Writing

Maybe I should stop talking and just get them to write. I think they'd like that more. I guess what I'm doing is a pre-emptive strike toward writing I'd rather read. Don't get romantic, get specific, is the kind of thing I've been saying.
Some students aren't convinced. They're bringing in knives and Russians and south Florida and forgetting that a human being, their character, wants something--which no plot exotica can provide.
I wonder if that's what I shouldn't be saying.
It's taking too long (my fault) to get to material and the workshop fun that goes with it.
Meanwhile, I hope the Raymond Carver stories pay off--the ones in What We Talk About When We Talk About Love in which, as I claimed earlier today, the story lies deep, barely visible through words.

Song

At Westminster United this aft, I opened the Chamber Singers concert program. Item 1, "Sing We and Chant It", which once I'd sung.
In that choir years ago, an eighth note was as fast as I could go but I could hold a tune. And read. Like the other 4 or 5 in the bass section, I clustered close to Daryl, our one proper singer. Daryl knew how to sing and smile at the same time, which the conductor, a Welsman, wanted from all of us, especially for a Renaissance seize the day number such as "Sing We".
This afternoon, seated eight pews back from the stage, See poem as location for voice, I read in my notebook. (I thought I should mention it.)
A single voice, soprano, began to sing from the stage. Sing we and chant it, while love doth grant it. The fa la las came from all around, the rest of the choir rising as a kind of flash mob and filing up to the stage. A series of love songs and death songs followed--madrigals, canons. I went to market, I met swans. I could hear myself.
For their encoure: "Sing We and Chant It" again, the choir filing off.

Overcoat

I went to pick up my overcoat today, the one I'd ordered from the high-end (highest-end) menswear store in Regina. To be honest, I admit that the look I wanted was the Jerry Seinfeld overcoat look. 12 to 20 years ago. That look no longer applies maybe? (Betsy, my ex-New York friend, would say, "No, 12 to 20 is about right, by the time it gets to Regina".)
Anyway, I don't care. I want a long coat, below my knees. Being a tall fellow, maybe an out-of-date fellow, I found all the overcoats in the high-end store to be too short. So I ordered one, paying about as much as I paid for my first car.
Today I parked on Hamilton, took off the coat I was wearing and stepped inside the menswear store for the new coat (which is Italian, by the way, a Biello, in a charcoal wool).
"Let's try it on," said the high-end guy, the latest of a hundred sales guys to flummox me, except in this case I'm so sure.
"You bet," I said. Well, the coat was way too big--gorgeous for length but wide through the torso, long and wide through the sleeves.
"Tell you what," the guy said. "We'll order you another one, a smaller one. We'll try to get it here before winter's out."
I don't care about this winter. Me and the coat are good for twenty winters, I told him. Just a guess.

One Afternoon During the Midterm Exam

Eight essays remain on the table, but only seven of the writers are present.
Eight people are present, but only seven get essays. How so?

Fourth Letter Home

The traveller sees Don McKay
reading "Sometimes a Voice" on YouTube
as Hillsdale voice, the same
facial track as Woody Allen but
a voice from the trees
in Monroe park grown now
and from lights over back doors
and from that dark over McKay's left ear
the easement draws.

Not Sure What to Call It

I heard scene and fiction and narrative. And not sure but the lines felt long. The word poem seemed slow to come. Tomorrow I want to speak of that but don't know what I'll say. What comes to mind first is that in a poem you make a line and you end it. After that, what you call it matters not. I'll show a few examples.
Pretty soon what my students write turns into poems that I might write.
Nevertheless I press on. You give me action in your lines I'll be happy.

Update re Loco Log

You fans of my Loco Log (hello Uncle Martha and Aunt Pete) have been clamouring to find out whether I counted that photograph of a CP locomotive. The answer is not yet. But should I? My own eyes didn't see it but there it was, paused over Albert street, joined at the rear to 9132.
(I told my daughter Lucy one day on a road trip, the two of us, she was about 15, that the CP locomotive we zoomed by east of Belle Plaine was one we'd never again see. So we wrote it down, or I did anyway. By now I've logged about 50--number then location, day, time.
Lucy didn't take to the idea at first. Six or seven years later, she's weakened a little, I'm guessing. The prize: spotting a locomotive a second time.
This idea I blame on direction.)