Between October 2012 and April 2013, author Garry Thomas Morse wrote eight installments of a column he called “Text in the City” for Meta-Talon. Each is a treasure trove of literary bits and baubles, and each is a thorough and thoughtful exploration of a theme or question that may be on the minds of contemporary writers and readers.

A word cloud based on “Text in the City: A Ranticle For the (Life)long Poem”

Here are all eight installments of Text in the City, in reverse chronological order:

• “Music Somewhere Near a Griffin” (April 25, 2013) brings to light GTM’s hate-love relationship with literary awards; and nods its head (in no particular order) to Nancy Shaw, Catriona Strang, Colin Browne, Stefan Zweig, Jan Zwicky, rob mclennan, Sharon Thesen, Ralph Maud, David W. McFadden (just before his Griffin win!), and Bach.

• “Negative Capability, or A Kind of Private Quicunque Vult” (March 7, 2013) offers ruminations on Keats and “negative capability” as well as the works of George Bowering, Federico García Lorca, Arthur Rimbaud, Plato and the Muse, Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff, Wassily Kandinsky, Marie Annharte Baker, Jan Zwicky, Steve McCaffery, the concept of the “sacred,” Debussy, Paul Klee, Ezra Pound, the philosopher-composer John Cage, Laurence Sterne, and Guy Debord.

• “Novel Novel” (February 20, 2013) delves into the evolving form of writing that is the novel and explores revisions of the novel form; it touches on works by authors that include M.A.C. Farrant, Martine Desjardins, George Bowering, Daniel Canty, Patrice Martin, Jonathan Ball, Jean-Paul Sartre, Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, Robert Desnos, Iris Murdoch, Flann O’Brien, J.K. Huysmans, and Beckett, Proust, Woolf, James, and Joyce.

• Seriously Serial Series (December 20, 2012) is a love letter of sorts to the vibrant Vancouver poetry community and its reading series, with homages to Frank O’Hara (from none other than Don Draper) and shout-outs to George Bowering, Cecily Nicholson, Daniel Zomparelli, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Jen Currin, Aislinn Hunter, Jamie Reid, Wayde Compton, Rahat Kurd, Rob Taylor, Renee Sarojini Saklikar, Susan McCaslin, Diane Tucker, Dina Del Bucchia, Daniela Elza, and Evelyn Lau.

• “abOriginal Genres” (November 28, 2012) alterNatively problematizes, plays with, and praises a variety of writers and movements, discussing “The Last of the Mohicans,” Jordan Abel, Wanda John-Kehewin, Thomas King, Drew Hayden Taylor, his own work, Paul Seesequasis, First Nations “issues,” Karlie Kloss and the Victoria’s Secret 17th Annual Fashion Show, Wes Studi, Misty Upham, “Dances with Wolves,” Marius Barbeau, Waubgeshig Rice, Eden Robinson, Janet Rogers, Tomson Highway, Marie Clements, Bill Reid, Marcia Crosby, and Atwood and Cohen.

A word cloud based on “Text in the City: abOriginal Genres”

• “Difficult Language” (November 7, 2012) gathers some thoughts on contemporary poetry and the value of challenging oneself with literature and makes mention of Virginia Woolf and “The Hours,” Weyman Chan, Anis Shivani, Jenny Sampirisi, Lyn Hejinian, the term “sic.”, Cecily Nicholson, Nikki Reimer, Natalie Simpsons, Jack Spicer, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Katie Couric, and Brahms.

• “A Ranticle For the (Life)long Poem” (November 1, 2012) is just what it says it is; in it GTM rants (or does he?) about “the long poem, and what is more, the lifelong poem,” and invokes Robert Lepage, Adeena Karasick, Stephen Collis, Lyn Hejinian, Imperial Canada Inc., Robin Blaser, Sharon Thesen, Daphne Marlatt, Jay MillAr, Karl H. Siegler, and Hesiod.

• “The Idea of North” (October 24, 2012) is the first installment, in which GTM sets out one of the underlying purposes of his Text in the City columns (“to bring up a few Talon titles from authors who had or were still writing from that area, titles that had been on my mind lately”), tipping his hat to George Bowering, George Stanley, Brian Fawcett, Capilano University Editions, Barry McKinnon, Ken Belford, Gillian Wigmore, and especially Glenn Gould.

A word cloud based on “Text in the City: Difficult Language”
(Word cloud art was created with WordItOut.)