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Airstream Land Yacht
A love song to the worldless parts of the world, Airstream Land Yacht explores the inexpressible. Partly grounded in the concrete of everday experience and partly floating away in the ineffable, these poems delve into questions of conscience and problems of consciousness. Generating music from paradox, they treat the intellect as equal parts junk heap and life preserver, making for a spellbinding collection that charts a bold new direction for an acclaimed poet.
110 pages, Paperback
First published August 8, 2006
About the author
Ken Babstock
13 books8 followersKen Babstock is a Canadian poet. He was born in Newfoundland and raised in the Ottawa Valley. Babstock began publishing his poems in journals and anthologies, winning gold at the 1997 Canadian National Magazine Awards. He currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 22, 2019
... I was pulling a trailer onto which a friend was loading irrigation pipes. He was powerful, and beautiful, yet far from me, we finished early to a round of applause from a bank of thundercloud that had reared up over the cottonwoods. There's a kind of shroud I pull across my life.
I saw and was relieved. I saw my relief and left. I left without seeing what I'd done...
My mood stiffened, grew intractable, opaque; I felt blue flashes inside that were flares of all the moments I'd sought causality, a why for each failing of character, somewhere outside of myself, amounting to a web of reflexive sophistry that reached back into the years of my life like illness discovered late, or how rot sets into wood compromising the strength of a structure by softening its centre.
Explanatory Gap
It was Nineteen-Eighty-BoreYouToDeath and sex had attached its lips to Things. New was no longer the inverse but the utter annihilation of old. New laws, models, growth on the hedgerows that had to be hacked. New fear: moles with bleeding edges; monkey bars, merry-go-rounds, outlawed lawn darts; the poems of ex-presidents; crack, glue, gas, E; evangelists on their knees, and a funky steam rolling over from the Unter den Linden. I hear Stasi, I see the Nordiques.
We can't know what things mean in the place where they're meant to, or know what's meant by place with no map in our head. Like those whose hobby it's become to dog-sled, day-hike, air-lift in to where latitudinal lines meet the north-south ones at some lonely, never stepped-on patch of steppe or muskeg mat in Labrador; and they intersect there, apparently, though there's nothing to see, or nothing visibly marking the spot other than the spot itself: the mapped land beneath the numbered globe. Say hello to coordinates-ordinates-ordnance, and a ground rodent sniffing the spruce air under a daytime moon. There'll be a sign here soon.
January 22, 2022
Milk of input. Milk of matter.
Honeyed epoché.
Honey of all
that seems to me to be -
But when our billy bee's half empty,
we can see straight through his head!
* * *
Sometimes making is play, only that. I've not been
made yet, but will be, and when willed
into my bean-baggish zen loll
might wish for you night of no nightmare,
layabouts with or without some other
when words are your mind's lit
carousel, monkey bars, or gravel pit, not the spiral
jetty you like to make of it. We pretended
affection each for the other, then
wrecked the furniture, is what we'll say when
they ask how we spent the duration. Single
man and his simian hand, memento
origo, minister of the bemused stare. Lean me
against the neck of the reading lamp: sleep,
farts, fucks, illnesses, and idleness, I'm I
through and through, function removed from the feet
and become face with a grin and stillness,
form that gives if you hold it when there's only you.
* * *
There was the covert summer fling -
rail bridges, back lanes, blue dust of building
sites - with the NSCAD dropout (b.68, Khanesetake)
who worked at night with stencils and spray
paint, enlivening the poured forms of the capitol
with red and black silhouettes of ordinary people.
Meridians, bank walls, light poles, high rises.
I asked her to outline clearly her emotional boundaries
but at the front edge of fall we had words over colour;
a flare-up, really, over
who was seeing what when they saw what
they claimed. Tempers got hot.
Steady brown hand on a Stanley knife,
she cut me - expertly - out of her life; the life
I see now I'd been
filling in.
I catch glimpses of her anywhere the city is. Or is
that me, dead still, spread thin?
* * *
Most were written at home,
some done away,
a few in a bar,
one inside his head.
Many had a tendency to roam,
some felt grey,
a few went too far,
that last refused to be read.
* * *
Not poor, but adjacent to that, I lived
in an outer suburb, undistinguished but
wihtin the limits of nowhere; the rest
alongside the feeder lanes. Not country
and no sort of city. Everyone drove, to all points
within the limits of nowhere; the rest
incarcerated on public transit: packed
in the high-wattage strip light
sat the poor, the mad, the adolescent
and license-suspended, the daylight
drunk, and Malton's newly arrived.
