Loyalty Management Assignment Anika Roberts-Stahlbrand
Surrender to the surprisingly Good
I generally don’t like poetry (except rhyming couplets). I find it very time consuming and monotonous to read. My impatience stops me from completing complicated poems with complicated ideas. I feel very pressured when reading poetry, especially for school, to suck a greater meaning out of it. I never know whether the meaning I got really exists, or was contrived by my mind to get me on to the next poem. However, with Loyalty Management, by Glen Downie, I tried very hard to read the
poems at a tempo I could understand. I re-read them and thought about their meanings. Although I was still annoyed with some of his poems, overall I found it a very rewarding experience.
Loyalty Management was easy to read. The words well flowed together. Many of the poems,
such as He naps in his former bedroom, conjured up vivid pictures in my head. I really love the poem
Fafard’s cows take Toronto. I thought it was witty and got its point across well. Poetry can get a point across without actually saying it. You can feel the ideas in your heart and can relate to them, rather then just intellectually understanding them. Some of Downie’s poems creep in under me and then, while
reading, I suddenly find myself feeling a certain emotion.
Downie didn’t use commas and periods, which confused me. Maybe he was indicating that the reader could make sense of the writing themselves. I often find that poetry tries to be so deep that it doesn’t make sense anymore or is trying to hide the fact that it is actually shallow. Sometimes I wonder if some poets are intelligent at all, or are just stringing a bunch of words together. In my opinion (for how much it counts, considering I’m no poetry connoisseur) I think that on a whole, Downie’s poems
seem to have content. I didn’t understand Pine cone. I though it was a jumble of words and references
to his other poems. But some other slightly confusing and wordy poems still stirred my emotions. For example, Door to door is long and a bit hard to follow. I felt like I was listening to French—getting the
general idea, feeling the emotion, but maybe missing some of the subtle nuances. In that poem, as well
Loyalty Management Assignment Anika Roberts-Stahlbrand
as others, I could still find myself caught up in Downie’s whirlwind of words. I didn’t always know exactly
what was going on, but I just surrendered to the wind and let it blow me where it would.
I often find poetry annoying and pretentious. I have always liked some poems like Lake Isle of
Innisfree. But I usually find many free verse poems bamboozling and only thought them a bunch of nonsensical words. But since Loyalty Management was for a school project, I had to read it. I sometimes
thought the poems were trying to be too deep and didn’t make sense (or sometimes found myself
almost asleep on the TTC while reading). But I’m glad stuck with it. As I look back on it, I enjoyed most of
this book and many of these poems. If I learned one thing from reading my first full book of poetry it is this: don’t worry about understanding the poems, don’t struggle with their meaning, just enjoy the
sound they make in your head and the natural feelings they bring. Poetry is often heavily analysed, but with this book, I found the poems I enjoyed best were the one’s I didn’t stress about understanding, the one’s I just let hit me.
Loyalty Management Assignment Anika Roberts-Stahlbrand
It ain’t that bad (It’s pretty darn good)
It seems as though everyone bashes Toronto, so I was expecting the Downie’s poems to be
about how Toronto is bad and other such trifles. While reading I found myself picking out all the proofs that proved my hypothesis. Once I realized I was doing that, I tried to step back a bit and read it from a non-partisan point of view (which is impossible).
I still found that the author seemed to not like certain aspects of Toronto. In Fafard’s cows take
Toronto I think he is saying that Toronto is too uptight and that bureaucracy just gets in the way. Downie also expresses dislike for politicians and political decisions. In Cold Snap, he reprimands the premier for
not doing enough about homelessness in Toronto. In The Message, I think he is talking about the power
of the word No when many people join together to say it. I don’t think I fully understand Vertical Society
but it is an obvious attack on the government. It says, “Screw the Premier!” (Downie 56). I understand
two things from this poem. Downie’s daughter is growing up and seeing beyond, but the Premier is still blinded and short sighted. Downie could also be saying that there is no support for the future, only limited infrastructure and pathetic welfare.
Downie finds Ontario’s government to be rather useless and hypocritical. He thinks parties
“buy” our votes and then sell infrastructure and things like that to private companies. I gather he thinks Toronto is starting to have too much crime. He, like most people, is annoyed by the constant onslaught of marketers and canvassers asking for signatures and money, who bother you with a rainbow of brochures and pins.
