The Canadian Cottage Garden, end of July 2023

 

It is just as I wanted it to be. To sit in the garden, surrounded by flowers, and on a hot summer day to have insects, wild bees, and butterflies going from flower to flower, busy with their work of pollination and collecting pollen and nectar. 

Poets' Web Sites

www.stephenmorrissey.ca

Even fairly recently I was asked about the importance of poets having webs sites. A poet's site is a business card. A site won't make you famous and it probably won't sell your books, it probably won't get many visitors, but it will PR you to some extent. And you can make the site more interesting by adding content that would otherwise not reach a wider audience. You don't need a large audience for your site, but you need the right audience. A site will help you make connections and increase your involvement with other poets.

    People buy books online from companies like Amazon.com. I doubt many poet's sites actually sell any books. Some poets PR their latest books on their sites, but how effective is this for selling books? As someone said to me, "if a million spam E-mails can bring in a few hundred orders, you will need maybe a thousand visitors a day to your site to sell only a few books, if any." Sixty or seventy visitors a day to a poetry site is pretty good, but it won't sell books. Poetry isn't a big seller at the best of times and your site isn't likely to change this. 

    Until I'm proved wrong, I'll continue believing that poets' sites aren't an effective means to sell poetry books. Some poets have beautiful web sites, they are beautiful business cards but still worth the effort; maybe that online business card will put you into contact with someone who interests you or who is interested in your work, or that you are interested in. A poet's website is also a portal into a poet's work; either the beautiful business card model or a comprehensive portal to a poet's body of work, a poet's website might generate some interest in a poet's work but I doubt it will sell many books if that's what you want. Why does a poet's website not sell books? Because you are trying to sell something that has very limited or no interest to most people.

    This leaves a poet's site as both PR and educational outreach. What is effective, or interesting content, for a poet's site? My own feeling is that I want to put everything I've written regarding poetry online. Most of what we write reaches a small audience at best, so why not recycle this content onto our sites? The internet is a voracious publisher of content. I think of Allen Ginsberg's Deliberate Prose, Selected Essays 1952 - 1995 (New York, Perennial, 2000) as a model for what can be put online. Ginsberg's book is a collection of essays, short prose pieces, letters, odds and ends, and notes. Put some money aside in your will to keep your site online for as long as possible, sometimes a poet's work will become popular post mortem, but don't count on it.

    I recommend Bill Knott's blog which is apparently the complete Bill Knott body of work, or something approaching it. Artie Gold gave me Knott's Nights of Naomi (Plus 2 Songs) (The Barn Dream Press, Massachusetts, 1971) back in the mid-1970s. It wasn't until the 1990s that I found Knott's Other Strangers Than Our Own, Selected Love Poems. Now, online, you can find Bill Knott's body of work. Of course, Knott retains his copyright, but anyone can access the work online. He's even presented his work so it can be printed in book form. Good for Bill Knott!

Note written in July 2023: I found this 2008 post that I had taken offline, I don't remember why I took it offline. But now I see there is a comment (below) from Bill Knott, a poet whose work I like and respect. So, here it is, restored to the site. BTW, Artie gave me Bill Knott's book and then told me he was selling it to me, there you go. It was $5.00 and I'm glad I still have it. Thank you, Artie!

Bill Knott died on 12 March 2014.

The hidden trail

 The joy of being in nature.

Growing hostas

It is not that I like hostas that much but they grow in the shade and this is a fairly shaded garden, that's why I have so many hostas. I have always regretted the lack of full sunlight on this garden; in fact, I've spent a fair amount of time regretting the lack of sunlight on this garden but I've also come to accept it and even think it is perfect the way it is. 

Hostas are easy to grow, they don't need much care (or any care), or any sunlight.

A Canadian Cottage Garden, late July 2023

 

Hollyhocks at Loyola College

Photograph taken from the parking lot of what used to be Loyola College but is now part of Concordia University. For some reason, in recent years, these hollyhocks are cut down sometimes even before they bloom. This year they are a beautiful sight; sometimes I take seeds from these hollyhocks to grow them in my garden, but rarely with much success. Considering they are a fairly common flower, growing like weeds in this neighbourhood, I have little luck growing them. 

