We’re too modest and we know it. We’re too efficient and we take for granted that all entrepreneurial, leading-edge enterprises are as progressive, forward-thinking and enlightened and other clichés as the folks here at samoyeddogs.
We forget how talented we are and think it no big thing to win fifty thousand dollars for a poem. I mean fifty dollars. $50. Did I say $50,000? Money is no object. It’s a good poem, obviously, and it deserved the $50. Needed it too. And there’s at least fifty thousand dollars worth of wisdom and clichés in “The Boys”. Personally I wouldn’t pay a dime over ten thousand. But that’s just me!
That’s right. A few howlers, some idealism expressed, a bracing dash of cynicism and a bit of a mysterious lyric. 16 lines in two 8 line stanzas. Stanza. Love that word. A stanza helps you get organized and that’s great.
The Boys
They have no male role models
Their fathers were gut shot or had their brains blown out
That’s why they’re like that
They have no respect
Because they don’t know what respect is
They’ve never known discipline
They’ve never faced the consequences of their bad behaviour
They behave like imbeciles and it’s not right.
How will they learn if we can teach them?
Because they’re doomed on their own
They’re going down and if we don’t do something
No one will and it’s the world’s loss
And we’re decent, we acknowledge responsibility
And we volunteer because it’s the right thing to do
Even if it’s a waste of time
How will they learn if we can teach them?
50 big ones. You know what happened? The fifty grand got donated. How altruistic! Some organizations, doing important work, exist solely by donation. I know. Hard to believe. Priorities. They can be a little messy at times. All you can do is try and get it right.
I want to thank the panel, the organizers, the judges, and why not while we’re at it deliver a big “Sit!” to all the hounds, be they breed or mongrel, on Hound Hill? You’ve worked hard and made us better. What was that again?
It was late. I mean it was early. I don’t know what I mean. There’s some pretty beautiful things happening around here. And something else. It’s spacey. It’s Kevin Spacey. After the face-lift. That’s not fair.
Together we can do great things. I know we can. I must be dreaming. And I hate clichés. Hate ’em. What’s that sound? It’s somebody’s car in the lane. Vroom vroom. It’s six o’clock in the morning. You blink and get half up, thinking it’s your turn to set the blind. It’s a brilliant new morning and you’re not ready for it. You’ve only been down four hours. But you can feel it. You know it’s the glory of the morning and it’s time to meet it head-on. It looks like a head-on collision.
You remember the trumpets. And, oh, the trumpeting. The blast from the past. And you’re thinking, “Who exactly was the first disc-jockey to come up with that?” It doesn’t matter now. That’s so yesterday. Immediately it’s “who said that too”? Cut it out. It’s too early. The sound of the trumpet. A distant trumpet. They’re meowing at me to come. At least that’s what it sounds like. Meow meow. Not quite. It’s the actual cat doing that. She wants out. It’s 6:01 in the morning and everyone, including the flowers, forgot I’m not a morning person? It’s awful. I mean wonderful.
The intensity of these flowers in the sun. It’s incredible out here. How come I didn’t know about this? Get out of here. I did know about it. I just couldn’t face it.
And it’s been like this for weeks. While England slept. The images don’t do justice. I hate that expression. So why use it? Because I’m dumbfounded. Everybody knows what that’s like. It’s like when you’re dumbfounded. It’s something in your past. And what you didn’t know then you certainly won’t know now. You’re outraged that you didn’t know about this. Outrage is the wrong word.
You’ve answered the bell before and that’s what you’re doing this morning. You’re answering the bell. Answering the bell? That makes no sense. You’re so tired. I’m so tired, Grandma. My cliché thingy is working hard as rain. It’s overflowing. And with love, strange other-worldly love. I’m doing everything I can and obviously it won’t be enough. It could be over.
Heavenly Blue Planet
It might be over here. Already. Life’s like that. The end is the answer to every problem. If only. This planet cannot be saved. Forget it. The incredible sound of the flowers, bright and clear. It’s like how can they not last forever? But they don’t. It’s going to be over soon and you better get your bets in now. Here comes the big shrivel.
We be going back on ourselves. We be spending our coin and disappearing, jah. What was barely started is already almost over. It’s tragic. It happened to my shoes. They just plum wore out. Italian plums. I’ve never seen them since.
It’s 1:00 pm. I mean 2:00 pm. I mean 4:00 pm. I don’t know what I mean. It’s tough when you start to see your friends disappear. You just met them this morning and now they’re folding and moving on. It’s what they do.
