Starting to see a way out of the procrastination-paralysis of the last month and a half. Rather than reading and preparing for exams, I’ve been worrying about what to write for the two papers I have to do this term. My philosophy of law class has been a real worry, because most of what we read and discuss has to do with the question of whether law and morality are separate. I can’t seem to become invested in that question. I just don’t see how it matters. What interests me is the construction of law, how it’s linguistic and textual. The problems of language and the problems of texts (indeterminacy, ambiguity, desire for closure) are the problems of law.

The light for me at the end of this particular tunnel is Barthes. I’m going to try to discuss the genres of legal texts in terms of the readerly/writerly distinction. Maybe I’ll also throw in some Saussure and discuss the difference between speech and writing and try to argue that because writing is inferior so is law...

Hmm. Yeah, this probably won’t work. But whatever, I get to read Barthes again, Yay!

How little thought patterns matter.

A sentence like this is comforting because I feel that its absurd complexity relieves me of any obligation to understand it.

And during the period of twenty-one years from my death if the said Lilian Aspinall shall live so long to accumulate the surplus if any of such income at compound interest by investing the same and the resulting income thereof in any of the investments aforesaid by way of addition to the capital of such fund as aforesaid and so as to be subject to the same trusts as are hereby declared concerning the same and during the remainder of the life of the said Lilian Aspinall in case she shall survive the said period of twenty-one years to pay or apply such surplus income (if any) to the person or persons or for the purposes to whom and for which the same would for the time being be payable or applicable if the said Lilian Aspinall were then dead.
In Re Smith, England, 1928

Slightly shocked today to see the Post-Prairie anthology all spiffy on display at the university book store. I've had the experience a few times of seeing a publication I'm part of in a bookstore before receiving my contributor copy in the mail, and I always have the same reaction. Curiosity, pride, etc. but also a horrible cringing regret, a desperate desire to take the poem back, rewrite it, erase it, burn it. There's such a crushing finality to words on paper. I tend to have to acclimate myself to publication -- leave it around the house for a while, flip through it a bit, read some of the other contributions -- before I can stand to look at my poems in print.

It's an interesting and absurd neurosis: I hate not being published, but whenever I am published, I feel like I've misrepresented myself.

Anyway, the anthology looks amazing, I can't wait to read it, and I am thrilled to be part of it. Go buy.

Law is mind without reason.
-Aristotle

I don't understand this quotation. I find it completely impenetrable. Granted, I read it out of any context, or rather in the random context of a webpage of quotations about law or reason or whatever. But still. What is mind without reason? What is law without reason? Everything in law is reasonable. That's a joke, ha. Well not ha, more blah. The answer to any question anyone can ask in law school is "reasonable." What is the standard of care to which a tortfeasor is held? The standard of the reasonable person. What kind of notice is required to avoid a claim of wrongful dismissal? Reasonable notice. Why can't I think of any better examples? No reason. In fact, I'm doing pro bono research for a civil liberties project looking at tenants' right, focusing on a particular piece of legislation that provides for a reasonable standard. My job is to figure how the standard would be applied were the provision to be adjudicated. My guess is reasonably.

My god. Law is not really this boring, I swear.

With absolute, overwhelming conviction, he didn’t believe it.
- Philip K. Dick, Minority Report

I’m enthralled with the paradox in that sentence, but I’m not sure why. I read it in one of the texts for a Law and Literature mini-course I took last year. I remember at the time I thought the sentence reflected the theme of the story quite powerfully; now I don’t remember the theme of the story anymore and I don’t really care.

I took the course because I figured it would provide me with some familiar ground in an unfamiliar environment, but it was an incredibly disappointing class. The focus was on the themes of law, justice, and criminality within science fiction. Not really my cup of tea, but I’ll read anything with a narrative. The class discussions, however, were mind-numbing. They went from quick plot summaries of the short stories to the question, how does this theme relate to what we already know about law in the world? From there, no-one ever returned to the stories themselves, except to refer to the actions of the characters in a decontextualized way, as though the experience of a character in a short story and one’s own experiences are discursively equivalent.

