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Other Poems
"I have to wonder why poets are always expected to write exactly what they wrote the last time they wrote a poem. So I wrote the poems a little differently this time. That's okay too."
- MillAr, interview published in The Danforth Review
Jay MillAr's poetry resists classification. This book, being a collection of Other Poems, is an assemblage of seemingly disparate materials--the poems are of various lengths, subjects and origins and were composed over the past ten years of this prolific author's life. Reading this book is likened to finding a box of photographs in a thrift store; here lies a miscellany of meaning that offers an intimate view of MillAr's "direct manner of spoken mind."
- MillAr, interview published in The Danforth Review
Jay MillAr's poetry resists classification. This book, being a collection of Other Poems, is an assemblage of seemingly disparate materials--the poems are of various lengths, subjects and origins and were composed over the past ten years of this prolific author's life. Reading this book is likened to finding a box of photographs in a thrift store; here lies a miscellany of meaning that offers an intimate view of MillAr's "direct manner of spoken mind."
- GenresPoetry
96 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 28, 2022
Lyric
The dumb sky
isn't even blue
today - those
faded sad clouds
in the distance
above the houses
bleed white: milk
spills upon the
green of the hill.
Don't worry, we
aren't dead yet.
We can at
least spill sense
some wind flatter
the trees. Lying
here on the grass
laid out between
the blades like
clover or a weed
I'm here to
be lazy and
quiet and so
beautifully useless as
long as I can.
*
:ODD , for SC & JH
the insect's cocoon
an act of translation
without ending the known discourse
things only imagine their own mass
still kicking feeble mind from within
will pushes in most against peripheries
* * *
what you construct for yourself
we considered the ships as tools
unable to understand the limits of
mirrors' flat consciousness
then you look away
a dementia of falsehood
* * *
traditions as misinterpretations
in the tense of presence
hollow grammatic whisper parcels
& they rise from under the belly
life divided as easily as a dream
landed of awkward selectors
* * *
the influence of motion
until all that remains is a notion
gravity what remains the dominant force
the only requirement is to remain stand
comparatively similar events
the body a motion a vessel of emotion
* * *
the hot patch your feminine side
play for keeps kept secret
fantastic they're real
as an ugly question
fodder for the ego
a response could bounce off a skull
* * *
she keeps changing positions
actively perusing a state the
calls her own hypnosis
dying to hear such theories
on the laminate floor where
deception achieves silence
* * *
please read the following carefully
in other words you're dead if you arrive
at the margin of the lake
mouth drying to formulate word
each syllable he lexical dance
coded in vents to remain translated
* * *
the call of species
it took trillions of years to produce a
strong enough broadcast a
mammal is only one of many to
the lines of their own requirements
is it what keeps them guess work
* * *
out on the lawn
between the blades of grass
growth is a most telling swell
I must remain in a state of equal Librium
chance it has to achieve
only 15 to 35 centimetres in length
* * *
to challenge death humans
keep it interesting they experience
monkeys trading objects or ideas
the result ultimate of evolution
& win $1,000,000
praise the last one left alive
* * *
my gift to you is an
eye wonder who would put that in writing
settling in to corners or in to cracks
the only rule is the one you remember
besides the emblem is as
an intrusion is to pierce the skin
* * *
she keeps giving birth to
the joke goes something like
they clip grudges against the scalp
the events will repeat unprecedented
& i will release the enclosed
& read it quietly forever inside the sky
*
Downsized, (w/ Stuart Ross)
The sun enters the room like a blade of music.
An earwig crawls up the walls: a sudden aneurysm.
Whoever invented this chair must perform miracles -
Levitation may transpire in any cave. It's easy to forget
A quietly brainwashing trigger-finger stuck
In the wall-hole that holds the lost smile.
See how things look from down here? This motion
Shakes spiders from the ceiling, where they've
Been reminding the other insects
Of tenious obligations. But in the dark pantry
The organic environmental babies count
Their bundles of cash; their endless one two
Three fours keep time fro the day's meaning.
Some things are almost too big for the sum
Of their parts to comprehend.
