Ghost in the Gears

by White, Howard

• ISBN13: 9781550170658
• ISBN10: 1550170651
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-01-01
• Publisher: Harbour

Summary

This collection of poems is steeped in the west coast tradition of storytelling and mythmaking, a tradition Howard White has nurtured for two decades. The poems are as real, down-to-earth and funny as White's award-winning prose. He admits to having a messy yard, describes city street crazies and the late-night "undermind," teaches his boys how to hammer, and sits down to dinner with fancy people. He takes the trouble to figure out that if Canada's unemployed people were laid head to toe, they'd stretch from Vancouver to Winnipeg. His poems are rich with west coast denizens-loggers, fishermen, executives and industrialists, slugs, ravens, loons, and even Old Scabby Mackay, who got his nickname for breaking one strike in 1937 and who says, "We Canadians, we gotta be the stupidest damn race of people that ever walked." "His work is as refreshing, as spirited and melodious as a vibrant April shower. White's style is always crisp, fresh and ebullient." -Virginia Aulin, Vancouver Sun "Howard White is a pure delight to read." -George Melnyk, Calgary Herald "White's is a major coastal voice. . . the best of his work is about seeing." -Charles Lillard, Victoria Times-Colonist

Author Biography

Howard White was born in 1945 in Abbotsford, British Columbia. He was raised in a series of camps and settlements on the BC coast and never got over it. He is still to be found stuck barnacle-like to the shore at Pender Harbour, BC. He started Raincoast Chronicles and Harbour Publishing in the early 1970s and his own books include A Hard Man to Beat (bio), The Men There Were Then (poems), Spilsbury's Coast (bio), The Accidental Airline (bio), Patrick and the Backhoe (childrens'), Writing in the Rain (anthology) and The Sunshine Coast (travel). He was awarded the Canadian Historical Association's Career Award for Regional History in 1989. In 2000, he completed a ten-year project, The Encyclopedia of British Columbia. He has been awarded the Order of BC, the Canadian Historical Association's Career Award for Regional History, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award and a Honorary Doctorate of Laws Degree from the University of Victoria. In 2007, White was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. He has twice been runner-up in the Whisky Slough Putty Man Triathlon.

Table of Contents

Books in Canada ...This leads to the counter-argument posed by Howard White in his introduction to Ghost in the Gears on the subject of "what makes poetry poetry," he writes: "I'm struck with the inappropriateness of placing many of these pieces in anything so static and exclusive, as this pricey little book - for most of them I would have preferred a spot on the local breakfast broadcast or editorial page where they might have provided a chuckle or a moment of reflection and been disposed of. In our world, those are the spaces most in need of what poetry has to offer, the frontier where the battle for cultural survival must be renewed, and my best hope for this motley, collection is that it contains a few steps toward the kind of poem that could do that work." White's folksy manifesto moved me and alarmed me at the same time. His poems are admirable, ethical, warm, humane, self-deprecating, accessible. I'm glad he is speaking, and I'm pleased to read his book. -Margaret Sweatman CONTENTS The Ghost in the Gears Tiresias II Loonshit Sidetrip Scabby Mackay The Oldtimer Talks Economics Invisible Minority The Executive Has Anyone Seen the Working Class? Street Crazies Culture Poem Ending with a Line by Raymond Carver From Book Blurbs to the Bomb Timewarp The Word Dante's Wife City Poets bp nichol October 1, 1988 Closeup Undermined Low Ebb Cups Hanging from Cuphooks The Dog in the Mountain The Paintings of E.J. Hughes I The Paintings of E.J. Hughes II Dead Farms Matilpi Oolachon Grease Domanic Charlie's Last Forecast The Raven Be Careful How You Die The Time My Body Died Invisible Kid The Good Woman Oldtimer Abroad Voices Klein Comes Back A Fairly Honest Guy The Handkerchief Angle The Genius Small Blessings The Made Bed Pinned Down by Love Waves A Study First Poem of the New Space Age Long Term Investment On the Evening News Friends Alter Ego Wanted After the Wake You Tell Me Fucking Slugs For the Birds Lull Kinky

Excerpts

Oolachon Grease
Oolachon grease gold, you hear about it
how the Tsimshian empire held
the whole coast to ransom for it
brought the poor Stick Indians begging
from the interior, beating paths
between the mountains you could
follow in the dark, by nose
the "grease trails" that let the
whiteman in, later on -
a beautiful woman professor told me about it
paler than butter she said,
but like butter without salt
and not at all repugnant to
the European palate
used as a condiment
but I ask you, are empires
sustained by condiments?
It was their oil, for the flame
in the flesh and more
I found it finally
in Bella Bella 1992 price $120/gal.
and it smelled like the cracks
between the deck planks of an old fish barge
if you can imagine spreading that
on your bread -quite enough to hurl
the European palate toward the nearest
toilet bowl which is how far
Indian is from White how far
learning is from knowing how
far we are from this ragged place
we've taken from them, for that,
the smell that comes of fish waste
thrown aside and let go bad,
that is the old smell of the coast,
known, as scent is the final intimacy
known of lifelong mates

take that barge plank, let it toss
ten years on the tide, knock on every rock
from Flattery to Yakutat, bake another
ten in the sun, take it rounded like
an Inuit ivory and grey as bone
crack it open and sniff the darker core
and you will know
what Vancouver knew ducking through
his first Nootka door pole, the essence
the odour of their living here
and however far you are from loving that
is how far you are
from arriving

You Tell Me
The kind of mess my yard is
I have no solution for
weeds rampant amongst good stuff
hedges of salmonberry and buttercup
overhanging the twisting
puny rows of spinach
affording a local base of operations
for the multitudinous vermin
that defeat me, but I will
not root them out, no:
I will not make demands
upon myself which in the end
might prove discouraging.
I know me. I must be
coddled along, if I am to
even keep up watering
through the season.
Low expectations are the key
to any dealings with me.
The house will never get painted.
The boat motor will never get fixed.
My book will never come out.
I have adjusted to these
realities, for nothing is so pathetic
as the slob with ulcers.
The thing that still gets me though,
is this neighbour I have.
He has a yard in which no weed
survives beyond the germinative stage.
It is like the miniature
Swiss town at Disneyland.

He also runs the waterboard
limits out in spring and coho
every Saturday, administers
a sprawling business empire,
has a wife and family who love him
and yet when I drop over
for some BS and coffee
he is always available
and to listen to us
there seems no essential
difference between us.


Kinky
In half wakefulness you get a
glimpse of your life
passing through some trees.
It is important.
I get up in the night hoping
to see my life passing
over.

I used to get up at dawn
swim out to the island
sit naked on the rocks
watching the sun rise
hoping
to make myself different.
I hate not knowing
if it worked.

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Excerpted from The Ghost in the Gears by Howard White
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.