Favourite Poem of the Month

He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded

I sit down on the floor of a school for the retarded,
a writer of magazine articles accompanying a band
that was met at the door by a child in a man's body
who asked them, "Are you the surprise they promised us?"

It's Ryan's Fancy, Dermot on guitar,
Fergus on banjo, Denis on penny-whistle.
In the eyes of this audience, they're everybody
who has ever appeared on TV. I've been telling lies
to a boy who cried because his favorite detective
hadn't come with us; I said he had sent his love
and, no, I didn't think he'd mind if I signed his name

to a scrap of paper: when the boy took it, he said,
"Nobody will ever get this away from me,"
in the voice, more hopeless than defiant,
of one accustomed to finding that his hiding places
have been discovered, used to having objects snatched
out of his hands. Weeks from now I'll send him
another autograph, this one genuine
in the sense of having been signed by somebody
on the same payroll as the star.
Then I'll feel less ashamed. Now everyone is singing,
"Old MacDonald had a farm," and I don't know what to do

about the young woman (I call her a woman
because she's twenty-five at least, but think of her
as a little girl, she plays the part so well,
having known no other), about the young woman who
sits down beside me and, as if it were the most natural
thing in the world, rests her head on my shoulder.

It's nine o'clock in the morning, not an hour for music.
And, at the best of times, I'm uncomfortable
in situations where I'm ignorant
of the accepted etiquette: it's one thing
to jump a fence, quite another thing to blunder
into one in the dark. I look around me
for a teacher to whom to smile out my distress.
They're all busy elsewhere, "Hold me," she whispers. "Hold me."

I put my arm around her. "Hold me tighter."
I do, and she snuggles closer. I half-expect
someone in authority to grab her
of me: I can imagine this being remembered
for ever as the time the sex-crazed writer
publicly fondled the poor retarded girl.
"Hold me," she says again. What does it matter
what anybody thinks? I put my arm around her,
rest my chin in her hair, thinking of children,
real children, and of how they say it, "Hold me,"
and of a patient in a geriatric ward
I once heard crying out to his mother, dead
for half a century, "I'm frightened! Hold me!"
and of a boy-soldier screaming it on the beach
at Dieppe, of Nelson in Hardy's arms,
of Frieda gripping Lawrence's ankle
until he sailed off in his Ship of Death.

It's what we all want, in the end,
to be held, merely to be held,
to be kissed (not necessarily with the lips,
for every touching is a kind of kiss.)

Yet, it's what we all want, in the end,
not to be worshipped, not to be admired,
not to be famous, not to be feared,
not even to be loved, but simply to be held.

She hugs me now, this retarded woman, and I hug her.
We are brother and sister, father and daughter,
mother and son, husband and wife.
We are lovers. We are two human beings
huddled together for a little while by the fire
in the Ice Age, two hundred thousand years ago.

Alden Nowlan

Poems

Touchstone
for Grandma

One by one, we take her energy and try
to give something back; a shape, sound or colour.
Something she can hold onto or take.
She is scattered on the bed like rune stones.
We touch her fingers, her hair.
Give her sips of water
so that she may speak. Tell us what we can do.
Grandma, our oracle, our history fading with her.
She is a touchstone, my cornerstone,
my rock.
I watch her shift from someone I know, I remember
in part, or I don’t recognize.
It is the same for her, this quiet exchange
of energy moving in and out.
She squeezes my hand, rubs off on youth,
youth rubs off on her. A charm, fading.
A light touch, and go.

Writing on Week Ten

I've heard back from some of you, in relation to my blog posts, and wish to thank you for your encouraging comments and heartfelt condolences (my grandma's passing).

I hope to see more discussion happening around the scenarios I've put out there in my seminar questions... please don't hesitate to give me something to chew on.

The fear of writing and deadlines - I have two quotes (or paraphrasing, really): The minute you set out to write a masterpiece, you've already defeated yourself. - Patrick Lane

I love deadlines - I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by - Douglas Adams

First, the pressure a writer puts on themselves can be self-destructive. If you expect only greatness to happen in your writing and are afraid to write unless greatness comes, you are sunk. The reason? Writers can freeze up if they think they don't have anything spectacular to write, and if they are already evaluating the worth of the end product. It is writing suicide. This piece of wisdom is freeing for writers - write out the junk, if it is junk. The importance of writing is to keep writing. There are gems that you will be able to lure out later. As I was working on my novel, Turnstiles, I would refer to the manuscript as my first draft. A writing friend of mine helpfully pointed out that it was my 'zero draft', which meant I should not harness my writing or be too particular. My first draft would involve the editing part, my zero draft was meant for 'getting it all down'. I think this is an important approach to any writing. See the object, write the object - you can get it right later, after you've put it down on paper and looked at it from every angle.

