Some Poems and Issues

The catch-all term "populist" can refer to almost anything that contains an appeal to "the people," but what is "the people?" There's a long tradition of folk poetry, ballads, vernacular poetry, dialect poetry, and experimental poetry that reaches out to different forms of language, and these books fit those forms. Songen, with its italicized g on the cover (harking back to bpNichol's gIFTS-the open universe of song) is shaped like a chapbook (that calls to mind a songbook), a term that has its roots in Old English- "barter, business, dealing." The book is full of moments that encounter/counter consciousness, and in the sudden echo of sight coming into image an interval, a break, or a narrative is formed, developing like a Polaroid or not-"directions are shutting down."