draft: part four of a poem not yet finished (though this is the last part).

dried flower bones, near sask. drive, edmonton, january 2009

iv)

i don’t know what moves me
like this, across these fields
like i have travelled them

before, following a crush
of fuzzy lupines, & your voice
stuck like a burr in my mind –

don’t know if it’s a dream
half-remembered, an aching
sightless & cellular

that is telling me i am exactly
where i need to be:
i feel your sweet seed-packets

sewn into the lining of my coat,
old-country nettles catching
on my dress –

a flock of bulbs is lies
eyeless, winter-deep in my skin,
subterranean birds curled in sleep –

onions & crocuses like
nesting dolls shedding a
thousand papery kerchiefs

& i open & i open,
& find you ever
growing there.

draft: part three of a poem not yet finished.

illuminated seedcoats, saskatchewan drive, edmonton, january 2009.

iii)

late october,
& i dream of you
in my kitchen:

o, doroha babusja!
call us in from the
fields now, from the

threshing & stoking
& singing, the chopping
of wood for the winter –

for we all eat round
the same table now,
you & every ancestor

who whispers in, pokes
a hole in the soft beeswax
of my cerebrum,

comes bearing gifts –

we’ll share that stubborn
gentleness, quiet relentlessness
& all that troubled wisdom

we’ll feast together
on roasted roots
that still taste of wet clay,

& the endless aching
centuries of sunshine
ground to flour –

we’ll make a toast
to this pantheon,
a pagan hagiography,

for there are no saints, no-one
except those who made us,
left us long before.

draft: part two of a poem not yet finished

fields, the acreage, october 2008

ii)

you had one thousand years
of orthodoxy in your mountains,
but still, you know better:

there is no paradise,
no such thresholding,
no either/or.

just the endless sweeping
of steppe-grasses, a slanting
of light on bare aspens
like honey falling on bone.

no tunnels to spit you
through blindness, no tubes
to suck you up into a bowl
pure whiteness –

just that everpresent whispering,
hushhush of the wind
in the barley,

a slipstream of voices
rushing through the wheat-ears,
calling us in from the cold.

draft: part one of a poem not yet finished.

bare trees, the acreage, october 2008.

“your eyebrows will be tangled up with the ancestors, you’ll see with the same eyes and hear with the same ears. won’t that be wonderful?” – wu-men, on solving a zen koan.

i)

out in the fields, you looked
for the last time. travelling blurs
sharpened, & you saw only

the threshed hills rolling
into the silent black hearth
of the earth.

autumn passed, the geese
flew low; your shaky hands
followed their paths,

instinctual embroideries,
left piles of pillow-down
woven with snow.

then one day you slipped
away with the owl’s glide, &
slid like the fallen aspen-spine,

into the fallow of the field.
you fell asleep, fox with a
brushtail curled in shelter,

a soul gone bone-white
& blown clean
for dreaming.

kukuvala zozulen'ka...

footsteps on the frozen river, n.saskatchewan, edmonton, january 2009

I go to this site very often, just to watch this animation over & over again... I was introduced to the lovely artists of Tin Can Forest through their book Pohádky which was given to me as a Christmas gift by my dear friend Arwen. We spent an afternoon poring over the details of each illustration, & I was delighted to be able to recognize so many of the characters once mentioned to me by my baba & interpret the pysanka-inspired iconography. Tricksters, wise women, rusalky, the forest come alive... It was also a fitting introduction to showing Jason my most beloved film, Tini Zabutykh Predkiv (Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors)... as the pantheon of forest spirits figures prominently in that work as well.





I am currently particularly enchanted by this set of illustrations, called 'Domovoi' (house-spirit). Layered shelters, dark but warm, ancestral & hibernal. Certainly, some of it might be seen as sinister, especially by Western European sensibilities -- but I feel comfortable with this darkness, the ambiguity, the presence of death & the connection with ancestors tangled in the roots that brings forth life. These images evoke so many stories, feelings, songs, & I always feel this sense of wordless recognition when I look at them, wild & inchoate yet so deeply familiar; their work feels like such a home to me.

i couldn't have done anything else.

sun in the wild grasses, n. sask river valley, edmonton, jan 09

snow on old blossoms, n. sask river valley, edmonton, jan 09

Gentle Hour (mp3) -- Yo La Tengo (off Dark Was the Night, which is an excellent compilation & you should obtain it)

This song is sumptuous & lightfilled & hopeful, it is the colour of gold in these photographs, it is winter sundown & I want to live in it, lovelovelove like warm burrow in the snow.

kitchen language

iced-cherries in the cold, belgravia, dec. 23, 2008.

kitchen language

heard your voice again, babusya,
as i woke in winter lightlessness;
you crept like sticky apricot footsteps
on the cobbled linoleum, bare feet
slipping warm into the morning.

how i once grew in the thick stirrings
of your kasha accent, the butter-on-toast
of your kitchen language; it came through
the cracks in a krashanka, nourishing yolk
on hungry ears.

been three years now, but you are still
singing to me. i hear you move between
the shifting frequencies of memory,
trailing apron strings, your lilt still a morsel
of sweet almonds & milk –

do you remember the taste of it?
or is it something like the food we eat
in dreams?

but i cook now, baba. i roast beets & scoop
onions into the pan, stain my fingers rosy
& pinch the leaves of sour cabbage. i pile
the bowls high & swear psha krev when i
i slice my finger, sing

your songs to the girl with the accordion,
whisper them coyly to my lover’s ears –

i’ve set a place for you on the poppy-seed
dishes, & i can say these words back to you
now, scatter them like kernels of buckwheat
flung to the frost & the soft blue dirt
of the horizon:

i’ll bake them well into myself, drip
them like honeyed amber onto the plates of
others – alive in me so that i might still
feed you, living now in the whole
earth’s mouth.

pomegranates & pine nuts.

pomegranate, arwen's windowsill, montréal, dec. 7, 2008

Recipe time, because I am starting to fear that cooking is becoming obsolete. Lately, when I spy on everyone's groceries in the check-out line, I increasingly numbers of packaged noodles & frozen pizzas & microwaveable dinners & deli meat... I worry that cooking skills are being lost, or even worse , that they were never transmitted in the first place, with all this oven-dial-turning & microwave-button-pushing.

