Vision in Poetry

It is a constant struggle to write from one’s vision
when there are so many people who oppose what one has to say.
It is a constant struggle to be true to one’s vision,
to be true to one’s self over a lifetime of writing.

It is a constant struggle
to be strong, strong in one’s vision,
not give up, not surrender, not lose one’s vision.
 
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I wrote the above on staying strong, not being deterred from one's poetic vision, after experiencing how pernicious this can be, when even people you thought were your friends end up not being friends at all...

At Cote des Neiges Cemetery, Montreal

I've walked in Cote des Neiges Cemetery many times, including winter when some roads were closed due to the snow. I know it seems "morbid" to some people--hanging out in cemeteries--but walking in cemeteries has always been very pleasant for me. Like many people, when in foreign cities, I visit museums and historical sites, but also cemeteries. It has to do with an interest in family history, but in Montreal cemeteries are also places with green spaces and the quiet of the country in the city. Increasingly, cemeteries are nature preserves. There is bird watching, walking, and even some biking through the cemetery. Most of all, there is a sense of history and a place of quiet that you rarely find elsewhere in the city.

Cote des Neiges is the traditionally Catholic cemetery in Montreal, owned by the Sulpician Order that once owned the Island of Montreal, and still owns Notre Dame Basilica in Old Montreal, the College de Montreal, and Le Grand Seminaire de Montreal just east of the corner of Sherbrooke Street West and Atwater. This is the cemetery for Montreal's French and Irish and now many others, new people who live here, who are a part of the multi-cultural aspect of the city that helps make it the interesting place that it is.

Lost, found, missing... (three)

St John the Divine, NYC

Two views of Griffintown, Montreal

Griffintown, once an Irish neighbourhood in Montreal, was rezoned for commercial and industrial use back in the early 1960s, and for the most part stopped being the close-knit ethnically Irish community that it had been for the previous hundred years or more. Now, Griffintown is the home of some of the most innovative high-tech companies in Canada. It was saved, perhaps only temporarily, from being re-developed, by the current recession. The plans that the city and private developers proposed were clearly on a scale that is not appropriate to Montreal and ignored the historical, business, and cultural development of Montreal by, in effect, moving the downtown core to this area. To some people it sounded wonderful, to me it sounded like a dog's breakfast of half-formed ideas that would not have served Griffintown or the city well. Griffintown is located between downtown Montreal and the St. Lawrence River, thus prime real estate. Some kind of development is inevitable, but it will have to be thought out much better than the proposal that was made for this area.

Lost, found, missing... (two)

Art at the Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Lost, found, missing... (one)

Probably because of the context of these photographs, they have a forlorn look to them. Family photographs become mug shots for the lost. Many of us know the archetype of being lost. I've been lost several times and wandered, perhaps in "circles" as they say, and it was a miserable experience. Here we have lost cats, dogs, people... how many are found? How many find new homes, or no home at all.

Sunday Morning at Alexis Nihon Plaza, downtown Montreal

The solarium at Alexis Nihon Plaza, Montreal (two), end of the day

"In the Shadow of War," by Carolyn Zonailo

Montreal West train station, fifty-four years later

The solarium at Alexis Nihon Plaza, Montreal (one), end of the day

Under the Ville Marie Expressway at Atwater