I love Toronto! It is an amazing city. I love food and in Toronto you can get any kind of food for any kind of budget. I enjoy experiencing new things and my favourite place is little India. It is so nice that we have a beach and I am lucky enough to live right near it. A favourite pass time of mine in the summer is to spend a day swimming in the lake with a friend (and some hummus and crackers). It’s also great to
Loyalty Management Assignment Anika Roberts-Stahlbrand
live in the beaches because I can walk everywhere. I’m so glad I don’t have to spend money on a car or rely on my parents to get me where I want to go. If I want to leave this area I can take a 45 minutes streetcar ride to Kensington.
I agree Toronto has many problems. But everyone is so hard on us. We are the economic center for the country, but we never get our fare share of the money. Our under funded TTC can be unreliable, slow and crowded. Our politicians aren’t the best (I’d rather see a focus on the environment, which by
extension would help the economy) but politicians are people too. Even though we have very little crime per capita, everyone talks about how crime is going up. Everyone focuses on the bad of Toronto. I have lived here all my life, but travelled a lot. Whenever I come home I am happy. I want to be someone who gives Toronto a pat on the back. It’s a city to be proud of. As important as it is to criticize the
government and actively work for change, it is also important to celebrate successes and enjoy our convivial city of lakes, concrete, neighbourhoods, foods and cultures. Toronto is a great experiment in social composting.
Loyalty Management Assignment Anika Roberts-Stahlbrand
Summer Job
girls running jumping calling
camp counsellors can’t control their contagious energy
joining in they yell and leap
having fun despite their older age
at university counsellors are much too mature for meandering in the forest of blueberry island and rolling
in the morning dew but in this magical place
the mature and the mini march along singing
my-mamma-don’t-wear-no-socks having a ball playing parachute games in the sun shinning down on their sensitive slightly sun burned skin
once I was on of those tiny tots
of about ten tramping about
my head filled with a scintilla of thought
I’ll not be a counsellor but a CIT*
rather then seeing how to drink tea like at a prim and proper aristocratic asthmatic democratic diplomatic bureaucratic office worker in an attic I will learn how to lead the learners
I will learn how to follow the young folk’s enthusiasm and joy and carry it higher and make it grow and glow and perk up the pessimistic with a personable grin
No longer young and care free
the weight of the lives of the campers on my back but the love the joy of the job in my heart
no flipping mcburgers
contributing to deforestation global warming
from farting gigantic gaseous cows eating GMO soy
grown thousands of miles away
no spending my time
bored and buckled down in an office as the sun beams bounce into the room no going out late at night with other non-working friends and waking up with a whopper of a headache just to go off and sell
whopper hamburgers to sardonic costumers
I have a summer where my joy of camp and my love of the canoe and rock climbing can be shared and can grow and expand
I can look from my lopsided canoe to giggling girls as they hold their first paddle their top hand
holding the neck of the poor strangled old thing
for the first time
I instruct I teach I tell what I have learned from people like me from the counsellors of my past who I now room with
I’ll get the girls paddling and pat them on their life jacket-padded backs
Loyalty Management Assignment Anika Roberts-Stahlbrand
Just listen to the description of this job but think
of the responsibility and required energy being silly and being safe
it is a hard act to balance
I’m not expecting a simply pleasurable summer but a summer
with simple pleasures like the satisfaction of seeing someone learn to swim or making
a kid smile
on Saturday skit night
I have a dream job
I am lucky
Explanation
The specific poem I’m trying to emulate here is Door to door. But this is really a melange of all the styles from Downie’s poetry. I notice he uses a lot of alliteration without many commas and periods.
Downie tends to leave his sentences ambiguous. I also found that he takes a sound from a word and then twist is into another word (bureaucratic;attic). I noticed he would be writing about a totally innocent thing and then suddenly throw in some political message. I hope I did a reasonable job of
interpreting and capturing Downie’s style.
*counsellor-in-training
Loyalty Management Assignment Anika Roberts-Stahlbrand
Our Lake I row in my single
down the long canal
in the golden sunset,
by the Toronto skyline
by enjoying the calming water by the exertion of my muscles
I tip that’s just great
feet out of foot stops
into the dirty canal
by the gravel pits
by the toxic piles of dust by the gas plant in progress
I bike cold and wet
winding along the lake
thinking
why the tip was foul
why the water is dirty
why industry comes first
I swim by the beach
practically alone
wondering
why the lake is safer here why other are afraid to swim why we can’t feel comfortable
I hope that’s for sure
sitting on a bench
on the boardwalk
that the economy will value our lake
that the city will prize our lake that the people will enjoy our lake