I am so grateful for being taught to cook by my mother & my grandmother, who let me stir stew & put homemade pyrohy in the water & sing to the cookie batter when I was three years old, who let me help cut things up as soon as I was dextrous enough to be trusted with a knife, who nourished me so well & helped me to appreciate freshly made, unprocessed food.

There are so many issues here -- I think loss of cooking can also lead to lack of respect for food, because one is less engaged in the process of creating it. When things are processed, I think we are less likely to be conscious of the source(s) of our food & what it took (in human labour, the energy of the earth, the workings of the market) to get here to us. This can lead to seeing food as less significant, more disposable. If things are easier to consume (all convenient & pre-packaged & the like), as well, we tend to consume even more, more freely, & without a second thought. & there just seems to be too much mindless consumption already.

Being in the north last year, I witnessed attitudes to food that struck me deeply. Understanding the hunter-gatherer approach to eating has really reinforced for me the respect I've always had for food, but wasn't always able to articulate. The combination of a harsh climate mixed with cultural ideologies stressing the connection of humans to animals & to the earth as a whole made people very aware of where their food came from and their responsibility to consume with care & respect. Sharing food was also of paramount importance, & I was honoured to be given meat (even though I am a vegetarian) because I understood its significance. I also respected the manner in which the animal was treated, in spirit & body; people were very much conscious of the fact that in order for them to eat, & live, other things had to die. Both animal and plant lives were seen as sacred, & that eating anything was a gift. & I find that really profound to remember now, when eating, that these deaths are necessary to sustain a life, & that it is so important to be thankful.

We have so much here. It also destroys me to think of how there is more than enough food to eat on this planet, & yet so many people have so little. Part of the reason for this is the extreme levels of North American consumption of meat & processed foods. Energy & land could go to provide vegetables & grains for far more people -- according to trophic levels, it takes ten times the vegetable matter to feed animals being raised for meat than it would to feed the same number of people a vegetarian diet.

So all of this just makes me very happy to buy fresh vegetables, because that is truly a luxury, & all of this also reminds me that cooking is not a chore, it is an experience that I am lucky to have. It makes me want to share food even more, have more impromptu dinner parties & partake in more kitchen socials where everyone cooks together & learns new recipes & then shares what they have created.

This recipe was first prepared by a friend at one of his infamous tea/delicious-food parties. I think pomegranate season is waning, but you can save it for next autumn when they are abundant once more.

* * *

Pine Nut Pomegranate Pilaf

Ingredients

Some olive oil
1 onion, chopped
½ cup pearl barley
½ cup wild rice
2 cups of veggie broth
The seeds of one pomegranate
½ - ¾ cup of pine nuts, toasted
2 tsp lemon zest, or lemon juice (or a tbsp of each)
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley

Instructions

Heat the olive oil in a good-sized pot and then sauté the onion until nice & translucent. Then add the barley and rice, and stir about for a few seconds before adding broth and bringing it to a gentle boil.

Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer until the wild rice and barley are tender, and most of the liquid has been absorbed (about 45 – 50 minutes).

Meanwhile, toast the pine nuts carefully in a small, dry pan over medium-low heat. Stir constantly! They should be golden and fragrant in less than 5 minutes.
Let them cool in a small bowl.

De-seed the pomegranate, zest the lemon and chop the parsley while you are waiting for the rice and barley to cook.

Once the rice and barley are tender, add the pomegranate seeds, lemon zest, pine nuts and parsley. Stir well, and cook a little more if there’s still a bit of broth left unabsorbed. Give it a fork-fluffing, and serve!

gratuitous waxwinging.

birdfruit, waxwings, belgravia, edmonton, jan. 24/09

perching waxwings, same tree, same place, same day.

This is such joyfulness, such brilliant languageplay. Besot my soul, indeed.

Here it is, with the original Russian alongside.

Where The Waxwings Used To Dwell

by Velimir Khlebnikov

Where the waxwings used to dwell,

Where the pine trees softly swayed,

A flock of airy momentwills

Flew around and flew away.

Where the pine trees softly whooshed

Where the warblewings sang out

A flock of airy momentwills

Flew around and flew about.

In wild and shadowy disarray

Among the ghosts of bygone days,

Wheeled and tintinnabulated.

A flock of airy momentwills

A flock of airy momentwills!

You're warblewingish and beguilish,

You besot my soul like strumming,

Like a wave invade my heart!

Go on, ringing warblewings,

Long live airy momentwills!

waxwing blessings.

a waxwing reaching for an ash berry, belgravia, edmonton, jan. 23/09

berry obtained by same bird, same place, same day.

New camera. Waxwings. That is really all. I love these birds. That is all. & no matter what I try to write about them, I cannot do justice to these creatures, & what it's like to stand with someone & watch two flocks of them, a skyful of thousands, merging like the unconscious arms of a spiral galaxy, their telepathic wingbeats. & their joy, of feeding & fluttering, voices like clear keening water. It stirs me so deeply, the blessing of witnessing this, that nothing I write seems to fit the scale of this, just like I can't fit their whole migration in a camera lens.