*
Poem
The sun is out. The
Canopy has broken, at last
To shake the city - that
Green against the sky reminds
Me of why we are
Here. My children play, their noise
Quietude against all the news
Carried about inside the heads
Of those who happen to see it, vague
Representational glint in the small
Unbound non-sequitur joy of release -
If everyone hates 'America' why
does it continue to exist?
*
Entropic: A Narrative
1
They were taking off the alfalfa
Towards a variety of new technologies - agriculture
Is so completely boring, nothing but snow.
All of us eagerly awaited something,
Wanting a miracle, bu instead were stunned.
There was certainly no reason to be ashamed of
What was ultimately used as an excuse for news:
I had all the books set up
And saw nothing but an endless sea.
What could desire to record this occasion
Of a thinning crown? We know the guards bite
Threatening close to the blackboard.
In the midst of all that history
Vacantly
Is lodged unmentionably.
Someone had it fixed to their head, but
In other cultures it is known by sight
Which is why you are opening so wide to all the world.
*
9:23 am
across the room
a cat folds
up 3 feet into
the air
a perfect
circle
8:17 am
waking
dream
revising
the world
your breath
hot in my
eyes
10:23 am
the radio
plays
an open
window
closes
the sun
10:23 pm
'the fact
I never
had a
sister'
11:28 am
dead worm
on the
walk
question
mark
8:19 pm
a bus
curles
around the
CN Tower
as the
sunsets
1:04 pm
sun beams
through the
empty
window
in the
mirror
combing
my hair
7:21 pm
smell the
mushrooms
cooking
and a call
from my
brother
4:37 pm
lean blue
glass on the
green grass
hide dirt
2:10 pm
a bug
holds
air
12:53 am
I get
nervous
just think
about it
8:52 am
feel like
a blue
shirt
putting
red socks
on today
4:12 pm
a minute
is a long
time to
think
about it
4:17 pm
vacuum
espionage
the carpet
has no
name
for it
2:22 pm
horribly pink
cherry
fake
favour
it rains
11:46 pm
'I painted
each red
brick in
my head'
9:58 pm
a popcorn
kernel rests
on my foot
beside
wondering
how it
got there
7:49 am
shaved
dead
skin
off my nose
it starts
to rain
9:17 am
flip through
this book
shadows
in the litter
box two
blocks of
lines
4:16 pm
punks
reflect
in clear
glass
window
kissing
3:19 am
for ever
fresh
takes
a spill
on the
refrigerator
11:08 am
freaks lined
up on
Yonge Street
do tricks
for eating
pigeons
7:33 pm
'I'll read
until
"Fall"
and then
fall
asleep'
11:44 pm
when Nicky
said 'Jim
Deahl'
I almost
laughed
my ass
off
9:17 pm
two
fighters
on a
piece of
paper
6:07 pm
this
just
in
7:11 am
two grey
cats outside
the window
there's no
one to talk
with
9:47 pm
lying
with spread
legs reading
feminism
7:12 pm
associated
freezers
1:41 pm
'just tune in
all this week'
1:42 pm
just in tune
all this week
9:20 pm
3000 words
in a glass jar
coloured
coordinate
12:42 pm
a table
covered
with enveloped
beneath the
pair of
scissors
7:02 am
cat
lookings
2:32 pm
bungle
eight
grounders
6:14 pm
single butt
ashtray
2:13 am
a cross
on the
door
covers
the moon
11:04 pm
it's just
that he has
bent his
head and
smiling
to himself
10:22 pm
thinking of
running away
right here
6:11 pm
on the steps
of admissions
and awards
two pigeons
get it on
10:19 pm
a broken chair
rests higher
than the
floor is
wide
8:00 pm
in the
laundromat
two bags
red white
and blue
test patterns
in a white
cart
4:49 pm
bird fly
over
against
traffic
11:24 am
'sightseeing sir?'
