“Maggie, I thought we’d go for a drive today,” her dad said. “Maybe we could go to the pond and look for frogs.”

After breakfast, Maggie’s dad rummaged in the back shed and returned with a small tin pail. They went out front to the big blue Chevrolet parked by the curb. Maggie liked going for rides with her dad in the big roomy car. She liked the smell of the vinyl seats, the way the car rolled smoothly down the tree-lined streets, and the way its chrome gleamed in the sunlight. She climbed into the front seat beside her father, setting her Brownie Starflash camera down between them. Her dad looked happy and not tired like he usually was. He was wearing a crisp short-sleeved shirt and pressed grey slacks. Maggie liked the smell of his Old Spice after-shave, which he kept on a shelf in the bathroom. Sometimes, when he was watching TV in the big armchair in the evening, Maggie would stand behind him in the darkened living room and fill her head with the spicy scent.

Maggie’s dad didn’t say much on the drive up to the pond and neither did she; they both liked it that way. Maggie enjoyed just looking through the big windshield as they passed farms with cows and chickens. Sometimes she would daydream about the shapes the clouds made and wonder how they got up there in the first place. Her dad also liked to think about things. Occasionally, he would write his ideas down in a little notebook that he kept. His ideas were mostly about poetry, truth, or our purpose on this Earth. He would show her stories in National Geographic about far-off lands. Sometimes, he would bring home little flea-market treasures that he thought she might like and hide them in her desk drawer as a surprise. In the evening, they would sit out on the verandah beside the fragrant honeysuckle bush and look at the constellations. If they were very lucky, they would even see fireflies.

“The old pond. A frog jumps in. Plop!” Maggie’s dad stood up. “That’s a poem, but it doesn’t rhyme. It’s still a pretty good one though.” He was quiet for a moment.

“Well, let’s go and get a vanilla cone before we head home. We don’t want to be late for supper.”

Just this once wouldn’t hurt, Maggie thought.

Two excerpts from A Talisman for Maggie

A Talisman for Maggie by J. McCartney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License

National Geographic: Basho

Frog image: Michael Yamashita

Yu Chang archive

Daily Haiku: Yu Chang

Cate Kerr’s blog: Beyond the Fields We Know

Cate Kerr’s photographs and haiku

When work took Erin Moure to Montreal for the first time in 1984, she admits that she could “barely cope” with the language.

Early last year, with poet/novelist/playwright Robert Majzels, she embarked on a French-to-English translation of Cahier de roses et de civilisation, a 2003 book by Nicole Brossard, one of Quebec’s most important poets. It took her and Majzels almost three months to complete the project, published last fall by Toronto’s Coach House Books as Notebook of Roses and Civilization.

The 88-page volume has gone on to be short-listed for the 2007 Governor-General’s Award for translation. And in April, it was one of three texts nominated for the Canadian side of the Griffin Prize.

Moure is hardly a stranger to Brossard’s work. Notebook of Roses and Civilization is the third Brossard translation she and Majzels have completed. Nor is Moure a stranger to writing poetry. She has been nominated for seemingly every Canadian poetry prize, including two nods, in 2002 and 2006, for the Griffin, and five for the Governor-General’s award, in a writing career spanning more than 30 years.

Translation is a fraught exercise, of course. As Moure notes, “Languages aren’t equivalent. The register even of the word ‘I’ and ‘je’ is so different. You think of these things as equivalent on a practical basis, from day to day … but day-to-day language is not as precise as the use of language in poetry.”

And in the case of Brossard’s work, there are “challenges because she has a kind of tone and register, on what we call the macro and micro level, that we have to maintain.” Plus, Brossard does things in French that are “syntactically strange that we have to find a way of doing in English as well.”

While Notebook of Roses and Civilization “is necessarily different from the book in French,” Moure stressed that she and her collaborator tried “to stick very, very closely to providing the same experience to a reader in English as a reader in French - inasmuch as that is possible because readers bring to texts their culture.”