I know they will make their way into poems, sneak in to feed, leave a rain of metaphors like red berry-hail on the pavement. But I can't write about just the waxwings themselves. They just are.

Jason sent me this poem, A Rescue, by John Updike. I am fond:

Today I wrote some words that will see print.

Maybe they will last "forever," in that

someone will read them, their ink making

a light scratch on his mind, or hers.

I think back with greater satisfaction

upon a yellow bird--a goldfinch?--

that had flown into the garden shed

and could not get out,

battering its wings on the deceptive light

of the dusty, warped-shut window.

Without much reflection, for once, I stepped

to where its panicked heart

was making commotion, the flared wings drumming,

and with clumsy soft hands

pinned it against a pane,

held loosely cupped

this agitated essence of the air,

and through the open door released it,

like a self-flung ball,

to all that lovely perishing outdoors.

the flash of a hand

brushtailed grass at nearly sunset, december 28/08, in the river valley.

Czesław Miłosz

SPOTKANIE

Jechaliśmy przed świtem po zamarzłych polach,
Czerwone skrzydło wstawało, jeszcze noc.





I zając przebiegł nagle tuż przed nami,
A jeden z nas pokazał go ręką.





To było dawno. Dzisiaj już nie żyją
Ni zając, ani ten co go wskazywał.





Miłości moja, gdzież są, dokąd idą
Błysk ręki, linia biegu, szelest grud --
Nie z żalu pytam, ale z zamyślenia.





* * *





And in English:



Czeslaw Milosz



ENCOUNTER



We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.
A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.
One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive,
Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going
The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.
I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.


* * *

Sunrise as a red wing rising in the darkness = oh my. This whole poem, I want to recite it over & over. The last lines are so tender, especially in Polish, soft throat rustles in a language I half-understand. Winter ache.

beauty is summoning...

dried flower heads, past sunset, the river valley, dec. 28, 2008.

winter asters, the river valley after sunset, december 28, 2008

My little camera (which has taken all of the pictures posted in this blog since December 31st, 2005) retires today. In three years, the shutter has clicked 12890 times, & its little parts & joints are wearying... the zoom function broke this past summer, now the screen shuts off at inopportune moments, the flash no longer flashes, and the dial at the top which allows you to switch functions doesn't always cooperate. It has travelled with me to France and Denmark, taken countless hiking trips in Kananaskis, and spent months with me in Yukon and Alaska during fieldwork, taking photos at -45 celsius, or at 3000m on a mountain in Kluane in the summertime. I've dropped it a few times, yes, gotten it wet & muddy & scratched, because it's in my bag everyday, so I can take photos of a bird or a leaf or a cloud or a pattern in the pavement on the way to the university or on a walk to wherever I am going...

I've gotten a new camera now, the newer, more sophisticated sister of this one. Hopefully she will have the same magical colour saturation tendencies & receptivity for light that made me love this one so well. & 'tis time for my dear FujiFinepix E500 to wear a golden-laureled lens-cap... Happy New Year! You have served me well.

* * *

I've been watching Tarkovsky again lately -- Ivan's Childhood & Stalker & Mirror -- & hungrily eating with my eyes the scenes of light & errant wind playing in the grasses, & bird-wings & watery dreams & the light on weathered faces. As well, I've been reading 'Sculpting in Time', his reflections on his films and film-making process. This is one of my favourite bits (p.200):

"In the end everything can be reduced to one simple element which is all a person can count upon in his existence: the capacity to love. That element can grow within the soul to become the supreme factor which determines the meaning of a person's life. My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and be aware that beauty is summoning him".

-- Andrei Tarkovsky.

happy solstice!

wild rose skeleton, n. sask. river valley, end of november 2008

(somewhere out in the field
we are walking, & our strong
legs tremble.) paper-birchs kneel,

fall: & the wind drifts through,
brushtailed grasses quiet hands
on my spine. come,

bury yourself in me: the edge
of the earth yawns gently,
bleached wheat wreaths paling,

stalks spent. (somewhere
out in the field lying fallow
the wind’s an old man, winding

his fingers in an old woman’s
wiry sun-silvered hair, unplaiting
the last of the woven strands

with shaking tender hands.) now
to sleep in the remnants of the sky’s
charred marrow, a gentle furnace;

rest in me. (somewhere out
in the field we hold it in our
bones, a soft glow in the root-tangle)

curlicues of fireweed embers
frozen to the horizon, to the
rib-ripples of clouds; just strip

to your soft skeleton, starry
filaments of cow-parsnip, twine
around me, now:

we’ll conduct light.

* * *

this poem has no name yet... also, i'm not sure i'm finished with it. but it wishes you a happy solstice nevertheless.

heart spatter.

sun reflecting on the ice-floes, n. sask river, edmonton, nov. 28/08

sunset. n. sask river valley, edmonton, nov. 28/08

light in the dry golden grasses, n. sask river valley, edmonton, nov. 28/08

the spruces gone to kindling in the sun, n. sask river, edmonton

nov. 28/08

Often I am overwhelmed with the immensity of being in love with everything; I feel like I am being ripped up like paper, into heart-shreds, because there is so much & I want to encompass it all. & then the realization comes each time that I am already part of it, I am made of this: stand on the edge of the river, watch the slushy platelets of ice rush through the artery, crowding serenely, sliding up along the half-frozen edges, bloodcells pushing gentle & relentless against the soft walls of the aorta. Feel an indivisibility in the pulsing, the breathing, between you & the water & the air & the sand frozen at the river-edge, melting between the sky & the light, the light strikes & the heart spatters, exploding into a thousand droplets into the water, & freezing, flows on. (This is everything; this is being alive.)

it was beginning winter

new ice, edge of the n. sask, nov. 28/08

dry seed-drops, banks of the n. sask, nov. 28/08

birch-curl-tendril, banks of the n. sask, nov. 28/08

5. “It was beginning winter”

It was beginning winter,
An in-between time,
The landscape still partly brown:
The bones of the weeds kept swinging in the wind,
Above the blue snow.

