Korea is a country blessed with natural beauty. Its landmass is predominantly mountainous and there are many National Parks for hikers of every level. The Federal Government has done a surprisingly good job at maintaining vast areas of untouched wilderness and countless nature enthusiasts delight in the joys of ascending craggy peaks that tower over fields of cherry blossoms, interspersed with gnarly coniferous trees, in National Parks that span the peninsula. To reach the summit of most of these mountains, parks officials have hammered cables into the rock face and climbers grab hold to pull themselves skyward, inching their way towards the peak. It can be a nerve wracking experience, as the mountains grow ever steeper and the sky becomes the hiker’s primary view, but these challenges, these slight brushes with death, do nothing to dissuade hoards of Koreans, and foreigners alike, from flocking to the mountains every weekend for a taste of fresh air and an escape from the exhausting bustle of life in the city.

For foreign hikers, the enjoyment is twofold. On the one hand, there is the simple joy of hiking, the challenge and the accomplishment of summiting a mountain. This is obvious, but there is another, slightly unexpected source of amusement that we are privy to as we join the parade – or is it traffic jam – of weekend warriors pushing their way towards the sky. The hikers themselves, the men and women we encounter on the trails, are often as eye catching as the mountains themselves. Most come equipped with the latest in mountain technology, ready not only for a day hike in the outskirts of Seoul, but well prepared to endure a winter gale high atop some unnamed peak deep in Alaska’s Valdez Mountain Range. Like all of us, they usually ride the subway to the base of the mountain and they are not planning on spending the night at altitude, but their equipment is astounding: Goretex boots, polypro long underwear layered under some kind of quick drying and breathable pants, goggles, retractable walking sticks, touring back packs loaded no doubt with medicine, extra water, sodium tablets, extra socks, a week’s worth of kimchi, muscle relaxants, bear spray, a flashlight, a camping stove, soup, meat, dried and fresh fruit, a medical kit fit for a paramedic and soju – Korea’s mandatory celebratory alcoholic drink of choice – not to mention the lightweight sweater that hugs their body and the thousand dollar wind breaker protecting them from the worst that mother nature could possibly hurl their way.

These intrepid day hikers stare with equal awe at groups of foreigners who amble past them sporting only jeans and a t-shirt, our ankles protected by Chuck Taylor’s signature shoes. As we meet on the trail and exchange friendly smiles, we are hikers at opposite ends of the extreme and each is shocked by the level of preparedness our comrades have taken to battle the beast. While foreigners often laugh at the obsession Korean hikers have taken with planning, packing and dressing, there are situations when jeans, a sweater and pair of converse just won’t cut it and when such predicaments arise, it is the Koreans who inevitably have the last laugh.

I have a personal example. Sorak Mountain, arguably Korea’s most beautiful and famous National Park, is a grueling ten to twelve hour climb that leads the hiker through various climate zones and forest types. At the base, it can be twenty degrees Celsius but well below freezing as one reaches the peak. In fall, these temperature fluctuations are all the more extreme, so having a variety of gear for all weather types is highly recommended if one wants to safely reach the summit. I mentioned that foreigners often do not adequately prepare for a Korean mountain climb; this typically does not present any serious risks, but in the case of Sorak, or any other big mountain, it is wise to take some extra precautions. When a group of friends and I embarked on an October ascent, what we may have possessed in spirits and expectations, we definitely lacked in gear and fitness.

The climb begins with a pleasant stroll alongside a pristine river, the banks of which are lined with families, couples and groups of friends, all relishing in their time away from urban life. There are also numerous restaurants at various spots along the river and they prove to be wonderful spots to stop and have a meal. These opening few kilometers, so tranquil and serene, are in stark contrast to the painful ascent to come. Glimpses of the mountaintop pop in and out of view as the river twists and turns through the canyon that it has carved; the peak towers above like a massive thunder cloud, dark and foreboding. The hike begins so nicely and everywhere there is laughter, songbirds and children, but then, in a single sharp right turn away from the river and into the trees, everything changes. At this stage, hikers are immediately confronted with a long, steep climb up moss covered stairs. Breaths quickly shorten, the heart pumps madly and the climb goes on and on and on.

