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 in 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 been published (2019). He edited the April 2019 Canadian poetry issue of the Portland Maine Café Review.
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From Where You Stand - for Leslie – Then ~ Now
In my favorite
photo
Buffalo
1968
you are leaning
against a No
Parking sign
corner of
Oxford
& Ferry
across from where
we lived in
the run down
Fenton Apartments
almost-no-heat
third-floor-walk-up
$39.67
a month
split
three ways
your hair in
braids
Fred Braun
shoes from
Greenwich
Village
real
deer skin jacket
poet
bohemian
Curt Lang
gave me
before
I left
Vancouver
fall of ‘64
now too
small and so
gave you
perfect for this
black & white
spring
photograph
you lean
into
purse slung
over right
shoulder arm
crookt to hold
the leather
straps
braids
down
in front
a knowing
smile
above and to
my right a
Sealtest Ice Cream
sign we’d see
light up
each night
looking down
from our
upstairs
window
across
the front
OXFORD DELICATESSEN
in big bold
lettering
black on white
or so it looks
now
here
above
the awning
GROCERIES COLD CUTS FRUITS VEGETABLES
the final word
cut short
while in
the windows
two signs
flash
GENESEE
Beer
CARLING
Ale
CIGARS
CANDY
on the kickboard
leading in
as though nothing
could be left out
from where you stand
the pebbled
concrete
sidewalk
is cool
and dry
melt water
sluices down
the asphalt
below the curb
in front
casual
open vest
dark jeans
your left leg
bent
so slightly
at the knee
gentle
yet
strong
enough
to kick
out winter
nudge in
spring
RLH: Mtn: 2022-01-12; rev 2022-01-13 4:30 PM; 9:50 PM; 2022-01-15 3:12 PM
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