Red Cedar

Thinking about poems and stories.

Posted on November 17, 2008 by Megan

“When poets stopped telling stories, they not only lost a substantial portion of their audience, they also narrowed the imaginative possibilities of their art. As long as there have been potes, those poets told stories. Those stories were rarely about their own lives but about imagined lives – drawn from myth, legend, history, or current events.”
–Dana Gioia

I’ve been thinking about this passage since I read it on Friday, in the preface to Good Poems, collected and introduced by Garrison Keillor. And as obvious as this statement is, it really hasn’t occurred to me before now that the poems which have stuck most with me in my lifetime are those which have a narrative of some sort or another. Not necessarily a fully developed plot, sometimes just a moment or description that exposes a person, a world, or a thing. Sometimes a story which can be read in multiple ways. But never has a poem stuck with me which contained only a pretty image or a deft turn of phrase – they are sometimes pleasant to read, sometimes annoying and pretentious – but in either case they don’t stay.

Brian and I have recently been reading the Canterbury Tales to each other, and remarking often how different a cast poetry had in an oral culture and when lyric was the main form of news broadcast. How memorable it is, how engaging to listen to. How unlike the poetry that is fashionable today – which dismiss lyricism as “too light” and narrative as “too traditional”. Rather we would have opaque, sometimes unreadable images layered upon each other – because it obscures the fact that nothing much is being said.

During a recent conversation with more traditional literature followers, I have heard it said that “spoken word” (a poetic form unto itself) is too cheap in its use of modern vernacular and the ostentation of those who come on stage with bombastic presentation. In 2003, the poet laureate George Bowering went public with his belief that slam poetry competitions were “crude and extremely revolting,” further elaborating by saying that a true classic poet is humble before the word and respects language, that using poetry to win a competition or for the writer’s own glory is missing the point.

As if poets have never been rock stars, as if Lorca and St. Vincent Millay were not celebrities in their own day – producing as much to dig themselves out of poverty as anything else. As if the bards of Chaucer’s day were simply humble to language, and had no self-interest beyond the love of words and language. I am no poetry scholar, but it seems to me that Bowering and others would like to corner the market on what art is and never have it change except in ways that maintain its elitism (a thing which is a change in itself – poetry once being the most accessible form of storytelling).

While there are aspects of the spoken word community which irritate me (celebrity creation, tough guy posturing etc), it’s quite simply ridiculous not to recognize what the genre has brought back to poetry. That would be memorable stories told in accessible language. Stories told about invididual experience, collective experience, the lives of the people around us – working stories, spiritual stories, romantic stories. Poems so big that they need to be shouted out to rooms full of people. Tales that make you laugh and shout out in appreciation. How can that be “revolting”? A shared experience of the art and craft of writing.

I’m not a spoken word poet, and it’s unlikely I will ever be – my topics are simply not hip enough for the stage – but I want to take this lesson of form on in any case. Right now I am working on a five poem series I hope to enter in a contest in early 2009 (is the fact I am using a contest to spur my work to a deadline considered “crude” also?) – but I am thinking about the narrative which will thread these five pieces together. Each of them being its own story and part of a larger one when read together – which I believe is all that could make a five part series interesting enough to read through.

To me, poetry has to tell something. To be the essential words needed for a story, for the imparting of information – but it ultimately has to say more than “that rose is beautiful” or “that city is a crazy, abstracted panopoly of lights” or whatever thin thing passing for insight is getting published these days. And so I suppose I am figuring out exactly what it is I want to say. What makes me want to write is the sense I have stories worth sharing, so why throw those out in favour of a word kaliedscope the reader simply puts down when they are done?

Time for lying still.

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Megan

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(this somehow didn’t get posted yesterday.)

Well. It’s been a super-productive few days, even if I haven’t posted here. Motivated mainly by a large stack of work and looming deadlines – I have managed to clear things off sufficiently, enabling me to leave work early today and head over to the island for my mother’s birthday. (Sorry friends, this is a family visit so I won’t get to see any of you this time). Will be home Mon-Tues and then in Ottawa Wed-Fri, then BCFed Convention etc. etc. It’s going to let up though in December, and I should have a couple of months off from out-of-province travel.

One thing I am looking forward to in December is a trip up to Hedley, BC to celebrate my friend Kevin’s birthday – if only because it will involve some hiking in a part of the province I like very much.