As for deadlines acting as a writer's freeze, I don't find it to be an issue. I actually work best with deadlines. For me, I think there is a bigger fear of the world ending if I don't get a submission in on time. I tend to mentally whip myself for a week after, knowing there was an opportunity missed.

There is usually a fear of productivity in writing - lacking in it, the value of it, beginning it, and even completing it. Break off little bits, stay on track, give yourself small affirmations, and trust in the end result. Michaelangelo's David was once a huge slab of marble and, although they say that sculptors simply remove the excess clay or stone to reveal what is already there, they still had to chip away at it.

Writing On Week Nine

For those of you who are counting, week eight is forever lost in the week of non-writing. I will try my best to make up for it. Actually, this past week has been a struggle to keep up my writing momentum, as life seems to be rolling along and picking up large debris in its path. One major event slowed me down a little... the passing of my nearly 90-year-old grandma. She was another creative spirit in my family and, as the rest of my relatives will tell you, they are few and far between. My grandma encouraged me artistically since I was very young - she would even send me cut-out ads for youth writing contest entries when I was in elementary school. One year I did have my entry published in a local magazine on the theme of 'my best Christmas' or 'what Christmas means to me' or something to that effect. So, I have been carrying my grandma around with me for a few weeks now, or so it seems. There seems to be an additional energy and weight to me, happening simultaneously, and one tends to defeat the other from time to time. I still talk to her and let her know how everything is moving along.

... what I have been dwelling on recently is the split that sometimes occurs with regard to the writer's passion and the self. I am writing in my head constantly, but the writing doesn't always make it to the tablet (ok, it does eventually, it has to, but not when I necessarily want it to). I've been giving into fatigue and sacrificing myself to the long hours of writing for work. Once my working day ends, part of me can't wait to retreat to my notebook/computer and unleash my own creative writing, and the other part of me deflates and says "the words will come -- first let's watch an old episode or two of Friends and then fall asleep". Still, a poem will trickle out, an article is written, a journal entry is made, and now I am returning to my responsibility as a blog writer. So, why do I feel as though I'm not giving everything I have to my writing? I believe it is because I have three novels in my head that aren't finished and numerous books of poetry yet to be published or written. Still, a poem trickles out, a book review is published, a character unexpectedly speaks, and the journal entries continue...

... funny about the journal entries... when I talk about the act of journaling to people who are non-writers, I feel as though I'm talking like a 12-year-old and I'm not always sure why. I have always had a nagging obsession to write down my thoughts, record actions, describe my days and how I felt in them, as though I can imagine creating and recording my own legacy. It is not egotistical; it is a must. For me, and perhaps others. I start to feel threadbare if I don't, and I often try to stretch out at least three pages. If not, I feel lazy, as though I'm only skimming the surface of things.

I've talked to a few people who are keenly interested in journaling, but don't know where to start or what to write. Or even what they should or shouldn't put down on paper. It is like starting at the beginning of a spiral labrynth... you have to either go deep inwards to get out, or start at the outermost point to get in. I say, write... start with the weather and you'll be surprised where you end up. One analogy comes to me, from my grandma (I will be in this place with her for awhile)... no matter how a conversation was started with her, somehow you ALWAYS ended up in World War II. You could start telling her about your cat, your neighbour, your neighbour's new car, a movie you went to see, school, work... anything at all... I could guarantee that by the end of it she would be telling you about something that happened during the war, or the great depression, take your pick. Sorry, I got side-tracked. Enough said!

So, my suggestion is to flick off the critic or ghost or whatever block you have lurking over your shoulder, and write. Talk it out.

Already I am feeling better - I think I've had a tinge of guilt this weekend, too, because I missed Planet Earth Poetry (and I may have had a few prospective sales of my book, which I hope will still be possible next week at the last PEP until September 14) and my writing group today. Brian and I are exploring the housing market, hoping to step into that new realm of having a single family dwelling with no cranky neighbours beneath us to complain about morning showers and our cats playing. We are working full-time, stick-handling steep learning curves and strata noise complaints, and simply trying to find some time in the day when we can both breathe and not think of the next thing to plan, fire to put out, or place to rush to. I've needed to slow down this runaway train. The question is the split between the passion and the self - one needs refueling to help the other exist. I am reconciling with this, with life in the way, knowing it will come back around to me in words that need to be written.