Leaving the peace of the river behind was a mistake and my legs began to burn about ten minutes in, which was worrying, since I knew that it would be at least another eight hours to the summit. Sweat poured from my body as I labored up the endless trail, and it seemed that with each step, the temperature dropped by a degree or two. I can remember looking back down at the river below, longing to find myself a round rock on which to sit, drink a beer and simply listen to the water flowing past, but up here, climbing higher and higher, all that I could hear was my pounding heart and the howling wind. My friends were not faring much better. Conversation came to a grinding halt and our entire existence became one of tired steps, relentless wind and ailing bodies. It was not too long, and not too far into the hike, that my legs began to cramp up. This excruciating occurrence always gives me the feeling that my muscles will simply snap and tear themselves in two and I was not thrilled to be experiencing them so soon, but the rapidly falling temperature, the intense wind and the sweat covering my body, substantially chilled me and my legs began to spasm until they finally locked up and refused to budge. I sat, clenched my teeth and began to massage my tired quads until I could feel the tremors starting to subside; when they did, I stood and resumed my painful march, eager to catch up with the group, but certain that this would not be my final encounter with the dreaded cramps.

I was not the only one to experience such hardships, but I do not wish to damage anyone’s pride, so all stories of pain will be strictly personal. I pushed and pushed, dealt with severe spasms in the legs and back but still I climbed. The summit was the goal and I would let allow my body to keep me from attaining it. As we neared the top, things got really bad. The temperature had plummeted to minus 10 degrees Celsius, which, although not particularly cold, is miserable when the wind is gusting to over eighty kilometers per hour and one is protected only by a thin sweater and blue jeans. We had, for the past couple of hours, been hiking alongside an elderly Korean man who gleefully informed me that he was sixty five years old. He said this without any shortness of breath and his cheeks had a healthy blush to them that angered me when I compared them to the grey complexion that had no doubt fallen upon my face. He was also incredibly well prepared, right down to the Goretex boots, the bulging touring pack and his top of the line parka. Inside, I’m certain that he scoffed at this group of young foreigners before him, all wearing blue jeans and running shoes and all struggling badly.

About 200 meters from the summit my legs simply gave out on me. I buckled under a rock and lay there, fetal, groaning on the frozen ground. The old man, in a gesture of nervous kindness, approached me and asked if I was all right. I informed him that no, I was not okay and that I needed to take a rest because I could not move my legs. He understood my predicament and immediately dropped his bag, crouched down onto his knees, and began to vigorously massage my inner thighs and quads. My legs were like bread dough and his hands were kneading the hell out of me; although his grip was painful, slowly my legs began to soften, my muscles unclenched and the pain subsided. However, I when I stood, my legs locked up again, worse than before, and I yelled out long and loud, my cry echoing off the rocks and traveling down into the valley below. Passing hikers turned to see what kind of animal was capable of such a noise and were probably not surprised to see that the culprit was the rare and unpredictable foreigner.

The old man hurried over to his pack and started rummaging through it. He returned with some kind of aerosol can with unknown Chinese characters written on it. Meanwhile, I was teetering on the brink of passing out while my caring friends looked on with noticeable smiles lurking just below the surface; to them this was all quite comical. Well, when the man returned I was slightly taken aback, but incapable of a reaction, when he reached straight for my belt and without saying a word, began to unbuckle it. Then his fingers were fiddling with the button on my jeans and then it was my fly’s turn to fall. In a single fluid motion, he grabbed my pants and pulled them right down to my ankles, then wrapped his hands around my quads and squeezed. Never before had I been so man handled. Too shocked to protest, I allowed him to massage parts of my body that seldom see the light of day, let alone an aged Korean man’s fingers. I was paralyzed, but truthfully, he was making my legs feel much better. There I stood, two hundred meters from the summit of the mountain, with countless hikers streaming past and my friends staring in amazement at the spectacle before them, while the old man worked his hands like a pro and soothed my aches and pains. Next, he grabbed the aerosol can and began to spray my inner thighs. Without being too graphic, I will just say that he was liberal with his dosage and a good deal of the stuff crawled into my boxers and settled on some fairly sensitive areas of my body. The spray had a cooling effect and it was quite a pleasant experience. Mere minutes later, my legs felt fresh and new, as did other regions not worth mentioning, and I was ready to make my push for the peak. I pulled up my pants, thanked the man for his kindness and triumphantly reached the apex. Without his help, without his loving hands and his magic touring sack full of surprises, I never would have made it to the top. Although I am slightly disturbed by the memory of what occurred that day, I remain forever touched by the experience.

