Sunday Poem

WATER GLASS

Sure fooled me.

Had me right up

to the tinselly scraping

when I downed

the last mouthful

and the ice cube turned

out to be glass.

Arrowhead.

Shark's fin.

Lifting it out

nearly cost me a finger

never mind

the carnage it

could've caused

in the throat.

Awe around the table

as if I'd gone

inadvertent skydiving

or breezed through

a tiger rodeo just while

sipping, squeezing in

a lime. See

how the trick is turned.

Thrilling to be fooled so,

like when I went to check

the time in Paris

and a thief's hummingbird

caress left me gaping

at my naked wrist.

That was a touch

I never felt, but this time

I'm suffered to see

how I'm spared.

Everyone wanted to touch it, tap,

test their fingers on the edge.

Makes you want

to try your luck again,

the way a carnival bohunkus

gawps at the stage;

then jets his hand

in the air with ballooning

faith. Me, me,

pick me, mister.

Saw me in half.

I believe.

From The Id Kid by Linda Besner, which will be launched April 17, 2010.

Greene Interview

Over at Northern Poetry Review, Carmelo Militano interviews Richard Greene on his GG-winning book, Boxing the Compass.

"Here are all these Canadian poets -- I'd say nearly half -- entertaining religious beliefs that they fear to talk about in poetry. It is like earlier centuries fearing to talk about sex in poetry. Even so, technique is learned from other poets, and if the religious themes are in disrepute, it is very hard to develop, in relative solitude, a technique for addressing them. It is something I think about a fair bit."

More here.

Saturday Poem

Night Shift

The owl skirrs for mouse
and in his gut, he turns her
inside-out. The bat weaves

through the criss-cross trees,
wings upon her sonar pings
to trap the bug and feel him sing.

Owl, wise anatomist, studies
the tissues, then spits the gist:
the shag and bone of what exists.

And bat, dread acrobat, flips
the forest upside-down, and all
the creatures underground,

the shrew, the hedgehog and the mole
fall out like rattled soldiers
from their tunnelled holes.

From Skullduggery, by Asa Boxer, which will be launched April 17.

Perfect Contempt

Jason Guriel reviews Dorothy Parker's Complete Poems in this month's Poetry.

In general, Parker came up with no surprising images, similes, or metaphors of her own. The odd telephone makes an appearance and keeps things up to the minute. But for the most part she made do with lads, suns, stars, things, tears, time. The heart is so frequently reached for and handled in Parker’s poems it’s as worn and polished a prop as Yorick’s skull. Eliot wrote that it was the poet’s business “to make poetry out of the unexplored resources of the unpoetical.” Parker worked the exhausted resources of the poetical.

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.

How Much?

Signal poet Asa Boxer -- whose second book of poems, Skullduggery, is out next month -- was in the news today about the gobsmackingly lucrative poetry prize he's just co-founded.

You can ask him about it on Friday, April 29, 2011 at 6pm when Asa will appear, along with five other poets, at a reading I'm hosting: Blue Met's "Poets at Night: Changing Landscapes, Eclectic Voices."

Alcuin Award Winner

I've just learned that Mark Callanan's chapbook, Sea Legend, published by Frog Hollow Press, has won an Alcuin Award for design.

The chapbook had already been shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award, and also enjoys the rare honour of being completely sold out. An e-version is available here.

Signal Editions is publishing Mark's second book, Gift Horse, this Fall.