Skip to main content

Poem by Sina Queyras

Eyewear thinks Sina Queyras (pictured above) is one of the most refreshing, innovative and provocative poets to appear in North American writing over the last few years, and is glad to welcome her here, today.

She edited the key book, Open Field: Thirty Contemporary Canadian Poets (Persea, 2005), which is one of the first anthologies published in America in the last few decades to consider the new poetry now coming from Canada. She is is the author of Slip (ECW, 2001) and Teeth Marks (Nightwood, 2004).

Her third collection of poetry, Lemon Hound, won the Pat Lowther Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Expressway is due out from Coach House in spring 2009. She is currently writer in residence at the University of Calgary where she is working on several projects including Autobiography of Childhood, a novel.

11.
This happened before. Then we ran. And the cable
hooked us to a big Dish. We signed up for more. Golden
arches nosed up out of concrete and we were delighted.
Everyone bought a Ford or Chrysler. Roads appeared and
women disappeared down them. Millions were served.
Some of them waved. This happened before. Then again
maybe not. Anyhow once we walked to the television.
Once your little sister stood and changed the channel
from 2 to 3, one hand on the antennae. This really
happened. At the end of the line there was a person.
Whole lives ticked by on salaries. Everyone wore
polyester. Blouses with imprints of European landmarks
abounded. People dialed and the numbers rumbled like a
bank vault. Shag appeared in avocado green and harves
tgold penetrating every corner. Coffee tables thickened
over night. Lights morphed into plastic balls hung
from chains. Little girls rhymed couplets, index
finger poised, waiting for the plastic rotary to hit
zero. This really happened. Women clicking on manual
typewriters. Whole offices of scritch, scritch,
scritch and ping, ping, ping as the carriage released
and rolled up. How we embraced the correctable ribbon.
How we coveted white-out. Listen, once people sent
letters with words crossed out. This all happened.
People placed vinyl on turntables and lifted needles
jumping slightly when the scratch blared out of the
cross hatched speakers from Radio Shack or Sears.
Rumors of a Japanese take-over surfaced. There was
talk of importing fathers. Then again maybe I am
lying. Anyone knew it was true. Anyhow we didn't run.
We bought bigger cars and women embraced the MuMu.
Everything was arriving all at once. Lapels sharpened.
Soul music sweetened the air. People drove their cars
to Drive-ins and hung aluminum speakers on the side
windows. How we embraced the wire.

poem by Sina Queyras

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".