Poem: Acts of Barbarity and Vandalism

Acts of Barbarity and Vandalism is a chapbook I published with Jonathan Ball's Martian Press in 2006. It is a series of fragments of fragments (or fragmented fragments) composed on the subject of the traces and remainders of genocide, the thoughts and words that gather after. To give you an idea of what I mean, here are two examples:

I. First Remarks

There is nothing innocuous left. The little pleasures, expressions of life that seemed exempt from the responsibility of thought, not only have an element of defiant silliness, of callous refusal to see, but directly serve their diametrical opposite. Even the blossoming tree lies the moment its bloom is seen without the shadow of terror; even the innocent 'How lovely!' becomes an excuse for an existence outrageously unlovely, and there is no longer beauty or consolation except in the gaze falling on horror, withstanding it, and in unalleviated consciousness of negativity holding fast to the possibility of what is better.

Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia


V. Foundation

It is not the mass that invents and not
the majority that organizes or thinks,
but in all things only and always the
individual man, the person.

Are there still treacherous secret
elements buried inside the Party, or are
they gone? According to our
observations over the past ten years
it's clear that they're not gone at all.
This is because they have been
entering the Party continously. Some
are truly committed; some waver in
their loyalties. Enemis can easily seep
in. They remain--perhaps only one
person, or two people. They remain.

Adolph Hitler, Mein Kempf,
and Pol Pot, speech

The title of the book is taken from the presentation Raphael Lemkin had intended to give at a League of Nations conference on international law. The paper, presented in his absence, proposed that the extermination of human groups should be considered an international crime. At the last moment, the Polish government had prevented Lemkin from attending the conference for fear he would embarrass the country with his controversial idea. It was 1933.

Jonathan Ball, with this origin in mind, bound the poems "conference-style" in black duotangs (40 with clear covers and 20 with opaque covers) and used Lemkin's proposal for the cover. You can read more about Jonathan and his good works here.

You can download a pdf version of Acts of Barbarity and Vandalism here.

Live Links: An Interview with the Left's Rush Limbaugh

This is less an interview with Slavoj Zizek and more a Slavoj Zizek lecture with a guy who sounds like "The Dude" from the The Big Lebowski piping in once in awhile with an "Amen" or "Man, you and are exactly the same."

For those not familiar with Zizek's work, this interview is a great introduction to his thought and his personality. For zealots and longtime fans, you can hear Zizek apply his usual finishing moves to recent happenings (Sarah Palin, the collapsing American economy, The Dark Knight). His description of himself as an old-time preacher is gold.

You can listen to the interview here.

Predicting: First Remarks

Over the next few months, I'm going to post some work from my first book of poetry, Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough Using a Potentially Dangerous Method (Predicting, from here on out, to stave off carpal tunnel). Since the book came out, I have received some intelligent questions (and a bunch of wtf's) and I thought this would be a good way for me to address these questions (the intelligent ones and the wtf's), while also investigating for myself where the work's been and where it might want to head to next. In this post, I'll make a few general comments about the book and provide a pair of "characteristic" poems. In future posts, I plan to provide more detailed anlysis of the poems or remarks on what I had in mind when I made a given piece.

Predicting was published by Coteau Books in 2006, with George Elliot Clarke having served as the editor. A majority of the poems were written after 2002, though a few come from way back in 1999. The book is divided into two sections, "Views from the Gallery of Recent Lives" and "For as Long as Their Looking Lasts." The poems in "Views" essentially look at how the lyric voice is deployed through different contemporary forms and peoples and discourses as a way of seeing and hearing the shapes the lyric voice's absences take. "Looking Lasts" does the same, but in a more directly elegaic mode.

Though "Metro" (from "Views") and "AB" (from "Looking Lasts") do not as obviously characterize their respective sections, they do demonstrate how received poetic forms are encountered by received (popular) cultural forms, in this case the movie trailer and the MAD Fold-in.

Here's "Metro" (in two pages):

And here's "AB" (pre- and post-fold):

Live Links: The Ritzer on Gerry Ritz

Every now and then I'm going to post links to peculiar artifacts and articles I find on the web. I don't intend to share the usual viral videos, celebrity gossip and top ten lists. What I'm after are the debris and dreams that don't reach the mainstream, but should. I have been meaning to do this for a few months. The website started by someone calling him/her-self the "Ritzer" finally gave me reason to begin.

For those who missed it, the news broke recently that Canadian MP and federal Agriculture Minister, Gerry Ritz (currently up for re-election), had made a joke about the Maple Leaf listeriosis outbreak, an outbreak that, thus far, has killed 17 people. Mr. Ritz, according to the CBC, "fretted [during a conference call] about the political dangers of the crisis before quipping, 'This is like death by a thousand cuts. Or should I say cold cuts.'"

