Stephen Cain

Review and Reminder

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:52:00 +0000

Nice review of I Can Say Interpellation in the new Broken Pencil by Nico Mara-McKay:

And a reminder for those of you in the Toronto area that I'll be reading from the said text, as well as new and old material, Sunday evening at the Holy Oak (see last posting).

Avantgarden Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 00:18:00 +0000

I'll be reading from I Can Say Interpellation and new material at the Avantgarden series with Mat Laporte and Jimmy McInnes.

Sunday, February 19, 2012 - 5:30pm

Holy Oak Cafe
1241 Bloor Street West
Toronto, ON
M6H 1N6

More info here.

Cool Covers 4

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:12:00 +0000

A find at a yard sale for $1, perhaps the cheesiest bookcover I own (although Cool Covers 6 might test that premise):

Published by Avon Books ("The Sign of Good Reading") in 1965, this misleading edition makes me wonder what Avon would have produced had they acquired the rights for Beautiful Losers, a book which actually does have pornographic passages.

Beyond the photo, and the American re-spelling of the original title, I'm surprised that the cover copy defines the favourite game as sex.

Of course it is one of the great aspects of the novel that the favourite game remains somewhat ambiguous, but can it really be reduced to sex? This is my reading copy of the novel:

Glad to see that McClelland and Stewart's NCL edition has the proper spelling (but which way will the new German-owned M&S go?). This time the cover image implies that the music industry is the favourite game, although this edition's backcover copy suggests otherwise:

There is humour here, and tenderness, heightened by a shrewd appraisal of the human comedy--where "the favourite game" is love.

I like this interpretation, but what does Cohen himself suggest by the novel's end? In my favourite passage, which concludes the book, Cohen writes:

Jesus! I just remembered what Lisa's favourite game was. After a heavy snow we would go into a back yard with a few of our friends. The expanse of snow would be white and unbroken. Bertha was the spinner. You held her hands while she turned on her heels, you circled her until your feet left the ground. Then she let go and you flew over the snow. You remained still in whatever position you landed. When everyone had been flung in this fashion into the fresh snow, the beautiful part of the game began. You stood up carefully, taking great pains not to disturb the impression you had made. Now the comparisons. Of course you would have done your best to land in some crazy position, arms and legs sticking out. Then we walked away, leaving a lovely white field of blossom-like shapes with footprint stems.

For a history of a similarly misrepresented Canadian "classic", see the Dusty Bookcase on Thomas Raddall's The Nymph and the Lamp here.

Grad School Anthem

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:56:00 +0000

Having been a big fan of the Weakerthans, and chief songwriter John K. Samson, for a long time it's nice to see his first solo album, Provincial, leading off with such a strong track. Riffing on Bob Dylan's "When I Paint My Masterpiece," Samson builds from a foundation of a Ramones-style guitar sound to produce a portrait of academic ennui that any grad student can identify with:

Samson, who is also one of the founders of the activist press Arbeiter Ring, has also released a collection of his poems and lyrics, which he was recently in Toronto to promote.

Cool Covers 3

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:45:00 +0000

Another book I picked up at Contact Editions based on the cover alone. A 1958 title from a time when Toronto-based Harlequin Books was marketing books for both men and women, and was dabbling in non-fiction (at least of the "true-crime" nature) and flying the flag a bit with a nod to nationalism. Many Harlequin books from the 1950s have great artwork and titles, but few as remarkable as this:

For the full back-story of Gay Canadian Rogues (as well as other early Harlequins) check out the Dusty Bookcase blog here.

Cool Covers 2

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 14:36:00 +0000

As a Canadianist I couldn't resist picking up this one-off Archie Digest from 1996 where the gang visits Canada.

I like to bring it to my introduction to Canadian Literature or Canadian Studies class and ask them, as Canadians, what's wrong with the cover image (beyond its obvious sexism) and see how long it takes to find the error.

Answer is in the comments....

