Aimless Reading: The D's, Part 20 (Jeff Derksen)

Down Time
Originally uploaded by Michael_Kelleher

Derksen, Jeff
Down Time

I am pretty sure I bought this on Amazon.com. Now and again I decide to catch up on my reading of contemporary poetry and buy used copies in batches off the internet. I am pretty sure that's how I acquired this title. No, it has a price written on the inside. I bought it at Rust Belt Books.

I am wondering where Jeff Derksen is these days. I only met him twice, a long time ago. When I arrived in Buffalo in 1997, his name was on the tips of everybody's tongues. He featured at one of the first readings I went to in Toronto. Peter Jaeger introduced him. It was at a gallery on Spadina, not too far from Queen St. It was called the red something or other.

And I remember Jeff came to read a year or so later in the Wednesdays at 4 Plus series that Charles Bernstein ran. We went out to dinner after the reading at Gabriel's Gate. I hate the food at Gabriel's gate, but it's not a bad place to hang out. And they have free popcorn.

from Blind Trust

They will recognize other as outsiders: a questions which has long intrigued students. Coddled, malignant. Redundancy with distinctive features for the following combinations: nasal, causal, projective, or simply flagging down fellow motorists for conversations. No need to humble. Pronunciation of full R designates import car or North American. Autobiography. Down in the office the obsession is with absence, really what the pay's for. Very much present, spittle.