the beginner

I've been busy on ricepaper duty for the last two days. I'm about to become their bookkeeper.

The next literary person in the cue is someone I met over four years ago, back at one of the UBC Green College reading series. He's the first poet that I really liked. He is also, like PK, still alive and writing.

Robert Bringhurst

In Waterloo, my thirst for something in life that amounts to more than mathematical equations led me to my first college level English course. We studied a few modern writers from Canada. The prof kept the class light and easygoing. Bringhurst was one of the poets in the course list, and I didn't understood what his poetry was about until The Blue Roofs of Japan. Of course, in retrospect, this kind of poetry is meant to be impressive and breathtaking, but at the time, I thought it was the most amazing thing ever.

Blue Roofs is a duet in poetry form, read aloud by one man and one woman. The voices overlap, fight, and make peace in the short time that the poem exists, not as words, but sounds. My partner was a beautiful girl with blond hair. I don't remember much about her, but I understood her pleasure as she practiced with me, because I felt it too. It was the closest I ever got to ballroom dancing. The intimacy arose from the music in our ears, and the black words in our eyes. The experience of reading Bringhurst was sublime, but the ending for me personally was unsatisfying because by the end of that course, I would have failed four other courses, and began the descent into the abyss.

My favorite poem, first stanza quoted:
The Heart is Oil (Robert Bringhurst, The Calling, p 88)

If a man should dream and should see himself dreaming
a dream, seeing himself in a mirror
seeing that the heart is oil riding
the blood like a lid toward which he is moving,
his bones like a boat and his gut strung up
for a sail in the wind of his breathing,

Fast forward a few years, when I came face to face with this man. I remember the fireplace, blazing heat to warm the winter air. Green College is such a decadent place, with pool tables, great comfortable couches, a Bosendorfer grand piano, and oak dinning tables. It plays host to visiting scholars and musicians taking their sabaticals at UBC. Bringhurst came in as a large man with grey hair. At his position in UT, he probably taught many of the writers sitting in that room. He began with little introduction, only stating the title of the poem. His voice tremmered and turned coarse and brittle. He was not reading the poem. It was almost a performance piece, as he brought his voice down to the lowest registers and recited the words as a broken man would. It was hard to hear the words, but from the way the poem was going, understanding was irrelavant. The emotion of abject solitude was there, and the man disappeared, replaced by a wall of sound.

After concluding remarks, a small group of the audience moved with Bringhurst out to the chapel because the main reading room was scheduled for chamber music practice. Away from the fire, and in the musty chapel, we began our questioning of his methods and his art. As the youngest member present, I asked, "How can I become a writer?" To that, he replied, "Read, read broadly and deeply, and then you will understand."

I was completely satisfied, but the audience clamoured for more explanation. Ever since that day, I have kept his words, and like his voice, those simple words echo.

I look forward to the day I understand.