Mountain Gridlock

Hiking in Korea is not without its fair share of hazards. From sheer cliffs to loose rock to landslides, injuries are a real possibility and the mountains should be taken seriously. That in mind, the hikers themselves only add to the danger, especially on weekends and holidays when there are literally thousands of people all sharing the same objective. As a result, there are often traffic jams and long lines, especially as one nears the summit of the mountain.

In Korean society, it seems that waiting one’s turn has never been hammered into the collective consciousness and any time that a queue is formed, be it at a movie theater, an airport or a thousand meter mountain, it is a regular occurrence to feel a pair of elbows jabbing into your back and tiny feet kicking at your heels. Annoyed, you turn around and at first you see nothing, but then you gaze down and there is a tiny old lady, sporting a perm, a floral shirt and plaid pants, her back hunched from years of toil, with her elbows extended, thinking nothing of barging past you for a better seat on the train or the chance to get to the cash register ahead of you in the grocery store. In the city, this is little more than a nuisance but the situation can be a lot more hairy when it is taking place a high up on a mountain side and it is occurring en masse. In the push towards the summit, many Koreans adopt the same mentality that causes the opening of a subway door to become a virtual stampede. When one is clutching a thin metal cord, feet barely gripping the slick mountain face, the last thing you want is to feel that jabbing sensation in your back and someone kicking at your heels, but it happens more often than you would think and it can turn a simple adventure, classic man versus nature, into something altogether new and terrifying: Man versus nature versus impatient old lady. Like a massive winter storm, one must wait out the abuse and hope that they emerge from it unscathed.

If you would like to experience this phenomenon for yourself, head to Bukan Mountain National Park in the northern outskirts of Seoul. Make sure that it’s the weekend and try to go on a sunny day. The mountain itself is quite breathtaking and it rises close to the thousand meters above the skyscrapers of Seoul. To reach the summit takes about three hours and in that time, hikers get plenty of views, both of the great city and of the range of peaks that stretch all the way to the eastern shores of the peninsula. Along the way, you will encounter people from all walks of life and of all fitness levels. You will marvel in amazement at groups of female university students who have decided to climb the mountain sporting the season’s latest fashion trends, from the miniskirt right down to the high heel pumps. Your eyes will widen when you encounter another group of ladies, only this time they are all retired, over sixty five and out for a weekend stroll. You will stare in disbelief at a group of children, no older than seven, climbing together without any parental supervision. Groups of thirty-something men will blow you away as they careen along the trail, passing soju bottles around and arguing loudly about nothing in particular. Although Korea may have done away with most of its wildlife, there are still plenty of fascinating animals to view on any given day within the mountains of this fascinating nation. While still hiking through the trees and on a definite trail, such a cornucopia of people is entertaining and helps to pass the time, but when all of you, the group of old ladies, the university students, the seven year olds, the drunken men, and about a thousand other people, all reach the summit push at exactly the same moment, utter chaos ensues.

It is the perfect situation for everyone to practice their line forming skills, but in reality it is little more than an excuse to push, to jab, to yell and to battle. In short, the mountain becomes a subway car and the peak the best seat on the train. For unaccustomed foreigners, this can be a terrifying experience and temporary paralysis is often the result. Of course, being immobile exacerbates the problem, as you become the focus of everyone’s jostling and impatience. As scary as this is, it is compounded by the fact that there are also people descending the mountain and doing so with the exact same mindset as those who are climbing it. Your arms begin to shake. You stare over a thousand meter cliff directly at certain death. Meanwhile, you feel that god awful jabbing right between your shoulder blades and someone kicking at your heels. When you turn to you face your abuser, you are shocked to see that it is the same old lady from the grocery store and the subway queue. She is everywhere. How can this be? Her perm is undeniable and you would recognize that floral shirt a mile away. Panic sets in and your entire body a freezes up. Everyone is pushing, fighting and then the wind hurls down from the peak – oh god, not the wind – and you wrap your arms around the cable and fall to your knees. It is horrible and you are certain that you will either be stampeded or thrown from the mountain. Either way, you are positive that you have met your end.