It was beginning winter,
The light moved slowly over the frozen field,
Over the dry seed-crowns,
The beautiful surviving bones
Swinging in the wind.

Light travelled over the wide field;
Stayed.
The weeds stopped swinging.
The mind moved, not alone,
Through the clear air, in the silence.

Was it light?
Was it light within?
Was it light within light?
Stillness becoming alive,
Yet still?

A lively understandable spirit
Once entertained you.
It will come again.
Be still.
Wait.


-- Theodore Roethke, ‘The Lost Son’

mud & dream

late afternoon, looking over the n. saskatchewan. nov. 14/08

illuminated stick-trees, n. saskatchewan river valley, nov. 14/08

brushtailed grasses, sunset by the n. saskatchewan, nov. 14/08

"I am a weak, ephemeral creature made of mud and dream. But I feel all the powers of the universe whirling within me".

-- Nikos Kazantzakis, 'The Preparation: Second Duty'.

* * *

It is November, but I don't mind so much. There are days that are black and white photographs, even the faintest hints of sepia drained out of the frost-feathered grass, the shade of a dull magpie, but I don't really feel the usual agoraphobia of the white sky. There is a richness, a comfort: the river exhales icicles on the sand, inhales the frozen rushes, the black water of a pool. My ear to your chest, water echoes inside, calmly blooming with hot platelets of ice. The long supine sun catches in the trees for a few short afternoon hours, spreading like a bruise on the horizon, settling into a warm furnace somewhere in my ribcage, so still. I am warm here with you, brushtailed grasses soft fingers on my spine, & in this strange liminal time there is peacefulness, & there is such potentiality that touches every nerve from the inside out with light.

* * *

I'll defend my thesis this week. Such sleepless anxiety, such excitement. So strange to be mostly done; just the formalities now. & then, on...

open letter...

a wasp-nest, the river valley, today.

The following is a letter I wrote to the author of this article. I wrote it two weeks ago, when the offensive piece first appeared and sent it off immediately -- to feelings of slight catharsis. But now I find that I'm still really quite angry about the whole thing. Frankly, I'm still in disbelief that it was even published. The Globe & Mail had nothing to say for themselves; they missed the point about what exactly it was they had done by publishing that piece of irresponsible, racist opining. It upsets me how blind many people, especially those in the media, are towards the structural violence still present in Canadian society. And perhaps what scares me the most is how many people refuse to learn, to open their minds, even when given the opportunity.

So this is what I wrote to the author. I highly doubt she actually read it, considering the volume of mail I am certain she received that week. (However, I'll leave it here. If she ever Googles herself, maybe this will pop up & she'll get another chance to see it.)

* * *

Dear Ms. Wente,

I am writing in response to your recent column, 'What Dick Pound said was really dumb – and also true'. I am sure you've received a lot of mail recently regarding this piece, but I just wanted to add a few of my comments on your piece, as well as clarify a few points for you. In this letter, I hope to illuminate some the issues I have with your argument and suggest some facts that you might consider. I was appalled by the statements you make in your piece. The comments you make display a distinct lack of research on, and understanding of the subject of Aboriginal cultures in Canada.

You criticize other authors and experts such as Ralston Saul for not citing any sources, yet you only consulted Frances Widdowson, who also does not provide any background or proof for her statements. You include slanderous and also unsupported statements such as "homicide was probably rather high". How can you back this up? This is completely un-academic and unacceptable journalism. Firstly, using a term such as 'neolithic' (Stone Age) as a cultural descriptor is inappropriate because 'neolithic' refers to a temporal period used in some describing histories of the world, not a way of life. To suggest that any culture in the world today is 'neolithic' is absurd, since we no longer live in that time period. It also makes the fallacious assumption that culture does not change, that the cultures of Aboriginal peoples are somehow 'frozen in time' and the very nature of a culture – any culture – is that it is dynamic, flexible and adaptive. However, the fact that cultures change does not mean that they all change uniformly. To quote statements of Widdowson's such as "We all passed through the stage of neolithic culture" is problematic, because it relies on this notion of linear progress as well assuming that the 'stone age' can persist out of time.

You should understand the necessity of small-scale kinship groups, especially in Northern Canadian Aboriginal societies. Groups were generally kept small in order to not overuse a particular hunting territory, and needed to be dispersed simply to keep resources from depleting too quickly and disrupting the ecological balance of a harsh landscape, and making starvation a risk. As for contributions to modern Western medicine, don't forget Aspirin; this widely used painkiller is derived from salicylic acid, which is found naturally in willow bark, a traditional pain remedy used by Aboriginal people all over the continent. If you are searching for "broader laws or institutions" you need look no further than the Iroquois Confederacy, which united six different tribes and formed multiple democratic councils. Regardless of whether it influenced the Declaration of Independence or not, you cannot deny its organizational sophistication and the role it played for the tribes involved. Smaller groups of people, such as the Blackfoot (Siksika, Piikani and Kainai peoples) of Western Canada also had a number of complementary societies whose members planned military strategies or looked after economics or division of labour. Today, the internal justice systems of many First Nations are inspired by their previous traditions, in the creation 'sentencing circles' to deal with offenders in their communities.

