Noises Off: A Found Poem (for Glenn Gould & Foster Hewitt) from The Globe and Mail (12/11/93)

"CBC Radio editor Peter Cook and engineer Don Davies were remastering some early Gould recordings recently for a new CD to be released this month when a voice spoke: Here in the first period... it's in the corner... out front to Sawchuk.

A hockey game, as described by Hewitt, had somehow inserted itself into a 1955 broadcast from Massey Hall of Gould's rendition of Bach's Keyboard Concerto in D Minor with the Toronto Symphony.

The explanation is a technical one. Davies had so successfully 'de-noised' the original Gould recording that radio interference of the day was now audible.

It turns out that night, as Gould was broadcasting live from Massey Hall the Maple Leafs were playing the Detroit Red Wings... just a few blocks north....

They lost 3 - 0."

Wind Instrument (for James C. Ison)

Once upon a great lake sloop with full sail set Toronto-bound & borne off to truths unsought Ison at helm & I now less queasy posit Einstein was a sailor out on open waters where space is waves & time is liquid

Come about off Grimsby spit port is left in plural senses & semantics from landlock let loose

Jib set, sheets taut jenny out, we make four knots, north-northwest as thought free-fioats & words play thru lacustrine changes: Ground goes figure fathoms beyond physics gale force meta

Listen Ison says & I learn to navigate by ear: proper trim & bearing true course making both best speed & sound keen melody of wind that alto sings thru sheets descants over sailcloth hums continuo on keel & Charlie Parker, man he’d be fantastic cat at tiller under canvas old salt at impromptu navigation, wind control spontaneous at instrument Dizzy, deft as first mate cheeky on turns at task billowing breezes to tune Coltrane for longer blows

Darwin, as we know truly was a sailor knew from Beagle’s voyage that human body is an earthly vessel but adaptable to water given time & need for weather eye & sea legs knew that by degree equilibrium evolves

Once out on that great lake by mid-crossing, unthinking you fiex with familiar yaw & pitches, feel fifteen marks off-centre as if on kilter (& will back on terra firma stumble first few steps)

CN Tower as our beacon intent on harbour pleasures I at tiller feel secure smug almost to ken newly so much nautical lore until thermals off swelter of city blast us heave us starboard hard over till we take on water & I panic: revert to landlubber useless as Ison reefs jib & mainsail & docks safely at marina

Twice to cross this great lake morning next & chastened deckhand barely able we shove off south-east, set course for Niagara mouth of river where no winds want to take us but by frequent oblique tack

Capricious blow these breezes until midday when they die fetch us, becalmed, up bobbed by swell all afternoon adrift mid-lake where garbage gathers

Apt passages from Homer sagas & Coleridge come Anglo-Saxon curses as we strike our luffing useless sails

prime, pull on & pray over puny outboard putt-putt thence to Grimsby earth & stanzas of lesson—

Warning to all craft: prevailing winds are fickle

Beware uncharted metaphors

The tiller is an instrument of music