homogeneous and in essence almost indiscernible from the host culture. This is the worst case scenario for a 2nd generation immigrant. The third generation: once it has received a modicum of social acceptability, often seeks out the original culture's nurturing teat.

As a second generation immigrant I self-consciously tried to gain the approval & approbation of this host culture. I saw my neighborhood friends & acquaintances (who I perceived had a flawed knowledge of the host language) as the enemies. Their stilted efforts at mimicking this language grated on my perception of what constituted an acceptable auditory pattern of this purloined language - that was English. I spent many hours listening to recordings of my voice trying to rectify stilted language. In my blind efforts & haste to be accepted I thought that I had received the ultimate compliment when during my undergraduate years at McGill University in Montreal - I was asked to play Macbeth in a staging of the play by a Shakespearean class (I had taken as an elective) and was told that I sounded like a young Ronald Colman (Prisoner of Zenda). Little did I know!

Despite my love & devotion to its nuances and the grammar of its expression - my love of poetics has gone by and large unrequited. It has not welcomed me open-armed within the ranks of its favored proponents. I still await the caress of an accepted manuscript - for example. I have not as yet been granted audience to read the borrowed words which best imitate my thought processes via poetic rhetoric. Despite my bending to a purloined culture I have nothing tangible to show for it. I still maintain a silent vigil.

Posted by Nick at 7:52 AM

3 comments:

Sheryl said...

Hang in there. Mine didn't get published until I had all but given up hope. Someone had to prod me to send it out that last time! I too can relate to this post as well as the other one.

1:18 PM, September 03, 2007

Nick said...

Thanks, Sheryl, for commiserating.

3:16 PM, September 03, 2007


Reginald Shepherd said...

Dear Nick,

Thanks for linking to my post. I completely understand and identify with what you write in your piece. Literature, literacy at all, was my shield against my surroundings in the Bronx ghetto, the black and Puerto Rican kids who threw rocks at me and stole my lunch money and just generally smacked me around because I didn't talk and walk like them, because I (supposedly) thought I was white; the Italian kids who threw vegetable crates on my head while calling out "Chocolate milk, chocolate milk"; even the snotty kids at the private schools I went to on scholarship. It was like learning a second language that no one else spoke, and that contained the secret words that would enable me to escape one day. Meanwhile, no one understand me but my mother (now dead), and even with her, the more her ambitions for me came true, the further apart we became, since her hope for me was that I would get to a different world than the one in which she grew up and the one in which she'd ended up.

And if you need encouragement, as I might have mentioned in my post, I sent out three hundred individual submission packets of four to six poems each before I had a single poem accepted anywhere. And it took me five years of non-stop submission (and revision) before my first book was accepted. I've now published five books of poetry and a poetry anthology, and I still get rejected more than I get accepted. So hang in there. Perseverance works, even if it works too damned slowly much of the time.

all best,
Reginald

5:55 PM, September 19, 2007

Quotes & Quotables

"Some folks lives roll easy
Some folks lives
Never roll at all
Oh, they just fall
They just fall"

------------------------------Paul Simon (from Still Crazy After all of These Years)