Endlessly Falling
Call it
an optical
illusionMake some
allusion
to scientific
reasonTell me again
the clouds
are moving
the earth
turningExplain
why the moon
falls
but comes
no closerhow
the clouds
slide over
while she
remains
still
moving meor that
the power lines
before my
window
do not
actually
cut the moon
in twonor yet
completely
sever
thoughts of you
RLH: Vanc: 1962-04-19; 2020-05-19; 2020-06-03
The Phonology of Love
I speak of love
as though it werea word as though
it were syntacticsimply
saidoval
lipsbreathe out
a gesturelungs send
sound in a tonguecurlpalatal L
down throata velar
cord songvoiced
fricativeending
lip to enamelteeth where
resonantair is
evocationlove
that is a dance of tongueteeth and tendon
turnbreath
into word
RLH: NYC: 1964-10-12; Rev: Mtn: 2019-02-04; 2019-02-09
Robert Hogg was born in Edmonton, Alberta, grew up in the Cariboo and Fraser Valley in British Columbia, and attended UBC during the early Sixties where he was associated with the Vancouver TISH poets, co-edited MOTION- a prose newsletter, and graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing. In 1964 he hitchhiked east to Toronto, then visited Buffalo NY where Charles Olson was teaching. After spending a few months in NYC, Bob entered the graduate program at the State University of NY at Buffalo, completed a PhD on Olson under Robert Creeley, and took a job teaching American and Canadian Poetry at Carleton University in Ottawa for the next 38 years. His books include: The Connexions, Berkeley: Oyez, 1966; Standing Back, Toronto: Coach House, 1972; Of Light, Toronto: Coach House, 1978; Heat Lightning, Windsor: Black Moss, 1986; There Is No Falling, Toronto: ECW,1993; and as editor, An English Canadian Poetics, The Confederation Poets – Vol. 1, Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2009. More recently he published three chapbooks: from LAMENTATIONS, Ottawa: above/ground, 2016. Two Cariboo poems, Ranch Days – The McIntosh from hawk/weed press in Kemptville, Ontario, and Ranch Days—for Ed Dorn from battleaxe press (2019). For April 2019 Hogg edited a Canadian Poetry issue of The Café Review in Portland, ME. His poems have appeared in over sixty periodicals, most recently: Pamenar Online; Empty Mirror; The Café Review; Dispatches; Arc; Some; BlazeVox Online Journal, The Typescript, Caesura and Ottawater 16. Books currently in the works for publication include: Lamentations; The Cariboo Poems; Postcards, from America; and Amber Alert, and Not to Call It Chaos – The Vancouver Poems. He is currently compiling a collection of new poetry, Oh Yeah!. Now retired, Hogg continues to write at his farm in Mountain thirty-five miles south of Ottawa.