Dean Young Needs a Heart Transplant

I don’t know the man, but I know his poetry, and as is the way with poetry, I somehow know the man. The news of Dean Young’s condition has simply stopped me, this morning, from anything resembling routine.

There were rumours of ill health, if rumour is the word: glancing mentions in interviews, etc. The full disclosure now makes me feel old, looking back at a younger self who simply assumed things will right themselves, he’ll keep offering up poems for me to read. And he may still, he may still.

I’ll be giving something, for what he’s given me.

Reading Joshua Ferris Is an Event

My one-line review of Ferris’ Then We Came to the End: why isn’t working in an office as hilarious as reading about it? I’ve done plenty of the former, very little of the latter, which raises the question: where are the other novels/poems/stories/cartoon strips about office life? Okay, there’s Dilbert. Maybe there’s only so much material to mine.

The book is in the first person plural (mostly), a brilliant stroke in a milieu where conformity is normative. Ferris also does a top-notch job playing fast and loose with the chronology; time feels different behind those brown cubicle walls, I tell you. It’ll have you believing there is no time, no motion−that everything is simply a trick of the brain. Or to be seasonal: a trick or treat of the brain.

I’m reading with Ferris this year at the IFOA. Quite pumped about it, with my bonus Hospitality Suite privileges and all-access pass. It’s like being a roadie for Oasis.

Couple of Hayflick reviews: one new from Event (excerpted by Coach House), one old now posted online at Matrix.

NewYorkMaisonneuvePeterNormanJacket2RickMoody

A summer gone, nearly. Wha’ happened?

4… It’s easy to love New York. It’s easier once you’ve been there. I’m writing this in a coffeeshop here in (sleepy?) Leslieville and my head’s still expecting American proportions in all things.

Two readings: one alfresco in Bryant Park (NY public spaces are multifaceted; our “Reading Room” within sightline of a carousel and ping pong table) and the other at St. Paul’s Chapel, which was a refuge during the 9/11 attacks and now serves as a memorial. Quite moving: it took what was once a TV event—horrific but filtered—and made it real. Rick Moody was kind enough to come up to us after the reading and shake our hands. As if mine wasn’t already shaking.

3… Interview with me posted on Maisonneuve. Linda and I did this a while ago, in fetching Besner style on a traffic island in Chinatown. The majority of interviews these days are conducted via email and polished to a sheen. Much more difficult to be articulate in your normal speaking voice. Which is my way of saying, okay, I ramble, but my heart’s in the right place.

(In my chest, slightly left of centre.)

(My left, your right.)

2… Jake Mooney makes mention of the A-grade debuts this year in CanPo. I must chime in with my admiration for Norman’s At the Gates of the Theme Park. His taut, self-deprecating, inventive takes remind me of Simic: poems that flatter the reader’s intelligence.

1… UPenn is taking over Tranter’s Jacket, to be sequeled Jacket2. Stephen McLaughlin came through town and interviewed a clutch of poets. I believe he’s crisscrossing parts of NAmerica, 60 towns in 60 days or something equally catchy, and will be posting podcasts for the January launch.

0… Trilliums came and went. I joined the ranks of poets who’ve placed behind a Solie win. But the ride was a blast.

Off.