Introducer- Most likely Roy Kiyooka
00:00:00.00
Good evening. Hello, Mr. Bowering. [Laughter.] Well, welcome to the sixth reading of our second series of evenings with Canadian and American poets. Tonight we have Joe Rosenblatt, Toronto, and John Newlove, formerly of Vancouver, now residing in Nova Scotia. Joe Rosenblatt will begin the reading, there will be an intermission, and John Newlove will follow. I'm going to quote largely from the copy in Joe Rosenblatt's book, The LSD Leacock, for I hope servient biographical information. It goes like this, he was born in Toronto on December the 26th, nineteen hundred and thirty-three. He says that he has suffocated in Toronto ever since then. He attended the Central Technical School and dropped out in Grade 10, he has worked as a grave-digger, plumber's helper, civil servant, railway express misanthrope. He has attended the Provincial Institute of Trades where he acquired a diploma as a welder fitter, his favourite writers are Ambrose Biers, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, and A.M. Klein, and his favourite dream, is Cyclops turning up at a nigh-bank[??] His previous book of poems, which was probably printed in nineteen hundred and sixty-three, is called Voyage of the Mood. Joe Rosenblatt.
Annotation
00:02:27.68
Applause.
Joe Rosenblatt
00:02:36.02
Wasn't that [inaudible.] I'm just going to read, start off with a series of poems I had written about my uncle, who was a fishmonger. He had a habit of phyxiating the murdering fish, and slicing them, and slicing them, and...well, I'll start. This is called "Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green."
Annotation
00:03:11.01
Reads "Uncle Nathan: Blessed his memory, speaketh in land-locked green."
Annotation
00:06:10.90
Applause.
Joe Rosenblatt
00:06:16.53
"Ichthycide." Another poem about my uncle. It's funny, really. [Laughter.]
Annotation
00:06:29.20
Reads "Ichthycide"
Joe Rosenblatt
00:08:13.84
This is called "A Shell Game," has to do with my uncle. [Laughter.] It's about his funeral. Joke.
Annotation
00:08:27.58
Reads "A Shell Game"
Joe Rosenblatt
00:09:42.23
I wrote all kinds of poems. I was in Vancouver and I came across the god-awful logic of the zoo. It kinda scared the hell out of me. It was a bat. I've never seen a bat before. Met people who were bats. But this was the real McCoy, it was a fruit bat and it was hanging upside-down, you know, that's the way they live and they fornicate that way too, apparently, upside-down. So I wrote about bats. I have some more fish poems but I get tired of that after a while, you start hating it. And we'll begin with "Bats." While it's true the bat is a mammal, not a bird, there's all types of kinds of mythology based on prejudice about bats and which I've tried to embody in these poems.
Annotation
00:10:47.70
Reads "Bats"
Joe Rosenblatt
00:11:32.46
Outside of the bat poem there came a group of sound poetry. Because I tried to get the feeling of the bat in the air, you know the image of the bat and the way it, and the movements of the bat. And this is called "The Fruit Bat." First encounter with a bat.
Annotation
00:11:56.05
Reads "The Fruit Bat"
Joe Rosenblatt
00:13:16.16
This is better. This is “The Bat Cage”.
Annotation
00:13:19.43
Reads “The Bat Cage” [first line "In this martian landscape"]
Joe Rosenblatt
00:14:39.22
Oh we're like bats to people. We used to have, I used to, when I was a kid I went to school and we had a music teacher who was a bit of a nut. She used to rap kids across the knuckles, you know, just to hear them singing. [Laughter.] I may have called her Mrs. [inaudible], I can't recall, the trauma was too great.
Annotation
00:15:02.85
Reads “The Vampire”.
Annotation
00:15:48.04
Laughter and applause follows Rosenblatt's last line, "I bet she's pushing up poison oak."
Joe Rosenblatt
00:15:55.46
"The Zombie." Just whistle when you get tired of these bat poems. Do anything you wanna do. "The Zombie." By the way, bats are supposed to be unkosher according to Leviticus. It says all fowl that creep going upon all fours shall be an abomination unto you. But in other countries they're great appetizers, the fruit bat especially, and I have a interesting poem, not right now though. "The Zombie."
Annotation
00:16:26.08
Reads "The Zombie."