'not today'
5:41 pm
I can
move my
eyes
9:34 am
bulletproof
caviar
4:28 pm
beside the
Indy 500
stock car
parked silently
in a silver
chair a
hunched
woman sleeps
8:17 pm
growing old -
every second
can't deal
with it
10:07 pm
one-legged
pigeon
swallows
hard
watching
tourists
walk
9:52 am
my face
reflected in
a bathroom
gets carries
away
12:00 am
silence
hates me
now
*
Wood Pages
I
How to desire that crackle trees half
empty of leaves crackle? A mind that
will run their minimalist instincts
through an environment only to
build nests in the whole of the sky. So
ghostly I recall some talk about
their presence, like names for mammals,
truncated communication that
listens carefully to the dispersed.
To listen to the wind is to see
a love, the feeling of settling love.
II
Autumn: some landscape the edges of the skies pulled
toward the earth for leaves to kick up the wind.
Can you sense the moment leaves halt for a fleeting
distraction of silence? Walking listens aloud
for the sound. What all the nameless creatures name. Some
relationship between two species in which one
obtains nutrients from the bodily function
of the other. Or could you possibly hear how
long the walk to chorus-less songs the lingual tics
are as likely as any to empty into.
III
Out from under
the foliage scoots
a leaf relief
another small
season lives, not
as a voice or
the tethered sounds
of the ether,
but the hours a
memory hangs
in an autumn
morning itself.
IV
A memory called late October
slows down the days around the so-called
point. Regard the rotten tree-falls such
and such waits under. Ah, toe nudge. Your
gentle words fall, and will never see up
again. Cool fungi, go on: feed from
the dead. Walk across the air to the
next wood. Perhaps these woods are tied to
a book of letters invisible
to the naked enjambment of our
lives - and the trajectory mammals
insects and birds weave into a land
to give it an immediate sense
of failure we learn to call decay.
V
Is it merely decay? Or is it just writing?
Small possibilities in a sensual act, how
sculptured could a grotesque change in the future be?
Is a culture of failure a happy culture?
Anyway, who needs more than a canopy needs
to those accumulation drinks of from the sky.
Leaves follow to the sound of shoots, the draft process
of germination weather unseasonably
flows out of, and the despair of knowing where to
go without thinking about it goes on breathing.
VI
A leaf. As breath
continues what
sound could it make
to satisfy
the quiet of
the realm? If it
were another's
dream of such un-
manageable
germination,
the voice might roll
over the land.
It continues.
|Do you hear it?
If you did could
the land settle
for sweet breezes?
If it did would
you be special?
VII
Only as meaningful and only
so when the senses have been blown through
an acorn the size of a human
brain. Silence is the only theory
a seed to the ear reveals. The sound
doesn't play in a shell's ocean, but
in the wind. Of pauses held against
contours in a sky the grey matter
makes of itself. A receptacle
as spectacular: a moment of self.
VIII
Patient for lines, impatient language asks of trees
who has spoken lately? Who has shed their leaves in
this long tradition of the best of the worst to
become the long arm the world casts out: great shadows
deliberately tedious, meticulously
limitless? I must ask who draws which attention
from who. Who owns the woods when the owls start to call
themselves a play on words: that first hoot a hollow
the second fills in for the third's sheer panic. The
wind dies away. Warm softness. Imagine the sound.
IX
Could you be lost
in the midst of
such a view? Shall
we record what
creeps in upon
our emotions?
The owl's desperate
eyes continue
to hunt for high
sundown in their
prey's flight. Witness
the bulky
dissection of
panic from the
occasional
rustle. At day's
end such huge brown
leaves take off to
hunt throughout the
imagined show.
X
Later than we thought of what it was,
where dreams of the missing sun inside
the knots of earth protrudes, we looked to
fortify the basic wooden land.
But the verdant always supercedes -
will supercede you. More than brown or
green or grey or all the shades therein
the wind is rewound with certainy
until you can smell the rain. It was
an idea we had. After blue
there is nothing: no lines, no nothing.
No chiselled work as though from stone or
wood. This comes to mind as I emerge.
XI
What suggests the call of the woodpecker is an
engraving? Listen to it hollow out the air.
