Gregory Betts
Gregory Betts was born in Vancouver to Maritime parents, and, "as part of the national compromise," spent most of his life in Toronto. Though not a natural "Upper Canadian," Gregory's work in poetry, fiction, and criticism has consistently explored the literary milieu of his adoptive city. He is the author of If Language (BookThug, 2005) and the collaborative Haikube (2006)—the sculptural counterpart of which, by Matt Donovan and Hallie Siegel, was displayed at the Olga Korper Gallery. He teaches Canadian and Avant-Garde Literature at Brock University in St. Catharines.
for
I
He has achieved
a basic ideological
non-enemy status
something we all
long long for
length for
Quantum mechanics
remains the most privileged
post-modern turn
involved in the
recovery of ethics
He is the honorary founder
His platonic turn of mind
a nuclear weapon
faith in the unthinkable
1964, through the microscope
the submicroscope
within himself
certainty thru doubt
before the stake in the universal
before cultures
discursive phenomenon
and the Copenhagan
nexus of knowledge
Physics and beyond
across the frontiers
transgressing the boundaries
The origin of the science
translates itself obscure
systematized matter
still life and war
satisfied the need for
a new paradigm
post-Newtonian defamiliarization
learning by rote
rotting material bodies
experimental apparatus
he stressed the similes
that betray realities
frozen like shadows on walls
graffiti words too quiet to read
smiles undo the shadows of
daily existence
inside the atom bomb
He happily reported
its failure
until
uncovered the irrevocable
He stumbled into
a unified field theory
of post-identity
the atom is not
a physical object
spoken in the matrix
it is a button
II
between the possibility
and the reality
Physics and beyond
the sight of a town
destroyed by an atom bomb
depresses our spirits
just one kind of cloaking device
this radical discontinuity
contaminated with too many
pre-modern connotations
the unpresentable
in presentation itself
all you have to do
is follow the rules
and disappear
A fountainous
source of river
high rolling wells swells
large, violent wave, billow
the rising and driving
of influences actions and agitations
fire, wind, sound
and the undulating hills
The windlass under strain
rocks forward to aft
peak voltage
the whispering voices
She will rise and fall
cast up by
moving tempestuously
of a crowd of people
of thoughts or feelings
driving with waves
slipping back accidentally
as a chain round a capstan
as a wheel
She lets go suddenly
sweeps, pulls, jerks
in every sudden direction
She will rise as a surgeon,
a violent oscillation of current
electric currency
the television malaria
blue light electrified bodies
of the personal
there is nothing to say
bugs forests and planets count
in the numbers of the body count
twinkling violence on mythic maps
bugs swarm the constellations
infect them one by one
we are the parents here
we count the bodies
of cities, the living world
the resource use
flowing between us
it’s a global whirl
identical houses web light spin
banana split subjectivities
well-trained movie goers
we say the prayers
we say goodbye
after giving articulate speech
one last rousing revival
in lakelands of automobiles
shimmering beneath whipped cream sky
the apparition of the cherry
rolls off the flat black earth
after the world ends
the human shame grows filmy
disappears cinematic fantasy
nature begins the long lunge back
bug by bug, little little stars
interrupting the drama
a cell phone rings
Sonnet
freeze
i leave the pale
trail for a sideways
breeze
i and i
now bone
find a lone
quiet sound
lie hearing how loud
my breath and that cloud