When the madness subsides and you summon the courage to carry on, you become part of the battle to the summit. Arms extended at your side, elbows flared out, you push past old men, young children, the ailing and the strong. No one will stand between you and the peak and once you arrive, there is brief moment of exaltation followed by the shocking realization of what you have done, who you have become. You stand atop the world in utter disbelief and you apologize to your family for your horrible actions. How could you have disregarded the queue? How could you be so rude? Head down, depressed and forlorn, you clamber down the mountain and try to erase the memory, suppressing the knowledge that Korea has changed you, that for all intents and purposes, you are the little old lady in plaid.

The Tuk Tuk was maxed out. The hum of its two-stroke engine was deafening and almost overpowered the timeless beauty of that particular spot. The road was headed due west, in a near perfect line; its trajectory lead away, but also gave time to repose, to look back and to ponder the significance of that which had just been seen. Moments before, I had stood in awe of Ankor Wat, that silent, lifeless monument which was once the cultural and religious epicenter to an all but forgotten people.

It is an immense compound – Ankor itself is by far the largest, but there are many lesser Wats in the surrounding area – each a haunting relic of the past; ancient ruins, slipping back into the jungle, being reclaimed, reminding us of a great prehistory, a history whose exploits and battles are depicted on massive walls of stone.

There is an inevitable feeling of insignificance that envelops the spirit of the average tourist when they enter the compound, for it is so vast, so real, yet so completely vacant that one begins to ponder the plight of all people – as history marches on, are we all to be swallowed up by the jaws and insatiable appetite of time? Will our reign on this planet be rendered skeletal like Ankor? Are we to become mysterious ghosts in some ever thickening jungle?

Skeletons, those lifeless outlines of something that once breathed, pulsed, thrived seem only to be able to tell part of a story, as if words and history vanish into the soil and float away into the cosmos. What these bones of stone at Ankor do is show us a story, provide us with a snapshot of one particular time and place, and in so doing, they mesmerize us with that which they illuminate and torment us with the questions they unearth. Answers are fleeting here and as the jungle closes in and time marches on, more questions arise. We feel at once closer to the past yet irrevocably removed from it.

So what do we do? How do we cement those memories into our minds? Like the snapshots of the past provided to us by the structures themselves, so too do we photograph, catalog and classify, all in an attempt to retain some of the aura and to allow us to venture down that same road when ever we should so desire. Of course, the moment we walk away from a place like Ankor Wat, the initial impact, watching the sun rise over its great turrets or standing transfixed as the building literally climbs out of the night, is lost. These experiences can never truly be relived, but we try. We click. We focus. We flash. We curse. We snap. We attempt to capture the experience so that we can relive it over and over again.

I am no different. My camera is always poised, itching to snap, like a drunk awaiting the chime of the noon time bell. Like most, I feel a need to remember my experiences and the photograph, it exacting - albeit two dimensional – quality is the best way I know how. Ankor Wat provides countless scenes, ooh and aah moments that simply must be documented. A forgotten pillar lies just as it has for seven hundred years, and on this day the light is filtering in through an adjacent window, giving the entire scene an ephemeral quality and in the mind’s eye, a monk has just emerged to perform his morning prayers. Snap. The moment, the experience, is captured, stored and saved, to be reminisced over in the coming months and years.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the Tuk Tuk was maxed. We were careening away from Ankor in a desperate attempt to beat the hoards of tourists who had also flocked there on that same day, in the middle of the Chinese New Year. The heat was oppressive and the breeze from the Tuk Tuk was a welcome respite. I could taste the engine as it blasted through its tank filled with fully leaded gasoline, but I didn’t care. This was an amazing day and my smile couldn’t have been wiped away with sandpaper.

“There still many land mines in the area, unchecked, live,” our enthusiastic driver informed us as we all but flew towards our next destination. I remember pondering the gravity of his statement – each year in Cambodia, close to a thousand people are maimed or killed by these buried nightmares – but his smile, his casual, kind demeanor, seemed wholly at odds with the information he had just provided and it dawned on me that this is perhaps one key to Cambodian perseverance. In a country with such a history of bloodshed, so much starvation and pain, how can they not now smile, for they have made it through some of the most heinous atrocities imaginable and they have emerged in victory, with only a few thousand land mines as an agonizing reminder of the monster that was the Khemer Rouge Regime. They are here, their lives are improving slowly and this must be why our lovely driver was all smiles. He – the entire country too – is a testament to the power of the human spirit.

