 |
| Philip's Square, Montreal |
At the point of greatest awareness and
primitive terror
the poem recommences
Louis Dudek, Continuation I, p.18
Commentary (discussion, insights, thoughts, opinions, dead ends, provocations) on book one of Louis Dudek's Continuation.
-o-
Robin Blaser writes:
The first run of the great meditative poem, Continuation, was published in
1981, a weaving so alive that it will, as I noted, stop only with the author,
and not in the closure of form. This narrative — and it is narrative for all
the appearance of fragmentation — unlike the previous long-poems, does not
follow the path of a literal journey. In this one, the mind darts, travelling
through the poetic effort of the whole century and gauging his own part in it.
But the tone is more urgent than ever before... (19)
We begin with the perfect
first line for this book; Dudek writes, “So, let’s continue...” It’s the continuation
of a poem that has already begun, an infinite poem, a poem in progress, the continuation
of a project that began before Continuation.
Dudek has several
themes in this work, for instance, poetry and being a poet. These themes are Dudek’s
foundation for the poem; he includes many references to being a poet that only
a poet would make and possibly understand. This is the thing to remember, he’s
writing about the importance of poetry in his life, but he’s not writing about
writing poetry, that’s something different. Poetry is his life discipline, it’s
what gives his life coherence and meaning, it’s what separates Dudek from other
people. I think this is a crucial point to understanding the poem.
Charles Olson,
borrowing from Robert Creeley, writes that “Form is never more than an extension
of content”; the form in Continuation is
the juxtaposition of single or several lines that are an extension of the poem’s
content, in the form of fragments, epigrams, and statements, placed before and
after each other. Olson continues: a “possible corollary...that right form in
any given poem, is the only and exclusively possible extension of content under
hand.”
-o-
How did Continuation get the form it has? How
did the epigrams get the order that they have? How did Dudek decide
how to order the epigrams in the poem? Was it thought out by Dudek or is it a
random assemblage? Although it reads as a randomly assembled poem, I suspect it
was mostly thought out, that Dudek didn’t totally trust a random arrangement
such as John Cage might have suggested. My reading of the poem is that although
it has a fragmentary quality it also still has Dudek’s (almost invisible, but
intended as such) controlling hand selecting, assembling, and ordering the
poem. The effect of the organization of the lines corresponds to listening to
someone thinking, it is a stream of consciousness.
-o-
Rereading Continuation this morning it occurs to me that the assembly of Continuation I is based on Dudek's subjective associations, what one line or sentence or single word suggests to him is the impetus of the next line or sentence; it could be as minor as a single word, taken from the text, and what follows is what it suggests. It is a wholly subjective way to assemble the ideas and lines that he has written. The whole project is all ideas, but by Continuation III he also reflects on personal experiences, for instance on experiences from his childhood, otherwise it is all ideas; it is “ideas in poetry”. Pound said that "only emotion endures" and Dudek agrees with this, but he doesn't necessarily act on it. The template of Continuation includes two main ideas, they are the nature of poetry and the divine presence, which is God. Poetry, and the other high arts, are an expression of the divine. And Dudek follows Mathew Arnold's insight that "our religion is poetry."
But God is a nice short word
for something too vast to imagine.
(78)
Then, referring to Continuation, Dudek writes
Piecemeal is how they come to to me
The prefabricated pieces
I put together
Much in the order in which they came
(78)
-o-
Beyond a few
sentences, in our lives, there is nothing
(11)
The real world
is silent, we must
be silent to hear it
(11)
Who cares, does
anybody care
about your precious
mind and what goes on in it?
(13)
But to accumulate
lines, is not that a pleasure?
To weave them into
patterns,
is not that happiness?
(13)
O the poet that
incredible madman
possessed by what he hardly knows or
comprehends
See him coming
toward you, his fat cheeks on fire
convinced of his
potency, his craft, his supreme art
that no one needs or
understands
(13)
This appears to suggest something of Dudek’s hesitation regarding self-revelation in poetry, the loss of
privacy in life, and the poet as celebrity; but writing poetry is also his
greatest pleasure (which he refers to elsewhere as an addiction greater than
sex or drugs). Some of the least self-revelatory poets are close to being confessional poets. Dudek greeted my confessional, self-revelatory poem, "Divisions", with nothing but affirmation, even writing that he would publish it.
-o-
The influence of epigrams
is also seen in this section; at first they seem like so many disparate and
unrelated statements, not poetry but statements, injunctions, conclusions, no
metaphor, no music to the language, no emotion:
The conscious mind
knows nothing of art
That’s why we forget
our dreams
(Give a dying man a
post-hypnotic suggestion
see if it works...)
It’s come about so
that anyone
who isn’t killing
himself for pleasure
is a puritan
Having lost the
dream, I feel no anguish
Lassitude itself is
a dream
(16)
-o-
Section Two:
Here is Dudek on poetry,
epigrams, and Pound’s Cantos.