You also make the unqualified assumption that 'written' language is necessary for laws, or "evidence-based" science. You don't get much more "evidence-based" than the directly observational ecological knowledge that has been preserved orally for hundreds of years. Your flippant dismissal of traditional knowledge and your ready acceptance of Ms. Widdowson's weak example that deems traditional knowledge to be just "a heap of vague beliefs and opinions that can't be verified or tested" is nothing but ignorant. It certainly can be tested, and there is a reason why governments, ecologists and other researchers wish to learn of this knowledge – because it is absolutely vital, most especially due to our current issues related climate change and increased immediate environmental damage due to industry (e.g. the Tar Sands). A life that is lived intimately in a particular environment for thousands of years (and yes, this knowledge has been and is still often passed down orally) yields a wealth of knowledge that originates from direct, constant experience and observation, and is extremely valuable for understanding what is currently happening within ecosystems across the globe. Knowledge regarding wildlife populations has successfully been implemented in a number of co-management programs for a number of years, such as in beaver population management agreements under The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement of 1975 or the Beverly-Qamanirjuaq Caribou Management Board in the 1970s. Currently, many Aboriginal groups in the North are contributing to studies regarding animal movement and receding sea-ice patterns occurring as a result of climate change. Combining these insights with Western science seems to be the most productive method of understanding what is currently happening regarding the shifts in climate and weather patterns. As Dr. Franklin Griffiths of the University of Toronto noted at a recent Royal Society of Canada meeting at the University of Alberta, "Southerners need Aboriginal thinking […] We need this wisdom, and I think they need some of our wisdom, to generate new intellectual capital for us to be able to move ahead with a better understanding of what our situation is and who we are".

It is somewhat understandable that one may have trouble with the 'vagueness' of some statements concerning traditional knowledge. To understand this knowledge and appreciate its full value, statements must be analysed in the context of that culture's own epistemology. This 'knowledge' must be taken in context, and often an understanding of other cultural symbols is crucial so we can assess a statement according to its own internal logic. This is no different from a non-scientist trying to read an academic paper full of jargon. Yet, we do not dismiss a scientist for writing something we as non-scientists or non-experts, do not immediately understand.

It really should not be necessary to point out that First Nations, Métis and Inuit people across the country do participate in "vastly complex late-industrial capitalist culture" – consider just a few of the housing developments, casinos and other successful businesses (both large and small) that are owned and operated by Aboriginal peoples – these range from service stations in small towns to diamond polishing comparies (Deton' Cho Diamonds) to vast management corporations (e.g. Kitsaki Management Limited Partnership of the Lac La Ronge Band, Kativik Regional Corporation in Nunavik, Québec) Other businesses, such as Däna Näye Ventures, an Aboriginal Capital Corporation based out of Whitehorse, has been aiding Aboriginal small business owners in the Yukon and Northern British Columbia for the past 20 years. To suggest that Canadian Aboriginal peoples do not participate economically in Canada and the world is a clearly misinformed viewpoint that reflects profound colonial ignorance. Furthermore, many of these businesses, while participating in a wider capitalist market, are organized and run according to Aboriginal philosophies and ethics. The work of countless Aboriginal people combines their own cultural beliefs with the norms and standards found in wider Canadian businesses; this displays the dynamism and adaptability that is characteristic of all cultures.

You go on to discuss how First Nations have been romanticized and idealized, but then make statements regarding how these beliefs "doom hundreds of thousands of native Canadians and their descendants to lives that remain isolated from the modern world, without the skills and aptitudes they need to make their way in an increasingly complex society". This comment itself is deeply paternalistic and reveals your own idealization of First Nations peoples as helpless and naïve; it falsely assumes they are unable to make their own choices and decisions about their lives, because their culture is not 'complex' or 'advanced' enough. The way you are speaking about Aboriginal peoples ignores their will and fundamentally denies them agency. Not once do you quote or refer to an Aboriginal person regarding how they feel about their lives and cultures. It is not a matter of what Aboriginal Canadians should or should not do. All individuals in this country must have a choice on how they want to live, and have a right to their own specialized, sophisticated lifestyles and life-ways – which are contemporary, advanced, and flexible – just as they do have a right to participate in the business market or politics or any other sphere of Canadian life. As Chief Dan George of the Tsleil-Waututh stated in his 'Lament for Confederation': "Like the thunderbird of old I shall rise again out of the sea; I shall grab the instruments of the white man's success-his education, his skills- and with these new tools I shall build my race into the proudest segment of your society".

Lastly, you speak of others who refuse to see reality, when it has become clear to me that you remain wilfully blind to the continued reality of colonialism. Every criterion you use to illustrate the "savagery" of Aboriginal societies is compared directly with Western industrial society – an argument that rests on the belief that one culture is superior. This is nothing but a profoundly ethnocentric, ignorant standpoint; the insult is compounded by the fact this culture you deems 'superior' is the one that decimated Aboriginal populations and continues to oppress them. Frankly, this is racist. You cannot make excuses for this.

I could certainly provide you with a reading list if you would like to learn more about the examples I am presenting here. I hope that this has at least made you question or reconsider some of the beliefs and ideas you hold and have put forth in your piece.

Sincerely,

Jenanne F.

