Mark Truscott's Blog

Hi there, everyone:

Just thought I'd let you know that I have a new book, Branches.



If you're so inclined, please read it! It's available for sale and through libraries now. I'd be grateful to hear what you think.

Thank you!

Skanky Possum Presents Kate Greenstreet and Mark Truscott.

We hope you can join us at a secret location on the central east side (message me for details), where our guest poets will be Kate Greenstreet and Mark Truscott.

There will be food, poets, fun and books for sale. It's a reading and a party. Please bring friends, your favorite beverage, and money to buy books.

***The gathering begins at 7 PM. Reading starts at 8:20 PM sharp.***

About the poets:

Mark Truscott is the author of two full-length books of poetry: Said Like Reed or Things (Coach House, 2004) and Nature (BookThug, 2010). In June 2011, BookThug published a prose chapbook, Form: A Series. He is working on a manuscript tentatively entitled Branches. Truscott lives in Toronto.

Kate Greenstreet is currently on the road with her third book, Young Tambling. Her previous books are The Last 4 Things and case sensitive, all with Ahsahta Press. Her videos can be viewed in Atticus Review, The Volta, Typo, and other places online. New writing is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly and Everyday Genius. Her site is at kickingwind.com.

I thought I'd resume using Goodreads now that I have a little more time for reading.

These pictures were the first a Six Mile Lake that greatly interested me and that are still clear in my mind. Passing among the big trees and the saplings on sunny mornings I sometimes stopped to consider what was before me, trying to translate the exciting mystery of the bare trees and branches into painting language. At first I used the photographer’s method when making sketches, moving about until I got an uninterrupted view of whatever seemed important in the mass of detail in front of me. This didn’t seem to work, the mystery and thrill was gone. Then I noticed that usually, when I was moved by a scene, before I changed my position to get a clearer view there was often a branch or sapling right in front of my eyes, vague and out of focus and hiding a part of the material beyond. I tried using these almost formless shapes, not of interest in themselves, but merely distracting the attention from what was beyond. It worked. The effect of these obstructions to a clear view was as exciting in the picture as in nature. There was not only the obscuring of shapes, the interrupted vision that stirred the picture maker as well as the syrup maker to effort, there was also a change in texture from the scarcely defined very near shapes to the clear-cut farther ones.

David B. Milne, Autobiography, National Archives of Canada

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George Oppen defines poetry as a process of thought. I'd say it's a process of resistance to the poem's own thinking as a form wishing to complete itself, to make a circle, to be complete. No resistance = no thought, no thought that could be called one's own, that could matter as one's own. And of course there has to be form—inherited or otherwise—for there to be resistance. Difficult to open or break a window that isn't there. (John Taggart)

Note to self: Trying too hard to co-operate during an interview makes one sound like a cheeseball. Oh well, Mitchell Caplan hosts a great show, so I don't suppose I should be blamed too harshly.Tweet

According to the preface to the 1979 edition, Arakawa and Gins began The Mechanism of Meaning to study "not simply images, percepts, or thoughts" but "more nearly all given conditions brought together in one place." They soon came to realize, however, that this focus was bringing them into correspondence with that vague something "that might [...]

Here's a quote from some previous reading. I'd like to offer it here because it's stuck with me, and because it serves as a bit of an antidote to my Arakawa and Gins post below: The piece in question, since the legs are apart, is not altogether within the dominant idea of his work. This [...]