I guess I shouldn’t criticize too much; there’s no reason why a class of law students should conform to the expectations of a literature class. But it seemed that the course was indicative of the practice of the burgeoning “law and literature” movement. Apparently some legal academics are starting to recognize the relevance of narrative within the law. How facts, evidence, issues are framed by narrative, and how narratives about law (like Dickens’ Bleak House, which seems to be the main object of study) can offer lawyers a way to examine the legal system and its flaws. Fair enough, but I don’t think it goes far enough. I think a law and literature movement should look at not only novelists, but also poets and theorists: writers who recognize the complexity and inadequacy of language; who can shift the question from what does this mean to how can this mean?

I had hoped to make some kind of poem out of phrases from the Magna Carta, but so far it’s just not happening. Maybe it’s better to just enjoy the language for its own absurdity.

There shall be standard measures of wine, ale, and corn (the London quarter), throughout the kingdom. There shall also be a standard width of dyed cloth, russet, and haberject, namely two ells within the selvedges.

All fish-weirs shall be removed from the Thames, the Medway, and throughout the whole of England, except on the sea coast.

People who live outside the forest need not in future appear before the royal justices of the forest in answer to general summonses, unless they are actually involved in proceedings or are sureties for someone who has been seized for a forest offence.

All evil customs relating to forests and warrens, foresters and warreners, are at once to be investigated in every county by twelve sworn knights of the country, and within forty days of their enquiry the evil customs are to be abolished completely and irrevocably.

All forests that have been created in our reign shall at once be disafforested. River-banks that have been enclosed in our reign shall be treated similarly.

No town or person shall be forced to build bridges over rivers except those with an ancient obligation to do so.

Style is a very simple matter: all rhythm. Once you get that you can't use the wrong words.
-Virginia Woolf

Too much has been left to unsafe conjecture and frequently that which might have developed into proof has become arrested on the border of suspicion.
-Clarkson Co Ltd. v. Zhelka, Ontario, 1967

Nice. I wonder if there's a course one can take to learn how to write like a judge?

I want to be creative so I bought cheap paint and small canvasses and I paint. But I can’t really draw, so I just paint streaks and swirls of different colours. It’s meant to be relaxing, but it’s actually frustrating, because it doesn’t look good. I’m a perfectionist and I want to make art. It seems silly to spend money on supplies to create something ugly. At least with writing you’ve only wasted time.

I was reluctant to buy the supplies in the first place because I knew I would get upset. At least I understand the problems I make for myself. That’s a start.

If I could turn all that off, I would enjoy just the motion of painting. I like how thick the paint is at first, how it thins out with brushing, then ends up in a nice pattern of back and forth brush strokes with white canvas showing through. It’s pleasing to see the white space of the canvas become red, then blue, then shades of purple. Sort of like a bruise. Maybe that’s what I should do: try to paint a bruise.

The most interesting thing said in class this week was, "A trust is a trust is a trust, as Gertrude Stein might have said if she'd thought about it." My ears perk up at any mention of Stein, especially in settings that are mainstream, not poetic, where people are not in the know, whatever the know is that I think I know.

But it is interesting -- when Stein wrote, A rose is a rose is a rose, it was to disassociate the word rose from the referent rose and make a familiar word uncomfortably unfamiliar for its materiality. A trust is a trust is a trust, however, has nothing to do with the word trust and everything to do with the concept of trusts, which are fundamentally the same whether they are personal or business-related, investment vehicles or tax avoidance strategies.

Stein is one of those writers whose profound statements have become very well-known, even though the significance of her insights have not. Too bad people don't randomly quote Tender Buttons. I'd love to hear everyone saying, Single fish single fish single fish eggplant single fish sight. It's pretty catchy once you get it in your head.

