I have joined Blog Network on Facebook

This means that if you are a member of Facebook, you can click on the link, and join my fans. Yipee. I know you are excited. So am I (yawn). I'll just duck behind this bush to avoid the stampede.

"triptych": Experiment in poetry and photography

"triptych" is an experiment that uses two WordPress plugins: "Post Tabs" by Leo Germani, and "Grey Box Integrator" by Ajay D'Sousa. The one allows me to set up as many tab links as I want so that a clickable verse appears in each tabbed page, and the other allows me to set up words in a verse so that when you click them, a photo comes up in a rather impressive frame.

Here is what the post looks like:


All the words from "leaves" to "signs" are links; that is, the verse above the tabs is a link, each tab is clickable, and the verses below the tab are links. If you click a tab, you are taken to a new verse, and if you click a verse, you are taken to the relevant photo. In all, there are four photos, one for each verse.

Click on the title of this post to go to the wordcurrents post.

New wordcurrents theme revisited

So I was noticing that two of my stats collectors were showing zero visitors to wordcurrents, even though readers were still commenting on items and Google stats was showing a continuing readership. As an experiment, I went back to my old theme*, and right away, my blog stats all started working again. So I guess there is something about the theme that does not allow stats from most stats engines, including WordPress stats itself.

So now, although I have a new visual direction for wordcurrents, it appears that I cannot use it without losing statistics, my main feedback, since most people do not comment.

One other thing: I am using HTML redirect code on my root home page so that anyone surfing to riverwriter.ca will be directed automatically and almost immediately to wordcurrents.

*theme: a program that controls the blog's appearance. That includes page and background colour, frame outlines, number and size of columns, fonts, consistent graphics.

Blog problems and twists and turns

The new look at wordcurrents has come with more than one price:

1. My usage tracking services are not working, even though they indicate they are: according to two stats services, I have had no visitors since I made the intital change, even though I have had comments on the blog's new look.
2. Although I like the appearance of the blog, I prefer a three-column layout (which the new beta versions of the theme have, without the same colour choice). So I believe I will give the beta version a shot when I have worked out the wrinkles. (see below)
   
3. I have had to downsize the wallpaper to decrease loading times. The wallpaper loses something with the smaller file sizes.
   

This is a view of what the beta version looks like. The background wallpaper is also available on the current site; just click the buttons in the header to change wallpapers. The wallpaper in this screen capture is a photo I took of snow in the flaming bush beside our garage.

wordcurrents' new look

Here is a screen capture of one version of what my blog now looks like. I am using Vistered Little 1.6 by Nik Iliadis, a theme that allows me to upload backgrounds that the reader can select using the little swatches (in this shot, there are 29) at the top of the screen. Cookies keep each reader's choice so that the reader's view stays consistent no matter what I or other readers choose.



It also means that text is displayed against a black background, as I have always thought text should be. We see light, not dark.

I have provided a sticky post for reader comments. The blog is at wordcurrents

Traffic in my theatre reviews

Although I started wordcurrents as a poetry blog with occasional theatre reviews thrown in, the reviews have become the most heavy traffic on the blog. My review of Scorched by Wajdi Mouawad has had hundreds of viewers. Today the total count was over 750. Other popular reviews feature Talking With . . . by Jane Martin, Departures and Arrivals by Carol Shields, and Swollen Tongues by Kathleen Oliver.

One of the reasons for the reviews having more hits than the poems have is simply vanity searches: people search for their own names or they search for the title of a play they are thinking of seeing or producing. The only way my poems will have that kind of traffic is if I write a key word or tag that people are searching for. Should I pander to that tendency? Not easily.

Computer Interface

As I have already posted in wordcurrents, I am attempting to dictate my posts instead of type them. While dictation has the advantage of allowing me to rest my poor aching hands, it has the disadvantage of creating barrier to my imagination. I have noted in the past that my handwritten work is different from my typed work. Learning to dictate without this barrier is a little bit like learning how to drive on the opposite side of the road in a foreign country, or learning how to draw with your foot controlling the pen instead of your hand.

