Poem by Glen Sorestad

I am very glad to welcome the well-seasoned traveller, Glen Sorestad (pictured here) to these pages this Friday.

Sorestad is a veteran poet from the Canadian prairies who lives in Saskatoon on the South Saskatchewan River.

His poetry has appeared in nearly 50 anthologies, textbooks and other volumes, has been published in literary magazines in many countries, and has been translated into French, Spanish, Norwegian, Finnish and Slovene.

He is a Life Member of the League of Canadian Poets, a recipient of the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal, and he has read his works at over 400 public readings in Canada, the U.S., France, Norway, Finland and Slovenia.

His latest books of poetry are Grasses & Gravestones (2003) and Blood & Bone, Ice & Stone(2005).

The poem below is from Blood & Bone, Ice & Stone.

Somewhere Near Endeavor circa 1953

What you remember now
with fearsome clarity: the lighted
windows of the Flin Flon Flyer
flashing past in the darkness,
the car careening to a stop
a few feet from the crossing.

What you’ve forgotten: the road,
the make and year of the car,
who was driving, where you sat,
how many were in the car,
how close you’d come.

But you knew then. And just before
the car shuddered to a stop
in a billowing of gravel dust,
you took a huge gulp of air,
threw your hands up as if
your arms could protect you
from the rushing train. And now
after all these years, the miles,
the cars, all that’s left is the image –
the lighted windows streaming
past like all those lives we live.

poem by Glen Sorestad

Comments

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...".

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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