Sometime after the news of the "joke" went global (or, possibly (if it was an insider) before the news broke), "the Ritzer's" site appeared online. The Ritzer, as I imagine you can guess from the image below, is a reference to the Joker, the villian from the Batman comic books and the recent film you've all heard about/seen 1000 times (unless you live in a (non-Bat) cave), The Dark Knight. The Ritzer's site takes some pretty grotesque and cruel shots at the MP cum "joker"'s slip-up/vile act (depending on which way you vote).

This example of the Ritzer's work isn't the worst of them. Satire? Sure. Sick? I think so. For those of you who want to judge for yourself, here's the link (NSFW).

Poem: In Memory of David Foster Wallace (February 21, 1962 - September 12, 2008)

MORS FINIS NON EST (WHY WALLACE WROTE SUCH GOOD BOOKS)

"What do you say if you just shouted 'Victory for the Forces
of Democratic Freedom!' right when you came?"
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-David Foster Wallace

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaThat's the first sentence
you remember after hearing the news, of all the things he wrote
that stuck with you, your friend having just called from upstairs
with the headline when (of every question he'd asked
in his sadness and in his jest) you remember it. And you keep it
to yourself, your recollection of that question, as your friend reads
the article, gives you what a man on TV would call the few details
so far to "come out," to "emerge," as though they were felons
(the details) pinned in the woods before spotlights and pistols
and forced to surrender themselves and speak. What you wonder
is what he would do with it, this question coming to you
when it did, right before you understood, "got it," and the deluge
hit, you finally believing the fact you had met with total
disbelief. This paralysis that constricts in paralysis,
he'd see it first: your immobility before the whats and whys
and hows of this loss, and the more petty terror you feel, trapped
in the embarrassment of getting hung up on this one chance
line.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaIn Wallace's poem
the felons would refuse to surrender, submitting
in their silence to oblivion instead. At most
they'd be lovers who puzzled their pursuers
with the sound they made when they made
love, the senseless victory
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaathey cried out for. Your friend
would call down in the end from upstairs. What
do you say?


We want the devil to be right. "Time and place can't change
the brain," is Satan's saying, the mind and self the brain contains
capable of making hell heaven and heaven hell. Wallace's genius
is this: his sentences prove the devil's vision of mind false
and true. This is more than a paradox or a game
or "masturbation." This is our burden. For though the mind possesses
the unclassifiable appendage of its own noisy void (the hand
and mouth and wing-like thing no community can clothe)
it still stretches flat for screening chatter-filled films, for light
cast so seductively through a celluloid-shouted "Enjoy!"
that not a single synapse dares to stray. This is why to speak
of a language is to speak of a way of death. It's why
in each ascent for the apical the ladders of our ideas leave us
stranded on the ledge of what we scaled, formulating plans
in the dirt and grieving scruffy and mad and singed beneath
these season-crushed skies. Many of us decide to climb our palms raw
against the mountain's sheer face, as though the rocks we cling to
are the features of our master's looking, suffocated by a surface
of stone. While those of us who quit the climb turn our eyes
closed instead or open on that final step that falls on nothing
but its fall. We want death to not be the end. And
it isn't. Death comes after. The end is first, within us from the start,
invisible and un-kindled except where it turns to spirals
all the straight lines we limn, the paths we draft in answer to
the "how do" and "how should" of the lives we fill with life.


aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHe ended like this. Not
another word. No more books. Behold

the man. Where he stood. Then
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadidn't. Where my friend read
his wife found him. I wonder what
he would have done. Which actions would he have decided to remain
undecided on? Hearing the news. This man who ogled endlessly
the infinity of the self, its escapes and cages, the closest he ever came
to saying "No" being a measured rejection of the spectacle's
relief, declining to be a part of it, even
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas a witness, what
would he have said, right now, "Look," or "Look
away"?



To download a PDF version of the poem click here.

Reading: Victoria and Vancouver

I have two readings coming up in rainy British Columbia.

The good folks of Planet Earth Poetry, with the support of the CC, are going to give you a taste of a little Planet Saskatchewan Poetry. For those of you in the Victoria area, you can check it out on Friday, March 7th, at Black Stilt Coffee House, #103-1633 Hillside Avenue. The first wave hits at 7:30.

On Monday, March 10th, I will be reading in Vancouver at the Chez Nous Ballroom located at 70 E 2nd Ave. PRISM magazine is sponsoring this event and things will kick off at 7:30.

Publication: "Beautif" in Forget

Forget Magazine has put together a special 7th Anniversary Valentine's Day issue (the 7th Anniversary for Forget (Valentine's Day has been around at least since this)). Congratulations to Kent.

You can check the issue out here and read my poem here. Also, be sure to check out my source of inspiration (the site or the myth).

Happy Valentine's Day!