The weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful

It's time to boast a little. I've had possibly the best poetry two weeks I can imagine:

I gave my reading at the Attic Owl, which was a success. Everyone was very receptive and entertained, I think, even though I may have read a little too long. Even two professors from the university came and enjoyed themselves.

I met Linda in New York, where we went to the AWP bookfair and met with friends. I got a lot of good information from journals and got to see some Bucknellians after too long a delay. Most importantly, I got to see Linda.

I finished the second cantica of Evangeline.

While in New York, I received an email from the co-director of the Northrop Frye festival, which is the biggest literary event in Atlantic Canada. He invited me to do two readings and a school visit, for which I will be paid.

I received another email there from The Louisiana Review, who will be publishing two poems of mine ("Feu-Follet" and "Searching for the Grave of Walt Whitman") this spring.

Linda and I returned to Moncton where I received a message from Ken McClane. I was cooking a Cajun feast and could not answer the phone. Mr. McClane is on the creative writing faculty at Cornell University and called to notify me that I was accepted as 1 of 4 poets in the MFA program with full funding (tuition and stipend) and a two year lectureship after I graduate. Cornell is the most selective school in the country and consistently ranks at the top of the list for every criterion. There is almost no way that Linda and I won't be moving to Ithaca right after the wedding.

This will make this semester travel more quickly Thank God. I will visit Ithaca in three weeks. Then I will see Linda in New Orleans right before Holy Week. After Easter, I'll have less than a month in Canada. This leaves me with little time to finish the rest of Evangeline, but that's fine. I probably need a little more distance from Moncton to really write about it, as I did with New Orleans, Chauvin, and America.

Nothing's Going to Change My World

It's been over one week since I've been in New Orleans. Today, for instance, I trekked over a mile across snow in my jungle combat boots to the university. I now live Downtown, with a new address, which I'll happily give to anyone willing to pay postage for communication.

Mostly what I do is look at my watch, which has two beautiful timezones on it. It keeps me steadfast. I know that no matter what I do here, it will be a form of waiting. Winter, I've heard, is long in the northern lands. You've ruined me, Wallace Stevens.

I am an artist here. Specifically an American artist in Canada. A Cajun artist in Acadie. But what I really am is an imposter. An artist in artifice. I am not a cultural martyr. And although this project is for making a link between these two cultures, their burden will not be my yoke.

I am saying this as I come to a close on my second sequence within Evangeline, which is the great journey North. I have three or four poems left to it, maybe eight or nine pages, depending on my stamina. Again, Stevens, o picture of the poet as a virile youth. You might as well hang me for redundancy.

In any case, I have a reading in Moncton on the 24th. A week later, I will be in New York, preparing for Lent.

You say you want a revolution?

The last I posted, if I recall, was about a hurricane, a storm, barrelling through Moncton, barrelling through my life, my work. And now, I am writing this on borrowed time in New Orleans. Don't worry: I will be back on my tour of duty later this week. It is probably forty to sixty degrees colder in Moncton right now than it is here. I would bet.

I honestly don't know what to say since I've last written. The last few months have given new meaning to the idea ruin value, at least for me. The idea of beautiful dissembling, the shards of a former reality shown to be nothing but dissimulations, just gaudy façades of a former, more idealistic era. I, of course, finished the first third of Evangeline. Now I write about the great exile North, a voluntary sequestering, a minor conquest, a minor treasure. I will begin the deconstruction of Acadie soon.

As far as travel goes, maybe I've lost myself in it. The idea of home doesn't quite exist the same way in French as it does in English. There is no direct translation with the nuance and aplomb of home. With the variegated images, the smell of vanilla, the warmth of flesh on flesh. Right now, it's as if I want to echo Duras's screenplay: ELLE: J'ai tout vu à Hiroshima. LUI: Non, tu n'as rien vu. I don't know anything.

Perhaps this is what le Grand Dérangement means afterall: the loss of knowledge, the annihilation of all the former myths you told about yourself, the endless and endless waiting for the next thing to define you, give you shelter, give you repose, devastate you. This will be the title for my second sequence in Evangeline, the part about driving to Canada: Le Grand Dérangement, the great upheaval, the great moving, the diaspora, the exile. You see, the difference in my telling is that the threat of exile is never from without, but from the self, the oblivion of the love relationship, and the comfort in thinking you know what the right thing to do is. The threat is volition.

If this is not indication enough, let me be clear: I am back in action.

Hurricane in Canada

You may never believe it, but this last weekend, a hurricane--or at least a tropical storm--passed over my apartment in Moncton. It was very cold. The wind howled all night. Even when the sun was out did the wind howl.
Now, it is still windy. It rained a bit today. I am unsure if it will ever be sunny again.

