Seven Poems
by
Robert Hogg
Short Bio
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: fromLAMENTATIONS, 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, 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.
Titles:
Epigraph
Concrete Still Life
Venice Beach Meditation
For Tom Raworth, these Laments
To Bill Sylvester, these Laments
Jazz Harp
Oh Yeah
Epigraph
Sky blue
That’ll do
What we all
want to wake up to
Concrete Still Life
In LA
you can do
almost anything
because it never
rains so my friend
the Canadian
poet has made
a colorful chalk
drawing on the side
walk outside
his high rise and sent
this photo of
elongated
Irises
slim
purple flowers
green
Modigliani stems
that grow down
deep into
the concrete
roots
tendrils
nodules
can you
imagine
in LA
Venice Beach Meditation
Blonde as
California in
tank top and
slimjms
she sits in
half lotus
barefoot
on the sand
gold
wire-rimmed
sunglasses
and a floppy
cotton hat
break the sun
she loves
and cups in
her hands
a perfect
mudra
arms
on knees
thumbs
almost invisible
drum
a silent
text
to a distant
friend
For Tom Raworth, these Laments
Dear Tom it’s
been a long time
coming
this little fragment
of a longer lament
wch in some way
is the long poem
we are all writing
together trying to
bring our era to an end
we hope won’t come
because we believe
the struggle is more
important than the cure
god knows the cure
is what governments are
always after what wars
are all about so keep
me just a little sick
thanks & I’ll be just
fine sitting on a snake
fence in the Cariboo
of past dreams & looking
out across the snow
Bob Hogg – Nov 28 — 2012
on the Mountain
To Bill Sylvester, these Laments
Dear Bill
do you remember
that summer of ‘81
you drove up from Buffalo
to Ottawa
visited
family I didn’t even
know you had
picked
the hottest day
of the year to ride
your ten-speed
35 miles down
to Mountain
showed up
at our farm
two hours later
so flushed
out of breath
I thought
you’d die
from heat stroke
& exhaustion
told me
once again
I was one of that
batch of promising
poets showed up
in Buffalo
to study with Charles
entered the PhD
then let you and all
SUNY down by not
finishing up
the degree
by god
I was so impressed
& duly guilted out
I knuckled down
& got the thesis finally
done for you as much as
anyone
and a year later
made my defense with Bob
Creeley chair who now
gets an elegy
in return & Jack
Clarke—he got the poem
of A Liftetime
decades ago–
& Mac Hammond also
on the committee
what a party
the whole thing was
I got the PhD
w/ distinction
after stumbling
14 years
so thanks old
pal for your devotion to
your profession
as much
poetry as teaching
wch in
their mutual
state are one
and the same
Love & best wishes
Bob – Nov 28 – 2012
Jazz Harp
Cut wood
this morning
six till noon
trying to beat
the heat
and so
lunch and
a probable
nap
from which
I am
awakened
to the jazz
strains of
a squirrel
not five feet
from my deck
chair
flitting up
and down
our honey
suckle
like it’s
a harp
Oh Yeah
I’m going to write
more poems
whatever
you say
And tack them up
on the wall
for all
to see
Oh yeah
for all to see
