Rose DeShaw » Reviews

KEMENY BABINEAU’S TONGUE DOES IT AGAIN!

Rose — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 22:38:26 +0000

Tongue 10 from Laurel Reed Books is out in all its profundity and entertainment. This brilliant 26 page starkly black & white chapbook begins with a quote from Joe Louis on the inside page: “Everyone has a plan until they get hit.”

Much of the text is Letterplay. There’s a proper poetic name for this sort of beautiful word dance which Kemeny himself surely knows. All I can do is admire the way certain pages are put together. Especially the way Derek Beauliu’s work cavorts.

Matthew Frederick George’s Typographical letter is memorable.

There is a lengthy list of contributors. It is an honour to be in a Kemeny Tongue, among such company.

Babineau makes contemporary work accessible and a pleasure to read. Tongue 10 is a keeper to put beside your Atwood and your Ignatiff, telling yourself that fun, literacy and the poetry scene can intermingle and give you the sensation of a great party on the page.
On the back is the program for the 2nd Louis-Schmeling fight.

You’ll always have a good time in a Babineau Tongue. Order one for yourself at 2011 Laurel Reed Books, 206 Ellis Ave, Mt Pleasant, On N0E 1K0. I don’t know the price. Be sure to include postage for a 26 pager.

GLENNA GREEN – ADD THIS WARM-VOICED, DISTINCTIVE SINGER TO YOUR HOLIDAY COLLECTION

Rose — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 21:10:35 +0000

The red-haired Glenna who sings at many local venues, has a new CD called ‘TREE TOONZ. where she is dressed as a guitar-playing Christmas Tree. Tree Toonz, which retails for $20, includes New Years and has such favorites as “Miss Fogarty’s Christmas Cake,’ and ‘Sleigh Ride.’
You can pick one up personally from Glenna at the RCHA club in Kingston, Ontario, December 3rd at 8pm where she gigs with Dave Barton and Bob Arlidge. It’s also available at the Brew Pub and the Pilot House.
Glenna’s is one of those warm voices that goes with a warm heart, which comes across in the rich meaning she gives to her songs.

WENDY LUELLA PERKINS with TEILHARD FROST has a new CD ‘This Very Moment.’

Rose — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:16:45 +0000

“Breathe, chant, listen, sing, connect, improvise,’ it says on the half of the ticket remaining to me when I went to celebrate the music that has come out of Wendy’s Soulful Singing Gatherings which meet weekly here in Kingston, Ontario and environs.

The meeting was held on the stage of this candlelit old church where participants and audience sat (one and the same), sang or even got up and danced as they were moved.

While the picture I have of Wendy herself, smiling and singing in her red skirt doesn’t give you a closeup, she embodied the feelings of peace and openness about which she wrote and we sang, as well as that of the place and a lovely, lively place. Her husband, Charlie undoubtedly has pictures.

THIS VERY MOMENT is a wonderful CD just at this time, a sound for holiday parties when you want to step past the traditional carols into meaningful lyrics and peaceful sounds.
Teilhard Frost’s imaginative interpretations with a variety of instruments is the backup you’d dream of as a singer. Imagine the voices. Or go to Wendy’s website and hear it for yourself.
www.wendyluellaperkins.com

THIS SIDE UP BY SANDRA STEPHENSON (CZANDRA) – REVIEW

Rose — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:34:17 +0000

Montreal Poet, Czandra, is a graceful woman with the classical good looks of Virginia Woolf. She has a new chapbook from Sitting Duck & Broken Rules Presses. I have #7 of the first print run of 120. ($12) from 6871 rue d’Iberville, Montreal, PQ H2G 2C9 Canada

When opened up, the 42 page book has a lively drawing of an angry Mr. Punch on a bicycle. The picture is an appropriate prelude to the poems such as Jubilous “It juggled eggs and spelling in the obdurate then and now III It whistled correct spelliing like a writing in the air”
These lines echo the tone of the book – words that the poet has altered such as ‘turrible’ and ‘observashunz’ and ‘electrik brumstik.’ We know what the originals are and we are curious to know why the change.
Curiousity is a good approach to This Side Up. The title is also useful when examining the cover to see which is front, which back. Then inside, bring the same attitude to Unmentionable: skunk smells sweet/ roasted garlic/lilac smells like solvent/spring something/must be wrong.
Wide-ranging contents run the gamut from playful through reproachful to wistful and serious. All the senses are engaged. Her poem, ‘cool’ is very much a subset of Carroll’s Alice.

