stretching a tripping line from ginsberg to muldoon

when the withering hand raises its statues chiseling Moloch-granites
at
their
edge
at
the
margins
poetry
grain
by
grain
digs
its
gates
seam
by
seam
pulls
the
threads
unnoticed
unraveling

The Israeli writer Amos Oz remarked on Charlie Rose's PBS interview show recently that he walks in the desert among the ancient stones near his home every morning to "put things in perspective". To me Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl" is one of those lasting touchstones. With it I judge the quality of my own work and that of other writers. Editor Jason Shinder's twenty-six essay collection The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a book that I have kept on my night-table for a long time because it is fascinating to read how others value Ginsberg's 1956 poem, or not (the book is not all panegyric).

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In the latest installment of CBC Manitoba SCENE's talks with the presenters at our Canada Reads, Manitoba Style evening next Wednesday, Head Assiniboine Park Zoo vet Dr. Chris Enright tracks John Vaillant's The Tiger.

Visit the SCENE website to read the article.

For more information on the event itself, click here.

Paging all booklovers! On January 25th, at 8 p.m., CBC Radio and McNally Robinson Booksellers invite you to Prairie Ink Restaurant for an evening we're calling: 5 Writers, 5 Readers, 5 Minutes.

Canada Reads 2012 features five non-fiction titles this year, and in our regional warm-up to the national CBC Radio book brawl, five well-known Manitobans have been matched with the five titles. Up to Speed host Larry Updike will invite each reader to share their insights with the audience, each with a unique presentation lasting only five minutes. Well, maybe ten. No debating, no brawling, but plenty of insight, humour and stories.

Find out more about the evening and corresponding Big Ticket Contest that could see one lucky person walk away with the five nominated books and dinner for two at Prairie Ink Restaurant by visiting the CBC Manitoba SCENE website. You can also visit them on Facebook, Twitter and stay tuned to our own front page for a feature interview with all five of the evening's advocates!

 

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We were very saddened to hear of the death of Christopher Hitchens late last night from complications related to esophageal cancer. Our stores have been selling his work for many years, and he's always had a large place on our shelves. Whether you agreed with him or not, there is no denying that the world has lost an inimitable, incisive and resolutely curmudgeonly voice and a brilliant mind.

The latest work from this multi-award winning and #1 bestselling author, is a collection of his most important and controversial essays on the theme of culture and politics and how the two relate. For nearly four decades, Hitchens has been telling us what we confront when we grapple with first principles - the principles of reason and tolerance and skepticism that define and inform the foundations of our civilization - principles that, to endure, must be defended anew by each generation.

This is a fitting final salvo from a writer and conversationalist whose unique take on the world is already greatly missed.