He smiled again. “We almost there now. Oh my God – so busy, more than I ever see.”

There, at the entrance to Bayon, a smaller, crumbling Wat, famous for its immense stone structures of an important deity, my eyes widened, for it was shortly after eight a.m. but up ahead, no more than two hundred metres, were literally hundreds of Tuk Tuks, each honking and jostling and trying to gain an upper hand on their competitors. As my eyes grew large, my heart began to sink and in that moment the Tuk Tuks, Chinese New Year and all those damned tourists – just like me – flooded my mind and overwhelmed me.

My camera, my trusty companion, had previously been perilously placed in the inside pocket of my basketball shorts, which were designed to hold something like a key, a ring or a similar small object. My camera case was in hand. Why it was not performing its sole duty was entirely my fault. A slight bump in the road and the shockless Tuk Tuk took the hit like a speed bike racing down a mountain trail. In that moment, my camera leapt from my pocket, seemingly willed to do so by some unknown force, and crashed on to the road below. In a whiplash-like motion, I swung my head around just in time to watch it strike the cement, bounce once, and then break into pieces. Upset, but unwilling to let the pain of losing my sidekick destroy the day, I begrudgingly instructed the driver to continue on. He did. I said a silent good bye to my long time friend.

Behind, in another Tuk Tuk, were two friends and they bore witness to the entire incident, from awful impact to the camera’s final resting place somewhere on the side of the road. Being eternally optimistic, or wonderfully thrifty, they shouted, “stop!” Their driver obliged and they pulled over to retrieve the broken bones of my former camera.

Slowly, their Tuk Tuk sidled up alongside and they handed the heap of plastic and metal over to me.

“Was only the batteries that fell out,” they said. Sure enough, my camera, aside from a slight scratch on one corner, appeared as good as new. “We don’t know if it works – the lens is probably shattered – but no harm in trying, right, and no use losing your memory card.”

They had a point. I had forgotten about my memory card and I was grateful for their quick thinking. However, there was no way that my camera was going to work. At the time of impact, we had been traveling at speeds in excess of sixty km/hr, and the camera had fallen at least three feet on to the road below.

I turned it on. Its little motor fired up. The telltale icon flashed on the screen. It seemed primed and ready. Could it be? Surely the lens was damaged or the flash shattered. Some vital mechanism must have been destroyed in the fall. But from the initial appearance of things, it seemed good to go.

I looked at my Tuk Tuk driver. He seemed as impressed as I was. With a coy smile, I pointed my camera in his direction. He beamed. I pressed and clicked. The picture was saved. It is one of my favorite images from my trip. My camera survived its Cambodian adventure. In some way, its perseverance reminded me of my driver, of the Nation in general. When the odds are stacked against you, when danger still lurks in the shadows, it is a true test of will to emerge on top, unscathed. Cambodia lives on, a spectacle for the world, reminding us that we can survive the greatest of falls, defeat the toughest odds. We find strength in its ancient past and smile at what they are accomplishing today. After a painful fall, the pieces are being put back together here and the images being created are the most beautiful of all.

Canadians and Poets frequently come across as polite ignoramuses; they let others spit on their shoes and tend to hibernate. Yet at the same time Canadians and Poets are fiercely lyrical at heart. Just think of the opening to our national anthem, “Oh Canada glorious and free…we stand on guard for thee…” These lines stir everyone’s bowels at least slightly (to use the word bowel in the archaic sense of “the seat of gentler emotions”). Or take Leonard Cohen’s stanza from Tower of Song, “I was born this way, I had no choice, I was born with the gift of a golden voice”. Canada is blessed with a beautiful voice, like Leonard Cohen, and also smitten with the idealized romanticism of our national anthem.

Poetry and Canada are at the same time fractured entities for which federal or poetical totality glue will always seem weak and unwise to squeeze on unless you possess the sticky vision of a Pierre Berton, or Margaret Atwood, or Northrop Frye, or Sir John A Macdonald. Diversity and spatial fragmentation hold sway over vain universals; which is a blessing, indeed, so long as we negotiate our differences to the best of our imagination and come up with some common ground upon which to make a stand. Nationalism can become violent and fascist - but it doesn’t have to. It may in fact be a necessary mode of expression for avoiding involvement in other forms of hegemonic nastiness.