Handbound on tree & cotton textile paper, this lovely little book sings to you whenever you dip in past the angry Mr. Punch. I had a good time in the text.

BEST CANADIAN NEWSPAPER FROM A READER’S PERSPECTIVE

Rose — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:10:12 +0000

Disclaimer: I don’t subscribe to any but for years I’ve bought, read and discussed 6 papers daily. I’ve had features in most from time to time, letters in all but no affiliation with any. No one is bias free but I try to have an objective viewpoint. For certain, I’m probably a good fit for the average semi-informed reader who gets her news from the printed page as well as online and from the odd gossip in the sauna at the pool, wanting to know what’s going on in the world. (And if you can’t trust hot retired people in swimsuits and nothing else, to give you the truth as they see it, where can you turn?)
My rating lineupgoes like this: 1) Ottawa Citizen (really a national paper), 2 Toronto Star (national), 3) National Post 4) Local Paper – Kingston Whig Standard 5) Globe & Mail 6) Toronto Sun
Here’s the reasons:

The Citizen has a broad viewpoint, managing to straddle the middle better than any of the others. It’s reporting is meticulous and thoughful, cartoons (important to me) adventurous, with a widespread op ed section. Balanced, articulate and much overlooked, I turn to it when I really want to know what’s going on. They’ve taken the lead on prison news for which they deserve a lot of credit.

When the Sun was just starting up, Doug Creighton at the helm, he published a cartoon that he often quoted later in speeches, comparing the leading newspapers of the day covering a shipwreck: Roughly it said: Globe & Mail headline: ‘Financial Disaster: Shipping Stock Plummets. Telegram (a leading action daily): Thousands Lose Lives At Sea. Citizen: Prime Minister Promises Investigation, Star: Heroic Reporter Saves Drowning Puppy
The Toronto Star’s comics are full-colour. They’re the best investigative paper, on the side of immigrants, considered the most liberal. Their letters page shows signs of becoming interesting lately. It’s a fat, fascinating weekend read with the best movie reviews and with Cathal Kelly whom they have the good sense to feature, a great sports section. My husband usually reads me Kelly aloud in the mornings before we go out, even though I’m anything but a sports fan. I love his way with a metaphor. The man belongs in Great Canadian Lit Hall of Fame.
3)
Robert Fulford on Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wednesday. The proudly right wing National Post devoted part of their front page and a considerable amount of their inside to a brilliant essay by the former editor of Saturday Night magazine on the father of language philosophy. Quirky, (though not as much as in the Conrad Black days), often blindingly original, by turns thoughtful and pedantic with an unreadable priest as a regular columist, it is the most hated of all the national papers but consistently worthy of a memorable place in the paper echelon. We miss the graphics from Black’s day but their showcasing the best in graphic novels throughout the week, goes a long way to make up.
4)
It is an item of faith to support your local paper – and try to keep it honest and healthy. The myth goes that these writers and editors are just in it for the money when every evidence is that they truly do care, are trying with a limited budget to do their best writing/work every single day while contending with being part of a chain that doesn’t give them much of a chance.
There’s a movement to reform the Kingston Whig Standard and reminiscing of when it used to have 60 some reporters and editors, which is a hard number to swallow these days. Every rock and blade of grass was fodder back then and the editorial section alone ran for pages. Back in the 1850’s, there were 13 newspapers in our small town. Now we have a monopoly with a scrappy little supermarket paper, EMC running around the edges but not yet in the game.
Another myth is that in not buying your local paper, you send them a message. All that tells them, is something is wrong. They don’t know what but they can guess and largely it’s beyond their control. The more readers a paper has, the greater potential it has to be better. Hundreds of letters to the editor will convince the chain to put a little more money their way, more reportage, better stories. The greatness of any newspaper rises and falls over the years. Better get in & help them fight than to disengage and see that light flicker and go out.
5)
Aspiring to be Canada’s USA Today, the Globe & Mail has abandoned its readers along with literacy and common sense. A once-lauded letter’s page full of wit and pith has inexplicably turned sour and dull. The Globe used to be the place to read and be read, compliments flowing in the locker room on a particular turn of phrase. No more. The Star is winning that battle regularly. They have lost Blatchford, a beloved & featured columnist. Others are dropped with no explanation or farewell, often popping up in other papers or online. Their Life section remains The Best, vibrant with David Eddy, Judith Timson, Claudia Dey as well as various health gurus. Margaret Wente always thrills but cookie cutter syndrome is making the Grey Old Girl look like a south of the border wannabe, running far behind the pack.
They have the most quirky of the comics but remain with their half-page stance despite the brilliant new strips out there and upcoming.

