Pluriel

Pluriel provides a composite snapshot, taken from a few particular angles, of the variety of poems written in Canada over the past few decades. In shaping this anthology the editors were attracted to the diverse cultural and social responses evident in the work of poets writing in English and French, both across Canada, and in particular in Quebec and other French-speaking regions of the country. Each poem is offered in its original language and in translation.

A poem of mine called "The Lot" - written in 1994 in response to the "accidental" shooting death by a Montreal police officer of a black youth and the officer's subsequent acquittal - appears in this new anthology from the University of Ottawa Press. The anthology is interesting from the standpoint of an experiment in translation. To my mind, it gives the impression of cultural distance rather than proximity. The volume is split between poems originally written in English and then translated into French and vice versa. I enjoyed reading the French rendering of my poem, though I might have questioned certain word choices. The anthology is eclectic,the choices decidedly idiosyncratic and the quality all over the map. There are poems by Klein, Atwood, Cohen and Purdy, but many by lessers like myself which can be refreshing.

A.M. Klein, Richler, Bezmozgis, Michaels and ...

Rotchin are on the syllabus of Alexander Hart's summer course at UBC on Jewish Canadian literature. No kidding. Have a look for yourself. I hope the students have to buy the book.

Woman self-induces miscarriage, calls it art

The reality of miscarriage is very much a linguistic and political reality, an act of reading constructed by an act of naming -- an authorial act. It is the intention of this piece to destabilize the locus of that authorial act, and in doing so, reclaim it from the heteronormative structures that seek to naturalize it.

Reason number 2,767 why art shouldn't be taught at universities. Bring back the atelier. Please.

Bonus comment on Passover

Here's Lawrence Nyveen's less theological comment on my last Passover post. It's at the bottom of his post with pics about a vomit-fest he inflicted on his kids in a Cessna airplane. I gather from the details that his kids are not eating too much matzoh this holiday.

Passover meets Dora the Explorer

Leave it to Johnny Kay - actually it's Jonathan, National Post editor, but I have it on good authority that his mom Barb, (actually it's Barbara Kay, National Post columnist) calls him "Johnny" - could put Pharaoh in the same piece as Swiper the Fox. For those of you who don't have a toddler and are out of the loop, read on anyway. The article's a hoot, and since it was Barb who sent me the Solway poem I figured I'd give her son a little air time too.

"Passover" by David Solway

(Thanks to Barbara Kay for forwarding this newly-minted poem by David Solway. Posted by permission of the author.)

David Solway

PASSOVER

There must have been one,
at least one,
who stayed behind in Egypt.
How could there not have been?
Just think about it,
though it is not written in the Book,
how the paradigm inserts itself
in tribe and tribulation.
Maybe he’d slept in, the lazy Jew,
when the people gathered in the Prince’s train,
and awoke too late to grasp his stave and scrip;
or, the lascivious Jew, he’d fallen hard
for a young Egyptian maid
and could not bring himself to renounce
the honey and figs of her lavishness.
Who knows? he may have been on his knees
or swaying back and forth in deepest trance,
the pious Jew, praying for deliverance,
demanding attention,
too busy giving the Lord an earful
to notice what was happening.
Maybe he was tending to his wounds,
the lacerated Jew, applying balms and ointments
to the scars of his captivity
on the fateful morning he was left behind;
or the foolish and myopic Jew wondering
why all the commotion, all that dust, nothing to worry about.
Could he have been the heroic Jew,
part of the local Irgun,
preparing to blow up the palace and assassinate the Pharaoh?
Flight was not on his agenda.
But just as likely the appeasing Jew
reluctant to offend his tormentors
or the fearful Jew, expecting pursuit,
unwilling to perish
beneath the wheels of the thundering chariots,
not to mention the traitor Jew
shedding his afterskin
to make himself anew in coveting and subtlety.

Sometimes I think
I am he, I am all of them.
For every reason not written in the Book
I am the Jew who stayed behind in Egypt.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

"Fun" in this case is short for "funeral" and it captures perfectly the essence of this "tragic-comic."

This book makes a compelling argument that the graphic-novel is perhaps the ideal form for memoir/autobiography (in the same vein, Art Spielgman's "Maus" immediately comes to mind as well.) I guess they should be called graphic-memoirs. Alison Bechdel has made a name for herself as a lesbian comic-writer (Dykes to Watch Out For) but what a shame if, like me, you are initially put off by the gay tag. There is just so much more to this brave, deeply honest and touching story of a person in search of a personal narrative. It's about unteasing tightly knotted threads (that can easily tear), about secrets badly kept, lies badly told, myth-making and busting, and the love that holds a family together in spite of itself. The epicentre is the author's relationship with her father, one that is part Daedalus/Icarus, part Stephen Daedalus/Leopold Bloom (I know they're not father/son, you have to read the book to understand the reference.) Bechdel is as gifted an artist as she is a storyteller and this is as much the story of an artist "coming-out" as it is a lesbian, probably more so (see also James Joyce.) Her panels have the feel of being both entirely fresh and archival at the same time, like genuine snapshots from a family photo album that have been filtered through an utterly present and contemporary consciousness.