Edmonton, AB

fever dreams.

cow-parsnip, last weekend, riverlot.


skeleton of fireweed, riverlot, last weekend.

upsidedown trees/sky dendrites, riverlot, last weekend, photographed by jason.

these are some much beloved songs of late, my unconventional lullabies (mp3s are both living here for your listening pleasure):

cursed sleep -- bonnie prince billy (the letting go)

lullaby for grown ups -- ane brun (changing of the seasons)

'tis all for now.

o sappho

not one girl I think

who looks on the light of the sun

will ever

have wisdom

like this (#56)

Eros the melter of limbs (now again) stirs me --

sweetbitter unmanageable creature who steals in (#130)

stand to face me beloved

& open out the grace of your eyes (#138)

their heart grew cold

they let their wings down (#42)

spangled is

the earth with her crowns (#168C)

All of the poem-fragments beneath the pictures come from Anne Carson's translations of Sappho's poetry, from a book called 'If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho'.

(All the pictures I took in the river valley about two weeks ago)

Last week I heard a talk on Sappho's poetry by a professor from History and Classics at my University. I learned a number of interesting things, including that:

-- Sappho may or may not have been a real person who actually existed; the unreality of other Greek poets, like Homer, is suggested because many of these poets composed at a time when the language was transitioning from an oral language to a more widely written one. Thus, the epic poetry of Homer was likely created by multiple composers, whether at a specific time or over successive generations. Sappho might have been a style, too, of lyric poetry that originated in the oral tradition that became mediated through writing.

-- However, we do seem to know a bit about her purported birthplace, & her supposed family. She (with her fancy headdress) appears on a lot of coins from Lesbos. The invention of playing the lyre with a pick is also attributed to her.

-- If she did exist, she did not die jumping off a cliff, inspired by her unrequited love for a man called Phaon. This scenario apparently appears in plays all the time, even centuries after her time... but in comedies, though, not tragedies. Sappho in love with a man was quite the preposterous scenario, yes. (Unfortunately, this story often gets reproduced by silly people with a heteronormative agenda).

-- New fragments of many Greek lyric poets are constantly being discovered. Apparently poems often show up on mummy-wrappings from Egypt. I guess it was like reusing scraps of newsprint...

-- As much as I like the idea of her poems being a heteroglossia, a collection of many voices singing at different times, I also like the idea that she was real, that she wandered the mountainsides picking sweet clover & plucking her lyre & expressing all this desire.

re-reading...

sunset-time, gilded river. this past saturday.

First of all, this statistic is shocking to me -- that only 1% of Canadians have read a book of poetry in the past year. That's about 334020 people... which maybe isn't a small number. But compared to the number of people who have likely read textbooks or non-fictiony things, it is rather small. Compared to the number of people who have definitely read at least one novel this year, it is really quite tiny. Compared to the number of people who have undoubtedly read the newspaper or the TV guide or the magazines you get at the grocery store line-up, it is postively miniscule.

And like my dear friend notes in her comments, which I have linked to above, I just cannot fathom such a poem-less life, because poetry is something I think about all the time, constantly. It is just part of being, finding poems, making poems, reading poems, hearing poems. That is what I do.

It makes me want to put poems everywhere. Tuck them randomly under car windshields. Leave them on bus seats, slip them under doors. Strategic wallpaper for the world... Not in an 'I'm taking over the world & everyone should do read poems because I know what's best for everyone' sort of way (well, maybe an iota or two of that) but because I really would just like to share things. Because some people haven't read Valzhyna Mort or Michael Longley or Adrienne Rich or Theodore Roethke. Or Anne Carson or e.e. cummings or William Wordsworth or Gregory Corso or Pablo Neruda or Oksana Zabuzhko. & to me, this is a bit sad, you know? Because there is so much richness. & this is summed up so aptly, in a poem by William Carlos Williams that Adrienne Rich quotes as the epigraph to her book, 'What is Found There':

It is difficult / to get the news from poems / but men die miserably every day / for lack / of what is found there.

I could write an autobiography in poems, how poems have nourished me. One of the first poems I ever loved was Robert Frost's ubiquitous poem about the snowy woods. I was eight & I already loved to write haikus & couplets. With this poem, I admired the calm even-ness of the rhyme, the lilting sleigh bells. I loved thinking of how my footsteps creaked in the snow, when I went on walks in the early winter evenings with my mother. I loved stopping, letting her walk on ahead, while I stayed mesmerized in the quiet, the swirl of snow under the streetlights. I memorized it & when I have panic attacks I still say it to myself in attempts to slow my heart. but i have promises to keep & miles to go before i sleep

Then when I was 11 I met e.e. cummings with in just spring --

& he made me want to write things, poems, all the time. At one point, I tried stories too. But I came back to poems.

He wrote, in 'Forward to an Exhibit: II':

Why do you paint? / For exactly the same reason I breathe. / That’s not an answer. / There isn’t any answer. / How long hasn’t there been any answer? / As long as I can remember. / And how long have you written? / As long as I can remember. / I mean poetry. / So do I.

& later I met Wordsworth, with 'Tintern Abbey' & that force that rolls through all things, which touched me deeply. I had the requisite affair with Sylvia Plath as a 16 year old, but then I met Anne Carson who was even more enriching, so... Just this evening I was flipping through Plainwater again, & got stuck once more on her poem-prose-essay The Anthropology of Water. My copy of the book is creased & folded & caressed, pen & pencil scribbles underlining the sentences that stuck to me, shocked themselves into me. I carry so many memories in this piece; one line, highlighted in fading silvery-blue pen takes me back to the floor of a bookstore where I sat reading this at 17, trying not to cry a little in public but failing miserably because when she wrote

Language is what eases the pain of living with other people, language is what makes those wounds come open again

how could I not?

I have a lot of poems in my head now. There are poems I've met that made me physically weak in the knees, like that time when a friend & I first heard recordings of Adrienne Rich reading her poetry (when she said 'I am a woman sworn to lucidity', I had a wave of shivers). There are poems that I sometimes have the urge to get tattooed on my body in sinuous Cyrillic cursive; the urge to get tattooed passes, but not the wish to feel inscribed.