Despite considerable razzing, we read the paper with the very best sports section – Toronto Sun. They have an Ottawa edition that is just a faint reflection of what’s going on up in the big city. This is an honest little paper still having all the tabloid raunchiness with which it began. Unabashedly right wing and often funny, it must be distinguished from the ill-fated network that doesn’t have the same lively spirit that is consistent in the paper itself. Yes, they have sunshine girls but also beloved columnists who write often surprisingly thoughtful and non-party line pieces. Their sports photos are superior and often surprising. Their comic selection is absolute bottom except for 3 found nowhere else: Scary Gary, All In The Family, Zack
My husband, who reads right along with me, will have a different take on these. I invite him to submit his list tomorrow. And anyone out there who would like to contribute, my blog awaits.

AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON – I WROTE THIS MOVIE SPOILER (Link to the right)

Rose — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 20:23:47 +0000

THE MOVIE SPOILER.com SPOILER ARCHIVE

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON

NOTE: Here is a Classic spoiler from Rose who says… “This is my favorite film. The music is superb.(Three separate classic renditions of Blue Moon.) There is no explicit nudity, the violence is subtle and the gore really not that bad.”

Moody shots lead us deep into the Yorkshire Moors as the opening credits scroll down and Bobby Vinton sings: Blue Moon. . Gradually the camera picks out a single lane road coming over a rise, headlights coming towards us. The vast loneliness of the immense space is emphasized. Behind the lights is a battered blue pickup full of sheep. The truck stops at a fork in the road. The driver gets out, goes around and opens the back. Two wisecracking guys with backpacks get out; Jack (Griffin Dunne) and David (David Naughton). “Lovely sheep!” David says. “Bye, girls!” Jack says, much in the manner of a Hope & Crosby road picture…

This is the beginning of a review of my favorite movie of all time. If you know me at all, you know how unlikely it is that I should even have watched this movie once. I still don’t understand why it is so important to me but it’s worth watching. And reading my line by line walk through the film, if you like. So glad they still have it on line.

TARA KAINER’S BOOK OF PAIN & NATURE

Rose — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 15:40:32 +0000

She’s been on welfare. Tara says that right up front in an interview on youtube. (Link on right). Titles of the work in her new book give you some idea of what she’s been through: Past Hope, Sadness, I Didn’t Count On This, Hunger, Love Is Like Death, This Yearning, There’s A Funeral Here Today, Collateral Damage, Misreadings, Self-Doubt, At The Welfare Office, But I’m Hungry. Plus Denial and A Lunatics Love Song. Those are just the obvious ones.
And yet she is constantly surprised by nature; that it exists at all. She doesn’t expect it will be there for her: “I didn’t count on this/a riot of colour in the rain red leaves”, “Otherworldly light/spills across the sea, the sky/unearthly, faery, godly/gossamer light.”
A disclaimer. Tara is one of my heroes. This gentle glowing tough woman who has plowed her way through more mountains than the rockies ever had, stood her ground while trouble rained on all sides and now produces a book so like herself in its tenderness and unshakeable faith in what should be, what ought to be and how it can be told.
For, ‘A Single Seed,’ alone she deserves nomination for some kind of award within the community of poets. I read it aloud to my husband the critical and seldom impressed philosopher and he said, ‘OH WOW SHE’S GOOD!” The opening stanza’s begin in the garden where she suddenly marvels that she is here on this planet, living this life and then she begins to sum up:
“I am
a middle-aged woman
of the 21st century. Three
children, three jobs, alone
in a rented apartment, an image
in the mirror I don’t recognize.
What convergence of forces
rooted me here? Which corner
should I have turned, thought,
suppressed, action taken, lover
embraced?”
You can purchase it online or at the Novel Idea in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Let her know what you think once you’ve absorbed it, eh?

1 MILLION REASONS TO READ MY BOOK: For all young women who think their dreams can never be

Rose — Sun, 08 May 2011 11:14:24 +0000

In my book, right now titled, Louisa May in Spandex, she returns to our times along with the creatures she wrote about in her Very First Book. It was NOT Little Women, that over-preachy tome her weird father had a substantial hand in, as Louisa was still in her teens.