It calls to you. Or at least you imagine it
does, and somehow are satisfied in becoming
drawn though the puzzle. Metaphysical in so
far as the details are maintained as such; details
to suggest the ninth quote from the second book of
miscellany is an arbitrary hybrid
constructed by language. What is there to hold on
to? I have this very fine edge of the world: sound.
XII
Tell me the call
of the crow is
rooted. Tell me
to build in the
heliotropes'
reversal of
silence. The bird
calls lead all too
quietly, and
without warning,
to the parting
of this first sound.
The dumb sky
isn't even blue
today - those
faded sad clouds
in the distance
above the houses
bleed white: milk
spills upon the
green of the hill.
Don't worry, we
aren't dead yet.
We can at
least spill sense
some wind flatter
the trees. Lying
here on the grass
laid out between
the blades like
clover or a weed
I'm here to
be lazy and
quiet and so
beautifully useless as
long as I can.
*
:ODD , for SC & JH
the insect's cocoon
an act of translation
without ending the known discourse
things only imagine their own mass
still kicking feeble mind from within
will pushes in most against peripheries
* * *
what you construct for yourself
we considered the ships as tools
unable to understand the limits of
mirrors' flat consciousness
then you look away
a dementia of falsehood
* * *
traditions as misinterpretations
in the tense of presence
hollow grammatic whisper parcels
& they rise from under the belly
life divided as easily as a dream
landed of awkward selectors
* * *
the influence of motion
until all that remains is a notion
gravity what remains the dominant force
the only requirement is to remain stand
comparatively similar events
the body a motion a vessel of emotion
* * *
the hot patch your feminine side
play for keeps kept secret
fantastic they're real
as an ugly question
fodder for the ego
a response could bounce off a skull
* * *
she keeps changing positions
actively perusing a state the
calls her own hypnosis
dying to hear such theories
on the laminate floor where
deception achieves silence
* * *
please read the following carefully
in other words you're dead if you arrive
at the margin of the lake
mouth drying to formulate word
each syllable he lexical dance
coded in vents to remain translated
* * *
the call of species
it took trillions of years to produce a
strong enough broadcast a
mammal is only one of many to
the lines of their own requirements
is it what keeps them guess work
* * *
out on the lawn
between the blades of grass
growth is a most telling swell
I must remain in a state of equal Librium
chance it has to achieve
only 15 to 35 centimetres in length
* * *
to challenge death humans
keep it interesting they experience
monkeys trading objects or ideas
the result ultimate of evolution
& win $1,000,000
praise the last one left alive
* * *
my gift to you is an
eye wonder who would put that in writing
settling in to corners or in to cracks
the only rule is the one you remember
besides the emblem is as
an intrusion is to pierce the skin
* * *
she keeps giving birth to
the joke goes something like
they clip grudges against the scalp
the events will repeat unprecedented
& i will release the enclosed
& read it quietly forever inside the sky
*
Downsized, (w/ Stuart Ross)
The sun enters the room like a blade of music.
An earwig crawls up the walls: a sudden aneurysm.
Whoever invented this chair must perform miracles -
Levitation may transpire in any cave. It's easy to forget
A quietly brainwashing trigger-finger stuck
In the wall-hole that holds the lost smile.
See how things look from down here? This motion
Shakes spiders from the ceiling, where they've
Been reminding the other insects
Of tenious obligations. But in the dark pantry
The organic environmental babies count
Their bundles of cash; their endless one two
Three fours keep time fro the day's meaning.
Some things are almost too big for the sum
Of their parts to comprehend.
*
Poem
The sun is out. The
Canopy has broken, at last
To shake the city - that
Green against the sky reminds
Me of why we are
Here. My children play, their noise
Quietude against all the news
Carried about inside the heads
Of those who happen to see it, vague
Representational glint in the small
Unbound non-sequitur joy of release -
If everyone hates 'America' why
does it continue to exist?
*
Entropic: A Narrative
1
They were taking off the alfalfa
Towards a variety of new technologies - agriculture
Is so completely boring, nothing but snow.
All of us eagerly awaited something,
Wanting a miracle, bu instead were stunned.
There was certainly no reason to be ashamed of
What was ultimately used as an excuse for news:
I had all the books set up
And saw nothing but an endless sea.
