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There are still copies, of course, of Levy's above/ground press title To Assemble an Absence (2024). Check out Levy's full bio (a new book forthcoming, by the way), a hefty "Judge's Citation" by Zapruder and a few Levy poems over at the Poetry Society of America link. Or, as Zapruder writes:It’s a lucky joy to stumble across a poet and fall in love with their work. What a gift. When it happens, I always want to reach out and tell all my poet friends the good news. Look at all these new (to us) poems we get to read! When a student of mine, the poet Robyn Schelenz, sent me a few of John Levy’s poems, I found them to be so direct and open, honest, precise, generous, funny, kind, and for lack of a better word, natural, that I could not wait to read more, and to tell everyone I knew about them. It felt to me like what I am always searching for, often desperately, in poetry: the language totally unforced, but also casually precise and alive, as if some kind of precious thinking is happening right in front of me. Reading Levy’s poems felt, yes, a bit like coming across someone who had read and maybe even known the poets of the New York School, and who had absorbed their intelligence and joy and liberated way of moving around a poem, but without their sometimes exhaustingly arch knowingness. There is a youthful innocence to Levy’s poems, the kind of innocence you only truly achieve when you have been around a while, and know that as Rilke said, the way to be a poet is to act like it’s the first time not just you, but anyone, has seen anything. I think of what the (then young) Dylan sang: I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. Combined with the dismayed comedy and genuine sorrow of a person who has had the privilege and misfortune to reside a while on earth, the poems feel like they are truly wise. I wonder if he, like me, also loves the philosopher poets of Eastern and Central Europe, and the attentive naturalists of the Tang. But other than all the poets and others he mentions in his poems, I actually have no idea really what John Levy reads or loves. I just know his poems bring me aforementioned joy, so rare these days. I am so grateful I was asked to judge this important prize from the Poetry Society, honoring a mid-career poet, whatever that is. As far as I am concerned, John Levy, whom I have never met, is one, for he must have been there for quite a while without me knowing, and he sure seems like he still has a lot to say. I am so happy I get to share his work with you all. I hope, and suspect, that you will get as much pleasure out of John Levy’s poetry as I do.
Tom Sandborn was good enough to provide the first review of Vancouver poet George Stanley's Love Is Not an Algorithm (2020) over at the Vancouver Sun. Thanks so much! And of course, you can see the full article here.
Do you love lively language and rigorous thought? Try long-time Vancouver poet George Stanley, a too-little-known writer who can be a delightful discovery
Love is Not an Algorithm
By George Stanley, Above/Ground Press (Ottawa, 2020)
$5 | 24pp.
George Stanley is one of Vancouver’s best-kept secrets.
For anyone who loves shapely language and rigorous thought, this too-little-known writer can be a delightful discovery. Stanley, an Irish-American poet from San Francisco, has been living and writing in B.C. since 1971, and much of his remarkable poetry reflects his Canadian experiences.
He writes in “Montmartre” that “I started out in Montmartre/in the bars and cafes. I drank/With Manet and Baudelaire/Now I drink at the Fringe Café/on West Broadway, in Vancouver. I’m one of the ‘regulars’.”
And he has indeed been a regular in the world of poetry for most of his adult life, and certainly all of his time in Canada, publishing collections, chapbooks and stand-alone poems. (Full disclosure: I have known Stanley since he arrived in Vancouver in the ’70s. I have also reviewed earlier volumes of his poetry, including a review in 2018 of Some End/West Broadway.)
Despite creating an impressive body of work over his Canadian decades, Stanley has never achieved the commercial success or notoriety that can come, even in these post-poetry years, to more emotionally and intellectually accessible writers, either in his home country or here in Canada.
Because Stanley seems to have read and digested almost everything ever published, his work is intellectually dense; and yet his keen-eyed observations of the fine grain particulars of his city and his mind invite the reader in and reward careful attention. His book-length Vancouver: A Poem (2008) and his jointly authored (with George Bowering in 2018) Some End/West Broadway are both master classes in poetic observation, reflection and distillation. A George Stanley poem can deliver the potent kick and long lasting after-pleasure of a glass of single-malt scotch.
While Stanley is not likely to ever be a mass-market poet, he has been recognized by the Poetry Society of America with that body’s Shelley Award in 2006, and in 2011
The Capilano Review devoted an entire issue to printing both his original work and poems and essays of appreciation from many powerful voices within the world of current poetry. Clearly, he is a poet’s poet.
But don’t let that scare you off. Love is Not an Algorithm will reward any careful reader with its lyrical reflections on love, desire, the beautiful, the mind and the city.
Highly recommended.
Thanks to The League of Canadian Poets' "poetry pause" series for helping celebrate twenty-seven years of above/ground press! The series allowed me to curate ten authors for recent slots, all of whom are Canadian (and/or Canadian-based) authors with 2020 above/ground press publications. Most of the poems included in the series are reprinted from their collections, but a few even provided new poems! Here are the authors' names, with the links to their "poetry pause" poems: Dani Spinosa, George Stanley, Khashayar Mohammadi, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Sarah Burgoyne, Lance La Rocque, J.R. Carpenter, Leesa Dean, Razielle Aigen and Dale Tracy. Can you believe we're twenty-seven years deep? What might the rest of the year bring? We are so close to thirty!
Love Is Not an Algorithm
George Stanley
$5
West Broadway
Foreshortened the street
in my damaged eye
the crowd seems pressing
closer & faster.
In the eyes, mouths,
faces coming nearer
my good eye recognizes
what we all know.
Yet every eye in its personal dark
looks off in a different direction
out of space into time
realms of light or deeper darkness.
With eyes lowered, we pass each other.
A guy on a bike comes up from behind,
passes me, soundless.
Oh, I am one of you.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
A native of San Francisco, George Stanley has lived in BC since 1971, and has published ten books of poetry, including Vancouver: A Poem, After Desire, North of California St., and West Broadway (with George Bowering’s Some End) all from Vancouver's New Star Books.
To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com