Brossard, 65 this year, has won at least two Governor-General’s awards in French-language poetry. Yet her fierce rejection of conventions of grammar, punctuation, narrative and logic, of what’s been called “the natural speech lyric,” have made her a sort of “poet’s poet.”

For Moure, the fact that today’s so-called common reader often doesn’t “understand a lot of contemporary poetry at the get-go” is a quibble. “We don’t demand this of life itself. Find me someone who understands life. I’m 53, and I don’t understand it. I understand certain things; I have certain reference points. I get through the day and I love it - but something always happens to throw me for a loop.

Excerpted from James Adams, Globe and Mail, June 4, 2008

Carved into a sandstone face above the town of Lucerne in 1820, the famous ‘Lion of Lucerne’ is a memorial to the Swiss soldiers who died attempting to save Marie Antoinette in 1792.

The Swiss have a long tradition of supplying mercenaries to foreign governments. Because the Swiss have been politically neutral for centuries and have long enjoyed a reputation for honoring their agreements, a pope or emperor could be confident that his Swiss Guards wouldn’t turn on him when the political winds shifted direction.

The Swiss Guards’ honor was put to the test in 1792, when, after trying to escape the French Revolution, King Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and their children were hauled back to the Tuileries Palace in Paris. A mob of working-class Parisians stormed the palace in search of aristocratic blood. More than 700 Swiss officers and soldiers died while defending the palace, without knowing that their royal employers had left.

In the early 1800s, the Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen was hired to sculpt a monument to the fallen Swiss Guards. The sculpture was carved in a sandstone cliff above the city center, near Lucerne’s Glacier Garden, and it has attracted countless visitors since its dedication in 1821.

… the most mournful and moving piece of stone in the world.
~ Mark Twain, A Tramp Abroad

The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff - for he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. How head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies.

Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion–and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where he is.

More at luzern.org

When photography dealer Howard Greenberg celebrated his 25th anniversary in the business last year, he mounted an exhibition at his midtown Manhattan gallery. Amid 25 seductive highlights from his collection – including an abstract pear by Steichen, a pointillist streetscape by Karl Struss, two pieces of Americana by Walker Evans, and a print of Ruth Orkin’s An American Girl in Italy – he’d constructed a shrine to a book.

The installation made a strong case for the book’s place of honour among the dealer’s rare and expensive artifacts, with a video showing its creation, from typesetting to printing to binding, in an old-fashioned process that even Gutenberg might recognize.

The star of the 10-minute video was Michael Torosian, a Canadian little-known outside the small world of rare-book collectors. Since founding Lumiere Press in a garage at the foot of his yard in the west end of Toronto in 1986, Torosian has published 18 handmade books on photography. Printed on his vintage letter press, they are themselves works of art, limited editions in which the editorial content, design and printing is executed with an aesthete’s eye, an artisan’s hand and a perfectionist’s oversight.

Torosian’s 19th book, An American Gallery, was produced by special order for the Greenberg anniversary and includes stunning high-tech reproductions of the 25 photographs from the exhibit accompanied by the dealer’s commentaries. The book took almost 12 months to produce, slowed down only slightly by the fact that the photos had to be printed separately and then placed by hand into each copy.

Lumiere editions include three volumes on Dave Heath and one each on Lewis Hine, Edward Burtynsky, Paul Strand, Gordon Parks and others. Torosian also has published three books of his own photography work.

The title page of An American Gallery went through 53 different designs before Torosian was satisfied. The typesetting ate up half a year. He took months to figure out how to insert the photographs, which are a different thickness than a normal paper page, to ensure they didn’t cause the book to spring open awkwardly.

“You have to be focused: every day, every week, every month. You can’t just sort of go through the motions, because it’s very unforgiving,” he explains. “I guess it’s like someone who makes violins or something: There might be monetary incentive to turn out 100 violins a year, but if you can only really do 18 credibly, then you’d better stick to the 18.”