I believe that dictation will take over as an interface for computers particularly when the computer is a handheld phone. It just makes sense. The fact that we still type most of our entries into computers makes clear in the fact that we really are in the Model T age of computers.

In another about-face, I have decided that I will no longer attempt to post every single day, as this is getting in the way of a novel I am working on; however, I will still post fairly often, perhaps more often in prose. Perhaps this will improve the level at which I am writing poetry in my blog.

One interesting thing that has occurred during my hiatus over the summer while I was not posting at all, is that I note I have had pretty well the same number of visits to the website as I had when I was posting on a daily basis. Not surprisingly, most of those visits were to my theatre reviews. Of course, people search for what they already know: they don't know that my poems are here (at least, they certainly are not pre-aware of the titles of my poems to search for them, unless I start using titles that are already in the public awareness).

"fluid"

This is the first time I have used the "pre" HTML code to post a poem with indentations. This procedure lets me compose the poem in WordPerfect, then copy and paste it into the "pre" code, and it more or less keeps its formatting.

It has always frustrated me that HTML and php sites do not easily allow poems to be formatted that way, as it really limits free verse form. I have considered rewriting the css files of my WordPress-based blog to allow for indentation, but that is a tricky procedure at best. Finally, I have tried the "pre" code, of which I was aware, and it sort of works, although for some reason, the format does not allow the font to stay a normal size,; so it is either too small or too large.

Previously, my recourse was to post the indented lines using letters the same colour as the background to serve as placeholder; unfortunately, these characters print as black on a laser printer.

At least now the poem prints more or less correctly.

Michael Healey, playwright

I admired Healey's Plan B, which I reviewed in wordcurrents after seeing it at GCTC on Thursday June 5, 2008.

Plan B is a remarkably funny satire of Canadian politics. Better than that, it has three acts, and with two intermissions, runs over three hours. Healey is a Canadian playwright to watch.

Here are some links to give you some background about Michael:

Playwrights Canada

Suite 101

Doollee

Northern Stars

June 1, 2008: the count is now 800 daily poems in wordcurrents

This milestone has come with no particular fanfare. It is more a tribute to the power of habit than to any other particular talent; I have written and posted a at least one new poem every day (with the exception of July and August last year) since mid-February 2006.

I know that many of them are pretty feeble; in fact, since most of them are first drafts, and I have chosen to revise only perhaps one in ten, you could say they are more flotsam and jetsam than art. But there is a kernel of strength that arises from wordcurrents: I am doing it; I have done it; I have learned from it.

I have learned that I can write. I have polished my writing synapses so that the process is pretty well automatic. Just as a musician is made by practice, so a poet must practise so that the act is made fluid and the talent can emerge.

When he turned ninety, someone asked the late cello maestro Pablo Casals if he still practised. He said he played several hours every day, as he still had so much to learn. I still have almost a couple of decades to go before I am ninety; I imagine I will still feel that way then, too. I have so much to learn.

One of the areas I would like to explore is eroticism; however, I am more than a little reticent to do so, as my extended family would be grossed out, I am sure. Just as we all know our mothers were virgins, we also know that elderly men so not think about nor remember anything about sex, so I am obviously becoming increasingly less qualified to profess to know anything about it.

My summer break is coming up. I shall take July and August off again this year.

"the rest"

One of my FaceBook friends has a birthday today. As I was writing a note on her "Wall", which originally read something like "Today is the first day of the rest . . . ", it struck me that there was a poem in there. Then I thought of the anecdote that appears at the top of the piece, and after about a half-hour of fiddling, today's poem, of four-lines, was born. I tried a few stabs at lengthening it, but it seems that after the first four lines, it is complete.

It features tight internal rhyme and some dense word-play. I particularly like the play on "quarrel", which I suppose may be obscure, although a look past the obvious in at any dictionary will open it up.

the rest

"fiery braille"

The title of this poem ("fiery braille") derives from Tom's lines in the opening of Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie":

“. . . the thirties, when the huge middle class of America was matriculating in a school for the blind. Their eyes had failed them, or they had failed their eyes, and so they were having their fingers pressed forcibly down on the fiery Braille alphabet of a dissolving economy.”

