Ms. Lyric's Poetry Outlaws

I forgot to talk about the title! It means where a train goes off on its own track. But only lightly. O Ashbery. This one’s for Frank.

A curious, compelling thought. We don’t know the date we will die but we pass the day each year. For Chris. Whose birthday it was yesterday when he was alive.

Hey if one could only still write poems like this at 85! An elegy for her husband in the Recovery section of The Art of Losing.

It’s Part Five or Recovery (a misnomer) in The Art of Losing and Frank O’Hara gives us My Heart which I stumblingly discuss and then try to leave it to its own messy resonances!

A gorgeous villanelle that both makes and breaks the form to evidence the art of losing and how it’s done :)

From the Ritual section of The Art of Losing. Valentine’s paean to the somatic, the origins, the real. Happy Family Day. Hug your mother.

A gorgeous elegy from the Ritual section of the grief anthology on the tangibilities of loss, the wardrobe of mourning.

To face the Vietnam memorial; to face losses, the war’s past and now. Reflections. Real? Imagined? All is one in this elegy from the Ritual section of The Art of Losing.

A listener’s/interviewee’s choice poem from Susan McCaslin! She read it under a tree in the Han Shan forest and I talked about McEwen’s life and poem with its rich echoes and metaphysical resonances. Happy Day of Love!

In which I hmmmm a lot and a dog barks while we sip tea in a gloriously sunny Fort Langley kitchen, but also we chat about flowers becoming Wonderland, form poems, saving a forest, singing opera, literary allusiveness, cancel culture, poetic diversity and transcendence. And Susan reads Dear Lovers’ Tree in the Han Shan Woods. Thank you mentor and teacher and friend.

This poem, from the Remembrance section of the Art of Losing, and one of Thomas’s most sonorous pieces is nonetheless problematic. I relish its resonances and get irked by its intents. Such is poetry. There to make you feel and think!

A beautiful elegy for the knowledge of sacrifice and duty one could re-read eternally. From The Art of Losing’s Remembrance section.

Although I accidentally misname Doug’s wife and deal with the dog’s barkings I aim to otherwise create a true homage to this poet, speculative fiction creator and community builder for the arts, pastiched from other homages, his bio, a poem on Cezanne and my own memories. Thanks Doug!

Yay new intro and outro! And also another elegy, this time from the Remembrance section of The Art of Losing, on parents picking their cemetery plots. It’s a bit funny. And Hal is a new poet for me so also yay!

A reading of this poem as selected by Yvonne Blomer, then me chatting about its form and content and reciting it too! Wright rocks. Relish!

At the Penny Farthing pub in Victoria BC, I have a grand chat with the former poet laureate Yvonne Blomer. We talk about workshops, feminism, parenthood, Woolf, the sonnet, rhythms, pandemic pursuits and the meat of it all. And she reads a poem called Broadening! Enjoy the ambiance too, including an interruption by four scooter denizens ;) We aim to disrupt yes we do.

As recited by my brother Simon and then discussed in its form, repetitions, sounds and content by me! Plus I tell you what else the inimitable Bringhurst writes.

The last piece in the second section Regret in the Art of Losing anthology, a beautiful rhymed elegy on a refusal to accept by one of America’s once deeply loved poets. And no one interrupted me! Miracle of miracles!!

Herewith Kevin Spenst reciting his Listener’s Choice selection, me trying to chat about it while people move boxes behind me (hence forgetting the significance of the last line’s colon), and then hey I read it to. What an obsession this world was for Mr Berryman indeed.

In which (in a Vancouver coffee shop with its background music) he reads his amazing poem The Geology of a Moment and we talk about the 70s, the 90s, Roy Miki, the sounds of words, border blurs, the academy, love, the importance of venues for poetry, and how to chill. And we giggle or guffaw a lot too. Enjoy!

In which I pick a very short poem to recite from the Regret section of The Art of Losing thinking I won’t be interrupted at my parents’ house. But of course there is always a dog somewhere or a closing door. At any rate, I aim to engage in this dream elegy. We always want them to return.

In which I read a couple of her short lyrics, consider why she stopped writing poetry, talk about her work life, along with her painting and collage, note her supporters, quote her on the writing process and recollect the four times I encountered her in Vancouver and on Saltspring Island. Thanks Phyllis.

The American poet Ruth Stone’s elegiac sonnet from the Regret section of The Art of Losing. Be always in the moment.

Based on a real and tragic episode, this elegy from the second section, Regret, in The Art of Losing anthology, is Orr’s accounting of his accidental killing of his brother and how he turned to poetry in his grief. Language. It’s there to mourn with too.

Another stirring elegy from the first section, Reckoning, in The Art of Losing. And prior to this a paragraph on the elegiac mode from Kevin Young’s intro. And my bumbling abouts ;)