After the flood

 

After the flood

What some people dispute about climate change is whether it is caused by people or that it is a natural phenomenon. Whatever the cause we've had a climate roller coaster this summer. Forest fires, heat waves, and recently a downpour of rain here in Montreal so great that our infrastructure was not able to deal with it; in this part of our neighbourhood, many houses and apartment buildings had flooded basements. Right now the City is removing piles of wet garbage, broken gyprock, flooring, soaked furniture, papers, books, computers, microwaves, and just about anything else you can think of, all of it destroyed in flooded basements. I arrived home on the day of the rain ready to use a bucket and remove water from our basement, but it was a lost cause, the water poured in from a basement shower drain and toilet. I was not alone, for the following week, when driving on adjacent streets, there were huge piles of flood damaged stuff at the end of many driveways. As the week progressed the piles of wet garbage grew larger.

So, as I was throwing my papers from the last ten or so years into contractor bags, my soaking wet archives including letters, notebooks, manuscripts, and photographs, I wondered at how neat I had been, labeling every file folder, placing them in now soaking Bankers Boxes, and I thought what nonsense had propelled me into saving all of this stuff? But the fact is, the more I bagged the more relieved I felt, getting rid of this stuff, these many boxes of papers, now I wanted to get rid of them as quickly as possible not just because they were damaged and I wanted to get our home back to normal, but because I wanted to discard the mania of saving all of this stuff. And then the thought that I've been a fool, thinking this stuff had any value and that I could somehow defeat time by writing everything down, in diaries and poems and letters, and saving all of this junk. These papers would have been in my literary archives, the latest and possibly last accrual, but even these papers would have eventually ended up in the dust bin which is how the cosmos works, everything returns to nothing, and it does not favour permanency. I think of the Doukhobors who, finding one of there own has gone over to the side of materialism, no longer a "spirit wrestler", will burn down that person's big house and, they thought, restore the person to a spiritual sense of life. But, at the end, does any of it matters? We are all headed to nothing from the nothing we came from, leaving behind a few words, chalk on sidewalks, or a fragment of a poem, and even that is being optimistic, the rest is like Shelley's "Ozymandias". I am too old for this folly, or any folly for that matter. 

"Leisure" by William Henry Davies

Families at leisure on Fletcher's Field, now known as Parc
Jeanne-Mance, in the early 1900s

 

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs And stare as long as sheep or cows. No time to see, when woods we pass, Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass. No time to see, in broad daylight, Streams full of stars, like skies at night. No time to turn at Beauty's glance, And watch her feet, how they can dance. No time to wait till her mouth can Enrich that smile her eyes began. A poor life this if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare.

"Being For The Benefit Of Mr.Kite" by Lennon and McCartney

 

For the benefit of Mr. Kite
There will be a show tonight on trampoline
The Hendersons will all be there
Late of Pablo Fanques Fair - what a scene
Over men and horses hoops and garters
Lastly through a hogshead of real fire!
In this way Mr. K. will challenge the world!

The celebrated Mr. K.
Performs his feat on Saturday at Bishops Gate
The Hendersons will dance and sing
As Mr. Kite flies through the ring don't be late
Messrs. K. and H. assure the public
Their production will be second to none
And of course Henry The Horse dances the waltz!

The band begins at ten to six
When Mr. K. performs his tricks without a sound
And Mr. H. will demonstrate
Ten summersets he'll undertake on solid ground
Having been some days in preparation
A splendid time is guaranteed for all
And tonight Mr. Kite is topping the bill

Note: From Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) by the Beatles. I loved this album, from it I got the idea of a thematically themed book of poems; the album is all of a piece, not just whatever The Beatles had written and assembled in one album, but a whole album conceived as a single thematically piece of art/music. It is still considered the greatest popular album of all time. When I was in high school I'd go home at lunch time and listen to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. It's still great music and "Being for the Benefit" works as both song lyrics and poetry.