i remember you well...

ice cracks, chadburn lake, whitehorse, feb. 10/08

flowers at -45 C -- whitehorse, yukon, feb.8/08

''Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.''



Dear old Leonard Cohen* said that, and it's very true. (Now, we all know how I feel about Mister Cohen, & how he stirs such great cognitive dissonance in me... But I think that this is something he's said that I can agree with wholly & without any qualifications!)



Anyway, I am very grateful to have my writing book full of ash-fragments. This makes me quite thoroughly & truly happy.



***



*I think he's written some brilliant songs (& some not so) but I really like them better when women sing them. Because a woman singing his words does wonders in messing with his slivers of misogyny, and plays with assumed gendered roles in a pleasing way.


See, there's this one:

Chelsea Hotel -- as performed by Regina Spektor -- mp3!

When he sings it, it just annoys me. When she sings it, the lines that irk me in his version make me smile, because she conveys the vulnerability, the denial of the song... whereas he sounds a bit bored, & arrogant. Oh Lenny.