Hours-long treks through air-quality
alerts, fingering vials of hash oil and
transfers back. Or earlier, at the thin edge
of long dusks, the Bookmobile
dripping grease on clean tarmac
nudging the lower leaves of young maples,
I kissed a Jamaican boy with three
names, his loose jheri curls
looked wet and right, black helices
in the bay windows' blue glow.
And something inside me took root;
a thing mine that I didn't own, but cared
for, as I had for a pink-eyed rabbit,
loved without reason and was returned
nothing in kind, and so what? The flurry
of rose-brick facades being raised
on cul de sacs without sidewalks, outlets
and outlets, the sameness, and grimmer storeys
of the projects beyond the ballpark
were a weird history I was casting love
upon even as I wanted to leave it. I worked
retail, weekends, from within an awareness
of myself, as Self; the brown carpeted tiers
of the library, ravine parties, parading
my young body through malls. The world's
hub, improbably, here, under untranslatable
verses of powerlines, kestrels
frozen above vast grassland of what used
to be farm. November like a tin sheet
blown up from the lake over Mimico, with
garbage and refuse I'd built
a hilltop to the moon over Mississauga -
chip bags, flattened foil wrappers, shopping
carts growing a fur of frost, the shocking
volume and echo of squat women's voices
here from blasted South Balkan huts
via Budapest; Filipinos, Croatians
with income come to make good
and did, dressed us in suede pantsuits
at ten, or terry summer halters, confident
with adults, curious, clean. Damp
electrical storms, bloated purgings
of rain turning the avenues to linked lakes.
The low slung buses veering. Albion-bound
but stalled in a monoxide clooud
somewhere on the usual grid...
It was the world's hub.
If you feel otherwise, that it constituted negative
space, I can only say it's a postulate
without need of proof but for the love
I had for it. I knew before I could speak
of it - that great, horrible sprawl
folded under airport turbulence, advancing inland
each year, breeding signposts, arteries, housing -
it was life as it was lived. Raspberries. The smell of gas.
* * *
Christian said the number
pattern directing me
to the pages from which text had to be
drawn wasn't nearly
complex enough and
should be based
on some algorithmic
system to that
the process could
conceivably continue
indefinitely sort of
loop back on itself
or at least
to the point where all
text in both books
had been appropriated
and humorously
reassembled into
something he could
in good faith call
a project which might
take me years but
would leave me
in good stead with
certain people
in Buffalo, I said
Christian do you
remember Abraham
and Isaac and that
terribly sharp cleaving
instrument and
the talking shrub?
Honeyed epoché.
Honey of all
that seems to me to be -
But when our billy bee's half empty,
we can see straight through his head!
- Theory of Mind, pg. 9
* * *
Sometimes making is play, only that. I've not been
made yet, but will be, and when willed
into my bean-baggish zen loll
might wish for you night of no nightmare,
layabouts with or without some other
when words are your mind's lit
carousel, monkey bars, or gravel pit, not the spiral
jetty you like to make of it. We pretended
affection each for the other, then
wrecked the furniture, is what we'll say when
they ask how we spent the duration. Single
man and his simian hand, memento
origo, minister of the bemused stare. Lean me
against the neck of the reading lamp: sleep,
farts, fucks, illnesses, and idleness, I'm I
through and through, function removed from the feet
and become face with a grin and stillness,
form that gives if you hold it when there's only you.
- Found In a Sock Monkey Kit, pg. 20
* * *
There was the covert summer fling -
rail bridges, back lanes, blue dust of building
sites - with the NSCAD dropout (b.68, Khanesetake)
who worked at night with stencils and spray
paint, enlivening the poured forms of the capitol
with red and black silhouettes of ordinary people.
Meridians, bank walls, light poles, high rises.
I asked her to outline clearly her emotional boundaries
but at the front edge of fall we had words over colour;
a flare-up, really, over
who was seeing what when they saw what
they claimed. Tempers got hot.
Steady brown hand on a Stanley knife,
she cut me - expertly - out of her life; the life
I see now I'd been
filling in.
I catch glimpses of her anywhere the city is. Or is
that me, dead still, spread thin?
- Stencil Artist, pg. 23
* * *
Most were written at home,
some done away,
a few in a bar,
one inside his head.
Many had a tendency to roam,
some felt grey,
a few went too far,
that last refused to be read.
