WINDOW FISHING: The night we caught Beatlemania

Hi Tai, John B. & all the other contributors to WINDOW FISHING  : )
 
What a gorgeous book! I opened the package under the full moon by the Crowe River less than an hour ago. I started thumbing thru, & LOVE ME DO popped into my head. It's still there, altho a crazy juke box of other Beatles' songs keeps chorusing as well.

The life I've lived wouldn't have been the same, not half as full, without the Beatles. One of the first postings I did on my blog was about George Harrison. For over a decade George, & his mentor, A. C. Bhaktivedanta, have been my personal spirit guides. Yeah, crazy shite! The Beatles sang us out of the doom and gloom of the 1950s & early 60s to give us a glimpse of what human beings could make of life on planet earth. Bodhisattvas all  (yeah, yeah, yeah)!

peace & poetry power!
Chris




Window Fishing: the night we caught Beatlemania (2nd edition), edited by John B. Lee, Hidden Brook Press, 193 pages, 2014. $19.95

my contribution:

Chapter 3 - The Day We  (Sort Of)  Met George Harrison

It was late summer.  A bunch of L'Auberge regulars decided to take a Sunday trek to see George Harrison, who was rumoured to be living in a little village named Esher.  We hopped on the double-decker bus in Richmond, and after an hour or so of riding we arrived in Esher.  The ten of us were a scraggly lot, all would-be hippies trying to grow our hair long, the girls dressed in shawls and long skirts and granny boots.

Our goals were the standard ones in 1969 - California Jon, Canadian Peter and a couple of other guitarists had made a tape, and wanted Harrison's opinion of it.  I had a copy of my just printed haiku chapbook, Cricket Formations, and I hoped to get up enough nerve to present my poems to my idol.  And of course we all wanted to meet a real live Beatle!

Harrison was my favourite Beatle, largely because he was the one closest to me in physical appearance, with his craggy face and dark hair.  I had modelled my haircut and clothes on Harrison for some time.  I also thought he was the most interesting Beatle because of his enthusiasm for Eastern mysticism.

Someone had gotten good directions, for we actually found Harrison's house without a lot of trouble.  Located in a very staid, upper-middle-class suburban neighbourhood, the house stood out like a psychedelic advertisement.  A high fence bordered the large lot, and the house was painted a myriad of colours, like something out of the movie Yellow Submarine.  We were all entranced to be setting foot in a sacred preserve of Beatledom, and after knocking on the door and receiving no answer, we boldly began surveying the premises.

"MICK & MARIANNE WUZ HERE!" was spray painted on the front wall, and this further consecrated the property.  Our rock heroes actually lived here, visited with each other, slept together, and had probably done these wild paintings on acid trips like our own.  We were all strengthened in our faith as true believers in hippiedom.

Some of the group camped by the front door, and the guitar payers started scratching on their ubiquitous instruments.  I wandered around, and found a pair of George's jeans hanging on a clothesline.  For a fleeting moment I was tempted to steal them, to see if my hero's jeans would fit.

                          Manicured lawn
                          would-be hippies wait
                          for a Beatle
 

A touch of the Beatles' famous ironic humour was present in a large wooden cross leaning against the back fence.  I even had the nerve to peek in the draped windows.  On the window ledge of one room was a collection of seashells.  Miracle of miracles - there was even an apple tree - how appropriate for the founders of Apple records.  If there was a heaven on earth, this was it for Beatle fans.

                        Seashell    lined window
                        apples rotting in the yard
                        suburban fences
 

I rejoined the group on the front lawn, and soon a mini-car came scooting up the drive, quickly followed by a luxury sedan.  The driver of the mini got out, and a not-very-pleased looking George Martin confronted us.  He wanted to know what we were doing, and while we all sat there stunned, George and Patti Harrison disembarked from the sedan.  George wasn't really very prepossesing at all, but Patti was a vision of beauty, a psychedelic queen who smiled on us and calmed down the two very aggravated Georges.  She knew that we were harmless fans come to honour Beatledom, and while she smiled her guileless smile, we felt like we were in the presence of a divine goddess from another reality.  Canadian Peter recovered first, and awkwardly handed George Harrison the tape, mumbling something.  I followed suit, even more awkwardly giving George my thin booklet, and saying I hoped he would enjoy it.

An invitation inside was not forthcoming, although I believe Patti wanted to ask us all in.  We were all so enthralled at meeting George and Patti, awkward as all involved had been, that we decamped and blissfully headed back in the dusk for the bus to Richmond.

Several weeks later, a few members of the entourage went back to pick up the tape.  Apparently a record contract wasn't immediately offered, but Canadian Peter did have some good news for me. " George Harrison told me to tell you that he really liked your poetry."  I was thrilled, even though I now realised that Harrison was a mere, awkward mortal, and I was no longer in his thrall.  As a postscript, I note that George Harrison's first solo album, All Things Must Pass, had the lyrics printed on the sleeve like poems. I like to fantasize that maybe my booklet had some subtle influence, but that's wild hope and speculation ...


