Friday morning poem: Growing is forever

Growing is Forever from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Good Music: The Joe - Float or Flail

I first met Joe Gurba - aka The Joe - around 6 years ago as a fresh-faced kid with a streak of geek and a love of hip-hop music. Back then he was pushing his rough, but engaging debut album and performing for church youth groups. Since that time, Joe has transformed himself into a sharp slinger of intricate, and sometimes surreal wordplay, an indie music warrior, and a tireless champion of fellow artists. To get there Joe went subversive, working the indie rock scene from the bottom up. He played every show he could find with whatever bands would share the stage. He began promoting shows as Robot Human and joined with friends to found the Old Ugly Recording Co. whose roster includes rising local indie acts like Mitchmatic, Doug Hoyer, and Kumon Plaza.

Between 2006 and 2008, Joe wrote and recorded Float or Flail, a slick collection of electro-beats, crisp bleeps and bloops, and creamy synth washes that perfectly match his seemingly endless poetic energy. Sadly, the album was shelved until Joe could raise the necessary funds to free the master recordings. Three years later he's succeeded and his labour of love is finally seeing the light of day. Joe has expressed some mild embarrassment about releasing the album so late as he feels that he's grown beyond it as an artist and a person, but there's nothing to be ashamed of here. From rapid-fire fun jams like "Spaceman", "What Not", or "On My Right Shoulder", to the contemplative spoken-word flow of "Sorry If It Singed You", Joe's lyrical prowess is indisputable. He displays a complete mastery of vocabulary which he pours into a frenetic torrent of truly unique metaphor, simile, and pop-reference. Equal parts party and genuine poetry, Float or Flail is entertainment that both feeds your mind and bobs your head and Joe has made it's 15 tracks available to the world for a mere $7.50. I heartily encourage you to check it out.

How to make a poem

Our Daily Bird 52: The Lyre Bird

(with apologies for the ad)

It's interesting to note that the 'hushed whisper' is universal to both nature documentaries and golf announcing. Is Tiger Woods as skittish as the blue-throated warbler? Is he won't to scurry off into the underbrush if startled by a loud noise, depriving us of the awe-inspiring sound of his unique mating call?

We may never know, but here's a fine example of the artform in a BBCWorldwide spot about nature's Rich Little: the lyre bird. If I had one living anywhere in my vicinity, I'd be spending a lot of time in the woods playing bits of old 1930's jazz, excerpts from the Marx Brothers, and Looney Tunes-esque sound effects. After all, who wouldn't enjoy strolling down a nature path and hearing softly in the distance, "BOOOO-OI-OI-OI-OI-NGGGGGG.....why I oughta!...stooooooormy weathaaaaaaar..."?

And while it's feathers may not 'liquify the rainbow' and Australia is a long ways from the Panama Canal, there is more than a little of the lyre bird in Craig Arnold's "The Invisible Birds of Central America":

Click to read more ...

Animated Poetry: Billy Collins

I try to read a poem every morning. Three weeks of lectures and then weeks of other often inscrutable and dull writing has made catching the rhythm of a poem on the page more difficult. Since readings and being read to are not my favorite thing, a little animated poetry often saves the day.

JWTNY animated poetry channel:

"Billy Collins, former US Poet Laureate and one of America's best-selling poets, reads his poem[s] with animation by Juan Delcan of Spontaneous.

Noted for their intelligent humor, accessibility and observations on daily life, Collins' popular poems come alive further in a series of animated poems produced by JWT New York."

These are best dished out slowly. Here is Billy Collins reading "Forgetfulness".

Our Daily Bird 48: The Jain Bird Hospital in Dehli

Founded in 1956, the Jain Bird Hospital is capable of taking in up to 10,000 fine feathered friends.  Located in Dehli, India, it is run as an offshoot of the Digambar Jain temple, treating nearly 30,000 birds every year and admitting up to 60 new patients a day. Brought in by area merchants and townspeople, birds are treated for free with the hospital being supported through private donations.  

The Jain Bird Hospital in Delhi

by William Meredith

Outside the hotel window, unenlightened pigeons

weave and dive like Stukas on their prey,

apparently some tiny insect brother.

(In India, the attainment of nonviolence

is considered a proper goal for human beings.)