“We are poetry!” shout the wolves, and the members of the outdoors club howl back: “We are Canadian!”

Sometimes in our weaker moments we dream of a national or federal identity, a working foundation upon which we can agree to B, and build our B-eing. We might hazard a definition for Canada…“a post colonial, Westminster-model style of newish nation comprised of 10 provinces and 3 territories, as outlined in the constitution”. And so do the poets sometimes risk a totalizing definition of their vocation, maybe something along the lines of Poetry: “a compact form of expression employing words, with an emphasis on hidden meaning, sonic resonance, and metrical rhythm as outlined in the holy canon”, or some such.

Yet definitions limit and lock. They narrow and then strangle us. Most poets, even, tend to deny the experiments of their colleagues the status of poetry. “This picture of words is no poem,” the Sonneteer says in response to a piece of Concrete Poetry, “It is a painting!”; because the manipulation of material language in a visually conceptual way can be repugnant and confusing to the traditionalist who feels that poetry should best be written in metre and rhyme. (For a more nuanced treatment of this topic check out Pearly Pearl’s article, http://www.pagehalffull.com/rhyme.html.)

Of Spoken Word: “This oracular incantation be no poesy! This be public address of the raunchiest kind! This be immoral ego performance!” Decries the traditional Concrete Poet in turn when attending a poetry slam, because Spoken Word challenges their notion of what poetry should be. Poetry has traditionally been taught as something to be read or viewed on the page. Take away the notation and composition no longer involves “writing” as Mr. Guttenberg knew it. Then of course there is the outcry about the competitiveness of the form.

“All these funny nonsense sounds are balderdash, if you ask me!” Says the Spoken Word artist, in turn, when they hear Sound Poetry.

The different factions have trouble accepting each other – how human!

The result is like multiculturalism gone horribly awry, a Tower of Canuck Babel, different contingents hardening into discrete communities like misanthropic spruce sap, with little cross over ever happening between the groups – and sometimes wicked battles waged between opposing poetic or ethnic camps. The Anglo-Saxon projects their xenophobia and protectionist paranoia, born from northern emotional malaise, onto the transformative spirit of immigrants. Debate and conviction are important, but shouldn’t we at least assess each cultural product or practice on its own terms?

Our definition of national space has been narrowing to view the city as the dominant unit of geopolitical expression, with Federal/National organization as the most vulnerable because it is frequently founded upon what are perceived to be fanciful or wrong-minded universalisms, which although projecting the façade of inclusivity always leave some group in the dark. For instance the notion of “two official languages”, as if to ignore all the other ones, both foreign and indigenous. Or the narcissistic human failure to represent animals, trees, natural resources, in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution.

As Canada becomes a nation known mainly for its dirty oil and military bodybuilding it can be disappointing to realize that programs such as peacekeeping and universal health care are fading like an old Utopian dream. The self-conscious nationalism which strove to create a unique geo-social space is deteriorating from the acidic cynicism of a supergeneration of both young and old who don’t have much to believe in any more; whose dreams, aspirations, sense of belonging and comfort are kept afloat by the all-pervasive value systems of capital.

If Poetry and Canada are to find themselves it’s going to take some serious meditative cross country ski trips into the soulful snowdrifts to clear the mind of all the clutter of this techno crazy super stimulated world in which the only logic is that of material fulfillment and Self-realization.

We have to get Native about this! That’s right, we must forget our fears of cultural appropriation and dive into the holistic mindset of the tribal awakening! That is if we desire a fluid, righteous definition – a definition to end all definitions - there are no alternatives. It becomes like making the mental leap, as John Newlove does in this following poem, to know that we are somehow, through dust and bone…descended from those who came before.

…the Indians

are not composed of

the romantic stories

about them, or of the stories

they tell only, but

still ride the soil

in us, dry bones a part

of the dust in our eyes,

needed and troubling

in the glare, in

our breath, in our

ears, in our mouths,

in our bodies entire, in our minds, until

at last

we become them

in our desires, our desires,

mirages, mirrors, that are theirs, hard-

riding desires, and they

become our true forbears, molded

by the same wind or rain,

and in this land we

are their people, come

back to life again.