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Oct. 14/14:

Dear Tai:  I can't thank you enough for the wonderful words.  I will treasure this message.
Hopefully I can recreate the reading this Thursday when John B. and Bunny and I will be part of Cafe Cuba's "John Lennon in Havana" at Ellington's.
Appreciatively
Honey

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From: writers@hiddenbrookpress.com
To: zenriver@sympatico.ca; Subject: RE: Love Me Do!: congrats to all on Beatles tribute WINDOW FISHING (2nd ed.)
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 22:55:28 -0400

thanks chris for your words about Window Fishing – The night we caught Beatlemania – 2nd edition

john B. lee did a great job as editor of this book. we will keep you posted on future readings for the book. along with other fabulous pieces, give special attention to Honey Novick’s piece. it is one of my personal favorites. she did a great reading of it at the Stellar Lit Fest in the summer

all the best

tai

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after reading SISTERS IN THE WILDERNESS

after reading SISTERS IN THE WILDERNESS


wild ghosts fly above Hastings County
Susanna and Catharine morph into Margaret Atwood
scraggly hair wind whipping more airborne sparks
than the roaring fire Milt & I are tending on Big Al's point

Robertson Davies is in the A-frame shithouse
scrawling the walls while Big Al is drunk
& studiously pissing on Maggie A's tires

Margaret Laurence is also drunk while
Milt & I try to flirt with a strange curly haired girl
floating by in an ancient canoe
(note: it's hard to flirt when you're invisible)
and some incarnate folk resent the hell
out of being poked & prodded at by unseen
but verrry friendly hands

a giant shaman owl carries me over
the aqueous eye of the Bay of Quinte
below Susanna's angel stretches skyward
her clutched star an homage to the wild literary offspring
she has begat

yes, we love roughing it in her bush
fire bright  faces shine from Gore's Landing
to Lakefield ... Ameliasburgh to Marmora
those mushrooms Al and Eurithe picked
      what colour were they????


Chris Faiers

first draft October 6/14


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Oct. 6/14 from Jim Larwill:

.....  don't get me started on Susanna Fucking Moodie... Roughing it in the Bush... it is one of the most skillful pieces of political propaganda (in the vein of Edmond Burke's hatchet job on the Dr. Rev. Price) ever.

... I mean I like it as a wonderful example of propaganda hiding an ethnic cleansing encouraging the victors of 1837 to come and not Rough it in the Bush, but to settle the farms of the "Canadian Yankees" who have been cleansed... brilliant re-writing of history where revolutionaries become drunkards and with a letter by Susanna to a benevolent governor that is a historical erasure of somebody's else's wife on her knees delivering a petition with a huge percentage of a colonies residents asking for leniency before a hanging... take a look at your foot Chris....

and yes it is true  "Roughing it in the Bush" in many ways is the beginnings of Canadian Literature as we know it....

but not mine...

Jim  aka RK


Chris's note: Jim Larwill is referring to the tattoo on my left foot of THE UNFINISHED MONUMENT in the Toronto Necropolis - which is a memorial to Sam Lount & Peter Matthews, two of the patriots who fought against the family compact & British Imperial rule in our Rebellion of 1837.


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very late Oct. 6 reply:

Hey Jim,
Yeah, Susanna sucked up real good to get her useless Brit hubby hired as the sherriffe of Bville. I've added your comment, & the explanation of the reference to my foot, to the posting. The Strickland sisters & their hubs started off as real upperclass imperial Brit snobs, but they got the stuffing knocked out of them with their incompetent pioneering disasters. Charlotte Gray goes into this in the book - have you read it? - great read & she sure makes history come alive. When I first started SISTERS  I warned her in an email that I was unlikely to be happy with her interpretation of the Rebellion of 1837 & Susanna's family's cashing in on their participation on the wrong side of a progressive people's uprising.

gotta take Chase on his late night poopifying ... thanks for giving the accurate historical reminder

peace & poetry power!
Chris ... & Chase Wrfffffffffffffffffffffffff!

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On 2014-10-07, at 12:21 AM, Jim Larwill wrote:


to quote John Moodie in a letter to Susanna 24 April 1839  "... the population which is very much disaffected but the worst are clearing out as fast as they can get rid of their farms. Now is the time particularly if there should be war, to get farms cheap here as all the Radical Republicans will leave the colony."

.. the difference in Quebec is... we remember...

If the thesis of S. Moodie's book is "don't come and rough it, buy an existing farm" it is a hidden clue to how many farms may have been cleared out and made available... would a book be published in England if there weren't a lot of them?  I believe one could find out by researching the population increases in certain parts of the US.  There will not be records here.

rk
 
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On 2014-10-07, at 6:35 PM, Gray Charlotte wrote:

Love the poem (Pauline in the canoe, right?) and the dissident views!