No. It was FLOWER FABLES, which introduced a number of the fairies and other creatures that the meadow-dazzled Alcott believed had existence. Only this time they set up in the Fashion Dollhouse of Louisa’s biographer and new roommate in a Manhattan penthouse.
Here’s a profile of the readers for whom it was written:
Maybe a young mother with a child or two wondering if by having children she’s short-circuited her dreams? Early twenties to mid-thirties (and up, of course, we’ve all been there at some point). She may also be a young single on the brink of career choices. Not fully-matured, still loving to play and looking back to childhood, wondering what she missed. (Or she may be older, like me, looking back and loving it).

Louisa May In Spandex offers her all that. Perhaps she read Harry Potter but a boy wizard didn’t speak her language. But here is a young woman who does. Not Louisa May but Tommy Peters, a single woman with a sexy sister, on the brink of some major decisions about her life that make her stomach hurt.
Into this picture steps a beloved children’s author, whom she easily may not have read but knows about. Or read and worshipped. At any rate, Louisa May Alcott represents all that she has given up for adulthood, all the dreams set aside. Now she’s buying the heavily-marketed fairy dolls along with Barbies and all their clothes that spoke of a glittering lifestyle.
But with Louisa May Alcott comes news of the very first book Alcott wrote, when she was still a teenager, when She Believed In Fairies Because They Actually Existed! Astounding.
And then the actual fairies from the book turn up. Not all of them of course but gradually they will fill the three books in this trilogy. But they are 21st century, focused on all the delights that a technological society offers – like the Automated Closet.

In these hard times, a book that lets you inhabit a luxury condo with all the trappings (if only in your mind) and have a closet that dispenses with all the headachy, time-consuming chores of maintenance while styling and delivering miraculous outfits with accessories, shoes & jewelry, especially talilored for you – hard to resist. Especially when you yourself are poor, lonely, struggling with life far outside these wonders.
For a few hours you are again the princess surrounded by fairies catering to your every wish while being able to show a beloved children’s author your own intimate knowledge of this brand new century and see it through her eyes. You are sought after by two men. You are able to contend with your sister and mother on a superior level and you emerge a winner!
In the next book you discover how much nicer the fairy birth process is while once again playing among the fairies (and other creatures) but also, as in book one, gaining some understanding of other times and experiences.
This is a different Alcott from any we’ve seen thus far. She is having more fun as the series progresses, more is revealed about her relationship with Henry Thoreau and all the creatures she invented.
Plus, all the environmental concerns, major but low key in the book in terms of our relationship with nature.
Plus the comic characters and the looks at the way society goes on.
Louisa May In Spandex is JUST what the market is lookiing for in these lean, worrisome times. Fun with the FAIRIES!

WHY FAMILY MATTERS (According to Bronson Alcott, his daughter – and me)

Rose — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 14:46:15 +0000

Just finished, ‘Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott & Her Father,” by John Matteson. At first I was suspicious. The book is footnoted and I suspected it of academia (oh cursed word) but it turned out to be simply scholarly, objective and a great quoter of their work by someone with a close knowledge of who they were.
Thoreau was Louisa’s teacher, Alcott’s friend and lived in their future house on Main Street in Concord. Dabbling with the Transcendentalists has been one of my life areas. Matteson’s take on Fruitlands and the struggle to understand Nature between Father & Daughter bears some resemblance to mine with my father. From start to finish ‘Eden’s Outcasts’ is as engrossing as a good novel. I couldn’t put it down.
This is a picture of my grandmother after whom I am named and her sister, Great Aunt Sarah (Niece Sarah, are you seeing your namesake?). The two old ladies who came as teenagers to the Bellingham Washington area over the mountains in a covered wagon from Kentucky, squabbling with their mother all the way. Dunlaps, they were in those days, mother’s side of the family, believers in every omen and superstition that came down the pike.
I suspect Sarah of chin hairs if not actively sitting for the original witch masks of Halloween while her sister, Roseltha Dunlap Bouck has that ‘don’t-hit-me-I’m-harmless’ smile which she always used just prior to zapping you with a zinger!
But they are family and I’ve just finished reading a compelling tract on how that works out in the long run.

LIBBY PURVES! Understands women feeling trapped

Rose — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 11:04:43 +0000

Despite one book being unfortunately PINK, Purves lets you into how women feel in mid-family raising. In these novels you’ll get it too. (Free Woman, Casting Off). She shows you how a family operates, what can tear it down, build it up. A modern Dickens but not as long-winded, Purves KNOWS who these women are.

Census articles, this week, give us 63 categories of family by income. Purves takes a more human, colourful, compelling approach.