- The Lie Concerning the Work, pg. 45
* * *
Not poor, but adjacent to that, I lived
in an outer suburb, undistinguished but
wihtin the limits of nowhere; the rest
alongside the feeder lanes. Not country
and no sort of city. Everyone drove, to all points
within the limits of nowhere; the rest
incarcerated on public transit: packed
in the high-wattage strip light
sat the poor, the mad, the adolescent
and license-suspended, the daylight
drunk, and Malton's newly arrived.
Hours-long treks through air-quality
alerts, fingering vials of hash oil and
transfers back. Or earlier, at the thin edge
of long dusks, the Bookmobile
dripping grease on clean tarmac
nudging the lower leaves of young maples,
I kissed a Jamaican boy with three
names, his loose jheri curls
looked wet and right, black helices
in the bay windows' blue glow.
And something inside me took root;
a thing mine that I didn't own, but cared
for, as I had for a pink-eyed rabbit,
loved without reason and was returned
nothing in kind, and so what? The flurry
of rose-brick facades being raised
on cul de sacs without sidewalks, outlets
and outlets, the sameness, and grimmer storeys
of the projects beyond the ballpark
were a weird history I was casting love
upon even as I wanted to leave it. I worked
retail, weekends, from within an awareness
of myself, as Self; the brown carpeted tiers
of the library, ravine parties, parading
my young body through malls. The world's
hub, improbably, here, under untranslatable
verses of powerlines, kestrels
frozen above vast grassland of what used
to be farm. November like a tin sheet
blown up from the lake over Mimico, with
garbage and refuse I'd built
a hilltop to the moon over Mississauga -
chip bags, flattened foil wrappers, shopping
carts growing a fur of frost, the shocking
volume and echo of squat women's voices
here from blasted South Balkan huts
via Budapest; Filipinos, Croatians
with income come to make good
and did, dressed us in suede pantsuits
at ten, or terry summer halters, confident
with adults, curious, clean. Damp
electrical storms, bloated purgings
of rain turning the avenues to linked lakes.
The low slung buses veering. Albion-bound
but stalled in a monoxide clooud
somewhere on the usual grid...
It was the world's hub.
If you feel otherwise, that it constituted negative
space, I can only say it's a postulate
without need of proof but for the love
I had for it. I knew before I could speak
of it - that great, horrible sprawl
folded under airport turbulence, advancing inland
each year, breeding signposts, arteries, housing -
it was life as it was lived. Raspberries. The smell of gas.
- The World's Hub, after Pier Paolo Pasolini, pg. 67-69
* * *
Christian said the number
pattern directing me
to the pages from which text had to be
drawn wasn't nearly
complex enough and
should be based
on some algorithmic
system to that
the process could
conceivably continue
indefinitely sort of
loop back on itself
or at least
to the point where all
text in both books
had been appropriated
and humorously
reassembled into
something he could
in good faith call
a project which might
take me years but
would leave me
in good stead with
certain people
in Buffalo, I said
Christian do you
remember Abraham
and Isaac and that
terribly sharp cleaving
instrument and
the talking shrub?
- "Think, Pig!", - Samuel Beckett, pg. 82
June 17, 2023
I love buying and reading these types of books.
Boats, yachts, historical events and books about the sea are generally excellent. If there are sequels in your series, I would love to read them.
The beauties of owning the books of important authors cannot be discussed. I'm looking forward to your new books.
For friends who want to read this book, I leave the importance of reading a book here. I wish good luck to the sellers and customers...
Top 10 benefits of reading for all ages:
1. Reading Exercises the Brain
As we read, we need to remember the different characters and settings of a particular story. Even if you enjoy reading a book in one sitting, you need to remember the details during the time you devote to reading the book. Therefore, reading is an exercise for your brain that improves memory function.
2. Reading Is a (free) Form of Entertainment
Did you know that most of the popular TV series and movies are based on books? So why not indulge in the original form of entertainment by immersing yourself in reading? Most importantly, it's free with your Markham Public Library card.
3. Reading Improves Concentration and Focus
We all agree that there can be no reading without focus, and we need to concentrate on every page we read to fully understand the story. In a world where gadgets only speed up and shorten our attention span, we must constantly practice concentration and focus. Reading is one of the few activities that requires your undivided attention, so it improves your ability to concentrate.
4. Reading Improves Literacy
Have you ever read a book where you come across a word you don't know? Books have the power to improve your vocabulary by introducing you to new words. The more you read, the more your vocabulary will improve as well as your ability to communicate effectively. Also, reading improves writing skills by helping the reader understand and learn different writing styles.