Cows don’t have a quivering ______ .
I had a philosophy of law class yesterday that was so good I forgot to take notes. The only thing I remember is the above phrase, but I forget the end. It came in the middle of something about ontology and the dichotomy of “just being” and constant change and the problems human beings create for themselves by being aware of the quivering something of everything changing and how logos is the root of those problems because it makes us separate ourselves from the fact of our being. But cows don’t have that problem. It is so fantastically awesome to be in a class (in law school, remember) where you can answer the prof’s question of why you’re in the class with, “One thing that I’m interested in is language and how law regulates every aspect of our lives through language but no one ever looks at the language to realize that it’s flawed and impossible” and the prof is like, “Yes! That’s exactly it. Law has always felt to me like a translation.” Then he went off on something else and he lost me a bit after that, but still…. Awesome.

It's bad enough I haven't been able to get a book published; now I have to turn down invitations to read in Canada Council sponsored reading series because I'm not a "professional author." Whatever. My earnings this year alone from writing poetry will amount to well over $500. That's almost a month's rent! Come on.

Why does the Canada Council draw such arbitrary lines? Like it matters if some publisher puts out 700 copies of my manuscript and a few Chapters in urban areas store a couple copies for a year or so before they're remaindered. My readings would not attract any more or less people. Arts communities are not marketplaces. There's no more value in a professional than in an amateur poet; the distinction is absurd.

I'd like to completely reject the Canada Council's bourgeois value system that valorizes capitalist production. But I'm steeped in the same value system. Publication is the only measure of success. Awards confer worth. Reading series are sullied by unpublished amateurs. The suburbs are a great place to grow up.

This blog has been silent all summer, mainly because I’ve tried (half-heartedly) and failed to articulate my experiences throughout the summer in a way that is relevant to the theme of this blog – what law and poetry have in common. I got a summer job at a non-profit organization run by students in the law department. It holds free legal advice clinics for low-income people throughout the Greater Vancouver Regional District. Through the school year, the clinics are held in community centres one night per week or every couple of weeks and staffed by volunteer students. In the summer, certain lucky student who volunteered all year get paid to staff the clinics every day.

So I spent most days this summer at a community centre in East Vancouver talking to low-income people about their problems. My clinic wasn’t particularly busy compared to some of the others, and I didn’t feel like I did a lot of practical or substantial work to actually help anyone. I went to criminal court a couple of times to defend clients, but I really have no interest in criminal law, so while it was satisfying to get the result my clients wanted, I can’t say I really enjoyed that experience. Most of my clients had strange, complicated problems with no obvious legal solution. The lasting impression I got from the experience is that the line between legal work, social work and counselling is a blurry one. Just talking about their problems and articulating the various issues they are dealing with seemed to help some of the clients; receiving acknowledgement from a sympathetic listener seemed to be really important to them. I wrote several letters on behalf of my clients, helped them file small claims in the provincial court system, did one will, and gave out a lot of summary advice and referrals to other organizations that may or may not have been able to provide more help.

Coming from a background of studying experimental poetry and literary theory at the undergrad and graduate levels, this is the most pragmatic, socially-oriented job I’ve ever done, and I’ve been grateful for the opportunity, but I found it frustrating that things were often unresolved and out of my control. It’s very common to lose touch with clients – they are homeless, or their phones are suddenly out of service, or they are too drug-addled to be reliable enough to stay in contact. Often I would do research and prepare a response only to find that the client was inaccessible.

This job has been a novel experience for me, and while I wanted to express something about it, I didn’t want to harp on about the gritty underbelly of society and its lyric charm or its distance from poetry, and lamely tie my day-to-day encounters into the theme of this blog.

Anyway, a couple of things in the past couple of weeks crystallized some ideas I’ve had about community and the value of contributing.

All the work we do at the legal clinics is approved by a supervising lawyer. At the end of the summer, he gave a speech that I’m paraphrasing as, “The thing to remember about the practice of law is that it gets you connected. It gets you connected to the people who need you, it gets you connected to humanity, and it makes you useful. We’re lucky that we can help people, because so many people in our society are so disconnected. Let’s have a toast to our clients, thank god they need us.” So cool. And so apt: that’s why I want to learn a profession; I want to be useful. As much as I love reading, writing, thinking about poetry and language, history and theory, they are very introspective activities. I feel like I live in my head. I’m very involved in my own interaction with language, very self-absorbed as a writer. I don’t necessarily produce any poetry or have any ideas about poetry that, you know, have any use, and they certainly don’t help anyone.

