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Ecw Press - Robert Priest

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170 pages

English

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From his first book, The Visible Man ('as fine a first volume of poetry as one is ever likely to read' the Dalhousie Review), to his most recent, Resurrection In the Cartoon ('passionate, humourous, worldly-wise, kick-ass poetry' The Vancouver Sun), Robert Priest s poetry has been the delight of critics and readers alike. Blue Pyramids: New and Selected Poems brings together the best of Robert Priest s six books of lyric poems, spells, psalms, aphorisms, koans, diatribes, and prose poems along with an exciting new group of poems and aphorisms. Also included is

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Publié par	Ecw Press
Date de parution	01 septembre 2002
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781554902408
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Blue Pyramids

Copyright © Robert Priest 2002
The songs “Rockalong” and “Love Anyway” Copyright © R. Priest and Allan Booth
Published by ECW PRESS
2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW PRESS.
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Priest, Robert, 1951– Blue pyramids: new and selected poems / Robert Priest. Poems. A misFit Book
ISBN 978-1-55022-554-9
I.Title.
PS8581.R47B58 2002 C811'.54 C2002-902212-6 PR9199.3.P745B58 2002
A misFit book edited by Michael Holmes Cover and Text Design: Darren Holmes Production and Typesetting: Mary Bowness Printing: Ball Media
This book is set in Bembo and Avant Garde
The publication of Blue Pyramids has been generously supported by the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program.
DISTRIBUTION CANADA: Jaguar Book Group, 100 Armstrong Avenue, Georgetown, ON L7G 5S4
PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA

Blue Pyramids
New and Selected Poems
Robert Priest
CONTENTS
Crumbs
What Ugly Is
On Genuflection
Incarnation
Birth
Slight Exaggeration of a Childhood Incident
Education of Shit
An Advantage of the Identity Crisis
Friend
A Tall Man Walking Fast
Time Release Poems
To His 20th Century Lover
Like Two Branches
What Dew Is
Poem for Ursula in New York
Poem of the Two Tongues
Mommies
Insomnia
The Change
If
Frankenstein
If I Have Become a Prison
Revolutions
The Re-assembled Atom
Flags
Target Practice
Lesser Shadows
Excuses
Are There Children
The Glasnost Iterations
Dec. 8, 1980
Disguises
Concerning My Obsession with Blood
A Poem About Water
Vancouver from Mount Seymour
Poem for the Ancient Trees
Money
Quicksilver
Time Release Poems
Medium
The Door Knob
Ode to the Clitoris
Post-modern Penis
Ode to the Bum
Cherries
The Asshole
Time Release Poems
I Knew I Could Sing (Industrial Accident No. 1)
Why I Crushed My Hand
Industrial Accident No. 2
Poetry Is
My Grandfather Lives
The Hammer
Pride
My Father s Hands
My Mother s Hands
Now There is Rain
My Infected Rainbow
Time Release Poems
What Kind of Voodoo
When My Faith Leaps
Ghost Removal
How to Pray to a Woman
How to Pray to a Toilet
Several Other Uses for a Halo
Christ is the Kind of Guy
Getting Close to God
Testament of a New Faith
Christ After Christ
Time Release Poems
Come to Me
The Longer Bed
The Clock Has Gone Mad
Wedding Poem
Poem for a Tall Woman
On Hearing That Gandhi Tested His Brahmacharaya by Sleeping with Young Women
The Child Came In
Single Father
Sperm Sperm Sperm
Pregnant Woman in Bath
The Origin of Woman
Sleep Poem
Poem for My Unborn Child
Homebirth
On the Birth of My Son
New Father
Your Cry
Ode to the Mother
Rockalong
Giant of the Cookie Crumbs
My Son s Hand
Prayer for My Son
Daniel Age 3
Parental Hymn
Time Release Poems
Resurrection in the Cartoon
The Big Face Competition
Parallelvis Universes
You Call Me King
Elvis/Bacchus Iterations
Time Release Poems
Three Devil Songs
Time Release Poems
Modified Famous Phrases
Ten Reasons
How Much Patience
When You Call Someone Dickhead
Meditation on a Ruler
Go, Gather up the Love
In the Next War
Time Release Poems
Messenger
Poem for Reluctant Thread
The New Opportunity
To Be a Man
In Memoriam: Ellen Priest
Grandmother
Song Instead of a Kiss
Some Very Good Reasons Why
In Slow Apocalypse
It Is the Indestructible
Safe Rage with Mates
It Is Not Love at First Sight
Time Release Poems
Love Anyway
The Future of Prophecy
Sip
Gravity
Osiris Hydreis
An Exhortation to Dance
Blue Pyramids
Meeting Place
Poem Brought to You
Notes on the Songs
To my beloved Marsha
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Over the past 30 years, many of these poems have appeared in numerous publications, including the following books: The Visible Man (Unfinished Monument Press, 1979), Sadness of Spacemen (Dreadnaught Press, 1980), The Man who broke out of the Letter X (Coach House Press, 1984), The Mad Hand (Coach House Press, 1988), Scream Blue Living (The Mercury Press, 1992), Resurrection in the Cartoon (ECW Press, 1997), and The Time Release Poems (EKSTASIS, 1998).
Thanks to the editors of those books: Albert Moritz, Linda Davey, Christopher Dewdney, Bev Daurio, Michael Holmes, and Richard Olafsun.
The author also gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of: The Canada Council for the Arts, The Ontario Arts Council and the Toronto Arts Council.
Thanks also to: Mendelson Joe, Allen Booth, Marsha Kirzner, my parents, my brother and sister - and to my children.
In memory of: Libby Scheier, Linda Davey, Ted Plantos, Srul Irving Glik, and Derrick Ilsey.
Some of these poems are available as videos online at: www.poempainter.com.
Blue Pyramids is Volume I of Phormacopia . Volume II: New and Selected Prose Poems will be published next year.
CRUMBS
one crumb is a hook
to another crumb
and you can never go anywhere
but to another crumb
and there are advertisements on the way
all for a better crumb
and you can never have
the whole loaf
WHAT UGLY IS
i put on a man mask
and went among the people of earth
in search of what
ugly
means
many years the word had troubled
me, as i listened
over and over
to some of the approximately
four billion
mouth sounds
which these
animals
make
beauty i had come to understand
in stars
in eyes
the silver lapping of the oceans there
but ugly
what did it mean?
unrecognized
never speaking
but always listening
i walked their streets
and cities
i went into their starvations
their working places
deep in mines
i climbed a mountain
and looked into the writings
and holy codes
of their artists
but it wasn t until
i shared quarters with an actual family
and watched in shock
the upbringing of their young
that i realized
ugly
is what happens to something
you don t love
enough
ON GENUFLECTION
and in buildings huge enough
to house dinosaurs
they worship a creature so small
that they have to get down on their knees
to talk to him
INCARNATION
have a place for me
a perfect fit
make me one with my need
pour the warm light liquid
all down my naked body
i have a genetic expectation
a feeling for arrival
i m coming down
like a thousand birds onto the black branch
i m coming down
a zeppelin, a bag of blue air
into the tree-shaped brains
into the dendrite forest
into the longing cell
i have toes for my toes
and nose for my nose
i m coming down into my liver
descending into my lungs
i am diving down into the cold
black waters of the belly
a million miles into my stomach
and i still have not rung
the bottom s deep belltone
i am drifting down in mind s vines
into clear blue bones
into the orange skull, the blind gristle
in pulses of pure black soul
through a long rubber tube
through a bronze body
on a reel
on an anchor long since sunk
in the never-to-be-shaken bottom of me
to the blackened tree
mind cross
joining place
to the socket
in the riverbed
the pierced Cartesian crossroad
with a stitch of uncuttable time
i am coming down
like the entire airforce
onto the black ship
i am coming down like the monarchs on Mexico
the body is a vast tropic
unreachable by foot
i am lost between volcanoes
there are a thousand miles of air
above my head
in a moment more
a second more
my feet will touch the ground
and my feet
are the ground
my eyes are the light
the air breathes me in
and exhales me in a long fluttering flow
i am down in my body
like the liquid rains
like the finally fallen peak
the obese suspended Buddhas
the plutonium Christs with their tears of heavy water
i am down with my jade-grown bones
my spirit legs bicycling
and the earth touches me
like a forever denied son
like an exile returned illegally
the earth touches me like a long lost mother
and her name is terra
terror
her name is life
BIRTH
nothing is ordained
the infant stifling in the cot
does not predict
veins rising
through an ancient hand
the child upon the pendulum
hooting for joy
predicts nothing
the past at least is certain
i am face to face
with my origin
my mother s grim face
her sweat upon the pillow
the long-forgotten house of blood
forever closed to me
on this cold hearth
writhing in the oracle of the scar
i speak my first shrill prophecy
SLIGHT EXAGGERATION OF A CHILDHOOD INCIDENT
when i was two
a garbage man gave me a trumpet
it was a small silver
winding dirty trumpet
and shrieking at my own thunder
like any other prodigy mad with energy
i bellowed down Thames Street
levelling buildings, knocking down churches
with my blasts, of course the neighbours
complained, prodigy or no prodigy
they were having no such slumbers
as their very precious own
disturbed by little manic urchins
such as i was
but my mother in her arrogant way
defied them and sat severely on the porch
watching with pride my short pants parade
go boastfully by
it was the police finally
who had to silence me
arriving on bicycles with bells
and blowing whistles
i was standing on a post
in a circle of my peers
and when the bobby said
eaaah ooze makin oowl at noise en?
the circle opened magically before me
and they all pointed and said
it s him -
it s little Robert Priest.
EDUCATION OF SHIT
After he was shit
The shit
Went to shit school
In