T.L. Morrisey

Showing posts with label Canadian Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Canadian Poetry. Show all posts

Sunday, November 26, 2023

Preface, The Green Archetypal Field of Poetry: on poetry, poets, and psyche

 




Preface

 

 

T

he Green Archetypal Field of Poetry: on poetry, poets, and psyche is a collection of essays and short statements on poetry and poetics. This book complements my previous book, A Poet’s Journey: on poetry and what it means to be a poet (2019) also published by Ekstasis Editions. I’ve spent many years in the solitary work of writing poems and thinking about poetry; this book summarizes, explains, and enlarges on that subject. The book is divided into three sections; they are: ideas about poetry and writing poetry; a discussion of several Canadian poets, including F.R. Scott, A.J.M. Smith, Louis Dudek, and the poets I knew from the early days at VĂ©hicule Art Gallery; and shamanism, psyche, or soul in poetry.

 

1          H.W. Garrod in his book, Poetry and the Criticism of Life (1931), writes that it was Seneca “who first said, what Ben Jonson and many others have said after him, that the critic of poetry must be himself a poet.” There is a tradition of poets writing about poetry; Louis Dudek’s writing is full of a contagious enthusiasm for poetry; Irving Layton wrote with bravado about the importance of poetry in Waiting for the Messiah (1985), and there are important statements on poetry in the prefaces of some of his books. Three other books of essays and commentaries on poetry need to be mentioned: co-edited by Louis Dudek and Michael Gnarowski, The Making of Modern Poetry in Canada (1967); An English Canadian Poetics (2009) edited by Robert Hogg; and On Poetry and Poets, Selected Essays of A.J.M. Smith (1977). I also recommend George Whalley’s extraordinary Poetic Process, an essay on poetics (1967).

 

2          In Canada we rarely celebrate our poets, I refer to poets of previous generations; even poets who died only five or ten years ago seem to have never existed judging by their absence from our cultural or daily life, or their being mentioned for their poetry, or their poetry being quoted. We don’t name bridges or airports after our poets, that’s reserved for dead politicians no matter how dubious their contribution to our national life. This collective amnesia does not augur well for our future; if we can't even remember a few dead poets who helped define what Canada means, then what kind of a country will we end up having?    

 

3          What are the perennial qualities of poetry? There is the dichotomy between two approaches to poetry, two types of poets, Apollonian and Dionysian, classical and romantic, formal and informal, cosmopolitan and nativist. No matter which group of poets one falls into one of the things that makes for great poetry is if the poet has found his or her authentic voice: has the poet written something that is true to their inner being and is insightful of the human condition; and the corollary of this: does the poem move us emotionally, spiritually, or intellectually? This is the type of poetry that interests me; these perennial qualities make for great poetry.

 

4          My approach to poetry has always been intuitive. Intuitive people know that intuition gives us knowing but without proof, while intellectual knowledge is substantive but often lacks the insight and originality of intuition. When intuition precedes intellectual understanding, as it does, then it is necessary to find evidence for ones intuitions. Most of my insights into poetry—for instance, and Im obviously not the first to say it, that poetry is the voice of the human soul—originated intuitively. In this book I am trying to substantiate my intuitive insights into poetry, this has helped me to better understand my thinking on poetry and, I hope, it is of interest to readers.

 

5          No real poet ever decided to be a poet, it doesn’t work that way; if it was a decision they probably didn’t last long writing poetry. I answered a call to do this work and now I ask, is there closure on this activity that has dominated my life? This book is closure for my writing about the meaning of poetry but, as for writing new poems, I don’t want to end up as some old poets do, and that is publishing perfectly written but meaningless poetry. I hope I will be long gone before that happens. Of course, there may still be a few poems to write, and a few odds and ends to write about poetry; there is no age for retirement for poets, there is just the slow act of disappearing.   

 

 

                                                                                                Stephen Morrissey

                                                                                                Montreal, Canada

                                                                                                16 November 2021


Morrissey, Stephen. The Green Archetypal Field of Poetry: on poetry, poets, and psyche. Ekstasis Editions, Victoria, 2022.

Friday, July 15, 2022

Review of The Green Archetypal Field of Poetry

Here is a link to Cynthia Coristine's review of my new book, The Green Archetypal Field of Poetry; what a terrific review for which I am very grateful!

