Web Archive—Poetry, Reviews, Audio Podcasts, Press Releases, and other Arcana
December 14, 2009
Press Release: December 14, 2009
Arc launches Issue #63 (the three-legged issue)
and announces Poem of the Year, Readers’ Choice
and Diana Brebner Prize winners!—
Arc also congratulates contributors appearing in The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2009.
December 13, 2009
Chris Jennings
Fidelities
Excerpt from Feature Review
Carmine Starnino. This Way Out. Kentville: Gaspereau Press, 2009.
I’m sceptical of the word “progress” when talking about poets and their careers. Progress implies too strong a value judgement, as though, by some objective measure, we can say that practice and the wisdom of age necessarily make for better poetry. There are too many contrary examples of canonical poets whose best work came in their early- or mid-careers to accept the proposition (Wordsworth and Lowell come immediately to mind). I like “career” much better as a verb—swift, uncontrolled action—and, even better, I like “career narrative” as the record of those twists and swerves. This Way Out is definitely a swerve in Carmine Starnino’s narrative, one that draws out a basic conflict that has been playing through Starnino’s poetry for some time. To be more precise, it’s a conflict in the poetics more than the poems: a conceptual tension between “writing about x” and “writing poetry.”
Barbara Myers
Excerpt from essay "On ending a poem"
See how many ends this stick has …
—Montaigne
Essay in excerpt
To come to the end. To stop. Not necessarily the same thing, as far as poems are concerned. In fact, a frequent criticism of a poem is that its stopping place creates a “weak”ending or one that “doesn’t work.” I stumbled into this muddy field recently in asking poet-editors to read and comment on a book I was working on. Critiques of endings dotted the pages, rarely the same view, occasionally even contradicting each other.
How to go about “fixing” a poem when the ending doesn’t “work?” Whose advice to follow, and how does that advice sit with the impulse that wants to express something true and real?
The reader-critic seems to say, I want the satisfaction of knowing the dimensions of this piece, that it isn’t partial, not a draft, and that the writer hasn’t walked away before sufficiently attending to the birth. Conversely, the reader may find that the poem ends too abruptly, or is too neatly tied up, a package with no openings to enter into.
Press Release: December 13, 2009
Poet in Residence, October 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 - Call for Proposals
« November 2009 previous
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by Barbara Myers - Katia Grubisic on Matthew Tierney's The Hayflick Limit
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Log Entries Archives
- Recent Entries:
- Arc launches Issue #63 (the three-legged issue)
- The Night of the Apocalypse Yahweh Tinkles the Ivories
by Patricia Young - Canadian Gothic
by Jim Johnstone - Crow, of the family Corvidae
by Gillian Wallace - Advisory
by Steve McOrmond - Fidelities
by Chris Jennings - Excerpt from essay "On ending a poem"
by Barbara Myers - Katia Grubisic on Matthew Tierney's The Hayflick Limit
by Katia Grubisic - Poet in Residence, October 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 - Call for Proposals
- November 2009: Three calls for entry, and one new way to get Arc
- Calls for Entry coming up early in 2010
- Arc Digital Edition Now Available
- Lampman-Scott Award 2008 Winner
- Reactions to selections from Arc Annual 2010
- Frederick Ward’s blistering blues - Excerpt
by George Elliott Clarke
- Last Commented:
- PM reads Arc (1)
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- Arc launches Issue #63 (the three-legged issue)
- The Night of the Apocalypse Yahweh Tinkles the Ivories
- Canadian Gothic
- Crow, of the family Corvidae
- Advisory
- Fidelities
- Excerpt from essay "On ending a poem"
- Katia Grubisic on Matthew Tierney's The Hayflick Limit
- Poet in Residence, October 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 - Call for Proposals
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- Crow, of the family Corvidae
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- Excerpt from essay "On ending a poem"
- Katia Grubisic on Matthew Tierney's The Hayflick Limit
- Poet in Residence, October 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 - Call for Proposals
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- The Night of the Apocalypse Yahweh Tinkles the Ivories
- Canadian Gothic
- Crow, of the family Corvidae
- Advisory
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- Excerpt from essay "On ending a poem"
- Katia Grubisic on Matthew Tierney's The Hayflick Limit
- Poet in Residence, October 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 - Call for Proposals
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- The Night of the Apocalypse Yahweh Tinkles the Ivories
- Canadian Gothic
- Crow, of the family Corvidae
- Advisory
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- Excerpt from essay "On ending a poem"
- Katia Grubisic on Matthew Tierney's The Hayflick Limit
- Poet in Residence, October 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 - Call for Proposals
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- Arc launches Issue #63 (the three-legged issue)
- The Night of the Apocalypse Yahweh Tinkles the Ivories
- Canadian Gothic
- Crow, of the family Corvidae
- Advisory
- Fidelities
- Excerpt from essay "On ending a poem"
- Katia Grubisic on Matthew Tierney's The Hayflick Limit
- Poet in Residence, October 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 - Call for Proposals
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