And yet. About a week and a half ago, I attended filling Station’s Calgary Blow-Out, a three-day extravaganza of Calgary writing. Having been involved in the Calgary writing scene, and not having contributed at all yet to the Vancouver writing scene, reading at the Blow-Out was very much a visit home, in a sense one more entry to the list of all the readings I’ve done in Calgary. A lot of the people who have been supporting my writing for as long as I’ve been writing seriously were there, and most of them were also reading, as well as a lot of other writers whom I’ve met over the past six or seven years, and some who I hadn’t met yet. Calgary has an incredibly energetic, tight knit writing scene. It’s a wonderful community, and I realized (well, not for the first time or anything) how lucky I am to have been part of it and to still be a long-distance contributor. My writing is far from accessible, and the difficulty with writing experimental, innovative (I hope) poetry is that there are no reliable arbiters of quality or relevance. The best one can hope for is a receptive audience. The audiences I read to in Calgary have always been not only receptive, but encouraging, enthusiastic and supportive. Then again, the audiences I read to in Calgary are composed of roughly the same people each time. Poetry is an esoteric interest. Like any other city, Calgary has a small community of people who care about poetry, and it’s not likely to grow.

I’m fascinated with the contrast between these two roles I play. On the one hand, I’m involved in a specialized, marginalized art form that appeals to a select number of people who gather in small spaces to share their complicated relationships to the phenomenon the rest of the world takes for granted, i.e. language.

On the other hand, I become involved in the problems of a more or less random selection of people who don’t know who I am and don’t really care beyond the possibility that I can apply some of my knowledge and skills to alleviate their difficulties.

I don’t think one is better method of contributing to community than the other. When I’m right in the thick of either one, for example while I was reading at the Blow-Out, I do wonder why the hell I ever got into the other one. But for the most part, I think they balance one another. It’s good to have a creative, intellectual project, and more importantly to have the support and company of peers involved in similar projects. But it’s also good to be exposed to such a wide range of people I wouldn’t normally meet and to try to empathize with their lives, and to put my education, talents, skills and intelligence to use for them.

So, overall a good summer.

There is no poetry here, no romance, no idealistic satisfaction from helping the poor, the disadvantaged, the mentally ill. I'm so tired. And it's not from researching cases or writing letters or even my first dismal court appearance. It's just from listening to their stories, the mundane cliches of their neverending stories. Oh my god, how can I tell you if there is a legal solution to your problem, if you won't stop talking?
I've been told my whole life that I have to talk more, speak up more, express more opinions, explain myself. Like there's something wrong with staying quiet.
Especially if the alternative is blathering in endless fucking detail to someone who is trying to tell you why what you're saying is not relevant at this time in this context.

Writing's better anyway.

Some of my study notes for Criminal Law. The idea is to condense a case into one sentence, so that all the details will come rushing back when I read it. These seemed very concise and pretty funny at the time. Now they're neither. Mostly they're morbid.

Criminal law is depressing. The degree of abstraction it takes to study it makes it either more bearable or more depressing. Or both. There are endless inferences.

Accused drove car onto policeman’s foot, either deliberately or accidentally, then refused to move car off foot.

Accused were present at biker gang-bang.

Fervent pro-French activists circulated satirical pamphlet that was interpreted as anti-French propaganda.

Accused shot two ducks near a pile of grain on the road.

Business man accused of raping real estate agent claims honest belief in consent.

Two men acquitted of attempted robbery for knocking on door of closed restaurant while carrying a gun and wearing balaclavas.

Ludicrously drunk accused had no memory of sexual assault on wife’s handicapped hairdresser.

Seeking safety from storm and repairs, ship full of marijuana moored and off-loaded cargo on Canadian shore.

