Thank you, friend. Very much. That image sets the tone . . . There's so much here. And it just feels more true now than when I wrote it. I'm glad you can feel what's going on in these few lines. It's a very deeply felt piece.
History keeps repeating itself, especially in the US—we never seem to learn. Your poem captures that painful cycle beautifully, the way political betrayal and environmental collapse feed each other, how we participate in our own undoing. I'm glad you're writing this and putting it out there.
Dereliction says a lot about the mental health of a society; it is the first thought that comes to mind. "Volume" is also very important. Canada is becoming too "weathered" because it is too far down a road deluding itself that it is the utopia to come. And I think it's a deluded environmental rot: it's a collective hallucination, in Canada's case, that we've actually made manifest for certain political gains. (PM Mark Carney's remarks as well: that Canada must endure forty years of poverty to undo its carbon impact).
"The Age of Burning Things" will appear in my poetry collection "Dominion Ashes" . . . How come the fires keep getting bigger and bigger, the more and more we nod? It's scary.
A tyrant has to fall, but a nation that has deluded itself into what Canada has over the past twelve years will probably never recover. Canada's crisis is the opposite of the U.S.'s, but the worst probable outcome is just as bad, and I think much worse.
Thanks for explaining the Canadian context. Your poem captures something really heavy—that sense of watching things fall apart while everyone pretends otherwise. The dereliction as mental health indicator, that's such a sharp observation.
I won't pretend to understand the specifics of what you're witnessing up there, but I can hear how deeply you're seeing it. That question you asked—"How come the fires keep getting bigger and bigger, the more and more we nod?"—that will stay with me. Your poem holds all of that, the complicity and the decay and the weight of it.
"Dominion Ashes" sounds like it's going to be a powerful collection. Keep writing this, Brock—it matters that someone's naming what's actually happening, even when it's this difficult to look at directly.
This is beautiful, Brock. You had me at "the mitten of some child in its teeth". Just, wow. Love it.
Thank you, friend. Very much. That image sets the tone . . . There's so much here. And it just feels more true now than when I wrote it. I'm glad you can feel what's going on in these few lines. It's a very deeply felt piece.
Wonderful!
History keeps repeating itself, especially in the US—we never seem to learn. Your poem captures that painful cycle beautifully, the way political betrayal and environmental collapse feed each other, how we participate in our own undoing. I'm glad you're writing this and putting it out there.
Dereliction says a lot about the mental health of a society; it is the first thought that comes to mind. "Volume" is also very important. Canada is becoming too "weathered" because it is too far down a road deluding itself that it is the utopia to come. And I think it's a deluded environmental rot: it's a collective hallucination, in Canada's case, that we've actually made manifest for certain political gains. (PM Mark Carney's remarks as well: that Canada must endure forty years of poverty to undo its carbon impact).
"The Age of Burning Things" will appear in my poetry collection "Dominion Ashes" . . . How come the fires keep getting bigger and bigger, the more and more we nod? It's scary.
A tyrant has to fall, but a nation that has deluded itself into what Canada has over the past twelve years will probably never recover. Canada's crisis is the opposite of the U.S.'s, but the worst probable outcome is just as bad, and I think much worse.
Thanks for explaining the Canadian context. Your poem captures something really heavy—that sense of watching things fall apart while everyone pretends otherwise. The dereliction as mental health indicator, that's such a sharp observation.
I won't pretend to understand the specifics of what you're witnessing up there, but I can hear how deeply you're seeing it. That question you asked—"How come the fires keep getting bigger and bigger, the more and more we nod?"—that will stay with me. Your poem holds all of that, the complicity and the decay and the weight of it.
"Dominion Ashes" sounds like it's going to be a powerful collection. Keep writing this, Brock—it matters that someone's naming what's actually happening, even when it's this difficult to look at directly.
Thank you. Your acknowledgement of the bravery in this and the collection mean a lot.