Up in Ontario

Poetry Happens

So as someone who keeps a blog (albeit, rather poorly or late) I am interested in reading other blogs. One of my favourites is Bookninja because I can keep in touch with the writing and publishing scene of Canada and the world without having to spend much effort. The site is run by Peter Darbyshire and George Murphy and they do a fine job of collecting links and making comments, ranging from acidic-snarky to pithy, on stories.

Today Bookninja points to an article in the Elko Daily Free Press entitled, Young Poet: Freshman's poem selected for publication in national anthology. Reading through the article I thought to myself, this could just as easily be appearing in The Onion. Opportunities for satire were ripe.

Then once I had finished the article I got to thinking to myself that really, the easy way out is to satirize the sensitive, young poet, trying to express themselves and make sense of their world of hurt feelings through words. The tougher thing to do is to engage with the story and admit that we've all been teenagers at some time and we've all written terrible, introspective poetry. Some of us just have had the good sense (so far) to keep it locked away, so we'll sidestep the groaning pain of revisiting it later in life, when we're beyond the moment which made its contents seem so vivid.

In closing, congratulations to Janaya Sahara Johnson for writing the poem Love Happens and for its acceptance for publication in Poetry.com. Look for it in bookstores in November.

Coda: I once worked for an entrepreneurial fellow with undiagnosed ADHD who came from humble beginnings, started a string of risky companies straight out of high school and eventually hit on an idea that made him moderately rich very fast. He had a peculiar pattern to his baldness which left a tuft on his forehead and a ring of hair around the rest of his head. He hired his best friend early on in his company's development to be his vice president of marketing, and together they scrambled and schemed their way to some success. In his early 40s the entrepreneurial fellow with undiagnosed ADHD and his wife had their first child and they named her Summer Sierra S*******. The woman I carpooled with at the time, a good friend and sharp wit, wondered aloud to me one day whethey they would be putting a pole in the nursery, since the name Summer Sierra seemed to destine the girl for nothing but life as an exotic dancer. We never asked the proud parents what they had been thinking naming their daughter as they had. We let them be as they trolled around the office with their precious bundle in her carriage, as co-workers cooed and giggled or left for timely trips to the bathroom, as everyone avoided the lie of what a cute baby she was, because she was not remotely cute.

Over the remaining few months I worked at that company I continued to enjoy my carpooler's pole joke in much the same way as I savour a good nickname that sticks to someone because it describes them more fully than their given name. I dreamwalked the office halls and collected my check and my carpooler grew larger with her own child in her belly that turned out to be her own daughter, who was cute.