Portrait In A Convex Mirror

Turns out that John Ashbery's readings, as public events, are as eccentric and entertaining as his poetry:

"When Ashbery finished, his way had to be cleared once again. While Ashbery’s friend pushed his wheelchair, a photographer wearing multiple complex cameras duckwalked backwards, snapping pictures as if the poet were a runway model. It took me at least five minutes to round the corner to the exit, where the photographer stood cursing at Ashbery’s companion. 'I’m a fucking professional, I cleared it with his publicist, and he takes a swing at me?' Ashbery’s diminutive friend, who looked and dressed remarkably like Curly of The Three Stooges, simply stared at the photographer, who was a foot taller than he was. The friend’s crewcut head and flat eyes radiated menace as he pushed the elevator button to take Ashbery to the reception upstairs. The photographer stormed out onto the street."

The Death of Modern Canadian Poetry, Ctd

Evan Jones and Todd Swift hold their ground in this wide-ranging interview with Maurice Mierau on the subject of their anthology Modern Canadian Poets.

I've argued that the anthology -- by taking a wrecking ball to the existing CanPo canon and replacing it with scandalously neglected poets like A.G. Bailey and John Glassco -- is an exciting exercise in counterfactual speculation. But the editors aren't having any of it. "We were looking for poets who inhabited a Canada that does really exist: a place where, rather than reject the influence of the UK and the US, poets take on both, revealing a tradition inflected by its cultural position between two more dominant ones" [italics mine].

Point well taken (it's an argument I also make in the title essay of my book A Lover's Quarrel). And there's also this:

"[A] nation will always look differently from the outside. This is as true of Canada as it is of the UK, the US, Germany, Japan and New Zealand. There is no reason for poets to expect their tradition to resemble itself when viewed from another country: context has changed. We, as editors, are outside looking in; we have different expectations. Yet, we’re not interlopers. We have a direct connection and we see things differently, that’s all."

Read the rest of it here.

My Ears Are Burning

I'm very grateful to poets Jonathan Ball and Maurice Mierau for agreeing to chew over my bpNichol essay which appears in the new issue of Maisonneuve.

"I have long wondered why Starnino insists on writing at length about things he appears to hate, but although he is critical here toward the end, a real fondness for Nichol and an appreciation for aspects of his oeuvre shine through. Finally, some willingness to engage, which I find lacking in his other writings on the so-called avant-garde, which often, as they do here, descend into straw-man bullying."

You can read the rest it here.