I love it when I know other people who know certain poems & lines from them become fantastical intertextual codes. e.g. the road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor! (noyes) or pasting Tannu-Tuva postage stamps all over the picket fence (corso). I love it when people read me poems, especially ones they've written. I could listen infinitely. & I like it when they compel me to read mine, even if I'm hesitant at first.

One day a few months ago, a dear friend left a poem they had written in my mailbox. It was pretty much the loveliest thing ever, for a multitude of reasons, but just that gesture, of leaving a poem for me to find in my mailbox... I cannot quite describe it. The only thing that surpassed the goodness of poem-discovery, was writing one of my own and then sneaking down an alleyway to surreptitiously slip it into their mailbox... & then thinking about them finding it, reading it, & feeling something of what I had just felt upon discovering theirs, feeling all of what can be found there, in a poem.

fruit & thought, blosson & pit. (or, everything is related to everything else, really.)

rosehips by the n.sask river, september 2008

more river valley rosehips, september 2008

Over the last while, I've been realizing that something that I am consistently fascinated with in my writing is this idea of the space between -- the inherent separation between everyone & everything, e.g. the space between people, between people & land, between people & their personal conceptions of some divine (& unifying) force, etc. & I am fascinated by the way we try to bridge those spaces, those gaps between. I think my deep interest in language & translation is definitely rooted in my fascination with these spaces.


What I'm writing focuses partially on language (spoken, signed, written, visualized) as a major connector, & the poem itself as the vehicle of connection. Here, I'm very much inspired by Simone Weil's thoughts on the naturalness of poetry, & its role in direct, profound connection between people, a vehicle for conveying internal experience & feeling. As well, I am ever fascinated by the paradox of metaxu, what Weil describes as 'every separation being a link' -- if we were not so separate, there would be no reason for connection, for communication. We cannot bridge without that space, & so as painful as the gaps between our little beings are, it is the lacuna that makes language -- & all the transcendent things it can do -- necessary & possible.


& what I love most about this space between is that it is the very fact that there are spaces between absolutely everything. (Lately, my favourite distraction from my work is reading about the Large Hadron Collider & the philosophy of the particle physics behind it.) We are made of collections, aggregations of spaces, all these spaces between spaces at the atomic, & then subatomic level, held together mysteriously & delicately. & this, to me, is wondrous. Though there are spaces between us, & spaces within us, we are still united, as we are intrinsically connected to everything else in the universe by whatever it is (the Higgs field, say some physicists) keeps everything from flying apart.



So I'm writing a cycle of poems based upon Ukrainian holidays, the elemental feasts of the seasons. These holidays are elaborate syncretic constructions, their pagan integrity still intact under layers of Christian influence; fertility rites involving fire & water & ritual purification persist on a midsummer holiday now consecrated to John the Baptist; the Feast of the Transfiguration still involves the offering of the summer's first fruits back to the earth that provided them. Despite the Orthodox theological overlay, at their roots all of thse ritual celebrations basically serve the purpose of reuniting those who observe them with three elements -- the earth, one's ancestors, & some sort of universal presence (be it a deity, or the Higgs boson, etc) -- as well as with each other. They are simply attempts to bridge the spaces between all things, a recognition that everything is related to everything else. Through these poems, I've been trying to convey the endlessness of return & transformation, the perpetual cycles of separation & reunification, and how we try to connect with everything else (as well as ourselves) through these processes.



This is the third part of 'first fruits', the poem for the feast of Transfiguration, which is very much akin to thanksgiving, so it's also rather timely. See here for the first part & here for the second.

three)

(чорні черешнi при бiлiй хатi)
there are dark cherries hanging
above the river autumnal, echoing
round the doppler-throated swoop
of a swallow, downy feathers in the sun
splitting into vast white houses of light.

wind washes over the sky,
clouds like heavenly ribstones rippled,
a muddy bank sucks heartfuls;
we eat of the earth, ourselves, our
little birdmouths seeking sightless,
following the skirring of wings.

(ходи, дiвчино, черешнi рвати)
i have an armful of sun-darkened
cherries & i’m going to feed you
these first fruits: the poems that
gnaw sweetly away at our bones
leave us nourished & wanting

as the whole body
aches with such separation:
we are made of spaces between
spaces, the singing of shifting silt,
tiny sandgrains within
the indivisibility of wind –

(черешнi рвати, черешнi їсти)
but watch the nettle & thistle
crumble & slump back down
the fallen bank to the waiting river,
watch our hands slip cherries from
the branches onto hungry tongues

& someday, you know, there will be
no difference, nothing between
hand & mouth & fruit & thought
& blossom & pit; oh but now,
(так солодко, так швидко!) so sweet so swift –
rejoice in it.

* the Ukrainian bits are from a rather sensuous folk song about a girl picking nice dark cherries growing in abundance around a little white cottage, picking them & devouring them, as the narrator of the song implores her to share.

Also, returning to the Large Hadron Collider, this very educational little song makes me rather happy.

yesyesyes.

mossworlds, the river valley, mid-september.

very new tree-shoot growing from a decaying birch, the river valley, last week.

"When you think intensely and beautifully, something happens. That something is called poetry. If you think that way and speak at the same time, poetry gets in your mouth. If people hear you, it gets in their ears. If you think that way and write at the same time, then poetry gets written.
But poetry exists in any case. The question is only: are you going to take part, and if so, how?"