In other news, this is difficult. I've finished my first cantica of Evangeline. 33 poems. I am more or less alone all the time. I've met the literary community here. Something is strong missing. My parents will be here in 8 days. Linda in 12. My time.

Evangeline, virgin and martyr

There is an Acadian essay that begins with the sentence, Evangéline porte mal la mini-jupe (Evangeline wears a miniskirt poorly). She is the essence of holiness, you see, sanctified, what one would want the Acadians to be. The chosen people. Evangeline's white face is untouchable in the same way a magnolia bud is untouchable. You wouldn't want it to darken, be stained with the grime on your hands, the very filth of your skin-oil.

In Longfellow's poem, he shows the Acadians to be martyrs. All you Greek scholars will know that μαρτυρ or μαρτυρος does not mean to be persecuted, but to give witness. I wonder what the Acadians give witness to? What does Evangeline give witness to? Note this passage in the French translation:

Parfois elle venait, se croyant sans témoin,
Faible et lasse, s'asseoir au fond d'un cimitière.

(Sometimes she came, considering herself without witness,
weak and weary, to sit on the graveyard floor. [my translation])

This sentiment is not exactly the same in the original, which is:

Sometimes in the churchyards strayed, and gazed on the crosses and tombstones.

This admittedly is not Longfellow's finest verse. The difference is striking because the French version, which essentially brought about the renaissance acadienne in the 19th century, portrays Evangeline in despair. She is in despair because she looks only toward the past.

But it makes fine poetry, doesn't it, looking toward the past? This is the nostalgia of art, the regression I spoke of, passéisme. What else can we do in art?

I propose to force Evangeline into a miniskirt. I don't hide the fact that my poems are not about making anyone chaste. Maybe decadence is the only way to treat art. The realists sullied the delicious curves of Ingres. The impressionists distorted even these raw images. The modernists fragmented what was impressionistic. We've reached a point where it seems all art has been made or written. This is not true.

There will always be depravity and sentimentality. This is my currency. Art and literature has become too safe once again, obsessed with its own irony, its own cleverness. I deal only in the marginalia of relationships, torn papers kept to remember that lovers were once together, sexual awakening, liminality, the presence of the divine not trapped but freed in the confines of dirt and flesh. And so this is my Evangeline--a symbol of dolorous and ecstatic and shameful love, the passéisme of love. That is my μαρτυρια, my witness.

Art as Everydayness

I know I haven't posted in awhile, but I trust you understand the way time gets away from a person writing fulltime. The last two weeks have been extremely prolific. I have written poems and have almost reached the forty page mark on my novel. Linda has come and gone, bringing with her a respite and passion that is refreshing and sorely missed now that I am here alone with my creation and hermitude.

Acadian culture still swirls about me. My traveling poem sequence will now follow a reverse of Evangeline, whereas the narrator ends not in the Acadie Tropical of Louisiana, but in the Acadian homeland, more alone than ever with history contrasting with his newfound solitude. Then I will tackle the contes populaire.

I have seen a production of Don Juan, staged by Atlantic Ballet Company, with Linda and Frank, le Garçon Boucher, an adaptation of Francis McCabe's The Butcher Boy. Here, there is modern theatre with all its hysterics, surreality, and comedy. It is new art, being produced regularly by locals.

I will have something more theoretical to state later. I've been in such a rush to write everything down that there is little left for exegesis.

The Beginning of Autumn

After my last post, all I've done is write. I go to ethnology classes. I go to events, if I can. I pick Brady up from work. I watch French television and movies dubbed in French. I live a life I'd wanted to live.

Now I mostly live a life on page. There isn't much to say, really. Ernest Hemingway said a writer should never speak too much, he should save it for the paper. Well, I am writing here, but I am also apologizing, explaining, bringing on the bright lights upon a private shameful act: that of creation. It is not nearly as interesting as you might think.

I've written more poems. I've even started a novel--I've fallen in love with the characters. I write with a dip pen: I like the scratching it makes on the page. I like the way the air changes in autumn--I am in my prime. The trees are like fireworks. Life never ceases to surprise me.

As far as place, I am in the right one. I spoke at length with the directeur d'études françaises yesterday. He showed me different outlets for my poems and translations of my poems. We discussed our uncanny cultures. He will be attending a colloquium about the Cajun/Acadian diaspora in Austria. I didn't realize the Austrians were so concerned with American Francophone culture.

This post is more record keeping than anything. Just a friendly reminder that I am still in the game. Scroll down for something meaningful.