“No matter how well a conventional mass-market trade book is produced, in their nature as a physical object, they all look the same: this sort of blockish object. They’re interchangeable. But when someone picks up one of my books, it has the same pedigree as other books, and yet it’s a different species. And that’s what they’re responding to. It’s familiar but it’s outside the ordinary.” A number of Lumiere Press books are in the collections of rare-book libraries.

The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at the State University of New York currently has a remount of the Greenberg anniversary exhibition, including the Lumiere video installation, which will stay up until June 22.

Excerpted from Simon Houpt, Globe and Mail, May 17, 2008

Lumiere Press

Don Domanski was born and raised on Cape Breton Island and now lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His latest work, All Our Wonder Unavenged (Brick Books) recently won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry.

He is a poet of the holiness of subtleties, a master of mindfulness and being. His writing is a form of osmosis, spirit seeping through the details of each poem, creating a marvel of metaphysics and language distilled to purest energy. Living in the moment here is synonymous with being the moment, a transformation that is stunning to inhabit.

The nature imagery is interlaced with references to Buddhism, Greek mythology, ancient civilizations and even witches. The poems don’t transcend the material world so much as find the spirit in what we can see, touch, and hear. Domanski asserts that the deity is in all things.

my mother believed God moved the sparrows around day after day
as a teenager I believed the sparrows moved God around
all the inexhaustible crutches He leaned upon
all the underweights of silence to find His way

now the only god I believe in are the sparrows themselves

Don Domanski was recently interviewed by CBC. Here are some excerpts.

CBC: Your work brings the inanimate to life. What draws you to blur the line between the animate and inanimate world?

It probably comes from childhood originally, children blur that line all the time, giving life to inanimate objects, to toys and dolls, because they can’t imagine it otherwise. What I’m doing is making my way to presence, and blurring that line helps to draw out the inherent presence in things. My definition of life is isness, its elementary stance and grace, therefore everything is alive, simply put being equals life. Now I know this isn’t the usual definition, but still it is an ancient one, not just among children, but among people from all cultures.

I’m an animist when it comes to how I interact with the physical world. Animism is the oldest religious/spiritual practice, the base experience out of which all the other ways of the sacred have grown. So I guess you could say I’m a traditionalist of a sort, a basic believer in first experiences, whether it’s cultural or ones from childhood. There’s a very deep truth there that strikes well below the thinking level, a connection richer than language, which can give words a more inclusive depth and reach.

CBC: What draws you to geology and palaeontology as subjects for your writing?

I’ve always been interested in the natural sciences, so it seems almost instinctive that geology and palaeontology should find their way into my work. I collected fossils for fourteen years, to try and get some sense of time, some understanding of the permutations of time on life. Of course in the end it’s time out of mind, it’s impossible to grasp what two hundred million years actually means. But there were moments in this hunt for time that shone forth with a particular light I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. For instance, finding the impressions of raindrops that were three hundred and fifty million years old. The rain falling on a completely different planet then we live on today. That gives a new perspective, a new appreciation of being.

I see no difference between poetry and spiritual practice

CBC Interview with Don Domanski

Brick Books

Prairie Fire Review of Books

Sometimes it’s the heart that is last to go, a knot of dense muscle still recognizable after the other organs have long since vaporized. Sometimes non-combustible material is found among the remains — prosthetic implants, dental filling sand unretrieved jewellery, mingling with hinges and nails from the coffin. Two hours at 900°C is usually enough to reduce us to our bare essentials, the chemicals, gases and minerals from which we originated.

The human body is like that of any other creature, a biological cog in a cyclic enterprise of birth, death and rebirth. But the methods by which we inter our remains reflect our tendency to view death as a final state, an attitude manifested in our burial practices. We have come to face our natural demise in most unnatural ways, with the vast majority of us destined for one of two ends: a formaldehyde-infused corpse in a laminated coffin entombed in a cinder block vault, or a fiery evaporation into ash and nothingness.

