new from above/ground press: Poem beginning with a line by Pinder by rob mclennan

Poem beginning with a line by Pinder

rob mclennan

$3

1.

This is how a skein of ghosts appears in your inbox,

seawater spills, memory lines              lie still, sleep well,

float above the silence,

someone born and not yet

far too easy to get lost; upon this earth,

we singe and shrivel                verbal, alchemist

a bleeding sun, we absent-minded

sway like ink spots, tarnished; several times,

surrounding fidgets, green; mute,        if we could manage,

for the little sake,        your quick face, sharks

the creeping revelations, cloud                        and cluster,

forms of warmth, calendar-belief,

take; a moment to respond,

published in Ottawa by above/ground press

December 2012

a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

The italicized lines are borrowed from Toronto writer Sarah Pinder [her self-portrait above]’s chapbook, Obsolete Objects in the Literary Imagination (Toronto ON: bits of string, 2011), obviously owing a subsequent debt as well to Robert Duncan’s “A Poem Beginning with a Line by Pindar” (1958).

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections Songs for little sleep, (obvious epiphanies press, 2012), grief notes: (BlazeVOX [books], 2012), A (short) history of l. (BuschekBooks, 2011), Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011) and kate street (Moira, 2011), and a second novel, missing persons (2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review (www.ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (www.ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (www.ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com