So Sorry!

Sue Goyette apologizes:

We’re sorry we’re so sorry but we are sorry. It’s a Canadian thing like tourtière or Irving. Picture a moose trudging through tundra towards another moose, antlers grazing maple trees that haven’t been cut down yet, the snort of exertion, the clomp of intent. That’s us trying to find each other in this wilderness so we can apologize for something: standing too close, standing too far. Being hard to find in the appointment thicket of our days. We’re sorry one of us invented frozen fish fillets because single-portion frozen dinners invented a new loneliness and the lonely bone, they say, is connected to the drinking bone. The rest, well, the rest is history. Our apologies are welcome mats and engagement rings. The tiebreaker in overtime. Pierre Berton’s bow ties. Meaningful. We take an eternity to back into a parking spot and then feel sorry for all the unparked cars still circling; we’re even sorry for feeling a little lucky. And though having a pocketful of loonies is a good thing here, it sounds like something we should apologize for.  

From outskirts (Brick, 2011).
(Illustration by Julien Decaudin)

Barbarians

Michael Hayward profiles two master "typophiles":

The Elsteds have been operating Barbarian Press for more than thirty-five years. In that time they have done commercial work, such as stationery and cards, and fine press work, including broadsheets, pamphlets and forty books. They’ve published classic authors—William Shakespeare, Edm­und Spenser, John Keats—and contemporary ones, such as Theresa Kishkan and Tim Bowling. They have created, and live, what might be called a handmade life, carrying on traditions and practices that have remained unchanged in their essentials since the fifteenth century, when Gutenberg modified a grape press in Mainz, Germany, and used it to print a bible.

"CANADÆ"

A new poem by Jeramy Dodds. (Illustration by Rick Sealock.)