(from “The Pride” by John Newlove, originally published in the collection Black Night)

A strange thought….that “white” “man” is descended from the natives. But maybe these kind of leaps are exactly what is needed to continue rewriting this country.

Poetry as a Boundless Category

Instead of narrowing our definitions, perhaps we should widen them until they disappear altogether. Poetry can be seen as a force, let me put it that way, a fundamental energy for all kinds of expression, which only becomes recognizable as poetry (per se) once it’s been vocalized, either with a pen or one’s voice. But poetry doesn’t necessarily need to be written. It need not be spoken. It exists without our meddling. The poem itself is not essential to poetry.

There exists the potential for poetic expression in everything, anywhere. As bp Nichol puts it:

POETRY BEING AT A DEAD END POETRY IS DEAD. HAVING ACCEPTED THIS FACT WE ARE FREE TO LIVE THE POEM. HAVING FREED THE POEM FROM THE NECESSITY TO BE THE POEM IS NOW CONSTANTLY HAPPENING IN OUR LIVES. WHAT HAS BEEN CONSTANT TILL NOW HAVE BEEN THE ARTIFICIAL BOUNDARIES WE HAVE PLACED ON THE POEM. WE HAVE PLACED THE POEM BEYOND OURSELVES BY PUTTING ARTIFICIAL BOUNDARIES BETWEEN OURSELVES & THE POEM WE MUST PUT THE POEM IN OUR LIVES BY FREEING IT FROM THE NECESSITY TO BE…

(From ABC: The Aleph Beth Book, by bpNichol)

Poetry is above us and below us, under us and on top of us; it is hovering on the other side of the hill or sealed inside the bag of potato chips. It is within us, all around us. An old shoe is a poetic old thing. The light reflecting in a million scales on the water is poetic in a way which defies the cliché. Adbusters being sold in Wall-Fart is poetic. Irony is a level of the poetic. “Poetry in motion” is an expression of the same idea - that some things are poetry. Like Canada.

Poetry always hits the mind closest to the rainbow radiant. Our ability to receive poetic information is a sense that must be developed through the nerves. Poetry is in the printer and the micro-chip. Poetry conquers the musician who is nothing without it. Poetry is a fundamental unit of creation. It is a lever and a plug-in. It is part of the necessary components of the imagination. People won’t always understand it or even necessarily perceive it. Words magnetize the poetic charges which flow and weave all around us. Poetry is a license not to make sense.

Yes, poetry is the Canadian condition, but we cannot say that Canadian is the Poetic condition. There is, finally, a point where Canada and Poetry part ways, become absolutely unrelated. The only thing to do, in these moments when poetry is lost, alone in an uncaring universe, is write another poem. Or at least reflect upon its presence. No wonder Canadian poets are so renown (within Canada) for their obsessions with place. As if true Canadian history were in fact something like a haiku.

… …

Why The National?

Canadian-ess can be seen in the same perspective. Perhaps the term “Canadian” is just a façade concealing the spirit within the word. The spirit of Canada. The spirit, quite possibly, of the earth which predated our urban conglomerations. Peter Mansbridge becomes emblematic within the immanence, as if he were a shaman divining messages from Teleprompter. When poetics leads one into conspiratorial schizoanalysis Canadian culture may just appear to be a tidy concept - the national flag as a kind of matador’s cape waved by the government to divert the raging masses. The modern world sometimes seems best viewed through this conspiratorial lens, as if it worked according to certain social agencies much larger than individual understanding and influence. Poems can help decipher those codes.

Like wingless birds our desires migrate into a horizon without oxygen – our internationalism is a web of desire oscillating to other countries and coming back like a tide upon which beautiful influences are borne. Within this motion you can sense the tropicalization of Canada – that warming of the soul. Like electrons escaped from their atoms we bond with the foreign and form new chains of being. As if all the physical features floated on the pool of the soul and we were reaching ourselves across the intermingling currents. In the ice palace of the north southern spectres flicker upon gelid blocks raising ancient philosophical questions about essence and form. So much to learn from Cuba - them from us. The need to rise strong against what is coming; to say no to that which will be proposed; to stand tall against the shortness of the bill upon the table.