poetry 22:

gaspereu presses anthology, at 10 years. 24 poets, mostly what silliman dismisses as the school of quietede, with some post modern confessional to add texture. some famous canadians, like tim bowling and george eliot clarke...the thing with school of queitude is that it often does not mean anything, a light touch, a nice observation, and they leave--the problem with confessional, is that it is too heavy, too personal, anecdote supersedes poetics. there are exceptions, the excerpts from jan zwicky's small songs are humble, small things--like wrens or sparrows, not a word out of place, but also not concerned with being too poetic, here is here small song:prarie:

Wood light, meadow light,
the fencepost silver
in the afternoon's long stare;
beast light, the satin flash
of horserump or the brown hand
in the sasktoons;
cloud light and williow light,
the dead light of teh salt marsh
and the hammered brilliance
of the dug out under wind;
even the rain in the night singing,
the night in its forgetting,
is a kind of light.

its pure imagist, but the literature of t he praries is filled with long absences and epic spaces, w/o getting quantum about it, zwicky recgonizes the nessecity of tight enjabments and minute details--that poem there, in its zigzag of memory and tactile sense, is as good as wcw. Harry Thurston tries something similar and gets a poem called river otters at play, where the river otters are about love man--its high concept rod mckuen, and it makes you feel bad for the otters, John Terstrap talks about the church he goes to now, in the masterful, anecdotal, and theologically ambigious/ambitious brendon luck poems; George Eliot Clarke stumbles in bringing performance poetry to nova scotia, his obv. literal qouatlites getting in the way of hsi desire to be just folx, and peter sever makes the textual intertwinings of nature adn humanity, techonology and craft seem invisible...

it was worth reading, i think but just barely, and it makes me want to go seek out more zwicky