It’s like why can’t things be different? I’m a young flower. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me. But your time, your hours, your district and everything about you is on the wane. Get off him. You know what? Wane should move out of here. He hasn’t paid the rent forever.
It’s five in the afternoon. Some are blaring. Some are shriveling. Some are waning. Wane has a core group of followers and not a lot else. He’s good though. And don’t get me started on the female waners. In fact, don’t get me started on ‘don’t get me started’. Less later. It’s over but for others it’s just beginning. It’s what happens.
Don’t you love titles like that? Nobody knows what you’re talking about and there’s too many words. Let’s just move on. But I had this urge, you see, for reasons that will quickly be explained, to come again after many a day to the Capilano Review, to acquire the most recent issue of this venerable and usually quite interesting, high-concept, well edited and, hopefully, well-funded publication that should always do well.
I was intrigued recently when, I can’t remember just how, I learned that the Capilano Review was publishing a story on French writers of the early 20th Century who had mentioned “Vancouver”, the city, in their writings. You know, in their stuff. In their writings.
I knew about Blaise Cendrars because he’s one of the reasons this blog exists. Of course it exists. He wrote a poem called “Vancouver”. He wrote it when Vancouver was, like, young. Cendrars too. I didn’t know that Apollinaire had written a poem that also mentions Vancouver. Or that Marcel Thiry, a Belgian poet, a guy, I must admit, I’ve never heard of, also wrote a poem around the same time as Cendrars and Apollinaire that mentions Vancouver. And it’s all here in the Spring 2014 Capilano Review article “Colin Browne & Ian Wallace / A conversation”. I know I know. It’s not spring anymore. What’s your point? It’s a great article.. Really enjoyed it. There’s a couple of questions though. Of course there are. But first this:
DOCUMENTARIES
VIII. Vancouver
Ten P.M. has just struck barely heard through the thick fog that muffles the docks and the ships in the harbour The wharfs are deserted and the town is wrapped in sleep You stroll along a low sandy shore swept by an icy wind and the long billows of the Pacific That lurid spot in the dank darkness is the station of the Canadian Grand Trunk And those bluish patches in the wind are the liners bound for the Klondike Japan and the West Indies It is so dark that I can hardly make out the signs in the streets where hugging a heavy suitcase I am looking for a cheap hotel
Everyone is on board The oarsmen are bent on their oars and the heavy craft loaded to the brim plows through the high waves A small hunchback at the helm checks the tiller now and then Adjusting his steering through the fog to the calls of a foghorn We bump against the dark bulk of the ship and on the starboard quarter Samoyed dogs are climbing up Flaxen in the gray-white-yellow As if fog was being taken in freight
Okay members of the academy. This translation is still my favorite and was written by Monique Chefdor. I caught up with it a few years back in a volume published by The University of California Press. Impressive. The poem first appeared in the original French in 1924. It was a poem Cendrars wrote before The Great War. He lost his right forearm in that war. I bet that hurt.
The Capilano article includes an admirable new translation by Mr. Colin Browne himself. Nice job, but I still like Mme Chefdor’s for that image. ‘Samoyed dogs are climbing up’. ‘…grimpent des chiens samoyèdes…’ Got a nice beat to it. samoyeddogs are climbing out. Emerging, it might be, out of the fog. Like this blog. It gave me the idea for a name for this blog which I started some time ago for reasons now lost to me.
A fine article, as I say, although Messieurs Browne and Wallace put forth the canard that Monsieur Cendrars was never in Vancouver. It’s a lie. They claim he was never here, that he made the whole thing up and cribbed some of it from a French novel from the same period. Let’s set the record straight. Blaise Cendrars was in Vancouver. I had coffee with him in the defunct Marr hotel café down near the waterfront before he sailed. I’m lying.
Just a couple other things about this fine TCR piece. Mr. Wallace, in the course of a not overly long article, employs the word “trope” four times and the equally regrettable “tropes” twice. Mr. Browne uses the still regrettable word “trope” once. Mr. Wallace employs the even more regrettable word “meme” mercifully but once. Meme is not a manly word. It impresses nobody and in fact fogs things up. It never sharpens the focus. Get it the heck out of here.
I was surprised to see Mr. Browne misquoting his own translation of “Vancouver” stating at one point in the conversation that the passengers in the boat are being rowed out to the ship by a “little hunchback”. Again, not true. The hunchback is on the tiller as the poem clearly states. Wa.
Wa is a good word. I think we should see it more often.
How it goes, bud?
Thank you for the memories Blaise! The “Normandie”, eh? Nice job.
samoyeddogs 