Crowd Noises

A bunch of poets got together in 1971 and agreed upon nothing. I declared at the time that I had planted my flag in Church Street and from that moment on my poems would take root there. Ted Plantos took Queen Street. Robert Priest took all the pubs on Spadina and points north and east. And other poets divided up what was left. It was the Balkanization of the Toronto poetry scene. But of course none of us respected the terms and soon all out war took place. I fled to Europe where I met Lenin in Paris. A sweet girl with all of her own teeth. She asked me about my time before the great war of the minor poets. And so I collected the scraps of paper I had in my suitcase and published Crowd Noises.