At Tim and Stephanie's for Game Four of the EDM/LA series, Tim presents me with a belated birthday gift: Al Neil's copy of Robin Blaser's Syntax (Talonbooks, 1983), with the author's inscription inside. Below Blaser's inscription is Tim's note to me.
I confess to never having seen a copy of Syntax before, though I am familiar with one of its poems, a short narrow piece Allan Safarik anthologized in Vancouver Poetry (Polestar, 1986) -- one of many provincial attempts to sum up Vancouver for visitors of Expo '86. The poem appears in the opening "Truth is Laughter" section and is untitled. For Safarik's anth, the poem is titled "Sparrows".
Blaser's book is comprised of "things seen"... "things heard or overheard" ... "things read" ... "all things that run interference on a poet's life," which is more than enough for me, particularly at a time when poetry books are becoming more and more singular in their focus, more and more "about" the confessing self.
Like Blaser, Michael Ondaatje is another ludic type, and an admirer of Blaser's poems. You can see why in a concrete poem like this one (the second piece in Syntax):
The janitor at the St. Roch National Historic
Site said: "When I was in Los Angeles, the O
from Hollywood rolled down the hill and cut
a station wagon in half." "It would've been
better," he said, "if it'd been a Honda Civic.
Front wheel drive would let you go on driving." (13)
Last night, while caught in a loop that had me clicking on Carol Burnett's appearance on Jimmy Kimmel's show two weeks ago, Burnett (who turns 90 tomorrow) talks about growing up in Los Angeles and attending Hollywood High, across from the studio where Kimmel's show is taped. "As kids we used to climb the Hollywood sign," she says, then adds (to immediate laughter), "The Os were my favourite."
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