Joe Rosenblatt
00:17:59.81
I'll read one more bat poem, it's the sound thing, an experimental thing which I later developed...too many of these bats here. I wrote a Christmas poem on bats, too. Maybe I should read it. Dedicated to somebody. I'll read the sound poem. It's more important. "The Butterfly Bat." There is a butterfly bat. Hm, found in the Orient, a very beautiful bat, orange apparently, very beautiful though.
Annotation
00:18:43.86
Reads "The Butterfly Bat"
Annotation
00:20:02.03
Reads "Orpheus in Stanley Park"
Joe Rosenblatt
00:20:50.85
"Sex and Death." This poem's for a friend of mine.
Annotation
00:20:54.28
Reads "Sex and Death"
Joe Rosenblatt
00:21:48.22
I should read the egg poems, because I don't think many of you have heard them, and I'll do that. You'd probably like them better than the bats. More meaningful. This is called "Egg Sonata."
Annotation
00:22:20.39
Reads "Egg Sonata"
Annotation
00:23:38.57
Loud laughter and applause follows Rosenblatt's last line, "How fortunate I am, breaking the egg from the outside instead of inside-out."
Annotation
00:23:44.95
Reads ["Let the egg live"]
Annotation
00:24:56.72
Cut/Edit made in tape--unknown amount of time elapsed; silence on recording for 3 seconds.
Annotation
00:24:59.98
Reads "It's in the egg, in the little round egg"
Joe Rosenblatt
00:26:57.41
One more egg poem. [Laughter and applause.]
Joe Rosenblatt
00:27:08.69
This is a prose poem. It's called "The Easter I got for Passover." [Laughter.] It has to do with an argument, whether the body of Christ did not go to heaven, the moderator of the United Church of Canada said yesterday, Right Reverend Earnest Marshall Hows told a press conference that he does not believe in the physical resurrection of Jesus but does believe in a spiritual resurrection. That's from the Globe and Mail, 23rd of April, '65.
Annotation
00:27:46.78
Reads "The Easter I got for Passover"
Annotation
00:30:02.76
Applause concludes this reading.
Joe Rosenblatt
00:30:10.48
Do you want to read, John? Where is he? [Laughter.] Do you want me to come here? Yeah okay. I'm getting down to my dirty poems, what am I going to do? I wrote a whole bunch of pornographic poetry, right. I'll read that for the end when the time's up. I wrote a poem to Che Guevara, if I can find the thing now, because I really muddled everything up here, oh here it is. It's called "The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevara."
Annotation
00:30:52.48
Reads "The Beehive: An Elegy to Che Guevarra."
Joe Rosenblatt
00:31:42.43
A poem about a critic, “Fable”.
Annotation
00:31:47.56
Reads “Fable”.
Joe Rosenblatt
00:32:37.37
I wrote another one about a critic, a friend of mine. It's called "The Crab Louse." I'll read it. [Laughter.] I think some of you may recognize him.
Annotation
00:32:47.77
Reads "The Crab Louse"
Annotation
00:33:25.87
Reads "The Fire Bug Poet"
Joe Rosenblatt
00:34:29.39
"How Mice Make Love," how'd this get in here? "How Mice Make Love."
Annotation
00:34:36.61
Reads "How Mice Make Love."
Joe Rosenblatt
00:35:29.03
"The Electric Rose."
Annotation
00:35:34.11
Reads "The Electric Rose."
Annotation
00:37:13.93
Applause.
Joe Rosenblatt
00:37:17.79
Should I read on? Well this is a poem called "Itch." It's about that cat who, you know, in the world of the dead. And as usual I mucked up all the mythology, but it was too late to change the poem. So I said, what the hell.
Annotation
00:37:44.15
Reads "Itch"
Joe Rosenblatt
00:41:51.32
There's a loathesome typographical error in here. That's what happens.
Annotation
00:41:56.81
Continues reading "Itch"
Joe Rosenblatt
00:43:20.31
[inaudible] [inaudible] a more cheerful poem, if I can find one here. How about "Cricket Love"? I'll read one very early poem I wrote, "Better She Dressed in a Black Garment."
Annotation
00:43:39.69
Reads "Better She Dressed in a Black Garment"
Joe Rosenblatt
00:44:21.31
Thank you.
Annotation
00:44:22.30
Sustained applause concludes the reading.
Introducer
00:44:35.65
There'll be a fifteen minute inter-[mission.]
Annotation
00:44:37.30
RECORDING ENDS.
