Alex Boyd's Blog, page 20

Essay: Health Care and Huck Finn

Dear America: you've made some of the best films I've ever seen, and produced some great writers. With such heart-wrenchingly good stuff out there, I'm finding it odd one of your country's major political parties doesn't recognize social justice when it's staring them in the face. Republican responses to health care reform in the States have frequently been both tasteless and hysterical, and it's baffling to many Canadians. We've had heath care coverage for decades now. Trust us, the sky...

Health Care and Huck Finn

Dear America: you've made some of the best films I've ever seen, and produced some great writers. With such heart-wrenchingly good stuff out there, I'm finding it odd one of your country's major political parties doesn't recognize social justice when it's staring them in the face. Republican responses to health care reform in the States have frequently been both tasteless and hysterical, and it's baffling to many Canadians. We've had heath care coverage for decades now. Trust us, the sky...

Essay: Warehouse

Originally published in the Globe and Mail, 1999.

The spring that I graduated from university I was handed a diploma, crossed the stage and stood there, stunned. I'd been working toward that day for so long, without really thinking beyond it that its arrival felt like the air after a precipice. A heartbeat later I'm standing in a warehouse. It's a new job and every inch of the place seems to scream out to me that I don't belong. On my first day, Tony is showing me around, patiently...

One Question Interview: Ravi Jain

Ravi Jain is co-artistic director of the Why Not Theatre company. Tickets to I'm So Close are available now.

I'm So Close was an award-winning play at Summerworks, and is described as a play about "the technological landscape that is bringing us together and pushing us apart." Has it changed much since Summerworks?

The show has gone through so many changes.  It has been exciting to go through. We brought on a writer for this version of the play, which has allowed us to focus the material s...

One Question Interview: Jeff Latosik

Life is short. And there's a lot I want to talk about, so I'm introducing the one question interview, beginning with poet Jeff Latosik, who launches his first book of poems next month: Tiny, Frantic, Stronger.

Great title, Jeff. What inspired it, and is there a poem with this title or is it simply the title of the collection?

Thanks! Titling a book was much harder than I thought it would be. It was either "Tiny, Frantic, Stronger" or "Fireworks and Fighting," which I was told was...

Words in Air

Of course, Words in a Sack would be accurate too, but not as impressive sounding. Regardless, the complete correspondence between poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell looks interesting. There's a good quote from Lowell in the review: "The intoxicating thing about rhyme and meter is that they have nothing at all to do with truth, just as ballet steps are of no use on a hike."

Read the full review here.

Reality (Sound) Bites

Reality Hunger: A Manifesto is a new books by David Shields that appears to argue the novel is dead, and overly earnest non-fiction is going the way of the Dodo too, even as the lyric essay and collage are far better for reflecting current reality. And it's current reality we crave, according the Shields.

I'm curious to read the book, though at first glance I think the argument overlooks the old idea that fiction writers and poets use lies to tell the truth. And I do wonder what kind of...

Essay: Comfort and Canadian Poetry

Revised since publication in The Danforth Review, 2002.

Ezra Pound called poetry "the most concentrated form of verbal expression."  William Stafford noted that "we must have ready proof in the lines that the author is worthy company."  Randall Jarrell (who approved of some poets because reading them meant "one long shudder of recognition") wrote "a poem is a small machine made of words … there can be no part, as in any other machine, that is redundant."

Despite these kinds of notions...

Yours Ever, Canada

Best Canadian Essays has had a few more positive reviews here and there. The one from Quill & Quire (these are essays that "transcend simple reportage and reach the level of art") can be found by following this link.

I take none of the credit when there's a lot of great Canadian writing to choose from, though I will say the timing for the idea appears to be pretty good, considering national pride has burst out of the closet and started scoring gold medal goals.

Meanwhile, a thoughtful review...

Review: How to Be Alone

Essays by Jonathan Franzen

Originally published in Books in Canada, 2002.

In How To Be Alone, Jonathan Franzen begins with a title that, were it not for the addition of Essays, would sound like some kind of guide to anti-social behaviour.  But what Franzen wants is to be out of step in a world where few people are asking questions, where we've given the cultural authority over to passive mediums like television.  He isn't comfortable with a digital age that allows access to a great deal while s...