Colleen Thibaudeau’s obituary in the Feb. 9 Globe and Mail was intriguing in a couple of ways. For one thing, I had never heard her name before. This in itself is nothing new; even in the relatively small world of Canadian poetry I do encounter well-established poets I’ve never heard of. Having belatedly discovered Thibaudeau, … Continue reading Discoveries: Colleen Thibaudeau
Blog
Objects and memory
There are certain small objects packed away in a box in the attic, or tucked into the back of a desk drawer, that I will probably never get rid of, and this poem by Sharon Olds shows brilliantly the reason why. In “Toth Farry” (the spelling borrowed from a note her child once wrote to … Continue reading Objects and memory
Leaves on the family tree
Summer is reunion season. On the August long weekend my mother’s family, the Klaassens, gathered in Saskatchewan to visit and to recount family history. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that our family is very fortunate in having a wealth of documents detailing its history. We have diaries and memoirs, as well … Continue reading Leaves on the family tree
Naming flowers
I’ve just returned from a week of vacation in a nearby provincial park where, among other things, I discovered many wildflowers I’d never seen before. After my initial delight and surprise I realized this was because, in other years, we’d always gone there in August, when many of these flowers were no longer in bloom, … Continue reading Naming flowers
Poetry by heart
April is National Poetry Month, and rather than write about how we should all read more poetry (that’s just a basic assumption), I’ll suggest something more specific: go back to a poem you memorized in school, and re-learn it. Memorizing comes with repetition, but when you no longer repeat the poem, lines tend to go … Continue reading Poetry by heart
Giving literature away
Saskatchewan writer Don Kerr’s latest poetry collection, The dust of just beginning (2010), has two interesting things on the copyright page. First, the book is under a Creative Commons license, under the terms of which anyone can “copy, distribute and transmit the work” for non-commercial purposes, as long as the author is properly credited. Second, … Continue reading Giving literature away
How to ruin a perfectly good poem, and why
The prolific American poet W.D. Snodgrass, in his book De/Compositions, asks the question: What makes a good poem good? and what happens when you remove that quality? The short answer is that you spoil the poem, but the particular ways of spoiling poems are what make this book so intriguing. Snodgrass takes poems by W.H. Auden, … Continue reading How to ruin a perfectly good poem, and why
Winter trifles
It is a cold day in Winnipeg, a real freeze-your-face-off day, and while walking to a nearby café to meet some friends for a late breakfast I remembered this little poem: Oh, the cold of Canada nobody knows, The fire burns our shoes without warming our toes; Oh, dear, what shall we do? Our blankets … Continue reading Winter trifles
Odd notions
It’s been a long time since I read Ray Bradbury’s novel Dandelion Wine, but one short episode sticks in my mind. An old woman, Mrs. Bentley, begins chatting with three children who pause by her yard on a summer afternoon. One is Tom Spaulding, one of the main characters of the novel; the others are … Continue reading Odd notions
Getting a handle on the abstract
Russell Smith’s latest column in The Globe and Mail describes a documentary called How To Explain It To My Parents, in which nine Dutch artists sit down with their parents and try to explain what they do. Not surprisingly, some of the parents don’t get it. While they take a benign interest in their children’s … Continue reading Getting a handle on the abstract