If one of the pigeons should fly into the illusion

of my window and survive (the body is no illusion

when it’s hurt) he could be taken across town to the bird

hospital where Jains, skilled medical men,

repair the feathery sick and broken victims.

There, in reproof of violence

and of nothing else, live Mahavira’s brothers and sisters.

To this small, gentle order of monks and nuns

it is bright Vishnu and dark Shiva who are illusion.

They trust in faith, cognition, and nonviolence

to release them from rebirth. They think that birds

and animals—like us, some predators, some prey—

should be ministered to no less than men and women.

The Jains who deal with creatures (and with laymen)

wear white, while their more enterprising hermit brothers

walk naked and are called the sky-clad. Jains pray

to no deity, human kindness being their sole illusion.

Mahavira and those twenty-three other airy creatures

who turned to saints with him, preached the doctrine of ahimsa,

which in our belligerent tongue becomes nonviolence.

It’s not a doctrine congenial to snarers and poultrymen,

who every day bring to market maimed pheasants.

Numbers of these are brought in by the Jain brothers

and brought, to grow back wing-tips and illusions,

to one of the hospitals succoring such small quarry.

When strong and feathered again, the lucky victims

get reborn on Sunday mornings to the world’s violence,

released from the roofs of these temples to illusion.

It is hard for a westerner to speak about men and women

like these, who call the birds of the air brothers.

We recall the embarrassed fanfare for Francis and his flock.

We’re poor forked sky-clad things ourselves

and God knows prey to illusion—e.g., I claim these brothers

and sisters in India, stemming a little violence, among birds.

 

From Effort at Speech: New and Selected Poems.

Copyright © 1997 by William Meredith

Found at The Poetry Foundation

Our Daily Bird 44: Sometimes I hear them...

Da Vinci Landscape with Crows
© 2007 Lori Goldberg

I saw this painting at the Eastside Culture Crawl in Vancouver last year. There are a lot of crows where I currently live and I've been trying to look at them differently over the past few months. Less Poe and Milton. Something else. I don't know what yet.  I like how the artist saw crows not as the traditional tricksters but as helpers.

Goldberg has a strong connection to crows. She feels they have helped
her both emotionally and technically.

“When my daughter died twelve years ago at 10 months old, I would
walk the streets in an altered state, grieving a deep loss and the crows
would just be there landing in front of me or dropping stuff at me or
swooping down at me.

It was like they knew and they were trying to bring me back from the
depths of my pain and make me become more present. It worked.”

source: Grab News: Art Unfolding: featuring Painter Lori Goldberg by Rod Drown

While looking at this painting I had pieces of this poem running in my head. The crows, the painting, and Clifton's words remind me that there are those who may be experiencing the kind of extra heaviness that these long dark days of winter can bring. I hope part of that heaviness could be winged and beautiful.

sorrows
by Lucille Clifton

who would believe them winged

who would believe they could be

beautiful         who would believe

they could fall so in love with mortals

that they would attach themselves

as scars attach and ride the skin

sometimes we hear them in our dreams

rattling their skulls         clicking their bony fingers

envying our crackling hair

our spice filled flesh

they have heard me beseeching

as I whispered into my own

cupped hands       enough not me again

enough       but who can distinguish

one human voice

amid such choruses of   desire



Our Daily Bird 39: Bird With A Berry

A poem by one of the founders of the League of Canadian Poets (no word as to whether he helped design the matching spandex costumes), 1964 Governor General's Award winner, Raymond Souster.  It's good to know birds have these sorts of days too.

Bird With A Berry

A bird with a berry
big as it's head tries
to carry it across
the back grass, gets halfway
then drops it.
                      When I ask him
why he doesn't pick it up again
he answers, "I'm just not
in the mood and besides
I'd probably only choke on the damn thing anyway,"

Which only proves birds
are no better than humans
at answering questions.

(c) Raymond Souster, 1977

Click to read more ...

Our Daily Bird 30: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
by Wallace Stevens
I
Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird. II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds. III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime. IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one. V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after. VI Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause. VII O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the blackbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you? VIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the blackbird is involved In what I know. IX When the blackbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles. X At the sight of blackbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply. XI He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For blackbirds. XII The river is moving. The blackbird must be flying. XIII It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.