The growing understanding of human impact on Earth’s climate, however, has brought about an awareness of our own place within the ecosystem, and an embracing of ourselves — not just our actions, but our very bodies — as an ecological factor rather than an exception. Rather than pre-serve our bodies artificially or seek to escape our natural end, we are beginning to realize we can extend Earth-friendly lives with Earth-friendly deaths. An entire industry is surfacing in North America focused on this end — burial practices that allow us to biodegrade as plants and animals have been doing naturally for millions of years, feeding the ecosystem, rather than poisoning it.

Beyond the fossil fuels consumed in the cremation process, the reduction of the human body to cinders releases a grab bag of pollutants into the atmosphere, ranging from chemicals to heavy metals to sulfur dioxide (a source of acid rain) and carbon monoxide (a contributor to global warming). Included in this long list are dioxin, a known carcinogen, and furan. Emissions of these toxic chemicals can only rise if cremation continues its pace as the send-off of choice.

Traditional funerals are hardly a better option. Manicured expanses of headstone-pocked grass — appearing as nature-friendly as a verdant prairie — conceal a toxic soup of formaldehyde and other preservatives and disinfectants from the embalming process, which is seeping into groundwater and contaminating the surrounding soil. Mortuary chemicals have been linked to increased rates of leukemia and other cancers.

No wonder, then, that the idea of natural burials is taking hold in North America. The movement promotes chemical-free burials in biodegradable containers to gently usher our bodies back into the ecosystem. Buried without embalming fluid, laminated wood, cement chambers, and sometimes even headstone markers, bodies disintegrate into flora- and fauna-dense surroundings, not only reducing the presence of chemical contamination and green-house gases, but providing nutrients for a healthy ecosystem. Though natural burials are offered as a service by some traditional cemeteries, there is a growing impetus for entire cemeteries built upon this concept.

Eco-friendly cemeteries, known as natural burial grounds, first appeared in the United Kingdom in the 1990s, and have since sprung up in North America from New York to Texas. The movement in Canada is being spearheaded by the Ontario-based Natural Burial Co-operative.

Natural burial grounds do more than just reduce pollutants otherwise caused by cremation and traditional burials. Some eco-cemeteries function as wild spaces, marking graves with local rocks and flora rather than headstones, keeping track of burial plots through GPS locators. Rather than a chemical-dense, artificial landmark, people can visit family and friends in a wildlife preserve free of pesticides, herbicides and man-made materials, knowing that their deceased loved ones are nurturing a vibrant ecosystem.

Excerpted from CheckerSpot Magazine

“And now I come to the araucaria. I must tell you that on the first floor of this house the stairs pass by a little vestibule at the entrance to a flat which, I am convinced, is even more spotlessly swept and garnished than the others; for this little vestibule shines with a superhuman housewifery. It is a little temple of order. On the parquet floor, where it seems desecration to tread, are two elegant stands and on each a large pot. In the one grows an azalea. In the other a stately araucaria, a thriving, straight-grown baby tree, a perfect specimen, which to the last needle of the topmost twig reflects the pride of frequent ablutions.

Sometimes, when I know that I am unobserved, I use this place as a temple. I take my seat on a step of the stairs above the araucaria and, resting awhile with folded hands, I contemplate this little garden of order and let the touching air it has and its somewhat ridiculous loneliness move me to the depths of my soul. I imagine behind this vestibule, in the sacred shadow, one may say, of the araucaria, a home full of shining mahogany, and a life full of sound respectability - early rising, attention to duty, restrained but cheerful family gatherings, Sunday churchgoing, early to bed.”

Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf is the story of Harry Haller, an author and intellectual in post-World War I Germany, torn between two selves: a man who desires the respectability and comforts of bourgeois existence, and a wolf who scoffs that these vain, absurd desires. The perpetual antagonism of Harry’s two halves prevent him from finding happiness or meaning in life. Hesse’s novel is about selfhood.