Charlotte Gray

183 MacKay Street
Ottawa ON K1M 2B5
grayand@me.com
www.charlottegray.ca


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Hi Charlotte,
Glad you like the poem! I wasn't too sure just what I'd written late last night (well, transcribed for the Muse of chiraz) when I woke up this morning. Yep, Pauline was a'paddling through the vision. I heard Atwood speak in TO at a fund raiser for the A-frame, where she told the anecdote about Al peeing on her tires. And Jim Larwill can usually be trusted to offer an interesting perspective (although that contribution might have been influenced by his alter ego, Wilber Walnut).
Thanks for the note ; )
Chris ... & Chase Wrffffffffffffffffffffffffffff!
 
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On 2014-10-10, at 5:02 PM, Ed Baker wrote:

Ed Baker has left a new comment on your post "after reading SISTERS IN THE WILDERNESS":

"Al peeing on her tires"

now THAT's a worthy historical
applesauce

no matter what the facts have become or
never were ?

  Posted by Ed Baker to Riffs & Ripples from ZenRiver Gardens at 10 October 2014 14:02

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Them's the facts, folks! I heard it from Maggie A herself at a Harbourfront benefit for the A-frame.
Still pretty representative of the state of CanPo I'd say  ;  )
Chris

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Snow (Anna Yin elegy for her sister, ZhiHong)

5-7-5 zombies (and other petty haiku annoyances)

I was listening to CBC radio the other evening when a young poet-about-Toronto was interviewed on the haiku slams he organizes. GOOD GOD! The idea of a haiku poetry slam is bad enough, but these events feature that old zombie, the 5-7-5. I thought the haiku community had laid these to rest when I started publishing haiku in the mid-1960s. 

Yeah, the world's going to hell in a hand basket as usual, & ranting about petty annoyances in the haiku world is small potatoes, but hey, this is one of the joys of having a blog - I can rant about petty bullshit from time to time instead of saving the world with my poetry  ;  )

Annoyance #2: a 'haijin' of some renown recently contacted me about completing the rengay project he had requested from me five years earlier. I had let our collaboration lapse, as this self-important poet chose to edit my contribution - without first asking my permission - and I've been publishing this stuff for a decade longer than he has. 

Well, I thought why not give it another go ... so we resumed our collaboration. My first new haiku met with the master's approval, although I did let him know that I didn't want my haiku tampered with in the accompanying email.

Finally, it was up to me to send my final contribution. FUCK! - the master rejected it because I repeated the word yellow in my 2-line verse. I don't know where this dude digs up these arcane rules, but it looks like our "collaboration" will be on hiatus for another five years ...

Annoyance #3: all those silly haiku contests, and the haijin who place endless lists of their contest successes in their literary bios. argggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh


Chris the chirping cricket 


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Conrad DiDiodato has left a new comment on your post "5-7-5 zombies (and other petty haiku annoyances)":

Hey Chris

right on! When something's getting popular you know it's getting bad. Real haiku--and sometimes even a straight horizontal line across the page is real haiku--actually requires years of careful observation and practice. It also helps to know a little Japanese, too. Rules of 'rengay' also require fairly sophisticated degree of attention to style and content.

Again, I say: things that look too deceptively will spawn tribes of 5-7-5 zombies. Thanks for keeping it real, Chris



Posted by Conrad DiDiodato to Riffs & Ripples from ZenRiver Gardens at 4 October 2014 06:47

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Hand Painted on a Cave Wall: S. J. White

It is the hand chosen
for its aim with spear
its skill with flint
its touch with feather
and said of the father
of all our fathers:
after our lost and gone
under an old moon
in a morrow's time
this will be our sign,
       and they
not seeing, not knowing
will say of us ... why?


S. J. White

from Oddities: A Swansong of Late Poetry, S. J. White, chapbook, 2014


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Hi Stan,
Many thanks for your ODDITIES collection. I retrieved it from under a stack
of unanswered letters & unpaid bills & took it with me to enjoy at ZenRiver
Gardens this aft. This is the 'shaman shack' test - and of course your poems
passed with flying colours. (The books which don't get flying colour status
go flying anyway -  into the middle of the Upper Moira River.)

I've found your poetry very reflexive, at least on my part. It sticks with
me for ages, until I finally get it & then I can't get the images out of my
head  ;  ) The several poems you wrote about visiting ZRG still resonate
with me, many years later. I'm sure these newer poems will do the same!

My favourites on this initial delving include "Local Mall", "A Girl Thing",
and "Hand, Painted on a Cave Wall".

Thanks again for sending this - many more enjoyable times with it
anticipated on the shaman shack deck this fall.

peace & poetry power!
Chris ... & Chase   Wrfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff!

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Thanks for the many kind words, Chris. I am glad you are enjoying the book,
though had the poems not passed muster, I would have been happy at the
thought of them floating down the upper Moira river and clogging up water
systems...rare that poetry has a practical use.

Regards to Chase, stay well,

Stan.

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On 2014-09-08, at 9:29 AM, Don Gordon wrote:

You have caught our moment in time however elusive that is,
seasonal nostalgia, ghost of all our appearances on the autumn stage.
The hand most poignantly speaks to me of cave rock mysteries.

Katherine L. Gordon, in the Eramosa valley where spirits of first walkers
to this river remain



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