I’ve found myself with a renewed enthusiasm for outdoor activities lately, as Brian and I have both been getting in better shape at the gym and talking about the prospects for hiking, kayaking, possibly even a little skiing in the upcoming months. We’ll see. Between my work schedule and having M. half time it’s difficult to fit it in, but there’s got to be a Saturday during the snow season we can manage to take a skiing class together, right?

In the meantime my friend Aaron in LA has gone and bought himself a high-clearance pickup truck and is enticing me on another trip to Death Valley this winter – our trip last year being hindered by the small car and bad roads – we couldn’t go almost anywhere! A high-clearance truck means hot springs and way more back country camping options – which has me itching to go back. Perhaps February? I’ve got tons of Aeroplan points and leave days saved up from all the back-and-forthing that’s been going on, and by then I’ll be itching to go somewhere less grey.

And this August I’m thinking it will be time to do either the Nicomen Lake Trail (Manning Park) again, or try something all together new and do Cape Scott. Brian is game for either of these 4-5 day trips, and I suppose it will be decided by the weather more than anything. A dry summer makes Cape Scott attractive, but if it’s wet on the coast, interior alpine is definitely my preference. Months away I know, but it’s good to have goals to work towards on the elliptical trainer week after week. While general fitness is great to have, applying it to small adventures is the real payoff.

Hm. Interesting when I sit down with no idea of what I’m going to post – it seems that under this mountain of work I really am plotting escape from the grey, escape from the cube, a few days here or there to sleep out of doors and tramp around the bush. No surprise there given the gravity of it all these days. I’m a bit worn out and overwhelmed with it all these days – so much running about and so little payoff (as far as work and union are concerned) – I need to carve the time out to just breathe, write, hike, lie still. I feel caught up in everything, and most of all I drive myself crazy with ensuring that nothing gets away, that it all gets done.

So yes, it’s a good day to dream of pine forests and deserts and wild coasts – on my own and with my sweetie. Adventures await, if only I can find the time!

A journal entry about nothing in particular.

Posted on November 9, 2008 by Megan

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It’s been awhile since I have posted a private journal entry here. So here is one from Friday because it’s as good as any other day. (Note: I did get my computer back from MacStation yesterday).

It is morning on the west coast, coffee, rain. I am yet without computer and so my notebook stands in. As though it does not occur to me to use paper anymore despite the existence of beautiful notebooks and pens that make writing an effortless practice to the cramped hand.

It is morning and I am here at my table, with a coffee and stack of opened mail – three stacks really – each to be dealt with in their own way. Also a pile of envelopes for recylcling. Today is errands upon returning including a stop at computer repair to drop off the ailing machine even though it may never come home again depending on the cost of the fix.

I brough new books home from Ottawa, shelved appropriately first thing this morning – poetry with poetry, the rest in the pile “to read”. It’s not that I don’t read the poetry books but they aren’t the same as the novels and essays. Novels and nonfiction, I read once through and then shelve, possibly coming back to them another time to re-read or lend away. Poetry never gets a complete once-read-through but instead is returned to over and over, picked and chosen through in quiet moments or read aloud to a friend, a lover. In that way a book of poems lasts a lifetime for it is always new each time the hand finds it on the shelf.

Brian and I now read to each other once at the end of each day – taking turns to surprise the other with selections from all over.

I am looking here at the books around me as I think about this and recognizing the need for greater shelf space which will only get worse when Brian and I move in together. But I am so totally in love with these books on the over-cramped shelves that I feel bound to keep them no matter how impractical. Is this a sign of hoarding behaviour in years to come? Is it harding if you keep things tidy and organized or only if they are over-flowing garbage bags and boxes and there is no longer a clear passageway throughout the house? I tend to be pretty organized – I am hoping that alone fends off the label of crazy. Of course flip side of one kind of crazy is the other – obsessive compulsion – or the freaksihly meticulous need to control things.

While hoarders allow chaos to reign and their belongings to dominate them, the OC seriously internalizes their own importance in keeping chaos of whatever kind (illness, mess, accidents) at bay. IN my family we have all kinds of crazy – but the obsessive stuff is definitely more present. I have my own marginal tendencies towards OC but the signs tend to be limited to door and oven-checking which are not the worst things one can do.

Mostly though I can keep it in check with regular sleep, good diet, exercise – the obvious preventative and antidote both.

Winter is pretty much here now after a clear and sunny fall – the rain outside giving more excuses to stay bundled in warm quilts and cloister. It’s what I love about the climate here – the several months in which you have the excuse to be a total shut-in if you so choose. I certainly always get out but having the weather as a convenient mea culpa for anti-social tendencies doesn’t hurt.