Life on earth could thrive. Life on earth could soar. Right now things seem stuck. What holds us down? What keeps us from a higher living? I’ve offered a couple suggestions. What flags would you put on those mooring lines?
Author: David Barker
Why I am not a Progressive Christian
The title of this post is tongue-in-cheek, of course, with a tip of the hat to Bertrand Russell’s 1927 lecture “Why I am not a Christian.” I don’t intend my own reflection here as an argument for or against a position; instead, I intend it to elicit a curious (and accidental) lesson from Russell, a lesson which is lost on most proponents of Progressive Christianity.
Principles of Literary Criticism, by I. A. Richards
There is nothing worse than a glib thirty-year-old academic who has absolute confidence in the possibility of certainty. Reading Ivor Richards’ Principles of Literary Criticism, I was seized every five pages by an impulse to hurl the book at the wall.
A Poem For Christmas
I journeyed to the temple,a pilgrim borne on the wingsof a promise that I live better.I did, I did, oh I did.Face pressed almost to the floor,I rooted out every last coin,snuffling into the corner, kneesworn, but blessed with my reward:a two-for-one on tube socksheaped like fishes in a discount binfor the credulous multitudes. John…
Ten Storey Love Song, by Richard Milward
I was first attracted to Ten Storey Love Song because it began on the cover and continued to the end as a single 286 page paragraph – a quiet challenge to our assumption of what a book should look and read like.
Poem: The Dead Zone
My thing is not your thing;your thing is not my thing.Particulate things enclosed in force fields,bouncing off each other and brick walls,marbles flung from a sling shot. Talking through string between tincans, graduating to Morsecode on flashes of light betweenbedroom windows, semaphores,made-up codes, rudimentaryencryption. Now everyone’s talk is coded.The keys have gone missing: an aphasic blare,…
Toronto the Whore and Michael Redhill’s Consolation
There was a time when fiction writers from Toronto were self-conscious about setting their stories in Toronto. Our city was too provincial to be real. It was urban enough, but had no credibility. It was still too close to its parochial roots.
Nobel Peace Prize Awarded to Literary Critic
The Associated Press reports that earlier today, the Nobel Committee awarded the 2010 Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo in absentia. The last time this award was bestowed in absentia was 1936 when Hitler prevented Carl von Ossietzky from traveling to Oslo. No doubt China is smarting at the nasty association with Nazi Germany.
Particularity in Jeff Latosik’s Tiny, Frantic, Stronger
I have volumes of poetry that once belonged to my grandfather and which had belonged to his aunt before him. Some are more than 100 years old, mostly falling apart, with fake gilt lettering on the spines – Coleridge, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Longfellow. Back then, the rules for poetry went like this.
The Future of Books (according to Philip K. Dick)
Sitting at the breakfast table this morning, coffee in one hand, e-reader in the other, I discovered a passage about books in Philip K. Dick’s Do Android’s Dream of Electric Sheep, his 1968 sci-fi novel which served as the inspiration for Ridley Scott’s film, Blade Runner.
3 blogging blunders – plus one more for good measure
Every now and then, you read a blog post that pisses you off. What makes the piss-off quotient worse is that everybody else thinks the post is wonderful. You start to doubt your opinion. More than that, you start to doubt your hold on reality.
Haiku in honour of novel-writing (and NaNoWriMo)
Insight for needlesVoodoo dolls for charactersNovels for revenge I offer this haiku, remembering how, as a teenager, I fought with a friend who refused to see things my way. My view was obviously right, and his refusal was just him being mulish. Since I couldn’t budge him, I opted for the next best thing: I…
Peter Nap: J.M. Barrie’s Forgotten Sequel
NaNoWriMo Research pt 2 – The Loved One, by Evelyn Waugh
As of today, I’ve completed 48,000 of the 50,000 words required to “win” NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month. It looks like my novel will be more in the 75,000 word range. I feel like one of those marathon runners who doesn’t realize he’s crossed the finish line and keeps on going because his legs have gotten used to the idea of running.
Arm The Lorax
I took this image by the Eramosa River in Guelph, Ontario. Remember the Lorax? It’s Dr. Seuss.