Category Archives: Poetry

Uncoupling Suffocation

Posted on November 1, 2010 by Francois Lachance

Parked in a car looking out on a body of water. A man and a woman think back. Well one of them thinks. ‘Remember,’ he says, ‘we’d walk by this lake in the evenings, when we were first married.’ The … Continue reading →

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Past Smoldering

Posted on October 31, 2010 by Francois Lachance

My paternal grandfather smoked a pipe. Perhaps this is why the empty bowl leaves a trace in my mind of a clear image of not only emptiness but coolness as well as the lingering aroma. We take the poem beyond … Continue reading →

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Sunwards Sandwards

Posted on October 30, 2010 by Francois Lachance

Concurrent reading makes certain passages glow more. Take for example Stewart Brand’s The Clock of the Long Now: Time and Responsibility (advertised on its cover as “The Ideas Behind the World’s Slowest Computer”) still fresh in mind when encountering these … Continue reading →

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ZZZ

Posted on October 27, 2010 by Francois Lachance

I Anne Carson Ode to Sleep Decreation The poem describes sleep as a “slab of outlaw time punctuating every pillow”. II John Keats To Sleep O soft embalmer of the still midnight, […] Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,—         Save … Continue reading →

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Wine and Bread

Posted on October 26, 2010 by Francois Lachance

At first you have erotic flush, followed by lassitude but with a twist towards the celebration of the long-lived. A Decade When you came, you were like red wine      and honey, And the taste of you burnt my mouth      with … Continue reading →

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Syntactic Presumptions

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Francois Lachance

Keith Garebian in the introduction Wild Grass Moon Moon on Wild Grasses bemoans the limit-introducing limitations of the English language: It is difficult for English haiku to have kireji (cutting words), small but powerful linguistic units that indicate a pause … Continue reading →

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A Shiver of Memory

Posted on October 24, 2010 by Francois Lachance

Documenting a hole of personality. Sam Hamill The Infinite Moment: Poems from Ancient Greek No charm, all looks: she pleases but cannot hold — she floats like bait without the hook.        Kapitonos Centuries later another documenting of domestic doom. Paulette … Continue reading →

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Song and Scent

Posted on October 21, 2010 by Francois Lachance

I came upon this little booklet of verse and aphorisms at a book sale and its cover and place of publication intrigued me. Branches of Jasmine (which will grow and bloom on the West Coast) published in 1939 in Vancouver … Continue reading →

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Fish Man Air

Posted on October 20, 2010 by Francois Lachance

The opening two lines of “Ghost of a Chance” are set off in a stanza. You see a man trying to think. The poem urges the granting of breathing space but observes the old consolations will get him at last … Continue reading →

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Dog Gone Bow Wow

Posted on October 10, 2010 by Francois Lachance

Repetition of variants as means of construction. Rift on Riffaterre According to Michael Riffaterre, the poetic text is structured in such a way that it repeats many variants of the same invariant. This invariant is the semantic nucleus of the … Continue reading →

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