the green notebook
, reading Susan Gevirtz, Dennis Cooley + Captain Underpants etc at Great Wolf Lodge,
Susan Gevirtz, Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger (2010): “There is no other sun // in another room [.]” Another morning at Great Wolf, in the lobby by the gift shop, awaiting Rose in her quest, as Christine takes Aoife to the waterpark. I’m still wearing my aircast orthopaedic medical walking boot, after all, which prevents me from entering the water. Another mound of families on the lobby floor, listening to one of the staff read a story, as other patrons mill about for breakfast, check-in, check-out. Great Wolf Lodge, where I move through the first round of proofs for my upcoming chapbook with Gap Riot Press, and the cover copy for On Beauty (both are exactly right). I’m eager for both, for very different reasons, or possibly the same. Everything in the lobby is noise and movement, which doesn’t bother me much. I have my notebook, coffee. On the couch in the lobby, minding nephew’s copy of The Adventures of Captain Underpants (1997) for some reason.
“Stop!” cried the cops, but it was too late. George, Harold, and Captain Underpants were gone.
*
Turnstone Press requests a blurb from me for Dennis Cooley’s upcoming poetry title, love in a dry land (2024). Apparently a festival invitation has moved up the publisher’s timeline, so I have two weeks, if I am able. They send me a pdf copy of the manuscript from earlier in the spring, suggesting the book wouldn’t be changed much between this and the final collection. Do they not know Cooley?
During one of my western reading tours twenty years back, Cooley mentioned that he was rewriting his Bloody Jack (1978) for a new edition (2002) through University of Alberta Press, including the addition of the twenty to forty pages that original editor David Arnason had removed. When I mentioned this to the publisher in Edmonton, a few days further, down that western line, they had no idea. He’s doing what?
I’ve long had the sense that for Cooley, a poem or manuscript is something perpetually in motion, not even held in stasis through publication. Another step down the line. “what is this journal,” this draft writes, early on in the manuscript, “why am i writing always [.]” I’m curious to compare any potential differences between this and the final, published collection. Dennis Cooley, barely able to remain still, simultaneously working on numerous other projects and publications while working on this same particular project since the 1980s, at least, excerpting threads for the sake of book-length publication; this new title, utilizing the title of the entire project, at least the third from the same mound of poems:
this is love in a dry country
this is love in our house
this is the country i take down
careless with blot and erasure
it is the place we live in
and don’t dare say
It took a few days, between Picton and Great Wolf Lodge and Picton again, but here’s what I wrote as my blurb. Is it too much?
There isn’t anyone beyond Cooley able to offer such wild, prairie vernacular, let alone one riffing off a singular work by Sinclair Ross. From Country Music to The Bentleys to love in a dry land, Dennis Cooley playfully provides lyrics as pure gesture, intellectual wordplay and spinning puns in a magical articulation and expansion of open form. Okay, cool it, krazy mclennan, I hear Cooley say, but he can’t deny any of it. love in a dry land is an absolute delight.
*
Our final morning at Great Wolf, the young ladies, nephew, mother-in-law and Christine in the waterpark. I, an hour on the back step. Last night, our session of mini-putt golf was rained out, but only halfway. Christine won, of course, with margins between everyone by a hair. There was laser tag, which Rose achieved far better than the group, her enthusiasms and wild energy. They, in the wave pool; I am on the back deck, warm in the summer sun.
Am I to presume the local skunk emerges, only, come dusk?
Maria Stepanova, from Holy Winter (2024), as translated by Sasha Dugdale: “Blow winds. A crowd of unknown ghosts.”