Robert Bringhurst, in The Tree of Meaning, p. 143.

bringhurst on brain-birthplaces

aspen trees in the river valley, last week

black currants, the river valley, also last week

illuminated leaf veinage, the river valley last week

illuminated wild rose thorns, the river valley, last week

I was introduced to the writings of Robert Bringhurst in a very serendipitous way. I was in the library at the university looking for a book I needed to cite in my thesis, a rather technical volume on multilingualism, when suddenly, this other book sort of fell off the shelf into my hands: Everywhere Being is Dancing: Twenty Pieces of Thinking.



Robert Bringhurst is a typographer & a translator & a philosopher & an artist & a linguist, but mostly a poet, & he writes about poetry in a way that encompasses everything, & he writes about everything, because everything is connected to everything else, really. I am currently enthralled by these little pieces of thinking, as well as this book's 'spouse', as he calls it, The Tree of Meaning: Thirteen Talks. There is so much goodness, here, goodness that nourishes my heart & mind so very well. I can't really adequately talk about it all at once, or really summarize exactly what it is that is just so exactly YESyesyesyesyes. Also, I am still exploring it, of course. But I want to offer little bits of it to you here, selected morsels that are particularly profound & inspiring for me.



(even though I'm finding you can pretty much open up any page of either of these books & discover some breath-catching sentence in one of these essays that he has been crafting for years)



The Tree of Meaning (p. 9) begins as follows:



there are a lot of rocks in western montana, and several creeks called rock creek. one of them, draining the north slope of the anacondas and the eastern flank of the sapphire mountains, became my father's favourite trout-fishing stream around 1949. that watershed is where my brain was born. it wasn't the first world i'd ever explored, and it's a place i never stayed for more than a week or two at a time, but that is the first landscape i began to learn to read.



I am in love with this passage for multiple reasons. Firstly, I am fascinated by the idea of the brain's birthplace, a location where the mind becomes aware & lucid, realizing its connection to a landscape, to the place, to the richness that surrounds it (that is within it, & without it). Where we understand our place within a place, where we realize we are part of that place -- place, of course, Mister Aristotle said, is the first of all beings. & so, I think that these landscapes where our brains are born can be seen as the places that we think from, a place where poetry (which Bringhurst reminds us simply comes from the Greek verb poein, to make or do) originates. I want to ask people, lately, where their brains were born. Which landscapes? Or, as a dear friend suggested to me, within which bookscapes, because many of us first found a meaning, a synchrony, or an awakening while exploring the paths & woods of words themselves...



For me, I think it first occured in the mountains, in Kananaskis, where my family has camped every summer (since the one right after I was born) -- there is something alpine in my thinking, in the breathing swaying valleys of lodgepole pine forests, in the ache & arch of the opaline ridges gone amber-red at sunset. But the other reason I love Bringhurst's passage so much is that my brain was also shaped by the boreal forest creek landscape, just north of here where the prairies roll into the rocky mossy hills.



I too grew up following my father on stream-fishing expeditions, where I didn't pay so much attention to the fishing, but a lot of attention to the rocks & the blue blur of hills in the distance, to the mushrooms in the muskeg & the swirls of water spilling over the beaverdams. To the rosehips & the labrador tea, to the secret berries, to the smell of sunlight on coppery leaves. & this landscape is especially dear to me because I know it's where my father's brain was born when he was young. It makes father, a self-professed non-poet, express to me so eloquently these thoughts that he usually keeps quiet: little things, like how smelling the scent of sunwarmed juniper & listening to the rush of water makes him feel indivisible from the trees , how he wishes he could grow arms wide enough to fall into the forest & hold it all close to him. & now, in his illness, I watch him return to these creeks -- the Windfall, the Oldman, Chickadee, Carson -- to fish, to wander, to photograph, whenever he can gather the energy, because they are healing to him. Comfort to his heart, but also a respite for his mind, from pain, from the body's slow failing. I think there he can feel a sense of indivisibility, he can read that landscape he is part of / that is part of him, & that dilutes the pain, & simply lets him be.

abalone.

sea-stars, near juneau, ak, early june 2008

my boot, shiny pebbles in the bay, water-glint, near juneau, ak, also early june '08.

me on the beach, near juneau, ak, june '08

a poem, & gratuitous alaska pictures. so many i haven't posted. eeep.

abalone

(for b.)

once your heart’s been opened,
you’ll never close it again –

not once the crows have
carried you over the bay, a
smashed abalone shell
on the slick black beach-slate:

all your soft slippery creature
is splayed out all over the rocks,
sunlight illuminates the hidden insides,
the shattered shell’s nacre –

rib slivers glint & waves wash
out the bleeding crevasse
so small & shelterless
dissected & now caressed

by every last drop of water
in the world –

stones. feathers. bones. skins.

luminous caragana in the river valley, last wednesday evening

I am reading a very beguiling book of poems right now, by Sky Dancer / Louise Halfe. She's a Cree poet from Saddle Lake, originally, who writes in English, but writes it like it's nêhiyawêwin, Cree. Her syntax is smooth & distinctive & she weaves in the magical cadences of Cree phrases, and calls this mixed language her 'grassroots tongue'.

The new one I am reading is called 'The Crooked Good' & it is rich & dire & beautiful, & you should really go here & read the excerpt. She is a storyteller, & in this cycle of poems (which reads like a novella, almost), she is ê-kwêskit, Turn-Around Woman, haunted by cihcipistikwân, Rolling Head, who is a mother & a lover & a terrible conscience, a guide, & she is retelling her life, her mother's life, her grandmother's life, everyone's life. She plays with time, erases era so that it's all past, all future -- all her relations are alive. & she writes of this country here, & her words are like rose-hips & the little white shoots of grass, you can taste the geography of eastern Alberta so well.