5. Reading Improves Sleep
By creating a bedtime routine that includes reading, you can signal to your body that it's time to sleep. Now more than ever, we rely on increased screen time to get through the day. That's why you put your phone away and pick up a book and tell your brain it's time to calm down. Also, since reading helps you relieve stress, reading right before bed helps calm your mind and anxiety and improve your sleep quality.
6. Reading Increases General Knowledge
Books are always full of fun and interesting facts. Whether we read fiction or non-fiction, books have the ability to provide us with information we might not otherwise know. Reading various topics can make you a more knowledgeable person and therefore improve your speaking skills.
7. Reading Is Motivating
By reading books about heroes overcoming adversity, we are often encouraged to do the same. Whether it's a romance novel or a self-help book, the right book can motivate you to never give up and stay positive.
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https://theboatyacht.com/
https://theboatyacht.com/baja-40-outl...
https://numberoneboats.com/baja-40-ou...
https://theboatyacht.com/baja-405-for...
https://numberoneboats.com/baja-405-f...
Boats, yachts, historical events and books about the sea are generally excellent. If there are sequels in your series, I would love to read them.
The beauties of owning the books of important authors cannot be discussed. I'm looking forward to your new books.
For friends who want to read this book, I leave the importance of reading a book here. I wish good luck to the sellers and customers...
Top 10 benefits of reading for all ages:
1. Reading Exercises the Brain
As we read, we need to remember the different characters and settings of a particular story. Even if you enjoy reading a book in one sitting, you need to remember the details during the time you devote to reading the book. Therefore, reading is an exercise for your brain that improves memory function.
2. Reading Is a (free) Form of Entertainment
Did you know that most of the popular TV series and movies are based on books? So why not indulge in the original form of entertainment by immersing yourself in reading? Most importantly, it's free with your Markham Public Library card.
3. Reading Improves Concentration and Focus
We all agree that there can be no reading without focus, and we need to concentrate on every page we read to fully understand the story. In a world where gadgets only speed up and shorten our attention span, we must constantly practice concentration and focus. Reading is one of the few activities that requires your undivided attention, so it improves your ability to concentrate.
4. Reading Improves Literacy
Have you ever read a book where you come across a word you don't know? Books have the power to improve your vocabulary by introducing you to new words. The more you read, the more your vocabulary will improve as well as your ability to communicate effectively. Also, reading improves writing skills by helping the reader understand and learn different writing styles.
5. Reading Improves Sleep
By creating a bedtime routine that includes reading, you can signal to your body that it's time to sleep. Now more than ever, we rely on increased screen time to get through the day. That's why you put your phone away and pick up a book and tell your brain it's time to calm down. Also, since reading helps you relieve stress, reading right before bed helps calm your mind and anxiety and improve your sleep quality.
6. Reading Increases General Knowledge
Books are always full of fun and interesting facts. Whether we read fiction or non-fiction, books have the ability to provide us with information we might not otherwise know. Reading various topics can make you a more knowledgeable person and therefore improve your speaking skills.
7. Reading Is Motivating
By reading books about heroes overcoming adversity, we are often encouraged to do the same. Whether it's a romance novel or a self-help book, the right book can motivate you to never give up and stay positive.
https://numberoneboats.com/
https://theboatyacht.com/
https://theboatyacht.com/baja-40-outl...
https://numberoneboats.com/baja-40-ou...
https://theboatyacht.com/baja-405-for...
https://numberoneboats.com/baja-405-f...
May 21, 2021
"This is a poem,' she said, 'and that's not
good enough. Around here, we don't let art, no matter
how acutely felt, stand in for what's necessary, true, and right.
Next time you face me maybe leave you here. End quote.'"
Babstock spins some beautiful lines, especially in the first half of the collection where he describes human incursions into nature - first disruptive, then coerced or overwhelmed into new symmetry.
Echoes of Earle Birney, such as the beauty of discovering a rotting Labatt 50 can from the 1980s half buried in damp moss.
Did I imagine that there was supposed to be a narrative of two lovers traveling in a airstream, settling in a remote campsite for an extended stay - where their relationship was to fall apart? Maybe so, because I can no longer find the reference. In any case I went looking for this emotion to be symbolized in the collection and was unable to find it in the text either. - In the end I could not really find a unifying thread strong enough to carry this collection above others.
good enough. Around here, we don't let art, no matter
how acutely felt, stand in for what's necessary, true, and right.
