pulled down from the high shelf last night my copies of "Class Warfare" and "The Voice of Emma Sachs", two completely unique books of stories by the late Don Fraser. We were not close friends, but had a number of conversations that were of great importance and use for me, most memorably on Hornby Island in September 1983, where he received with great politeness and interest my half-framed ideas about how what I'd "learned" from lieder, Schubert and Mahler especially, might be applied to my poetry, spaghetti westerns, etc. The last time I saw him it was a typical sweaty rainy Vancouver spring day, running into him at a diner and after he left eating the two and half pieces (out of three) of his order of french toast...




"'One wanders through the days, observing and feeling and, occasionally, trying to understand, and unless one is terminally impercipient one finds abundant evidence to confirm the darkest world-view.'

'Dignity consists in staying put where the shame is...'

'Home is where the fortifications are, or should be...' "