Although information on A. Garnett Weiss is available from www.jcsulzenko.com, an independent Web presence has now been established.
“Since Garnett’s work is receiving attention and being published in literary journals and on-line, it seemed a good moment to create a site dedicated to Weiss’s poetry. ” Go to http://www.agarnettweiss.com to access the site, which will be updated on a regular basis.
I will post my review of the book on Amazon, etc., but offer this teaser here now to encourage people to buy the book by husband and wife team, Bob McMechan and Allson Woyiwada.
“Allison’s Brain,” available through on-line retailers and the publisher, Friesan Press, follows this remarkable couple as they team up with healthcare professionals, family and friends to support music dynamo Allison through very complex, dangerous surgery for a brain aneurysm and the long recovery period after the 12-hour operation.
JC was one of the friends who followed this odyssey closely and helped out whenever she could. “The book represents the triumph of this woman who faced such odds in risking the surgery and in surviving the aftermath setbacks. The narrative is sequential and includes notes from MDs, nurses, and therapists. It reproduces the regular updates which Allison began to send to her friends and family as the operation approached and which Bob continued to provide during all the many months of her recuperation. In annexes, there are ‘essays’ from speech and music therapists which illustrate powerfully how such programs can bring back brain function. There are telling anecdotes from some of the regular visitors to Allison during the stages of her recovery also in that section of the book.
“Most important to read, though, are two contributions: At the end of the book, Allison shares her own feelings and fears about what she has gone through. She is candid about what she remembers and what she cannot. Particularly revealing are her observations on her capacity to say what she meant: she always thought she was communicating clearly what was in her mind when in fact it would take a long period of her time and many therapy sessions for her to regain the ability to find the right words. Then, the last annex gives daughter Marya’s views on surviving the experience as the child who must parent her mother, not knowing whether and how all the efforts she, Bob, friends, and medical experts were making would play out.
“The book represents the best of the human condition: a triumph of science and spirit, of devotion, friendship, and hope. Allison’s perseverance and her family’s unrelenting efforts to bring her back to herself make for compelling reading for everyone, but particularly for anyone who has been exposed to the effects an acquired brain injury can have on an individual and the people who care about him or her.
“You come away from reading “Allison’s Brain” with respect for everyone involved in her story and a sense of awe about how the brain can renew itself,” JC concludes.
Here’s the link to the site where the book can be ordered: http://www.friesenpress.com/bookstore/title/119734000015343007/Robert-McMechan-Allison%27s-Brain
The film JC saw last night reminded her of the truth in the cliché about laughter being the best medicine. A comedy in French, “Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au Bon Dieu” (“Serial Weddings”), is both funny and human and absolutely the best comedy I’ve seen in ages, ” JC claimed.
Why write about the movie on this website? “I rarely write poetry that is humorous, ” JC laments. “I often asks myself why, when laughter brings such pleasure, I don’t celebrate humour in my writing? Because there sure is a need for comedy as an antidote to all the oppressive reality that screams from new headlines.”
JC has given herself a challenge: to find humour in her every day and bring what she discovers and writes about to this site when she does. Will she succeed? Comments?
“Vallum” devotes its new issue to the theme of speed and travel and features poetry from Gary Barwin, Evelyn Lau, Jacob Scheier, Karen Solie, and Jan Zwicky among others.
“Hesitation marks,” a cento by A. Garnett Weiss which pays homage to Robin Robertson’s poems, appears in the issue.
“It’s an honour to have Garnett’s work included in this fine magazine,” JC noted after attending the launch at the Supermarket in Toronto’s Kensington Market on September 29, 2014.
Here’s a link to the website where the magazine is available as a digital subscription: http://www.vallummag.com
JC attended the launch of the 8th anthology of winning poems and short stories in the Ottawa Public Library’s 19th Awesome Authors Contest. JC has served as the judge of poetry entries in English for a number of years and in the past has edited the winning poems which appear in the collection. “What a great turnout of young writers, ” JC observed after the event. “In fact, many poets who couldn’t attend the award ceremony in the spring made it to the launch. It was great to see them there.”
“pot pourri,” the 2014 anthology published by the Friends of the Ottawa Public Library, is available from the OPL at a cost of $12.95. For more information, here’s a link: http://biblioottawalibrary.ca/en/node/21442
“I consider it a privilege and honour to read the poetry of emerging poets in the 9-11, 12-14 and 14-16 age categories. Their creativity knows no bounds, so that it’s always a huge challenge to select the winning poems from among such fine entries.”
