{"id":9997,"date":"2011-11-01T14:46:14","date_gmt":"2011-11-01T09:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/the-best-of-our-primitive-hearts\/"},"modified":"2023-02-15T16:19:02","modified_gmt":"2023-02-15T11:19:02","slug":"the-best-of-our-primitive-hearts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/editorials\/the-best-of-our-primitive-hearts\/","title":{"rendered":"The best of our primitive hearts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Congratulations to Paul Tyler, author of A Short History of Forgetting<\/em> (Gaspereau Press), winner of the 2011 Archibald Lampman Award<\/h3>\n

\"tyler_b\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A Short History of Our Future With Aliens<\/h1>\n

~Paul Tyler<\/p>\n

On the day the aliens come, I’ll still go into work;<\/p>\n

it’ll be all the talk at the office. It’s getting closer.<\/p>\n

What skills they’ll bring from their foreign star.<\/p>\n

What devices of pleasure. As they squat, posing<\/p>\n

their ganglia beneath a strange blue sky, rubbing<\/p>\n

their droopy eyelids like sleepy toddlers, asking:<\/p>\n

Don’t you know who we are?<\/em> Of course<\/em>, we’ll cry,<\/p>\n

we have heard all about you<\/em>, offering the best of<\/p>\n

our primitive hearts. As they slink from the haze<\/p>\n

where the spacecraft sulks pulsing like a kidney,<\/p>\n

their procession, with a sobering hush, will pass<\/p>\n

through the burst of flashbulbs, metallic clothing<\/p>\n

humming in its weave. They’ll slide straight into<\/p>\n

the mayor’s congenial quarters, and be refreshed<\/p>\n

with seltzer. This is the way it will happen. I’ll be<\/p>\n

at the office knowing everything has arrived at its<\/p>\n

inevitable conclusion, and as silence descends like<\/p>\n

a train depot at midnight, things will finally change.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

from A Short History of Forgetting<\/em>, Gaspereau Press, 2011. Reprinted by permission.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Paul Tyler has been published in Event<\/em>, Grain<\/em>, The Malahat Review<\/em> and other Canadian and American journals. He was the recipient of the 2004 Byron’s Quill Award and received an honourable mention in the 2005 Bliss Carman Award. A Short History of Forgetting<\/em> is his first collection.<\/p>\n

Arc<\/em> would like to thank the 2011 Lampman judges, Anne Compton, Ross Leckie and Ian LeTourneau.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/h4>\n

Get your Arc<\/em> Poetry Annual<\/a> today for more winning words!<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congratulations to Paul Tyler, author of A Short History of Forgetting (Gaspereau Press), winner of the 2011 Archibald Lampman Award A Short History of Our Future With Aliens ~Paul Tyler On the day the aliens come, I’ll still go into work; it’ll be all the talk at the office. It’s getting closer. What skills they’ll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"10141,10008,10136,10923","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1416,1426,1600,1843,1896],"tags":[],"genre":[150],"publisher":[],"issue":[82],"poet-in-residence":[],"series":[3261,3123,3080,3148,3106],"topic":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9997"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9997"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=9997"},{"taxonomy":"publisher","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/publisher?post=9997"},{"taxonomy":"issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue?post=9997"},{"taxonomy":"poet-in-residence","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poet-in-residence?post=9997"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=9997"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arcpoetry.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=9997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}