(F)(A)(N)(B)(O)(Y)(S)
For Stuart,
and his press, on the occasion of neither his birthday nor his retirement, but
to celebrate him alone or perhaps him and his generosity yet the two cannot be
separated, so this.
After
a course I attended on writers who happen to walk around (although one may
argue most writers, if they are able, walk or have walked around or wandered
about, or even sauntered or, if
they are daring, frolicked in their
lives) therefore on writers who both walk
and write about it, as far as one can tell, in 2013, I mentioned a little
essay I had written for said class to a certain Stuart Ross, whom, as soon as I
mentioned it to him, the first time we ever met, in a little bar near the
university, on Rue MacKay, I believe, over bière-sans-bulles,
as if we were already friends, as though I, as a mere friend who’d come along
to meet my friend’s friend (that being Stuart Ross), whom my friend admired
very much, asked to read it, and to my great honour to then publish it, after
of course, proper pondering, with his
press, Proper Tales Press, it being deemed a “proper tale,” or at least not an
improper one, and it, upon
reminiscence, feeling also like the publication of our friendship, which would
endlessly go on, which is the true gift of Stuart--endlessness in friendship--friendship being a word which takes its
root in “love” (-pri) which is associated also with freedom, as in to be free
to choose someone, to prefer them, to experience a friendship with them, one,
perhaps, full of mentorship and kindness and many cups of tea, living room
readings, wedding attendances, and the writing of collaborative poems under the
dim infected light of Montreal’s once famous dive bars, the published “it”
being not only this, then, though “this” is in no way an “only”, but in this
case manifesting as a long poemish thing (which is my definition of friendship)
called Happy Dog Sad Dog. Because it
was long for a poem-of-mine, and I’d never quite written a thing-poem (what one
might call a thoem, a thoem being
then again what friendship is) that long before, even if I had a sense of where
it was going, and where I was going,
in fact, since it was constructed of seven walks all starting from my home near
Lafontaine Park, I needed it to be propelled by language, and so I established
four constraints: I used nearly all conjunctions and conjunction phrases in the
English language, and in every chapter (after the first introductory one) I
mentioned a dog, inserted, where I could, les
faibles doses de français, and a Montreal street name or landmark (like the
Kondiaronk Belvedere), “Kondiaronk” being still a word unbeknownst to most who
gather there, as I may, this upcoming New Year’s Eve, sadly sans Stuart, though
Kondiaronk was once chief of the Hurons, and indeed meant to be known as more
than a few slabs of loose rock holding up some orange cones. As long as I am on
it, I may mention that these “dogs,” as much as I didn’t intend them to be,
became a motif of mine, which, as
soon as I noticed this, that is this motif of dogs across my work, dogs being
uncannily the champions of friendship, began cropping up in poems that
referenced me, which I am honoured to admit exist now, in at least two books,
notably in the latest books of both poets Stuart Ross and Hugh Thomas, whose
recent reading in Montreal, in a bedazzled loft on rue Jean-Talon, I attended,
and before which I did not realize how much we all love dogs, or at least, I
might say, how dogs, in our work, have become symbols of friendship, even if
I’ve never had one (one being a “dog” friend in this case) for longer than
three months, and even though the end of those three blissful months full of
tossings of sticks, chasings of deer, struggle-washings, and buckets of bacon
(I worked in a kitchen which produced many unethical leftovers) resulted in my
poor pup being tiré dans la tête,
that is, shot in the head,
(unbeknownst to me before the deed was done, I might add), the whole tale of
this being most likely improper in
the context of this short essay, and rather than I tell it, may I turn your
attention instead to living dogs, so long as dogs “live” in “eternal lines to
time”, as the beloved tend to do, and the wondrous friendship and symbolic
value they provide, especially among poet-friends, and to the following two
lines, heard that night on Jean-Talon, about living poetical dogs from Stuart’s
poem “Considerably Sarah” and Hugh’s poem “Unofficial Translation, for Sarah
Burgoyne”:
The sun,
wriggling around in the red sky, is only a small dog. Such a small dog with so
many eyebrows.
Only what
freezes is called water. / Goodbye is a direction / to which dogs sing the best
songs.
These
lines that both Stuart Ross and Hugh Thomas read from Motel of the Opposable Thumbs and Maze, respectively, so thoroughly delighted me (when I wrote
“embarrassed” I replaced it with “delighted” since this was the nature of my
embarrassment—a word which originally meant “to hamper”—a good hampering being
the fate of most writers at certain points in their careers, though in my case,
the wealth of English conjunctions, and in this case, the realization of the dog motif or puppy pattern, and namely, my admiration for Stuart, or how this
pattern of dogs is in fact simply an illustration of friendship, has had a
rather “unhampering” effect on my short essay in honour of Stuart Ross--though
it was perhaps slightly hampered by the firearm tragedy described above, but
one cannot have friendship without tragedy, Derrida might say, that tragedy
being the eventual loss of a loved friend, such losses I know Stuart has
weathered in the past year, which only go to reveal their own depth, the depths
(of friendship, of loss) which we discuss, over tea, marvelling at how the
friendship lives on, past death, past loss…) that I felt the need to include
them here, now that I have indeed noticed the pattern, originally upon that
evening, whereas if I hadn’t heard these two lines, which, according to the
titles of these poems, have something to do with me, I may have never noticed
it, a pattern that indeed established itself in work published by the aptly
named “Proper Tales Press” the second properest tail, besides those published
by said press, indeed by Stuart Ross himself, in my opinion, being that on the
back of a dog, the wagging of which, signifies “hello!” or indeed, “hello,
friend”, which “hello” alone, often signifies, the “friend” being implied,
since one, in Canada at least, rarely “hellos” one’s enemy, or even a stranger.
Perhaps you may raise your many dog eyebrows. So allow me, sufficiently
hampered by digression, to sing in the direction of goodbye, a direction in
which, to the relief of all, I may now take this essay.
Of
Stuart, as the compellingly apt acronym for the coordinating conjunctions in
English cheekily point out, yes, I am and will always be a fanboy. A constant state of admiration shuffles through my blogging
heart. Stuart is the Stuart whom we all love (especially me). Hello!
Sarah Burgoyne
is an experimental poet. In 2013, she published Happy Dog, Sad Dog with Proper Tales Press, and it was included in
her first collection Saint Twin (Mansfield:
2016), a finalist for the A.M. Klein Prize in Poetry (2016), awarded a prize
from l'Académie de la vie littéraire (2017) and shortlisted for a Canadian
ReLit Award. Other works have appeared in journals across Canada and the U.S.,
have been featured in scores by American composer J.P. Merz and have appeared
with or alongside the visual art of Susanna Barlow, Jamie Macaulay and Joani
Tremblay. She currently lives and writes in Montreal.
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