Malcolm Lowry

Geomantic riposte: 'Oyama Pink Shale'

Born in Tisdale, Saskatchewan, and currently an inhabitant of the Okanagan “wild” in Kelowna BC, and self-identified in the company of poet George Stanley as a staunch “aboutist,” Sharon Thesen is indeed a literary rara avis whose score of witty, entertaining and insightful poetry books are balanced by solid editorial and academic contributions, including two editions of The New Long Poem Anthology, a Governor-General’s Award-winning edition of Phyllis Webb’s poetry (The Vision Tree), and with co-editor Ralph Maud, two books of correspondences between the poet Charles Olson and book designer Frances Boldereff — the most recent being After Completion: The Later Letters of Charles Olson and Frances Boldereff.

Circumfluent time: Sampling mescal in Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano

Lift up your eyes unto the hills, I seem to hear a voice saying. Sometimes, when I see the little red mail plane fly in from Acapulco at seven in the morning over the strange hills, or more probably hear, lying trembling, shaking, and dying in bed (when I am in bed at that time)—just a tiny roar and gone—as I reach out babbling for the glass of mescal, the drink that I can never believe even in raising to my lips is real, that I have had the marvellous foresight to put within easy reach the night before, I think that you will be on it, on that plane every morning as it goes by, and will have come to save me. Then the morning goes by and you have not come. But oh, I pray for this now, that you will come. On second thoughts I do not see why from Acapulco. But for God's sake, Yvonne, hear me, my defences are down, at the moment they are down—and there goes the plane, I heard it in the distance then, just for an instant, beyond Tomalín—come back, come back. I will stop drinking, anything. I am dying without you. For Christ Jesus sake Yvonne come back to me, hear me, it is a cry, come back to me, Yvonne, if only for a day.

 "It's mescal with me... Tequila, no, that is healthful... and delightful. Just like beer. Good for you. But if I ever start to drink mescal again, I'm afraid, yes, that would be the end," the Consul said dreamily.

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