Next time you face me maybe leave you here. End quote.'"
Babstock spins some beautiful lines, especially in the first half of the collection where he describes human incursions into nature - first disruptive, then coerced or overwhelmed into new symmetry.
Echoes of Earle Birney, such as the beauty of discovering a rotting Labatt 50 can from the 1980s half buried in damp moss.
Did I imagine that there was supposed to be a narrative of two lovers traveling in a airstream, settling in a remote campsite for an extended stay - where their relationship was to fall apart? Maybe so, because I can no longer find the reference. In any case I went looking for this emotion to be symbolized in the collection and was unable to find it in the text either. - In the end I could not really find a unifying thread strong enough to carry this collection above others.
January 13, 2021
In this third collection, Ken Babstock's poetry has moved away from lucid narratives and into the territory of the mind talking to itself (Thanks John Ashbery, you've ruined another good one!)--at least that's what I guess is going on. This is a huge disappoint for me, since I loved his first two collections. I read 42 pages of Airstream Land Yacht and just could not take it anymore. With rare exception ("Palindromic" and "A Brochure") I found the poems difficult to the point of impenetrable. The language was so cerebral I could not even enjoy it for its own sake. One might even accuse Babstock of riddling and purposeful obfuscation. I have had it! This collection is going in my discard pile.
June 14, 2011
"There's a kind of shroud I pull across my life" (39) writes Babstock in "Pragmatist," and it's easy to read that shroud as poetry, and in Babstock's poetry specifically the strongest aspect is the gloss and ornamentation of his language, though it also serves as something of a shroud that I can see preventing his further development through uplifting otherwise conventional subjects (and thus preventing Babstock from selecting better subjects). I don't think this is what's happening in AIRSTREAM LAND YACHT, which is an invigorating read, but it is something that struck me while engaged with the book.
Babstock is a master of taking a simple image and twisting it, ratcheting it up to its most perfect and surprising form -- thumbs hooked on backpack straps become "infant / bats snurl[ed] into the pack" (87) in "Verificationist" -- and it's easy to forget that this stunning image describes something so mundane and bland. This is the basic move of conventional poetry -- take something barely worth describing, and describe it well -- but we should not forget that at its heart, this conventional move locks and freezes poetry from developing except on its surface level. Babstock's brilliance lies at the surface, although his poems do have depth and his language raises his work heads above less energetic, less exciting poets.
One can sense, though, that he's capable of more, that he hasn't reached his pinnacle, and my perhaps groundless worry is that he may not care to climb -- perhaps groundless because this book hints in parts at just that desire to stretch his practice. The weakest poems here are the most encouraging, as when Babstock plays with found text in a procedural poem, which is followed by a tongue-in-cheek poem about how Christian Bok criticized that poem for lacking a more rigorous procedure, a criticism Babstock seems to laugh off, but although I can't see much point in Babstock moving into conceptualist practice, I do hope he begins to take experimentalist techniques and concepts more seriously, because that's what I think he needs to do in order to push his work further. Very excited to read METHODIST HATCHET. Babstock's voice is one of the freshest I've read recently, and his apparent confidence with the language (not to mention his facility with it) bodes well.
Babstock is a master of taking a simple image and twisting it, ratcheting it up to its most perfect and surprising form -- thumbs hooked on backpack straps become "infant / bats snurl[ed] into the pack" (87) in "Verificationist" -- and it's easy to forget that this stunning image describes something so mundane and bland. This is the basic move of conventional poetry -- take something barely worth describing, and describe it well -- but we should not forget that at its heart, this conventional move locks and freezes poetry from developing except on its surface level. Babstock's brilliance lies at the surface, although his poems do have depth and his language raises his work heads above less energetic, less exciting poets.
One can sense, though, that he's capable of more, that he hasn't reached his pinnacle, and my perhaps groundless worry is that he may not care to climb -- perhaps groundless because this book hints in parts at just that desire to stretch his practice. The weakest poems here are the most encouraging, as when Babstock plays with found text in a procedural poem, which is followed by a tongue-in-cheek poem about how Christian Bok criticized that poem for lacking a more rigorous procedure, a criticism Babstock seems to laugh off, but although I can't see much point in Babstock moving into conceptualist practice, I do hope he begins to take experimentalist techniques and concepts more seriously, because that's what I think he needs to do in order to push his work further. Very excited to read METHODIST HATCHET. Babstock's voice is one of the freshest I've read recently, and his apparent confidence with the language (not to mention his facility with it) bodes well.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews