a way to dialogue

i wanted to tell you, my friends,
what it felt like to step out
moments before dawn onto a
well-trodden path (moonlit
minus the stars) and fall in love

but i knew that if i started there,
you would not have believed me when i told you
that the thing
i fell in love with
was history

how come, how come
I anticipate nothing as intimate as history

perhaps if i explained this:
those walks
had become a daily ritual, a rite
performed faithfully in the slow
awakening of each morning.
and this:
at first i did not know the way.
the path was unfamiliar
(though not entirely unknown)
and i was weak and young.
but i stayed with that soil –
i had been told that it was
the only way.

Stay with this mud,
this granite. Every other step you take
will be a revelation.

can you imagine what it felt like
when the ground itself
began to teach me?
when the earth, as guide and course,
would show me how to tread it
if i studied it
if i took care enough?

indeed it was the strange pedagogy
of that prairie path
which taught me (a longer lesson) the meaning of
give and take.
it took the testimony of my steps
whether or not i was willing to give it
and eventually taught me to trace
in the grooves of its earthy floor,
the stories of others who had walked there,
who had also loved its worn-out soil.
everyday those stories caressed my fresh soles,
shaped them, taught them, hardened them,
until they began to respond, in kind,
with tales of their own. i learned
to tread carefully – always listening –
but also writing as i walked,
inscribing my story into the dusty path
until finally, one day, my own soles (aged by then)
could no longer recognize which marks were mine
and my story no longer belonged to me.
then, like every good teacher,
the earth (and i – which are one)
spoke less and less

Birds, singing, move
among leaves, in leaf shadow.
After many years you have come

to no thought of these,
but they are themselves
your thoughts. There seems to be

little to say, less and less.
Here they are. Here you are.
Here as though gone.

perhaps now, my friends, you would believe me
if i told you that i did fall in love with history
but you must also know that it is not unbelief
which keeps me quiet

(excerpts are Dionne Brand, Luci Shaw, and Wendell Berry)

a poem for spring

Although I wrote this poem last summer it only seems fitting to post it now.

Au printemps
(pour pierre)

Je suis assise ici à ne rien faire,
en flânant un peu
jusqu’à temps que tu reviens de l’aventure
dans l’arrière-cour avec tes amis récemment.

J’aurais été inquiète
si tu ne faisais pas ça tous les printemps
(lorsque les fleurs fleurissent, et les oiseaux chantent)
dans l’arrière-cour avec tes amis récemment.

Il y a trois semaines
quand tu commençais à t’asseoir sur le bord de la fenêtre
et désirais avoir une aventure
dans l’arrière-cour avec quelques amis nouveaux.

Mais, maintenant, je m’assieds
à côté de la fenêtre et
j’attends pour ton retour chez nous, à la maison
de l’arrière-cour avec tes amis récemment.

untitled

another occasional poem:
i wrote the skeleton of this poem many years ago and then rewrote it this fall for my brother and his wife and read it at their wedding (although if you asked my father he would tell you that i didn’t just rewrite it, i rewrote it and then revised it and revised it and revised it and. . .)

i.
intent and focused,
i feel a gentle hand surprise my body and everything
falls into place with this
welcome interruption;

an inexpressible, inexplicable relief.

that same hand reaches out for mine before i request it,
and not a moment too soon
the fear rushes out of me;

and i know now that this is love:
the vital union of necessity when everything
suddenly
resolves into perfection

ii.
driving through the sunlight nothing matters
not our destination or even our words,
because we’re finally together;
poised,
trembling,
satisfied,
sincere.

and our hands,
knowing themselves all too well in one another
ask of us a grace:
all that we desire,
all that we suffer -
what we add to this gentle touch
with words never spoken.

a confession and a poem for a sunday

Often when people find out that I’m an English major they will ask me whether I have a favourite author or period. I almost never answer the same way. Sometimes I will just respond by citing whichever poet it is that I pulled off my bookshelf the night before and have sitting on my bedside table. Other times, because I so often get swept away by poets, I will simply cite whoever, of the many authors I am studying at any given time, has my greatest affections at that moment. I like this game because it keeps me from getting bored with the question or my response to it and it keeps me from focussing too much on any one author or period. But the truth is, there is one poet who I think I could call my favourite. He is the poet who first made me love poetry and he is also the one who I always find myself turning back to whenever I feel wearied by my studies. And, it never fails, everytime I return to his work I still love it as much as ever. He is Gerard Manley Hopkins.
I think, more than anything else, it is the form of his poetry that has captivated me all these years. His experimental metre, his manufactured words… ah yes. Hopkins. The reason I bring him up is that I have decided to post a poem which I think appears at first glance, and I think you will agree, somewhat lacking in content. But it is a poem whose metre I have thought much about. When I wrote it, it was meant to be a kind of experiment and I think there may still be some merit in that.
Although I have not marked in accented syllables and feet as Hopkins so often did, I would like to make one comment on the rhythm of the piece. I think the metre will probably reveal itself quickly as you read and, as such, you will probably be inclined to hear the word ‘Memory’ (line 3) as a two-syllable word because that will make the third line, like the ones before and after it, iambic tetrametre (weak-strong, w-s, w-s, w-s). But please remember that ‘Memory’ can be read two ways, and if you read it as three syllables – mem – or – y – the line changes quite a bit, and i think the poem does also. First, the variable quality of the word itself and the interruption that it may or may not bring to the metre gives a little more depth to the surface reading of the poem (ie. the poem is centred around a night interrupted by memories [or personified, Memory] and the word may or may not be an interruption in the form of the poem – perhaps the word itself and the possibilities of reading it in two ways [one of which resolves a problem of metre] gives the reader hope that perhaps the speaker, like the reader, may find a way to stop Memory’s interruption). But also – and this is my more sincere hope (although I fear I was not quite successful) – I wanted the poem to invite a second, more philological reading (and maybe this will be more apparent to those of you who have been kept up at night wrestling with some linguistic composition that will simply not resolve itself). In this second reading, the word Memory may not only be capitalized to personify it, but also to draw attention to its identity as a word. In this sense, the poem becomes a meditation on some of the difficulties that one faces in the composition process, on a distinction that i began to draw out in my last posting between mere reflection and art. I guess, as it regards this distinction, I probably should tease out some of the implications of the dreaming that I represent here where dreaming is illustrated as ignorant but also not entirely futile. But I will leave that for another day, and conclude by saying, simply, that I wanted to capture, through my experiments with form in this juvenile little poem, a glimpse of the frustrating liminal space that I often find myself in when I try write poetry or when I find myself inspired by poetic thoughts or images but utterly defied in my attempts to capture them on the page in something like a poem. So…

Memory

The night has come
but as of yet I do not sleep
for Memory saw me lie alone
and came and wrapped his arms around
He filled with kisses full my mind,
but not my mouth.
His touch – elusive as the wind!

O, fly Man fly,
and let me least have dreams tonight,
(You do not know how longingly I look upon them)
when I forget no one is here
and relish in my ignorance,
cherish an hour of innocence
so sweet – without an empty mouth,
a captive tongue, a lost embrace…

and when I wake,
the sun shall be my comfort, for
daylight is poison to Your veins.

But sadly now You torment me,
and I just lie indignantly.

for we who still twilight in this west

i often refer to myself as an occasional poet. this is because i only occasionally write poetry and when i do it is generally to commemorate emergent occasions. what follows is one of these occasional poems.

reflections on east & west: to a goodly lady
(for my brother who always was and probably still is “the best in the west”)

oh lordy child, she said, you don’t need more.
what do you think a second scoop is for?
but that boy could never figure out why
he had to take those scoops one at a time.

I
listen,
the crashing of the bowl on the floor,
the scrambling to clean it up, the child’s
muffled tears for the loss.

the aunt
stares in wonder at this little child
who cannot seem to understand this simple
imperative
to patience.
the child just cries on the floor
still caught in the moment and now even more
for what it no longer has to offer.
the mother gently sighs, ambivalent, because this child
cannot understand proportion
but she, small soul, is hungry too,
yet bursting with short love
in a long, dark universe
she cannot fathom.

oh mother,
he could not know how differently
he could have done what he did not do.
but there are human possibilities
in stories of this hue
when heard in silent places,
in unrefractive darkness.

II
crystal in the window.
i came here to see the light change
colour. first red
then blue
then difference cease
it is no longer light transformed
no longer i pursue
i cannot see, but myself am seen,
kaleidescope of light, my eye.
the evidence of sun
explored in seeing
as vibrant crystal finds its home,
by light,
in me.

III
dull, flat february
without a taste of light.
we starve without the sun.
but simple thought is food
and we learn patience here
static with the memory of that goodly lady, who sparkled
in simplicity.
and who better to teach?
if there be one more qualified,
chasing the sun by night,
she’s landed in the east.
far from we who twilight in this west
and beg the moon for silent secrets
on how the sun will rise,
unknowing that a twinkle here
has made these quiet
eyes
wise.

the background

following in the footsteps of bpNichol, dionne brand, and so many other of the canadian avant-garde poets that i’ve been studying this semester, this blog will have many beginnings. here is another:

i was first introducted to the idea of a liminal space by a shakespeare professor at the university of regina in my second year of university. we were studying a midsummer night’s dream and he had suggested to me that almost the entire play exists in a liminal space. it begins (with Theseus):

Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace: four happy days bring in
Another moon; but, O! methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes; she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man’s revenue.

and she responds:

Four days will quickly steep themselves in night;
Four nights will quickly dream away the time;
And then the moon, like to a silver bow
New-bent in heaven, shall behold the night
Of our solemnities.

Indeed, almost the entire play unfolds in this liminal space – the four days of waiting and anticipating the marriage(s) that is(/are) to come. This holds both for the characters that we observe on stage and ourselves in the audience who understand, from the first moment of the play, what we are to expect from it.

But what I found most fascinating was how the idea of a liminal space is both illustrated and vivified in the fairy-world moments of the play. In that world, it is as if time completely stops for the characters. The lovers move into a space where it seems as if no time elapses at all. From the time they go into the forest until the time when they wake up, many things take place, and yet, upon waking, none have a sense or recollection of what happened. At that time, I tried to capture my sense of the liminal with some words about a dream. I called it then “still motion” and I hold now that such is the essence of liminality:

she danced in the delight of her own thoughts,
still motion, perfect movement; life without
contradiction.

lines moving among lines; into another
proclaiming what is not as that which is.

a moment without questions or realizations
everything passes without passing
existing without ever coming to be
infinite and nothing

the dance simply is what it is,
and is not; and it cannot be any other way.

that is its perfection. . .

so, the liminal space: the place where everything happens in the time between now and the moment we anticipate; or perhaps, the place that makes that future moment possible (or sometimes impossible)

as regards the title, the stillness is meant to capture the feeling we have while in the liminal space that we’re making no progress towards our goal. the motion is all that happens in the meantime, which we are so often unconscious of.

anyway, since that time, i’ve been fascinated with liminal spaces. they are beautiful, they are educational. . . they are often frustrating. but they are ubiquitous and unavoidable.
and with this blog i intend to seek out, write into, and exist in liminal spaces. that is the liminal spaces project – a project to make conspicuous the inconspicuous things in liminal spaces and in so-doing, make myself and hopefully others less uncomfortable to exist in them.

i guess it’s fitting that i have begun this project during advent.