In January, JC will offer two poetry workshops through the Library in the lead-up to the 2015 Awesome Authors Contest. The dates and times will appear on the OPL events listing and on this website as soon as they are set.
“I encourage all young writers to send in their best poems and short stories. I know that it takes guts to submit work for review by others but that’s the way writers become published authors and poets. What better way to launch a writing career than through the Awesome Authors Contest.”
Silver Birch Press’s focus in August is on self-portrature. A. Garnett Weiss’s “In the third person” appears on August 9 at: http://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2014/08/09/in-the-third-person-poem-by-a-garnett-weiss-self-portrait-poetry-series/
“It’s grand that Silver Birch Press published this piece, which uses the syllable count and form of the tanka, ” Garnett Weiss notes. “The poem examines how the brain is central to our individual human-ness and what vulnerability in the brain brings home to a person.
“The Editor chose an arresting image that complements the poem so well,” Weiss added. Artist Sandra Silberzweig created “The Truth is Reflected.” “Based on this experience, I wish I could involve Silberzweig in creating visuals that would complement my whole poetry collection. ”
The Silver Birch Press series feature two poets/poems per day by contributors from Canada, Australia, Austria, Colombia, India, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Singapore, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom and the United States.
Sunset: Still waters
reflect the colour spectrum.
Later, fireflies.
A. Garnett Weiss
On parade
When we sallied forth, it was blue o’clock in the morning
after the night before.
The Malahide Road was quiet,
immortal wheat standing from everlasting to everlasting.
Clatter of horsehoofs sounded from the air
where fallen archangels flung the stars,
bronze by gold. Just a flash like that,
a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming.
With ratsteeth bared, he muttered
“Their last hour came like a thief in the night,
worth double the money, the stars and the moon,
and comets with long tails.”
I tackled him this morning on belief
and the whole jingbang lot.
“What’s the best news?
Who could know the truth?”
“But wait till I tell you,” he said.
“Wait a while. Hold hard
the act of a hero,” he said.
“Who has passed here before me?”
His eyes looked quickly, ghost bright.
“All I want is a little time,”
smiled with unseen coldness.
“Shatter me you who can!”
He walked by the treeshade of sunnywinking trees,
where pigeons roocoocooed,
stood still in midstreet and brought his hat low.
The castle car wheeled empty into upper Exchange St.,
the most historic spot in all Dublin
swallowed by a closing door.
This Cento uses phrases taken unaltered from Chapter 10 of James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” pages 210-244, 1922 text, Oxford University Press
On parade, JC Sulzenko’s poem, written under her pseudonym A. Garnett Weiss, draws on phrases taken directly from Chapter 10 of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Why this poem for this day?
“Bloomsday celebrates Thursday 16 June 1904, the one day captured in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. The day is named for Leopold Bloom, the central character in Ulysses. The novel follows Bloom’s life and thoughts and a host of other characters – real and fictional – from 8 AM on 16 June 1904 through to the early hours of the following morning.” Quoted from the site of The James Joyce Centre Dublin @ jamesjoyce.ie/
“I couldn’t resist using phrases without changing a word to create this new work,” JC notes. “What came clear to me from Joyce’s words was the parade that goes on in Chapter or Episode 10 which I combined with the coming of Elijah. In my case, I took that as the coming of the prophet, where Joyce chose to give a man-made object the name.”
What do you think about this found poem? Let the poet know.
It’s not often JC receives two rejection emails in one day. That double whammy coloured sunny Sunday a little bit, JC admits. As she says, if you send your work out, you should be hopeful. But, at the same time, it’s important to remember that what one reader or editor appreciates, another may not.
JC has spent the last couple of months focussing on her collection of centos, which use lines from other poets’ work and combine them to create a poem that is new in form and meaning.
“This collection reflects my love of the form and the process, ” JC explains. “I read books written by individual poets or anthologies which capture the work of many different poets. From such sources, I extract lines that affect me in some fashion. Often I choose words which I wish I had written!
“From there, I live with the lines for a while: a week, a day, a month… And I wait for a sequence, a story, a poem to emerge. Letting other poets’ words guide me to something unexpected feels like an adventure!”
The Found Poetry Review’s “In Bloom” project, in which one poet’s found poem per chapter or episode of James Joyce’s “Ulysses” would be published on June 16 attracted JC’s attention. She wrote a cento which uses key phrases lifted directly from Joyce’s narrative and links them to the coming of the prophet Elijah, also suggested by what is contained in Joyce’s 1922 text.
For June 16, JC will release the new cento, “On Parade,” on this website. Watch for it.