Steven Parmenius

  Well, the short answer is, yes, it is, because the secular is a construct by and for Christians that can only serve (white) Christian hegemony. This is not to say, by the way, that secularity itself a bad thing when understood in a broader sense. It is to say that there are regional and provincial constructions of the secular that do not and cannot work in a globalized society except as forces of entrenchment and reaction. This will take some explaining especially to such readers as may be French or American (assuming they have read past the first sentence!). There are many problems in Canada and one can get very frustrated with its culture of virtuous mediocrity but if there is ONE thing I think Canada HAS figured out it is how to construct a secularity beyond secularism. This is important because it allows Canada to welcome immigrants from Asia and elsewhere who cannot live in any dogmatic construction of a secular society and still express their particular identities (for reasons

Shipwreck songs move us, move us uniquely, because we all die. The ship is the ship of state of course. It is also, in some contexts, the church. I think it is often the body. A ship is sailed by fools, blind to their folly. Captains go down with ships, bravely and sometimes mere lads do as well (at least in Victorian verse). Whichever way, ships do only one thing poetically speaking. They sink. If they sink memorably, they are immortalized in song. Songs about shipwrecks speak, proleptically, of the ultimate shipwreck of our bodies, fortunes and even of our own souls. Further, all shipwreck songs are one song. A poet, if they are a real poet, may attempt to write new one, to introduce novelty, but, as sure as the tides, the archetypes will master them. The shipwreck tale will impose its nature willy-nilly on any poet tuned in, beyond ratiocination or discursive chatter, to the primordial shape of life. The shipwreck tale will tell us who is a poet and who is a poser by how deeply and