So, these are my belated ramblings. The words have been in storage, forming themselves and handling a few road obstacles - death, living, new opportunities, and self.

Reviews

In Paper Trail, Paré Writes Her Way into Work

by Andrea McKenzie

In Arleen Paré’s first book, Paper Trail, published by NeWest Press, she examines the everyday ritual of people dreaming themselves into and out of working. Nearing the end of her long career, a sentence, in the public service, Paré dissects the surreal and all-too-real aspects of life in the office.

The book is a series of fleeting or consuming observations, memories, thoughts and mental schedules that flow into each other like the days of the week. Paré leads us through her inner files, a briefcase filled with poetry, poetic prose, memoir and fiction. She records the misconceptions about work, both inside and outside of the office, in relation to who we are. There are sections of her book that focus on the social graces of work life and the unwritten code of fitting in, and using appropriate, airy topics for conversations with colleagues.

There are dense pages and white spaces, like work and the life in-between work. Paré looks at work as a commodity for life and how we calculate our happiness. She gives us the plight of a career woman, shifting gears between different roles that include mother, wife, daughter, and civil servant. Interestingly, she brings in another examination of how the roles of women and their existence differ in comparison with her mother’s generation.

She pairs the surreal, seemingly arbitrary working world with the concrete, practicality of life, and the surreal experiences of life with the encroaching reality of work; measuring security and what her work allows her to have in life. She uses a Cinderella complex to draw a parallel in the idea of work, security, and perceptions being impermanent.

In the midst of all this, she has short, unexpected conversations or daydreams with her own personal Kafka, which is developed throughout the book, trying to find answers, a balance or an anchor, and preparing for this transformation of leaving work.

The notion of working as part of our freewill, and subjecting ourselves to the weight, fear, demand and criticism of our work is a crucial part. She writes about trying to write herself out of her office where she feels boxed in, drawing on the story of a man who spends twenty years in a jail cell and was afraid to leave it when the door was finally opened. He wouldn’t leave. There is an invisible chain that links the civil servant to his or her desk, and the security of a full pension dangling in front of them like a gold carrot.

From there, she launches into the lists of survival kit items for everyday, to survive the office wilderness. Her briefcase is both a burden and a necessity. Paré also identifies herself and her work through the personal sacrifices, self-preservation and resourcefulness of her Parents’ working lives. In the same vein, Paré likens work to religion and takes another look at these beliefs and values.

In Paper Trail, Paré writes another story between the musings of her work poems, writing herself into a real fiction.

Writing On Week Seven

A space to write. This seems like a simple concept, and that any space large enough for a pen, paper and a little elbow room is enough space. Sometimes, finding space can be the most difficult part of writing. Not only does a writer need to have physical space, but also to be in the
'right space'. At the moment, my space is a cubby hole closet and, when my neighbour's wireless connection is strong enough, I can move my space into the living room.

I look forward to the day when I have a home office to write, a place where I know I can go to and work without having to balance my writing materials on my knee. Organization is the key and I have a growing list of writing projects. I'll be happy if they are completed in the next ten years, or longer. My second poetry book, chapbook ideas, editing my novel, a second novel idea, and freelancing articles. These days I'm lucky if I can keep my journal updated.

There are times when you have to let everything go, and write. I tend to put off sleeping and eating (not for too long... I'm not a university student anymore!), simply to finish a favourite book or become engrossed in writing. I'm able to carve out a piece of the clock, settle into my cubby hole or well-worked dent in the couch cushion. From here, I bring words and test my elbow room, for now, balancing my laptop on my knee and juggling stacked books, until I have a writing room of my own.

I'd love to hear about your room to write and your creative spaces... what you need to breathe and get into an energetic writing space. Don't make me too jealous!

Photo Gallery

Morning Couplets

There is a morning scent, perhaps a mix of damp leaves and lawn
near the sidewalk, a still pool of last night's fury; the calm, labouring earth.

Sideboard heaters keep me in a dizzy dream state, a thin pane
of glass separates this warm bubble from winter's cold pin.

In winter's gray morning wind, the trees find their rhythm,
they sway in a whimsical ballet, bursts of petite jettes.

Gray hangs over my view frame like a canvas
from the couch, through the sliding glass the day is a still-life.

The day is submerged in water, drowns the thirsty plants,
we look to the sky for small pools of mercy, are given the skim off the Atlantic.