Robert Hogg : Reading A Wolf Lake Chorus and The Ogre

Reading A Wolf Lake Chorus and The Ogre
A Suite in 8 Parts
for Phil Hall

 

1. 

I didn’t really
read A Wolf Lake Chorus
to the mechanics 

at Hallville Garage
although they did
switch my summer 

tires for winter
treads they didn’t
complain 

There are no
wolves in that poem
only birds 

and too many
ands which
fails to explain 

why I didn’t
sit and wait
like ordinary 

folk my hands
tucked away
became 

instead
engrossed in
reading A Wolf 

Lake Chorus
to myself
then writing 

this poem
to Phil Hall
or also to 

myself
unhinged a poem
unwritten 

can do that
drive you
mad 

mad him mad
her an And an And
the birds 

were making
small talk
and what I heard 

I saw
playing a saw
until at last 

Mad her
An and
broke free 

RLH: Hallville ON: 2021-11-22 11:10 AM

 

2.

Blame it on
Trainwreck
covers I 

meant to bring
The Ogre
along to read 

but when I
got there I had
A Quiet Affair 

they both looked
alike in
the gloom 

RLH: Hallville ON: 2021-11-22

 

3. 

Maybe it's
just as
well 

I didn't
bring
the ogre 

to the
Hallville
Garage 

bad enough
I thought it
was in my bag

  

4.

For you
the poem is
a catch-all drawer 

ogres
elusive
wolves 

for me
more a drawer
of catches 

RLH: Mtn: 2021-11-23

 

5.

I’m not sure what
you’re doing in
The Ogre 

unless you’re
shooting ahead
just 

when language
wants to
hold you back 

it’s not that you
don’t know
where 

you’re going
it’s just
you’ve no 

idea how
you’ll get there
each word 

fluttering
a testament
to desire 

RLH: Mtn: 2021-11-23 8:03

 

6. 

What I do
know is

you take
chances

I’d never
take

leap
from one

thought
to another

like a frog
on fire

2021-11-23 7:38 PM

 

7.

And when you
miss

the lily
pad

you swim
to the next

hop on
pretend

it was
intended

nothing
lost

no need to
explain

no
defense

2021-11-23 8:47 PM

 

8.

I get it now
language

the ogre
original

sin
set

everything
in order

paced it all
out in long

lines
and short

said
this is the way

it should
sound

beauty
demands

beginning
to end but

hearing
anew

breaks
the completed

word
sounds out

a new
cacophony

hidden song
unhinges

expectation
rhetoric’s

familiar
no more

assiduous
rise and fall

silence now
overtopping

sound wind
now crashing

sea
harmony

getting a
rewrite

ogre
free

2021-11-23; 2021-11-23 9:06 PM; 2021-11-23 9:16 PM; 

2021-11-23 10:42 PM

 

 

 

 

 

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. He recently published several chapbooks: from LAMENTATIONS, Ottawa: above/ground, 2016; two Cariboo poems, Ranch Days – The McIntosh from hawk/weed press in Kemptville, ON; Ranch Days—for Ed Dorn from battleaxe press (Ottawa 2019); A Quiet Affair – Vancouver ’63 (Trainwreck, May 2021); and in August 2021 a chapbook titled From Each Forthcoming (above/ground). In December 2021, a chapbook will be released from Hogwallow Press, called The Red Menace, and another from Apt 9 Press in Ottawa, called Apothegms. In April 2019 Hogg edited a Canadian Poetry issue of The Café Review in Portland, ME. His poems have appeared in over seventy periodicals, most recently: Pamenar Online; Empty Mirror; The Café Review; Dispatches; Arc; Some; BlazeVox Online Journal, The Typescript, Caesura, Ottawater 16, Sulfur Surrealist Jungle, Touch the Donkey and recent issues of Periodicities, Bandoneon, and Taint Taint Taint. In early July 2021 a Spoken Web podcast was presented by the UBC Kelowna Amp Lab featuring Robert Hogg’s life and career; it can be heard here:

https://spokenweb.ca/podcast/episodes/robert-hogg-the-widening-circle-of-return/?fbclid=IwAR33NVedL97y38qeWXrdsfgudBITBoPghg. His ideas on writing have recently been collected as five responses to questions from Thomas Whyte found here: http://poetryminiinterviews.blogspot.com/search/label/Robert%20Hogg.

Books currently in the works for publication include: Lamentations; The Cariboo Poems; Postcards, from America; Amber Alert; Not to Call It Chaos – The Vancouver Poems; Oh Yeah—More Poems. In progress are The Offending Temple, and Ill Parodies – O, a selection of satires on various Shibboleths and current affairs. Now retired, Hogg continues to write at his organic farm in Mountain thirty-five miles south of Ottawa.