Yugoslavian woman imported narcotics into Canada with false passport, under duress from mob-type character in Belgrade who threatened to kill her mother.

Shot friend of daughter’s druggie boyfriend when he lunged at her.

DJ threatened sound system repair guy, who pushed back, then DJ stabbed him.

Somewhere in Will Self’s Feeding Frenzy, a collection of essays and ludicrously funny restaurant reviews, he writes that nothing is lost in the economy of ideas. Or something to that effect. Sounds aphoristic, or like it comes from some classic source. Google won’t tell me anything. Anybody know?

Either way, I think it's a good philosophy. Whatever you read, watch, contemplate is useful in the end, or not useful, because what is utility in the world of ideas? Valuable, maybe. Is it similar to Steve McCaffrey's general economy of the text? Libidinal excess recuperated? I don't know, I don't think I ever really understood the general economy. Good thing I spent a chapter on it in my thesis.

I'm a perfectionist, but I'm not very good at it. I have five exams worth 100% of the course mark starting in less than a week. I’m thrilled that the procrastination that usually leads to excessive housecleaning is instead leading me to literature. Here I am, writing poem-ish things, blogging, and reading all manner of poetry, fiction, essays. Exactly the kind of life I’ve always wanted. I wish this could last forever. But no. Exams will begin, they’ll be agonizing, and then I’ll be left with nothing to do and doing nothing.

Futile as it may be to scold myself for not reading enough – for every book I have read, there are endless equally pressing books that I haven’t – I’m still very disappointed at how much I’ve overlooked Creeley. And it’s no excuse to say that I went to the library this week and tried to catch up. Luckily for me, I discovered his fascinating Day Book of a Virtual Poet, which collects emails he sent to an online writing program listserv between 1996 and 1998. The book captures the tension between the ephemeral nature of online communications and the much more solid thingness of publication. Or is it the other way around? I’ve read that data on computers is almost impossible to erase completely, while books are relatively easily lost or destroyed. If nothing else, the book shows how much avenues have opened for presenting and talking about poetry in electronic contexts. The tone of the emails suggests that at the time the listserv dedicated to poetry was a new and exciting concept; now it’s hard to imagine being involved in poetry without email, listservs, websites, online mags, blogs and on and on.

My favourite quote so far (only coincidentally the back-cover quote):
Possibly the most apt advice I ever heard from an elder poet to a younger person aspiring to be one was the very genuine advice, “If it isn’t something you have to do, don’t do it.” All the tendentious proposals as to “why write,” in Pound’s useful phrase, finally fade to the one point W.C. Williams made by saying, “Why don’t we just tell them it’s fun” Not just the authority of endless revisions, not just the lists of publications or prizes won, not just the company of poets of public record—just fun. Fun. Fun.

Damn, I must be doing it wrong.

Another wonderful Creeley book I found is His Idea, published by Coach House in 1973. I don’t have it here to quote from, but the poetry is just lovely. Equally lovely are the black and white photographs that illustrate every poem, and the chapbook design. It’s not very many pages, saddle-stitched, but with a cardstock jacket glued on the hide the staples. I love it when book design, illustration and writing converge into a perfect package.

Sometimes judges go on absurd flights of rhetoric. Witness:

“This is the last of the dispensing power.” Maitland could never have thought that in the year 1968, nearly three centuries after the Bill of Rights, a certain departmental official of Manitoba, acting in fact or in law under the authority of his Minister, would purport to grant a dispensation in favour of a certain group, exempting them from obedience to a particular law to which all others remain subject. That sorry episode must now be recounted.

Wow. All that blustering leads up to a decision that Aboriginal people cannot be exempt from a law that regulates hunting of migratory birds. Not only is the decision culturally insensitive and politically obtuse, the style of writing is completely anachronistic. If you were charged with deciding whether the executive branch of the provincial government can legally grant exemptions from federal statutes to a particular group, would you go on like that? The judgment affects real people, with real concerns, in Manitoba, in 1977. Why not state it plainly?