Blog - December 2009

The apologetic Canadian

26 December, 2009

Mitch Miyagawa has an interesting piece in the December 2009 issue of The Walrus on Canada's proclivity for apology.  As is often the case with magazines, we are enticed with a title ("Please Forgive Us: why Canadians apologize") that is simultaneously provocative and enticingly inaccurate. 

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Night Lights

4 December, 2009

I’m riding a crowded shuttle bus from the airport into Victoria. It’s dark and I zone out, knowing my place down by the water will be one of the last stops. Down the highway, into town, back and forth from hotel to hotel, the world is a blinking, bouncing sideshow. All smiles, the driver jumps at every stop to help with the bags.

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The Anthologist

2 December, 2009

Have you read the new novel by Nicholson Baker? I highly recommend it to poets, failed poets, would-be poets, readers of poetry (are there any of those who aren’t in the first three categories I listed?) and lovers of rhyme and wordplay. Nicholson has a riotous time within his character of Paul Chowder, a mid-level poet who is anguishing over an Introduction he has agreed to write for an anthology of rhyme. From the very direct first phrase (“Hello, this is Paul Chowder…”), Baker creates with hilarious effect the simultaneously brilliant and befuddled character.

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