Some boxes arrived from the printer the other day. In them were copies of ESP: accumulation sonnets: a book written by me and designed by me and Mark Goldstein and published by BookThug. So now I've gone and done it. I've published myself. Again.

It's terrible. I'll be entered into that category of writers inhabited by the likes of Walt Whitman, Gertrude Stein, Virgina Woolf, bill bissett, bpNichol, Gwendolyn MacEwan, Victor Coleman and Stuart Ross to name a few -- poets who paid for their own work to be published or disseminated their work through publishing houses they either owned or worked for.

So why do I feel guilty?

An Essay

Meanwhile....

One must consider, from time to time, say, when the solid mass of accomplishment to which one is engaged daily, breaks open, a moment of pause revealed in which lies a brief self-reflective moment that holds up a mirror, however quickly, and one must clearly see how to deal with the onslaught of The Other. In the mirror I see a crowd of blurred faces looking over my shoulder. I'm not sure exactly what I mean by this, but recent events have made it clear that there is a tension that exists within my own frame of mind based on what I imagine are the expectations of others in relation to what I imagine are my own expectations for my self. It "affects" me, and I'm never clear how to negotiate the affectation.

For instance, it is becoming more and more clear, as my various projects begin to engage with the mechanisms of The World, that my Public perception grows more and more narrow. At least I imagine it to be so. Ben Watson, if I recall correctly, wrote in Art Class & Cleavage that we are defined by what we do to earn money, and this might be more clearly stated by saying we are defined by what others perceive one does to earn money. My trouble is that I'm not sure what it is that I do that earns money -- I count mice, for one thing. I teach workshop classes at George Brown College. I publish books. I sell books. And occasionally I publish my own work and am paid for it. Soon, I will finish the library degree I am working on and I will get a job in that field and add to my assorted definitions whatever it is that I will be doing that pulls a paycheque. And somehow in there lies me -- the me I wake up to each morning and stare at in the actual mirror sans extra faces before I run off to accomplish several things at once for the day. But what does The Other I imagine looking over my shoulder think I do to earn money? Or, if I'm not defined by earnings, what does The Other think I am?

Woods/Pages

A quick post to announce the publication of a new chapbook, Woods/Pages, published by the incomparable souls at Greenboathouse Books. Those of you who are sick & tired of the dark inane voice(s) of Lack Lyrics will enjoy my return to 21st Century nature lyricism. But don't worry, there's still loads of heavy procedural & conceptual & "experimental" work going on, (just like there is in all poetry).

I'm very pleased to be part of Greenboathouse, and lucky too, since Woods/Pages is the final publication in this project. Jason and the team are moving on to new things, but I'm sure they will be just as beautiful.

If you'd like to get a copy visit www.greenboathouse.com -- there are lots of other lovely things to pick up while you're there!

JM

Art Bar

Thanks to those who came out last night to my reading at the Art Bar. I had fun, and it was nice to go out into the world like a poet, nice to chat with Stephen and John and Sam and Becca, although Sam accused me of being a librarian and censoring the small blue. the small blue was not censored last night, insofar as it was first "censored" by my editor who insisted that I cover all that lovely blank space throughout the book with black smudges shaped like words, lest people think that we made a mistake. My readings of the text are meant to return it to a state more resembling the original, which is why I say that there is no number 63 (or whatever) when people ask me to read them.

The Art Bar is endearing. Never am I ever quite surrounded by so much seriousness when it comes to poetry. It's endearing. I love it. There is nothing like being validated for being something you hope no one will ever defined you as. Life is strange that way -- the seriousness of it all, when it is all so fleeting, so uncompromising. And yet, it happens, it has consequence. I have been thinking about classification for a long time now, at least a few months (can we classify that as a long time?) and I wonder often at what it means to "be" something. What metaphors are at our disposal to explain how things "are"? No wonder I'm so uncomfortable describing myself as something, or classifying myself in relation to everything else in the world. To define oneself is to let them ascribe. It gives them power.

Anyway, for those who weren't at the Art Bar last night, or perhaps didn't even know about it, I'm reading again on Friday at the IV Lounge. For now I must return to my paper on Foucault, discourse, truth, knowledge, identity and power. And surveillance. Watch out!

Dear Blog, hello.

I seem to have developed a cold. I'm tres grumpy right now, but I won't go into why. It is curious however that I'm generally grumpy. I wonder why that is? Perhaps one day I'll write something on the grump as an impetus for writing. But for now I have to blow my nose.

Jay

Dear Blog, hello.

It is a fantiastically fall night, but I am tired. Not really. My internal sense of language makes me write things like that. I've been typesetting a White Porcupine all day and glowering at how the world conducts itself. As a distraction, after massive hamburgers, Cole and I read Mr Happy before bed, and a Frog and Toad story we'd never read before called The Garden. Toad is very anxious about his new garden and keeps annoying it by reading it stories and talking to it and singing is songs and reading it poems. How annoying! Then Toad finally falls asleep and while he's asleep the garden finally has a chance to actually grow. A wonderful story.

I had a dream last night that the DEMTENED POEMS 21-30 I finished yesterday are not only not finished, they are not part of DEMTENED POEMS at all! How odd to have spent all this time on them thinking they were one thing when really they are something else all together. Well, fine. Cudos to these poems for having the decency to speak up and put me straight. So I'm still working on them and when they are done they will be done. Meanwhile, all that's left of DEMTENED POEMS 21-30 is a sequence of titles. Maybe I'll write some poems under them some day.

Maybe I'll get a grant to finish them. For the time being, I'm feeling somewhat distracted.

Where'd ya go?

Oh. There you are.

Back to printing millions of copies of covers for The Sands of Dream for the US market, even though it's the first English edition of the first surrealist text ever published in Canada. Dumbass Canadians -- when you suddenly realize it's right there in front of your nose it'll be out of print.

I'm not sure what else to tell you at the moment. Reid is watching inappropriate crap on the internet. Hazel is out at work. It's a fairly quiet night.

Jay