There might be an interesting article about the Toronto art scene in the Globe and Mail, but if you click on the thing, you only get a little message offering a peek at the article for $4.95. (It says “purchase the article” but they mean “look at the article”). Being made of money, I was about to commit to the transaction when I saw the announcement: “The full text of this article has 214 words”. Rather short weight for five whole dollars, unless the article contains something like the secret winning number to a lottery or something.

However, all is not lost. Toronto has its own poet laureate, apparently:

those are english words
that have no place in the mouths of people,
those are words made up for the language of thought,
that have forgotten to serve the language of lovers.
Those words are in a manual at the bottom of the ocean,
where strange fish gnaw upon them,

— Pier Giorgio di Cicco

H'm. I was just gnawing upon this verse and wondering what it might mean. Who wrote this “manual”, and what's it for? What does it mean to say that a word could forget to serve a language? Are the people of Toronto happy with this confusing message?

Labels: Poets