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Archive for August 31st, 2009

August 31st, 2009 • Posted in On Poetry

Making gentle pornography

Went to Wakefest yesterday afternoon to see local author/musician Phil Jenkins and friends at Kaffe 1870. In his introductory remarks Phil made mention of the Liverpool poets. I’m grateful to him for this because it prompted me to search them out, and find this gem called Party Piece, by Brian Patten:


He said:

‘Let’s stay here
Now this place has emptied
And make gentle pornography with one another,
While the partygoers go out
And the dawn creeps in,
Like a stranger.

Let us not hesitate
Over what we know
Or over how cold this place has become,
But let’s unclip our minds
And let tumble free
The mad, mangled crocodile of love

So they did,
There among the woodbines and guinness stains,
And later he caught a bus and she a train
And all there was between them then
was rain.

 

 

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August 31st, 2009 • Posted in canadian literature

Time for Canadian literature to get plucked.


In a previous post I quote W.J. Keith’s review of W.H. New’s A History of Canadian Literature. Second Edition. (McGill-Queen’s University Press 2004) in which he says "readers interested in literature as art, who wish to be informed about its most distinguished practitioners, are likely to be disappointed."

A.J.M. Smith, says the same thing, more directly, at the conclusion of his review of the first edition of The Literary History of Canada (ed. Carl Klinck, 1965):

What is needed now is a comprehensive ‘critical history’ by a single author who can combine scholarly research with imaginative interpretation and who has enough faith in the literary quality of the best work drawn from all kinds of writing…to make evaluation his first business and let the chips fall where they may."

Smith’s prescription is quoted in An Independent Stance: Critical Directions, by W.J. Keith, (a book I can strongly recommend to anyone interested in criticism and attempts that have been made to discern what is good in Canadian literature), as an antidote to this wound Northrup Frye inflicted upon evaluative criticism in the concluding chapter of Klinck’s book: "Had evaluation been their guiding principle, this book would, if written at all, have been only a huge debunking project, leaving Canadian literature a poor naked alouette plucked of every feather of decency and dignity."

Forty years on and Canadian literature still hasn’t received a good plucking. 

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August 31st, 2009 • Posted in On Life

Mankind’s true moral test lies in how it treats Animals

George Woodcock on Milan Kundera:

"The real subject of Kundera’s novels is the way that lying to the state leads men and women to lie in their relations with each other. Because the totalitarian state has destroyed the kind of natural trust and cooperation that should exist in a free society, infidelity flourishes, and Kundera’s novels are inhabited by petty Casanovas seeking freedom through promiscuity. They are guilty, they feel compassion for their victims, by they find it hard to stop."


Given the disgusting degree to which lying and deception epitomize 21th century Wall Street, and the dealings of corporate America’s big oil, armament, accounting and stock brokerage firms it’s clear that totalitarianism isn’t the sole cause of infidelity.

Woodcock continues:

"Kundera is really telling us that when the state becomes so powerful that trustfulness between human beings is destroyed, then men and women become ruthless towards each other. The relations between human beings become similar to the relations between humans and animals because, in such circumstances, humans, like animals, have no power."

And, yet, despite the truth in this and the way that Food Inc. mass produces and butchers innocent creatures, the bond between human and animal can be as strong or stronger than between human and human. Witness a recent local news story here where a three year old boy lost his life in an effort to save his dog.

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