Cool Covers 1

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 02:35:00 +0000

Still reading Mark Polizzotti's biography of Andre Breton, Revolution of the Mind, and am deep into the part of Breton's life where he was desperate to be considered part of the Communist revolutionary vanguard and was constantly rebuffed by the French Communist Party. As the 1930s draw to a close Breton's battle shifts to oppose Stalin's version of Communism and results in a friendship and intellectual collaboration with Trotsky. The schism between Trotskyists and Stalinists also becomes personal as Breton breaks all communication with Paul Eluard over his support of Stalin (Louis Aragon had been "excommunicated" earlier for the same reason). With all this infighting I was compelled to pull out my favourite copy of the Communist Manifesto:

I picked this up a decade ago when I was working at Contact Editions on Mount Pleasant. Published and printed in Moscow in 1954, it is quite the deluxe edition, the cover featuring embossed portraits of Marx and Engels, and their names appearing gilded (not so clear from the scan above). The interior is also surprisingly high-end for a mass-market paperback with photographic plates, some in colour. In many ways it resembles a bible, which I suppose is appropriate as Communism was to replace conventional religion. What is also surprising in the interior is the half-title page:

Here we have Stalin sticking his head into a lineage with Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Initially I thought this was hilarious, with yet another example of Stalin's immense ego, and his pretensions to intellectualism--and notice that he comes first: me Stalin me come first. But after recently reading about Trotsky's assassination and starting to look through Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands, I now just find it sobering.

Kingston Radio

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 04:14:00 +0000

Archived radio broadcast from CFRC (Queen's Radio, Kingston) "Finding a Voice" program hosted by Bruce Kauffman which features the Cain-Conley Novel Idea reading and the Mansfield Press launch in Kingston.

My reading of I Can Say Interpellation starts at 4:25

Tim Conley reading "It is Hard to be Different" starts at 15:00

The Mansfield Launch, featuring readings by Lillian Necakov and Carey Toane, starts at 46:05

Holidays

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:53:00 +0000

Best for the season and see you in 2012!

Favourite Books of 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 16:09:00 +0000

[A couple of which came out in late 2010]

bpNichol: The Captain Poetry Poems Complete (Bookthug)
Andre Alexis: Beauty and Sadness (Anansi)
Phil Hall: Killdeer (Bookthug)
Dionne Brand: Chronicles (WLU P)
Craig Dworkin and Kenneth Goldsmith, eds. Against Expression (Northwestern UP)
Caroline Bergvall: Meddle English (Nightboat)
Frank Davey: When Tish Happens (ECW)
Marcus Boon: In Praise of Copying (Harvard UP)
Tim Conley: Nothing Could Be Further (Emmerson Street)
Andy Weaver: Gangson (NeWest)

Reich and CanLit

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 17:59:00 +0000

As part of background research while working on the Steve McCaffery Open Letter issue I read Grant Goodbrand's Therafields: The Rise and Fall of Lea Hindley-Smith's Psychoanalytic Commune (ECW). Goodbrand's book is complex and deserves a blog-post on its own, but at the very least it seems as fair and balanced an assessment of the organization as we are likely to get from someone who was directly involved in the group. There are no heroes or villains in Goodbrand's book, and he is successful in explaining the human motivations for many of the actions and the resulting disputes that plagued Therafields.

While it's well-known that bpNichol was deeply involved with Therafields and dedicated The Martyrology to Hindley-Smith, Goodbrand's book really foregrounds the importance of Nichol to the psychoanalytic community, and begins each chapter in his study with a quotation from Nichol's poetry.

Another figure that comes up from time to time in Goodbrand's study is the anti-Fascist, pro-sex psychoanalytic theorist Wilhelm Reich. While Therafields was divided about the use of Reichian techniques of breaking down physical "body armour" as way to release psychological blocks, I'm interested to know how many of the community were reading Reich's works.

We know that Nichol was reading Reich, and that since the other members of the Four Horsemen were also involved with Therafields to varying degrees, it is likely they were reading Reich as well. In an essay by Frank Davey on the Four Horsemen, Davey provides this quote from McCaffery about the psychoanalytic influences on his and Nichol's work:

Barrie's theoretical interests at the time were largely psychoanalytic (an interest I am sure that was connected to his own therapeutic work as a lay-analyst). It was Nichol who introduced me to the theories of Wilhelm Reich..., to Alexander Lowen's theories of bio-energetics, to Edmund Bergler's theories of psychic masochism, and to a book of dialogues with his patients by Lacan. This was a radical but different body of theorists from those I was reading.