What could desire to record this occasion
Of a thinning crown? We know the guards bite
Threatening close to the blackboard.
In the midst of all that history
Vacantly
Is lodged unmentionably.
Someone had it fixed to their head, but
In other cultures it is known by sight
Which is why you are opening so wide to all the world.
*
it takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
- Gertrude Stein
9:23 am
across the room
a cat folds
up 3 feet into
the air
a perfect
circle
8:17 am
waking
dream
revising
the world
your breath
hot in my
eyes
10:23 am
the radio
plays
an open
window
closes
the sun
10:23 pm
'the fact
I never
had a
sister'
11:28 am
dead worm
on the
walk
question
mark
8:19 pm
a bus
curles
around the
CN Tower
as the
sunsets
1:04 pm
sun beams
through the
empty
window
in the
mirror
combing
my hair
7:21 pm
smell the
mushrooms
cooking
and a call
from my
brother
4:37 pm
lean blue
glass on the
green grass
hide dirt
2:10 pm
a bug
holds
air
12:53 am
I get
nervous
just think
about it
8:52 am
feel like
a blue
shirt
putting
red socks
on today
4:12 pm
a minute
is a long
time to
think
about it
4:17 pm
vacuum
espionage
the carpet
has no
name
for it
2:22 pm
horribly pink
cherry
fake
favour
it rains
11:46 pm
'I painted
each red
brick in
my head'
9:58 pm
a popcorn
kernel rests
on my foot
beside
wondering
how it
got there
7:49 am
shaved
dead
skin
off my nose
it starts
to rain
9:17 am
flip through
this book
shadows
in the litter
box two
blocks of
lines
4:16 pm
punks
reflect
in clear
glass
window
kissing
3:19 am
for ever
fresh
takes
a spill
on the
refrigerator
11:08 am
freaks lined
up on
Yonge Street
do tricks
for eating
pigeons
7:33 pm
'I'll read
until
"Fall"
and then
fall
asleep'
11:44 pm
when Nicky
said 'Jim
Deahl'
I almost
laughed
my ass
off
9:17 pm
two
fighters
on a
piece of
paper
6:07 pm
this
just
in
7:11 am
two grey
cats outside
the window
there's no
one to talk
with
9:47 pm
lying
with spread
legs reading
feminism
7:12 pm
associated
freezers
1:41 pm
'just tune in
all this week'
1:42 pm
just in tune
all this week
9:20 pm
3000 words
in a glass jar
coloured
coordinate
12:42 pm
a table
covered
with enveloped
beneath the
pair of
scissors
7:02 am
cat
lookings
2:32 pm
bungle
eight
grounders
6:14 pm
single butt
ashtray
2:13 am
a cross
on the
door
covers
the moon
11:04 pm
it's just
that he has
bent his
head and
smiling
to himself
10:22 pm
thinking of
running away
right here
6:11 pm
on the steps
of admissions
and awards
two pigeons
get it on
10:19 pm
a broken chair
rests higher
than the
floor is
wide
8:00 pm
in the
laundromat
two bags
red white
and blue
test patterns
in a white
cart
4:49 pm
bird fly
over
against
traffic
11:24 am
'sightseeing sir?'
'not today'
5:41 pm
I can
move my
eyes
9:34 am
bulletproof
caviar
4:28 pm
beside the
Indy 500
stock car
parked silently
in a silver
chair a
hunched
woman sleeps
8:17 pm
growing old -
every second
can't deal
with it
10:07 pm
one-legged
pigeon
swallows
hard
watching
tourists
walk
9:52 am
my face
reflected in
a bathroom
gets carries
away
12:00 am
silence
hates me
now
*
Wood Pages
I
How to desire that crackle trees half
empty of leaves crackle? A mind that
will run their minimalist instincts
through an environment only to
build nests in the whole of the sky. So
ghostly I recall some talk about
their presence, like names for mammals,
truncated communication that
listens carefully to the dispersed.
To listen to the wind is to see
a love, the feeling of settling love.
II
Autumn: some landscape the edges of the skies pulled
toward the earth for leaves to kick up the wind.