Is Harry man or wolf? He has lived with that conflict all his life until, one rainy night, a stranger hands him a small tract outside a Magic Theatre that he cannot enter.

“…So that’s it, thought I. They’ve disfigured this good old wall with an electric sign. Meanwhile I deciphered one or two of the letters as they appeared again for an instant; but they were hard to read even by guess work, for they came with very irregular spaces between them and very faintly, and then abruptly vanished. Whoever hoped for any result from a display like that was not very smart. He was a Steppenwolf, poor fellow. Why have his letters playing on this old wall in the darkest alley of the Old Town on a wet night with not a soul passing by, and why were they so fleeting, so fitful and illegible? But wait, at last I succeeded in catching several words on end. They were:

MAGIC THEATER

ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY

I tried to open the door, but the heavy old latch would not stir. The display too was over. It had suddenly ceased, sadly convinced of its uselessness. I took a few steps back, landing deep into the mud, but no more letters came. The display was over. For a long time I stood waiting in the mud, but in vain.

Then, when I had given up and gone back to the alley, a few colored letters were dropped here and there, reflected on the asphalt in front of me. I read:

FOR MADMEN ONLY!”

The booklet is A Treatise on the Steppenwolf – an analysis of Harry Haller that is Nietzchean, Jungian and Buddhist at the same time.

Bourgeois life demands that one lead a balanced life at the cost of intensity. Before meeting Hermine there is no intensity in Haller’s sad life; he is preoccupied with his books and his pains, although his wolf-half occasionally expresses its derision for this path, leaving him to flee social situations in disgrace. Haller is chained to the bourgeois life by childhood experiences. He is fascinated with the washed leaves of the araucaria, by meticulous neatness, by devotion shown in little things. He is disgusted when his wolf-half laughs at the bourgeois life, until he meets a young woman, Hermine, who tells him to do precisely that.

This bond to the bourgeoisie can only be broken through humour, and looking deeply into the chaos of his own soul. In a dream sequence, the Magic Theatre mirror reflects all the thousands of facets of his soul. Behind one of the doors in the Magic Theatre, Haller learns that his numerous selves can be reconfigured like chess pieces.

“I knew that all the hundred thousand pieces of life’s game were in my pocket. A glimpse of its meaning had stirred my reason and I was determined to begin the game afresh. I would sample its tortures once more and shudder again at its senselessness. I would traverse not once more, but often, the hell of my inner being.

One day I would be a better hand at the game. One day I would learn how to laugh…”

Image: Jaroslav Bradac, from A Treatise on the Steppenwolf.

“Eight Belles showed you her life for our enjoyment today.” — jockey Kent Desormeaux, who won on Big Brown.

The camera cut away from her, but it should have stayed on her. Eight Belles had run herself half to death yesterday, and now the vets were finishing the job as she lay on her side, her beautiful figure a black hump on the track. Horses don’t just fall down like that, you thought as NBC flitted away, cowardlike, from the sickening picture to the more appealing image of the Kentucky Derby victor, Big Brown.

Eight Belles collapsed after crossing the finish line, her front ankles broken so severely she could not be taken from the track. “She didn’t have a front leg to stand on to be splinted and hauled off in the ambulance, so she was euthanized,” said Larry Bramlage, the Derby’s veterinarian.

There is no turning away from this fact: Eight Belles killed herself finishing second. She ran with the heart of a locomotive, on champagne-glass ankles for the pleasure of the crowd, the sheiks, oilmen, entrepreneurs, old money from the thousand-acre farms, the handicappers, men in bad sport coats with crumpled sheets full of betting hieroglyphics, the julep-swillers and the ladies in hats the size of boats, and the rest of the people who make up thoroughbred racing.

More at Sally Jenkins, Washington Post, May 4, 2008

More about the murder of Eight Belles at Pet Connection