I have a hunch that knowing which writers, particularly those of experimental and counter-cultural nature, were reading Reich could open doors to investigation in the same way that knowing which Modernists were reading Freud advanced Modernist studies.

I need to revisit Nichol's essays collected in Meanwhile which I recall also mention Reich (one annoying note: both Goodbrand's book and Meanwhile lack indices). But speaking of meanwhile, there are also current writers dealing with Reich's theories such as the poet and artist Sharon Harris who works with modern orgone generators and accumulators. Her orgone site is here.

Anyone who has thoughts on Reich, Therafields, and CanLit, please leave a comment or drop a line.

To wit

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 12:42:00 +0000

I've broken down and started a Twitter account. It's at:

@cainstephen

I'm going to use it for micro-reviews of books I'm reading, announcements, and more.

Kingston Report

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 22:35:00 +0000

A great time in Kingston this weekend. Hadn't visited since the launch for the Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages five years ago. Certainly nice to do a reading in bookstore--the very cool Novel Idea--which is kid-friendly and to have multiple families in attendance. In the fun snap below by Sharon Harris, I read behind Nature with Tim Conley waiting in the wings beside a pop-up book of The Odyssey.

Kingston Trio

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:45:00 +0000

I'll be reading next Friday at Novel Idea, the wonderful independent bookstore in Kingston, with Clelia Scala and Tim Conley in support of I Can Say Interpellation and Nothing Could be Further. One night only!

Novel Idea, 156 Princess Street, Kingston

Friday, November 25 from 7-8:30pm

OL is Out

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 03:36:00 +0000

I received the new Open Letter issue on Steve McCaffery which I edited in the mail today. It looks great and is an exciting collection of new writing including: essays on McCaffery by Geoffrey Hlibchuk, Stephen Voyce, Gregory Betts, Tim Conley, Jason Starnes, Alessandra Capperdoni, Jean-Jacques Lecercle, Matt Carrington, Lori Emerson, Andy Weaver, and Christian Bok; new McCaffery-inspired poems by derek beaulieu, Alan Halsey, and Peter Jaeger; and new poetry from McCaffery himself.

The issue should be on the stands this week, and I'll have copies with me at the Bookthug launch of McCaffery's Panopticon in Toronto on November 26th.

Thoughts on the Rock

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 16:02:00 +0000

Finally finished a draft of an essay that I've been working on for a couple of months about Andre Breton's time in Quebec. I discuss, among many other things, his time exploring the beaches of Perce and his meditations on the Perce Rock, as well as his relationship to the Automatists, the birds of Bonaventure Island, agates, and Tarot cards. As a bit of a preview, the above is a photo of the plaque commemorating the trip Breton made to the Gaspe with Elisa Claro, outside the hotel they stayed at in 1944--just down the road from my paternal grandfather's farm where I spent many of my summers during the 1970s and 1980s.

If anyone knows the copyright holder of the image, taken from the Arcane 17 site, please leave a comment below.

Boss Signage

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:55:00 +0000

Via Torontoist:

By Marc Lostracco.

Secret Influences 8: Dali Denied

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 16:06:00 +0000

Like many a young male student I went through a Salvador Dali phase around 1988-89. The presence of his art on dorm walls appears not to have abated over the last two decades--one look around the Imaginus poster sales on Canadian campuses will reveal scores of Dali prints on display, many of which sell out.

As an undergrad I was under the sway of Dali with reproductions of "The Persistence of Memory," "Metamorphosis of Narcissus," "Swans Reflecting Elephants" and several others on my residence walls. Even though I was a perpetually broke student I managed to save up enough coin to purchase the two-volume Taschen hardcover edition of Dali's complete paintings: at the time, and for many years after, it was the most expensive book I owned.

But as deep as the obsession was, it was also fleeting. I think it was particularly the effect of reading through the collected painting that Dali lost his lustre: his work soon became repetitive, his tricks obvious, and his psychoanalytic symbolism immature. His posters soon came off the walls, and I eventually sold the Taschen collection to help with the rent during one sadly destitute month.

And this rejection occurred even before I knew about Dali's politics and repugnant personality.

One of the hardest things about teaching my course on Surrealism at York is trying to convince students that Dali is relatively unimportant to how Surrealism, as envisioned by Andre Breton, arose and evolved. In fact Dali became the public face of Surrealism only in a Hollywood or Disney sense; to the literary Surrealists he was a sell-out, a clown, an avaricious opportunist. Breton memorably dubbed him Avida Dollars, an anagram of Dali's name which deservedly caught on and stuck with Dali until his death.