The review can be found here, or copy and paste the following: https://poets.ca/review-the-green-archetypal-field-of-poetry-stephen-morrissey/



Friday, July 8, 2022

The Green Archetypal Field of Poetry

Here is the front and back cover of my new book, The Green Archetypal Field of Poetry, on poetry, poets, and psyche, published by Ekstasis Editions a few months ago. The book was published at the same time as Ekstasis Editions published books by Ken Norris and Endre Farkas, both of whom I've known since the mid-1970s. I thought I had reached the end of writing, now it seems I have a few more years left in me. 

Books can be ordered from Ekstasis Editions.



The Green Archetypal Field of Poetry: on poetry, poets, and psyche gathers a selection of essays and short statements on poetry by Stephen Morrissey. While best known as a poet, Morrissey’s critical writing is an important part of his literary work. In this book he writes on the legacy of Canadian poets who helped bring modernism to Canadian poetry. Morrissey’s approach to poetics reminds us of the enduring importance of Beat, Romantic, and shamanic poetics. Morrissey suggests that poems originate in what he calls the green archetypal field of poetry. This is Stephen Morrissey’s second volume on poetry and poetics, after The Poet’s Journey: on poetry and what it means to be a poet (2019).

 


Saturday, April 7, 2018

Thomas D'Arcy McGee, the 150th Anniversary of his Assassination

Today, 7 April 2018, is the 150th anniversary of the assassination of Thomas D'Arcy McGee in Ottawa. Celebrations of his life and memory are at present underway in Montreal. I made this video at McGee's mausoleum in August 2013, in it I read the Gazette's report from 1868 of the assassination that took place only hours earlier. We haven't forgotten him in Montreal, he is forever remembered. 

Thursday, August 24, 2017

McGill Fortnightly Review

Mark McCawley, the editor of Urban Grafitti, was in favour of online/digital magazines, I was in favour (and still am) of both, but I prefer a hard copy, on paper. This was one of the few things about which Mark and I disagreed. Online periodicals can disappear when the editor discontinues the site/periodical, and what is digital can be revised or altered in the Orwellian future. Hard copies of periodicals, kept in archives, can be researched years from now and I have done this type of research. So, for instance, two of the Montreal Group of poets (Scott and Smith) founded The McGill Fortnightly Review and it was published from 1925 to 1927; a few years later they published The McGilliad. Even today these periodicals are fascinating reading. The full run of both periodicals is available at Special Collections at McGill University or online at https://blogs.library.mcgill.ca/…/mcgill-fortnightly-review/




Monday, April 14, 2014

Review of In the Writers' Words, Conversations with Eight Poets

Laurence Hutchman on Grand Blvd near Somerled, Montreal, March 2016
                                 


Laurence Hutchman 
In the Writers' Words, Conversations with Eight Poets
Guernica Editions, Toronto, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-5507-309-1

Conversations with Eight Poets

by

Stephen Morrissey

             Laurence Hutchman's In the Writers' Words, Conversations with Eight Poets is a valuable addition to our knowledge of modernist Canadian poetry. The poets interviewed in these conversations are Ralph Gustafson, George Johnston, P.K. Page, Fred Cogswell, Louis Dudek, Al Purdy, Anne Szumigalski, and James Reaney. All eight of these poets have made important contributions to Canadian literature—they are all distinguished members of the Canadian poetry canon—and several have also contributed as translators and publishers.
            There is an easy intimacy between Laurence Hutchman and the poets he is interviewing. It feels as though we are listening in on good friends having a friendly but serious conversation on a subject about which both of them are passionate. Each interview is prefaced with a vivid and detailed description of the poet's home or place of work where the interview took place. When Hutchman is invited into Ralph Gustafson's Eastern Township's home he sits by a warm fire in late December; he describes the "chilly November morning in Saskatoon" when he rode a borrowed bicycle to interview Anne Szunigalski and entered her home where he admired paintings "everywhere on the walls, mostly done by her own family."
            Just before the interview which takes place in James Reaney's university office, Hutchman notes, "We sit on a green couch for the interview. On the wall facing us there is a painting of Reaney's, of The Nihilist Spasm Band. Above us is a picture, 'A Well Organized Athletic Meet on Centre Island, 1907 two women carrying eggs on a spoon.' Above those are topographical maps representing Grand Bend, St. Mary's and Stratford." Hutchman's awareness of the minutiae and detail of the place where the interview takes place enhances each interview that follows. In these interviews we are invited to know the human side of the eight different poets. Indeed, these conversations are an invitation for new readers to explore each poets' work.
            Scholars will find In The Writers' Words, Conversations with Eight Poets a valuable source of insight into these poets' work; recent criticism I've written on Louis Dudek's major long poem "Continuation" has been deepened by reading the interview with him. I can hear Dudek's voice—engaging and inquiring—in his discussion with Hutchman; Dudek states,

