The Old Man in the Mirror Isn’t Me: Last Call Haiku
$18.95
Poems about getting old and not liking it. About getting high on Christmas Eve. About a hole in the sky where Honest Ed’s used to be. About killing mosquitoes and petting strange dogs, and a homeless man who feeds the pigeons who are always happy to see him. About tuning out and turning off and unplugging. About friends who’ve died, and confused skyscrapers on foggy days, and Nabokov in his underwear. About shame in the evening, regret in the morning, and, if there’s time, a nap in the afternoon. About a world where the Clash is classic rock and experience killed curiosity and the corpse wondered what’s next.
“Why I Am Not a Poet” is the lively preface-memoir about growing up and becoming a writer in Toronto in the ’80s and ’90s, and being influenced by it’s long-gone bars, bookstores, and people.
“A haiku by Ray Robertson, like a novel by Ray Robertson, is the language we actually speak – whether by ‘language’ you mean what it sounds like, or what life seems to us, given that we talk this way. ‘Corn Flakes before bed / Zoloft for breakfast / I’m doing the best I can.’ The language is so mordant, relaxed, flint-chip shapely and edged, I think Sam Spade must have said these haiku first, between gun-butts to the skull, and Robertson channelled them. ‘Telling yourself it’s going to be okay / Over and over and over.’ They’re the alleys, sidewalks, offices, subways of modern Toronto, and they have the Zen poet’s reverence for the world as presence of the All (‘Sleet storm / Tin roof / Who needs Mozart?’). Their search for a way out only momentarily succeeds, and never ends, but it hovers around ecstasy. ‘Gasoline rainbows / Exist / Look!’” —A. F. Moritz
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