Robert Hogg
Updated: Feb 18, 2020
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 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 and took a job teaching American and Canadian Poetry at Carleton University in Ottawa for the next 38 years. He currently resides at his farm fifty miles south of Ottawa and is working on four collections: Lamentations; The Cariboo Poems; Postcards, from America; and The Vancouver Work. His publications 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; and 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 in Ottawa have recently been published (2019). He edited the April 2019 Canadian poetry issue of the Portland Maine Café Review.
Oil Change
Draining the oil of a tractor
is hardly a mythical act
worthy of classical hexameters
But neither is a seized up engine
a purely metaphysical fact
Likewise: add new
oil and change filter
are poor excuses for
Christian parable
Nonetheless we follow
such modern precepts
happily enough nor chafe
unduly at skinned knuckles
knowing that freedom consists
in meeting perfection half way
Dawn Poem
All cataracts
the gray-fall light
stepping between bodies/friends
asleep on the floor
had held itself
openly the white
blind pulled down
can’t keep out
the light
the night
sounds of your child
first chirps of a bird
rattling window night
weariness back
pain can’t
keep anything out
can’t keep out these
thoughts of you
here, turning in
sleep
torsion of your hips
clothed
quietly
sombre
I want to say but what
does that have to do with your lips
which seem to quiver
knowledge and loveliness
in the half light
After breakfast you read my Tarot
the cards falling
spherically the Sun
at center evidently
me
seated
diagonally watching
the cards fall
as from a distance
your hand
turning The Lovers
over upon my Sun I
want to believe
the cards are chosen we
are chosen as though some
power in the morning
sun breaks now
through the window
casts our fate
These are the things
I have had to say
in the dawn light
Day is so forgetful
of the night
A bird sings
Lost breath of a child
a set of closed eyes
against the light
Poem from a Letter
Strange how I have come upon you
in the darkness of your soul
that I did not see
opens now
a door into the Earth
The Angel is an act of love
imagining herself
“The rain falling on earth…”
no mention of
the spring
the I ‘Ching, or
Hesiod
singing for the Muses
Let there be earth in between
or a green meadow
a stream passing over
at High Tide the Sea
will lift itself inland
touching the salt bank
in memory
I would have it as you say
without the bridges;
Let the cloud stay
Take Two for Bernie Sanders—a Reprise
First it was the 2016
Primaries now
it’s the 2020
all American
Democratic Party
bake off
and once again
it's time the pundits
shut up and let
the people vote
for a real
politician
even a Social
Democratic
Politician hell
why not shout it
out loud in capital letters an
ALL AMERICAN SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC POLITICIAN
who’ll fend for
the homeless
the diabetic without insulin
the low wage earner
who can’t afford
an operation
if you can imagine
such a thing
America
LISTEN TO THIS MAN
What are you afraid of
that Daddy Warbucks
with his hundred
billion dollar
war chest
will slam the lid
on your fingers
yet again?
Big money always
wins you say well
Little Orphan Annie’s
got the people
believing there’s a future
to live for
Give them their hero
Give them
at long last
a chance
©Robert Hogg 2020-02-15
