Photos: Richmond pumpkin field

Michael Lind, "The Minor Prophets"

None of the minor prophets
knew that he was minor, of course. Habakkuk, I imagine,
thought that his visions earned him
standing as Ezekiel's peer, if not indeed Elijah's.
Then there was Obadiah,
who could be forgiven if he thought he might be a Moses.
How they would be remembered
Providence concealed from them all, though they could see the future.

Maybe it doesn't matter.
If you're on a mission from God, sent to rebuke a city
or to redeem a nation,
where by canon-makers you're ranked may be inconsequential.
Nor is the voice within you
any less authentic for not having a distant echo.
Seers of the world, be heartened.
Even minor prophets can have genuine revelations.


from Parallel Lives, by Michael Lind
Heard November 9 2007 on Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac"

Photos; Tom Balke, Pacific Rim

Photos; Tom Balke, Turkey

Wish I could claim these, but no, they're by my friend Tom Balke.

Hamlet concept?

"I think that there is probably a way to do Hamlet where the prince is a more Chekhovian figure -- essentially tragic-comic, his profundo monologues taken less as holy writ but as a pathetic defense against his hilarious inabilty to resolve his oedipal tensions, his dutiful son schtick, and his secret identification with Claudius, the virile man of action that he longs to be. A tension that can only be resolved in a farcical and suicidal bloodbath."

Anonymous email correspondent

Photos: Tom Balke, Wickaninish

Photos: Regent College

Julius Novick on Canadian playwrights

"Canadian Playwright." The words seem a little incongrous together, like "Panamanian hockey-player," almost, or "Lebanese fur-trapper."

- Julius Novick on "The Ecstasy Of Rita Joe"
New York Times (1967)

Photos: Semiahmoo

railing

bench

floor

Photos: Semiahmoo

tower 1

tower 2

tower 3

tower 4

tower 5

Photos: Fairhaven

garden shop

George Bernard Shaw, "The True Joy In Life"

This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one. Being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

George Bernard Shaw

Photos: Vancouver

Burrard

Broadway 1

Broadway 2

Broadway 3

Photos: Langley

yellow & black 1

yellow & black 2

yellow & black 3

Luci Shaw, "Act Now to Avoid Prize Entry Forfeiture (Pending)"

All it takes is a letter opener and an act
of surrender. Among the bulk mail offers
I was drawn ineluctably to the significance of
the words on the manila flap (“Dated material!
Open immediately!”) and my name under
the glassine rectangle on the front. No matter that
I couldn’t remember sending an entry,
nor what the prize was to have been,
my personal lexicon has never included the word
forfeiture. Others might view such a consequence
as a sign of profound personal sacrifice
or a valued lesson in relinquishment
and soul growth. Giving in to such temptation
is what I have always done. And I did.

The treasure flowed in. My address became
the destination for media millions. Catalogs.
Magazines. Samples. Plain brown envelopes,
white, cream, colored, it made little difference.
Friday mornings the neighbors took offense at
the overloaded garbage bins out front. Paper trash
began to clog the gutters. Overworked postal workers
went on strike. Trees were being clear-cut on all
the region’s hillsides. Protests and TV vans blocked
our dead end street. Environmentalists camped
like green mold on our doorstep. It all came
to a head when the Republican Party announced
my candidacy for President; they said only
the White House could handle that much mail.


by Luci Shaw

Tim Anderson, "I too have forfeited prizes in poetry."

I too have forfeited prizes in poetry.

One of my daughters once entered me in a poetry contest online - she being 15 and not knowing the whole deal. Upon seeing that the contest was so easy to enter, she found a copy of a poem on my hard drive (one that meant something to her) and with teen-aged precision quickly did the old copy and paste into the entry form. I wasn’t even involved, but I was entered.

Sure enough, a few weeks later (and this was the first I heard about it), I get a notice in the mail that my poem “To My Daughter at Her Birth” was the winner of a special prize in poetry!! Amongst the sheaves of laser printed pages (Yes, Tim Anderson, amongst the thousands of entries, your poetry has been recognized by our judges…) there was the elevated language of real culture and a suitably baroque certificate of congratulations, assuring me of my place among the literary pantheon. The fact that the envelope had metered bulk postage hardly diminished the personalization.

And (oh happy day!) they were releasing a book of all the prize winners, and I could see my poem in print (and get copies for my friends of course). All I had to do was send in $89.95 per copy. As a graphic arts guy, I had a sense of binding and digital short print run costs - my estimate was they were making about a 900% markup…

Oh – the final irony – they printed out my winning poem on my certificate. But it did not read as I remembered it. It seems their web-based submissions process had to limit the number characters in the submissions and therefore my poem was cut off in mid-sentence, so that the final words were a brief phrase that didn’t quite arrive anywhere, which made the work (presumably) all the more poetic and mysterious.

But my daughter was returning my tenderness, and my voice was heard without me even trying to speak, so who am I to complain? After all, however unsuspecting and abbreviated, I was a winner.


written by Tim Anderson
in response to Luci Shaw's poem
"Act Now To Avoid Prize Entry Forfeiture (Pending)"

Peter Norman, "Rejection Letter"

Thank you for taking the time to reject my work.