But this wasn't just professional jealousy--even stronger than the Surrealists' distaste for Dali's greed was their rejection of his clearly fascist politics. And it was not just Franco whom Dali courted, but dictators and despots of all types as this opinion piece by Vicente Navarro from a few years ago makes shocking clear.

I do get some leverage at my dismantling of Dali after showing Un Chien Andalou, and informing the class about Dali's cowardly snitching during the U.S. anti-Communist period, an action which resulted in years of hardship and exile for Luis Bunuel. Strangely, most students find this the most telling evidence of Dali's idiocy, rather than his fascism, which I suppose they might justify by Dali's desire for "stability" in his homeland (but what about Picasso and Miro, I say, they were never fascists....)

So while many of Dali's images may be indelibly inscribed somewhere in my subconscious, these days the only lasting influence from Dali on me would be his "paranoiac-critical method," a system of composition where one would get into a certain mental state and contemplate an object until phantom images and associations would arise which were related to the object but not in a direct or rational way. This appears in countless Dali paintings from eggs turning to sunsets to a bust of Voltaire disappearing into a slave market. As even Breton admitted, this method works well, even for poetic composition, and I've used it in the past to generate some pieces such as "Hydra" where a mediation on the mythical monster transformed into an exploration of an industrial assembly job I once worked at, and it also appears in some of my recent translation projects such as "Stanzas" and "Etc Phrases."

Welcome to the Occupation

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 16:29:00 +0000

The windiest and coldest day since fall began for the beginning of the Toronto occupation. All peaceful and beautiful from what I could see.

Stay warm & stay strong guys. Peace.

LangPoets at the Occupation

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 11:13:00 +0000

From Charles Bernstein's blog at Jacket2:

Wish I could be there too -- waiting for it to come to Toronto, October 15th. Info here and at the URL below.

REM R.I.P

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 16:15:00 +0000

I suppose this should be filed under "not-so-secret influences," and, indeed, there is likely no pop band that has influenced my poetics as much as REM. This is probably obvious, even from the first sequence from my first book dyslexicon. In "Circa Diem," my Cubist portraits of pop albums, REM's fourth album makes the cut (although the title was "corrected" by an over-zealous copy editor to read "Life's Rich Pageant"). Here it is in its entirety, and as it was first composed:

R.E.M. LIFES RICH PAGEANT (1986)

Cole Porter allusion speculation. Buck shot on the cover nevertheless. Insurgency discovery. Simian grappling the cost of murder shoes. Could base the project on bios and feedback. The curve produced follows the narrative too closely to be experiential. Nee experimental. Sample the example. Business cards to distribute randomly when the order has fucked up. All so insistent or merely the ignition. The source of John revealed subconsciously.
     Actually bury the initial remarkable. These days speed provides sentience. Name three. Trains of winter reckon a possible live bait. It can be realized. It can achieve mastery. Nod to those who live with the knowledge. Patricide is appropriate wherever you sow.
     Carbon does begin to decrease in momentum. An agreement among several parties. Fear of looking behind oneself. Revelation of certain peculiarities can bring closeness or abjection. Tonsorial narration alacrity. Idle time can sever hands.
     Always the question. Also the statement. Mood shift nightly. Would edit others when wished transcendence is found in failure. Native words announced properly create news nations. Take a picture here. Je me souviens. A proper finding the apocalypse has a lapse in it with the movement of a latter letter.
     Saves more frequently. Time ends when scavengers appear. Give a Roosevelt aphorism. Two sips to the swallow. Knitting factors. Last chance to preserve. It jams and gels.
     Latin and leave it at that.
     Ghost writing assumed. Get to the point at which it shatters. Flowers grow inside the condition. Say no to shrugs. Say it can receive. Fondness despite her politics. Vinyl caught by the speller. Buy memory when it's cheap.
     Possible trio to go. Absolut Georgics. The difference between the key to want and the lack of need. Change is belief. Young honourable and true. Other situations perfection avoidance brutality manifestos. Spirit in which was perceived. Horse gifts provide sport slippage and fertility. Greek was all to me.
     Question to come. Capital neighbour. Winks without intention. Overlook the glass I drop. Rhyme frost too wicked for good. Light strength pioneer. Trailer talk still holding court with those inferior to the shorn scalp the magic loot the quizzical paradox the pavement certitude the confidence that only the lost can exude.
     Assumed when passage was paid days of future passed. Honky tonk without purposity. Curious mammals. Has that smell that excites still. Almost left to the last. Improvident visitations. Amazing works of giants. Despair of classicism frequently. Wolves knew the presence knew whine was need. Cup of rye. Toothpick speck. All free now. An H becomes the cross that the generation bears happily. Price of fans. Three for one dollar.