                        In Continuation 1 and Continuation 2, I at last found a voice where

                        I could say exactly what I want to say, and everything I want to say,

                        in the most amazing fragmentary way... you have to take risks in poetry.

                        What is poetry trying to do on the page? It's trying to represent the

                        poet's thought.

                        Many of us have fond memories of having met these eight poets. I remember meeting James Reaney at a League of Canadian Poets AGM in Toronto; he was wearing a tie decorated with books that I liked so much it took me a year before finding a similar tie for myself. In Edmonton, a few years ago, Mark Abley's excellent keynote address at the League's AGM was on Anne Szumigalski and it brought her life and work to a new audience. Elsewhere, I heard Fred Cogswell and Ralph Gustafson read their poems and from time to time corresponded with them. I sat and talked with Al Purdy after one of the times I heard him read. Louis Dudek, besides being my professor, was a friend until the end of his life. I remember being a first year graduate student at McGill University and walking into the English Department's staff lounge and seeing Laurence sitting discussing his own poetry with Louis Dudek. Dudek's DC Books published Hutchman's first book, Explorations (1975). George Johnston was a good friend, we both lived in rural south-western Quebec after he retired from teaching at Carleton University. In addition to many discussions on poetry George taught me the basics of the art of bee keeping which I did for many years. George and his wife Jean were both good friends and warm-hearted people, over the years of knowing them I also got to know some members of their family. During their careers all of these poets that Hutchman interviews readily made themselves available to newer poets. Reading Hutchman's conversations with them reminds me of the generosity and welcoming spirit of this modernist generation of poets, many of whom made an indelible impression on me.
                  All eight of these poets began writing and publishing during the 1930s to the1950s. 
Individually and collectively they made a significant contribution to Canadian poetry. P.K. Page, reminiscing about when she lived in Montreal, reminds us of poets we may have forgotten but who are still important for their role in Canadian literature, they include Patrick Anderson and John Sutherland. She also remembers with fondness Montreal poet A.M. Klein; Page says,
            ... he was only nine years older than I but he seemed to belong to a different generation. This had to do with a series of things, I think, with the fact that he was married, had children, and a law practise. He was already established as a poet... I find him a  wonderful poet and can't think why people today don't see it. But they will again.

            In his interview George Johnston discusses the literary scene back in the 1930s when he was a student and had just begun writing; Johnston states, "To tell the truth, I was hardly aware of a literary life in Toronto, except at the university. There was one intellectual sort of magazine which came out once a month..." This comment by Johnston reveals to us how far Canadian literature has progressed over the last sixty or seventy years.
            The eight poets Hutchman interviewed spent a lifetime writing poetry and thinking about poetry; theirs was a life centered on literature and poetry. The New Brunswick-based poet Fred Cogswell, who did a tremendous service for poets across Canada during his many years of running the literary small press, Fiddlehead, makes this statement on "the philosophical nature of ... poetry":
           
The particular philosophical nature of poetry is that its function is to illustrate the  qualities of the human mind that are the basis for the attitudes we have as human beings. Keep going farther than you've already gone, or you become a victim of what you've written up until that moment.

            In the interview with P.K. Page, living at the west coast edge of the continent, in Victoria, BC, a clap of thunder is heard as the interview comes to an end. PK says to Hutchman, "You're conjuring up gods that we don't normally have." This is what Hutchman does in all of these interviews. He conjures the gods of poetry. Hutchman's interviews with each of these eight poets is an intimate conversation with each individual. We hear their voice, their commitment to poetry, and their example of a life lived for poetry. Hutchman's book stays vivid and lively and brings the reader directly into the personality and writing of each of the eight poets. For anyone of any age, either scholar or reader, who is interested in the modernist poets of Canada, this book is an indispensable companion to the poets' collected works. That is part of the magic of this book.


                                                                        Stephen Morrissey

                                                                        Montreal, September 3, 2013