I receive hundreds of rejection slips every year,
and unfortunately I cannot accept them all.

Regretfully, yours is not among the few
rejection slips I have chosen to honor this year.
It has been recycled, and the story or poem
in question will soon appear in your publication.

Pleae consider me again with further rejections,
and best of luck in your editorial pursuits.


Peter Norman
est. 1973

Photos: Calgary

Thanksgiving reeds 1

Thanksgiving reeds 2

Thanksgiving reeds 3

Thanksgiving reeds 4

Photos: Calgary

morning (horizontal)

morning pond

morning hayrows

culvert

Photos: Calgary

storm with eaves

pond (horizontal)

storm (bronze)

Gerard Manley Hopkins, "The Only Just Judge"

from a letter by Gerard Manley Hopkins

The only just judge,
the only just literary critic,
is Christ,

who prizes, is proud of,
and admires, more than
any man,

more than the receiver himself
can, the gifts of
his own making.


"Four Found Poems"
in Spinach Days
by Robert Phillips

Garrison Keillor will read it to you if you click here. If you're the impatient sort, you can cut to the chase by jumping straight off to about the 2:57 mark. But you'll miss some other good stuff..

Denise Levertov, "In Mind"

There's in my mind a woman
of innocence, unadorned but

fair-featured and smelling of
apples or grass. She wears

a utopian smock or shift, her hair
is light brown and smooth, and she

is kind and very clean without
ostentation-

but she has
no imagination

And there's a
turbulent moon-ridden girl

or old woman, or both,
dressed in opals and rags, feathers

and torn taffeta,
who knows strange songs

but she is not kind.


"In Mind"
by Denise Levertov

Thanks, Julie

Rainer Maria Rilke, "As though eternity stretched before them..."

In this there is no measuring with time. A year doesn’t matter; ten years are nothing. To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow. It will come regardless. But it comes only to those who live as though eternity stretched before them, carefree, silent and endless. I learn it daily, learn it with many pains, for which I am grateful: Patience is all!


Rainer Maria Rilke
The passage is posted at Diane Tucker's writing desk

Madeleine L'Engle, "French Peasant Writer"

When I start working on a book, which is usually several years and several books before I start to write it, I am somewhat like a French peasant cook. There are several pots on the back of the stove, and as I go by during the day’s work, I drop a carrot in one, an onion in another, a chunk of meat in another. When it comes time to prepare the meal, I take the pot which is most nearly full and bring it to the front of the stove.

So it is with writing. There are several pots on those back burners. An idea for a scene goes into one, a character into another, a description of a tree in the fog into another. When it comes time to write, I bring forward the pot which has the most in it. The dropping in of ideas is sometimes quite conscious; sometimes it happens without my realizing it. I look, and something has been added which is just what I need, but I don’t remember when it was added.

When it is time to start work, I look at everything in the pot, sort, arrange, think about character and story line. Most of this part of work is done consciously, but then there comes a moment of unselfconsciousness, of letting go and serving the work.


"Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art"
Madeleine L'Engle

Photos: English Bay

Photos: Ambleside, Stanley Park

Camille Paglia, "Only Religion Can Save The Arts"

For the fine arts to revive, they must recover their spiritual center. Profaning the iconography of other people's faiths is boring and adolescent. The New Age movement, to which I belong, was a distillation of the 1960s' multicultural attraction to world religions, but it has failed thus far to produce important work in the visual arts. The search for spiritual meaning has been registering in popular culture instead through science fiction, as in George Lucas' six-film Star Wars saga, with its evocative master myth of the “Force.” But technology for its own sake is never enough. It will always require supplementation through cultivation in the arts.

To fully appreciate world art, one must learn how to respond to religious expression in all its forms. Art began as religion in prehistory. It does not require belief to be moved by a sacred shrine, icon, or scripture. Hence art lovers, even when as citizens they stoutly defend democratic institutions against religious intrusion, should always speak with respect of religion. Conservatives, on the other hand, need to expand their parched and narrow view of culture. Every vibrant civilization welcomes and nurtures the arts.

Progressives must start recognizing the spiritual poverty of contemporary secular humanism and reexamine the way that liberalism too often now automatically defines human aspiration and human happiness in reductively economic terms. If conservatives are serious about educational standards, they must support the teaching of art history in primary school--which means conservatives have to get over their phobia about the nude, which has been a symbol of Western art and Western individualism and freedom since the Greeks invented democracy. Without compromise, we are heading for a soulless future. But when set against the vast historical panorama, religion and art--whether in marriage or divorce--can reinvigorate American culture.

Camille Paglia, "Religion and the Arts in America"
Arion Journal, Spring/Summer 2007

Friedrich Nietszche, "A Long Obedience"

The essential thing 'in heaven and in earth' is,
apparently (to repeat it once more), that there
should be long OBEDIENCE in the same direction;
there thereby results, and has always resulted
in the long run, something which has made
life worth living; for instance, virtue, art,
music, dancing, reason, spirituality--anything
whatever that is transfiguring, refined,
foolish, or divine.

Friedrich Nietszche,
Beyond Good and Evil (1886)