I listened to REM intensely throughout the 1980s and 1990s until Automatic for the People, after which my interest declined fairly rapidly, although I would still pick up each album as they came out and references to them continued to appear in my writing: "Three Miles of Bad Road" (a nod to "Crush with Eyeliner" from Monster) became a title of a poem in Torontology, and a shout-out to "Sad Professor" (from 1998's Up album) shows up as recently as Double Helix.

Although it was primarily the lyrics of REM that intrigued and inspired me, there was also the whole mystery of the band in its early incarnation (pre-Out of Time): the strange imagery and album covers (which my high school friends and I poured over obsessively), the blurry photos and videos of the band, and the invocation of a southern gothic (which appeared to us as an odd mixture of religiosity and dark sexuality). It seemed the band evoked a whole culture that was somewhat alien, but was also what was really going on in the late 1980s politically and socially for kids in Reagan and Mulroney's North America. They were self-consciously "arty," at least compared to the heavy metal bands that we mostly listened to, but never artsy for art's sake. In fact it does say quite a bit about their common touch that they could appeal to a working class kid from Oshawa (who, for example, at that time found The Cure a little too outre), and motivate him enough to start writing poetry and experiencing "alternative" culture and politics. And, as I noted above, it wasn't just the sensitive outsider-type that REM spoke to, but to a general popular youth zeitgeist at the time. For my peer group, phrases from REM songs even became part of our shared cant. Case in point, "Feeling Gravity's Pull", a stellar track from Fables of the Reconstruction, became our choice term to describe drunkenness, as in "Hey man, are you drunk yet?" "Yeah, I'm feeling gravity's pull." The video also happens to be REM at one of their coolest points, before real fame came, and still making groundbreaking and unique sounds:

R.I.P REM, a band that, to paraphrase D. Boon, "could be [our] life."

Revolutionary Pedagogy

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:48:00 +0000

I've just discovered the exciting writing and theory of Peter McLaren on radical pedagogy while reading the Capilano Review issue on manifestos (3.13, 2011), and am seeking out his other texts. A great moment from his manifesto here:

“The fact is, surely, that we are faced with two choices of how to live our humanity—the liberal model of pleading with the corporations to temper their cruelty and greed, or the reactionary model that has declared war on social and economic equality. And on the evidence that each of these models is fiercely and hopelessly entangled in each other’s conflictual embrace, we can accept neither.”

(Peter McLaren “Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy for a Socialist Society: A Manifesto”)

ICSI Notice

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 00:30:00 +0000

A nice notice of I Can Say Interpellation by Nathalie Foy here.

Vic D'or on bp

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Victor Coleman is conducting a six week course on bpNichol and his influence. Registration information can be found here. It commences on September 26, and here's the course description:

bpNichol was one of the most energetic and enthusiastic poets of his generation. He wrote, he edited, he experimented, he published, he performed, and sadly he died way too young, but not before he produced an incredible body of work. And when he died strange things happened in the writing and publishing community in Canada. It was as though a massive source of creative energy and excitement that supported a huge network of writers and poets suddenly disappeared and things, well, things changed. How could this happen? Why did so many people turn to one person to support them and their work? Who was bpNichol and how did he accomplish so much in such a brief lifetime? In this six-week course led by Victor Coleman, who was Nichol's first editor at The Coach House Press, and his good friend, you will get intimate with bpNichol and his work, and learn about the incredible influence Nichol had on Canadian poetry and poetics.

I Can Say Audio

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Cain) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 16:05:00 +0000

An audio recording of my reading of two poems from I Can Say Interpellation here (AKA "the head cold sessions").