Can you sense the moment leaves halt for a fleeting
distraction of silence? Walking listens aloud
for the sound. What all the nameless creatures name. Some
relationship between two species in which one
obtains nutrients from the bodily function
of the other. Or could you possibly hear how
long the walk to chorus-less songs the lingual tics
are as likely as any to empty into.
III
Out from under
the foliage scoots
a leaf relief
another small
season lives, not
as a voice or
the tethered sounds
of the ether,
but the hours a
memory hangs
in an autumn
morning itself.
IV
A memory called late October
slows down the days around the so-called
point. Regard the rotten tree-falls such
and such waits under. Ah, toe nudge. Your
gentle words fall, and will never see up
again. Cool fungi, go on: feed from
the dead. Walk across the air to the
next wood. Perhaps these woods are tied to
a book of letters invisible
to the naked enjambment of our
lives - and the trajectory mammals
insects and birds weave into a land
to give it an immediate sense
of failure we learn to call decay.
V
Is it merely decay? Or is it just writing?
Small possibilities in a sensual act, how
sculptured could a grotesque change in the future be?
Is a culture of failure a happy culture?
Anyway, who needs more than a canopy needs
to those accumulation drinks of from the sky.
Leaves follow to the sound of shoots, the draft process
of germination weather unseasonably
flows out of, and the despair of knowing where to
go without thinking about it goes on breathing.
VI
A leaf. As breath
continues what
sound could it make
to satisfy
the quiet of
the realm? If it
were another's
dream of such un-
manageable
germination,
the voice might roll
over the land.
It continues.
|Do you hear it?
If you did could
the land settle
for sweet breezes?
If it did would
you be special?
VII
Only as meaningful and only
so when the senses have been blown through
an acorn the size of a human
brain. Silence is the only theory
a seed to the ear reveals. The sound
doesn't play in a shell's ocean, but
in the wind. Of pauses held against
contours in a sky the grey matter
makes of itself. A receptacle
as spectacular: a moment of self.
VIII
Patient for lines, impatient language asks of trees
who has spoken lately? Who has shed their leaves in
this long tradition of the best of the worst to
become the long arm the world casts out: great shadows
deliberately tedious, meticulously
limitless? I must ask who draws which attention
from who. Who owns the woods when the owls start to call
themselves a play on words: that first hoot a hollow
the second fills in for the third's sheer panic. The
wind dies away. Warm softness. Imagine the sound.
IX
Could you be lost
in the midst of
such a view? Shall
we record what
creeps in upon
our emotions?
The owl's desperate
eyes continue
to hunt for high
sundown in their
prey's flight. Witness
the bulky
dissection of
panic from the
occasional
rustle. At day's
end such huge brown
leaves take off to
hunt throughout the
imagined show.
X
Later than we thought of what it was,
where dreams of the missing sun inside
the knots of earth protrudes, we looked to
fortify the basic wooden land.
But the verdant always supercedes -
will supercede you. More than brown or
green or grey or all the shades therein
the wind is rewound with certainy
until you can smell the rain. It was
an idea we had. After blue
there is nothing: no lines, no nothing.
No chiselled work as though from stone or
wood. This comes to mind as I emerge.
XI
What suggests the call of the woodpecker is an
engraving? Listen to it hollow out the air.
It calls to you. Or at least you imagine it
does, and somehow are satisfied in becoming
drawn though the puzzle. Metaphysical in so
far as the details are maintained as such; details
to suggest the ninth quote from the second book of
miscellany is an arbitrary hybrid
constructed by language. What is there to hold on
to? I have this very fine edge of the world: sound.
XII
Tell me the call
of the crow is
rooted. Tell me
to build in the
heliotropes'
reversal of
silence. The bird
calls lead all too
quietly, and
without warning,
to the parting
of this first sound.
Read
March 25, 2017He points out a lot of post structural problems and plays with the problematic apathy and ambiguity that is present in writing/life. He does this while using images of domestic family and genuine tones of feeling, which is quite clever. But, maybe it is that cleverness that gets tiring. It comes off as quite smug.
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