WIlliams' dynamic image seems more relevant now than it did in the forties, or during its referent, the Great Depression. In the thirties, unfettered greed was the engine; today, the driving force is still greed lubricated by oil. My poem focuses on a single flower, but the drama no longer simmering in the background is obvious.

thoughts below ground, the series

This series of poems is based on the fact that my office is in the basement, it is spring, and I have been noticing worm castings all over the lawn.

Worms remind me of the Hamlet's line in Hamlet, in which having killed Polonius, he tells the king to look for the old schemer "not where he eats but where he is eaten. . . certain politic worms are e'en at him."

The setting, then, is under ground, from the narrator worm's point of view.

The snake references came about as a result of a breakfast nook conversation with son Pete. We were discussing out-of-character actions that people take; he told me about the belief of

Kundalini yoga, in which there is said to be a fire-snake, coiled in three and a half coils in the base chakra (one of seven power-zones along the human spine). It is coiled around the Shiva lingham ­ the male line of force that comes down from the sky. Kundalini is an Earth force that comes up from the Earth. Kundalini yoga is the practise of awakening the snake and allowing it to rise up the spine until it reaches the highest chakra, the Crown chakra, where the meeting of Shiva and Shakti lead to enlightenment and the trance of Samadhi ­ ecstasy ­ the annihilation of the ego and the end of duality.

[I refer for my source here to a Google search using the terms snake+"human spine"+mythology and I excerpted this passage from an article in http://www.2012theodyssey.com/articles-beyond.html to which I do not particularly subscribe; however, I find the speculation interesting.]

"fountain" named Poem of the Week

"fountain" which first appeared in wordcurrents on March 16, and was redrafted and posted on April 12 in a new version in WILD Poetry Forum, has been selected as Poem of the Week for the week of April 14 in Wild. The version of the text posted in Wild is different, and appears below. Here follows the text of the proclamation at Wild, posted yesterday.

Please join the administration, staff, members, and guests of WPF in congratulating Douglas Hill on the selection of his poem "fountain" as Poem of the Week. You may follow this link to the Hall of Fame to familiarize yourself with Douglas' work. What most appealed to us about Douglas' poem is his very unusual choice of subject matter and the fine craftsmanship of this poem. Douglas gives us many strong images to visualize and with this poem, proves that any subject matter can be poetic in the right hands. The final line is both touching and evocative. Thanks for sharing this one here with us Douglas. We appreciate the chance to recognize such an excellent poem.

Our Honorable Mentions have quite a variety of subject matter to offer you as well. In no particular order, they are:

"Monarchs" by Sarah Sloat
"A Dear John Letter to Zeus from Hera" by Brenda Morisse
"Restless" by Laura Ring
"Horse in the Yard " by M. Kathryn Black

What an excellent line-up of talented authors and we count ourselves very lucky to have their work gracing our forum. Our thanks to all of them and all of you!

Fountain

I spiral down the spit-fountain
in my father’s dental boutique:
stare into the circular drain,
spitting, hoping it is almost over,
his gentle hands wielding mysteries
of pain and precision and finally relief.

Now, leaning back in a hard barbershop chair,
I wonder if the same company made
both scrolled fantasies of wrought iron
and black leatherette—a place to fix
your hair your teeth your smile.

The mortar sang a soft tuneless rhythm as he
deftly urged it against the pestle, mixing
the silver-mercury amalgam I would years later
pay to have replaced by less poisonous acrylic, then
we would share a moment of bonding closer
more intimate than anything else in our lives:
his soft warm fingers in my mouth.

"the geology of snow"

I wrote this poem, "the geology of snow" in wordcurrents after a few days of observing the ugly remainder of winter, which is best understood, if you have not observed such snow, by looking at these photos:







I have been trying to publish these with the poem, but the Gallery feature of the new version of WordPress is not working for me.

"Jay-Gee closes"

Today's poem, "Jay-Gee closes" is based on the following.

After 61 years in Cornwall, Joane Assaly, owner of Jay-Gee Shoes, has announced that the store will close by the end of August of this year. "Competition from stores like Wal-Mart made it impossible to continue," she said. Jay-Gee comes form her her uncle's name and her father's name: Joe and George. The two brothers owned and operated the elite shoe store for almost sixty years, until George died this past year. Joe preceded him over a decade ago. The quality of merchandise the store carried simply is not available in Wal-Mart. Cornwall has lost another local store with the character to distinguish us form the homogenizing effect of the ubiquitous giant box stores, and we will suffer for it as a tourist destination and as a place to live.

Too bad most residents are unable to see that.

About me

Here is an article our local paper ran about me. It is a 20 Question Q&A with a brief bio. There was a photo taken last summer of me with my youngest grandson, De Danann, but it is not included with the article.

So here it is. To see the article, click on the title, "About me" above.

about "reluctant clocks"

The wordcurrents poem referred to here is "reluctant clocks"

Last night, as my wife and I, both sneezing and coughing and feeling somewhat sorry for ourselves, attempted to reset our bedroom clocks to daylight saving time over a month earlier than we used to, our clocks refused to co-operate. Her bedside clock, a fairly new digital clock radio seems to have decided that the "adjust" button refers to radio frequency and not the advertised-in-the-instruction-book "time adjustment, and delivered static and new unwanted stations instead of "springing forward". My smartly styled digital travel clock, possibly still under warranty (fat chance) refused to respond to the prodding of the provided stylus, and sulkily stayed at standard time. Then my brand new wrist watch refused to so-operate, and left me with a precise chronometer running "estimated" time.

I'm back to a sun-dial. Or maybe a water clock. Or lunar observations. Or guesstimates. Or who cares?

Looking out over the Elsa Valley: Tuscany, 1998

Today's poem, "Looking out over the Elsa Valley: Tuscany, 1998", was inspired by reading notes and poems I wrote while staying in Cellole Uno, ten years ago. I found them while doing the cleanup I wrote about in yesterday's poem, "clearing out the essentials"


For two weeks in April 1998, we rented a section of the villa shown here. This is located just a couple of kilometers from Castellina in Chianti, about half way between Firenza (Florence) and Sienna.

The view of the Elna valley shown here is partly visible in the above photo of the villa. The reason that the left side of the photo is dark is that I don't have a scanner: I took the digital image of the photo on the kitchen counter.

What struck me about the contrast between Canada and Italy was how wild our country is in comparison to the sense that every inch of Italy has been worked over for millennia.

The inspiration for "open chakras"

In the picture you see Eero with his mother and maternal great-grandmother, attending the Robbie Burns Night in Picton, Prince Edward County, Ontario. The event is run at the Picton Legion by the Picton Legion Pipe band, of which my son Peter, Eero's father, is Pipe Major (leader of the band, for those who don't know what a Pipe major is.)

The morning after, in the Picton Harbour Restaurant, where we all met for breakfast, Eero, who is two, noticed the ceiling fan running above us, its light globe jiggling slightly, and said "flying light". I was so struck by the imagination there, and this fresh way of observing something we all take for granted that I wrote "open chakras", as today's poem.

wintering

I was at it again yesterday: shoveling four inches of snow out of my too-big driveway, path, front steps. The only advantages I can see to frequent renewal of snow depth are that the exercise is good for me, and the fresh snow covers all the gray road crap. Of course, this means that come the next thaw, we'll have an eyesore, but that's the nature of snow.

We have terrible cards at duplicate, Tuesday: I think I bid something like four times all afternoon. Most of what I could do was just furnish cards: no weird distributions, no high cards in particular. The only interesting factor was that all the other East-West pairs were just as frustrated as we were.

I am trying to take an adequate photo of Katisha (our Abyssinian kitten) to put up here. She is huge, fast, graceful (of course).

What happened to the snow

The first two shots show the city's loaders clearing snow from the boulevard in front of our house around midnight a few days ago.


These next shots show the state of the yard and street in front of our house after the warm spell of the last few days, when the temperature was warmer (15 degrees celsius) than it was in the first few days of July last summer (8 degrees celsius).