(The anthologists
themselves are the only readers)
(19)
No one is superior
to another, no one
In the end, what
matters is that you’ve got a record
of what you
said
(20)
As the true mimesis
a poem without direction
(20)
-o-
The poem, so far,
seems to be a lot of statements that are disconnected, and unconnected to each
other, to other unrelated statements, and are not conventional or formal poetry. But then
we read other lines:
The carrot greens are hanging out of the garbage bag
They have served their purpose
Necessity is the will of God
What he wants most is to exist
Wish you were here
having
a good time
I am the imagination that creates
an
image of itself
The poets have been trying to conceive man
Now they want to be as well as to conceive
So Ezra was ok
He survived
our misunderstandings
As the body disintegrates, the spirit grows more firm
(21)
-o-
Then, we must
consider randomness as a way to give art depth, it’s all thrown out at you,
none of it seems to have much depth in a linear, discursive way.
The following is
Dudek as he begins this new unexplored
area of poetry: it is to understand the psychology of writing poetry, that we understand life better in the act of creativity; cis life
affirming.
The style
simple but not
commonplace
a complex of clichés
Speak with your full
intelligence
Speak from the
secret mind
Expect miracles
(22)
-o-
Then we find
wholeness and vision in synchronistic experiences, even in writing this poem
there is the miracle of meaning unfolding, it is the “meaningful
(synchronistic) coincidence” in which the universe is unfolded, even that which
is apparently random has an inherent meaning.
Coincidences
The coincidences of
this world
(23)
-o-
We have
epigrams on poetry (some express Dudek’s bitterness at
his lack of greater recognition). Dudek’s literary papers (25) are housed in
Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa, and his personal library is at Special
Collections at McGill – neither is a “dunghill”, rather, they show the
greatness of the man despite the comment.
But there was the
epic poetry all around
that they
ignored
(24)
Poetry a cottage
industry
(25)
The poem, a man
talking to himself
(25)
A poet, let’s say in
the ‘major’ league
but if he goes into
eclipse
no one is interested
in studying his dunghill
any more
The ‘literary papers of’
(25)
-o-
Section Three:
This section of
epigrams is pure randomness, too bad Dudek was condescending about John Cage who might
have complemented (and developed/articulated/elaborated on) Dudek’s assemblage
of epigrammatic statements. The juxtaposition of Dudek’s epigrams results, curiously,
not in confusion and nonsense, but in something meaningful.
Personally, I do not
think of Dudek as a “philosopher-poet”, he’s a poet; “philosopher-poet” detracts from his poetry. If we go to the work, this
isn’t a systematic exposition of ideas, it’s random thoughts thrown at the
reader. A poet is rarely a philosopher, most poets prefer to be called poets.
This poetry also gives
the reader the expression of Dudek’s soul as separate from the public man. What holds these statements together is the persona of
the speaker, it is not an old man with a scowl, it is a poet who speaks
here. There is a lot of passion in Continuation
I:
Canadians have never
learned to think
Have never learned
to take up the subject
(31)
The poetry of the
commonplace
(Dudek’s “Snowbound”)
(33)
-o-
(“I don’t want your
fake poems
I want a record of your
mind”)
(33)
Most, when they
write criticism
are frustrated by their own
mediocrity
and have to take it
out on others
who turn out, no
matter how, a bit of the real thing
(35)
One doesn’t get
particularly wise as one gets older
only a bit milder,
we kill with
diminished zest
(35)
-o-
While Pound railed
against usury, the Federal Reserve and the monetary system (that Henry Miller parodied in his essay,
“Money and How It Got that Way”), Dudek rails against the way low art, or popular culture, has undermined high art (an example
of high art in music would be Bach and Mozart; I mention classical music
because it is one of Dudek’s passions). However, the passion in Continuation is not for people or social
justice, it is not a poem of great outer passion, but it is a passionate poem
with respect to poetry and this is also evident in the energy (which is passion)
required to write this long poem. The fact is, Dudek’s emotional range in Continuation is limited—he is an
intellectual, not a man of great emotions—and this is a deficit to
the poem—as poetry demands emotion, as stated by Pound and repeated by Dudek. However, the range of emotions in this work is not meant to be extensive, it is a work of ideas, insights, a work articulating a lifetime of thinking about poetry. Dudek laments what poetry has become, how it is no longer high art, it is entertainment, marginalized, and for this reason he is angry, bitter, as always an outsider to “poetry biz”.
Now, all there is is low art, low culture, vulgarity, and no one makes the distinction between the two, especially not the artists.
The strongest
emotion in Continuation is anger at
the crassness and commercialization of contemporary society. Regarding old age,
Dudek’s response is not emotional, it is more resigned to being old, and descriptive
of the condition of old age. The problem of high art versus low art is one of Dudek’s lifelong issues, something he returns to again and again (in his
numerous book reviews one of his complaints is that poetry is being debased by,
for instance, violence (in Patrick Lane’s work) and by poets who haven’t read
anything, don’t know much about poetry, but still want to call themselves
“poets”).
It used to be that
low culture’s demands on one’s time were minimal, now we are constantly
bombarded with advertising and commercialization; it seems that all there is is low art. Low culture demands
a commitment, in money and time spent on it, and its presence in our daily
life, that is way out of proportion to the value that it gives one. It seems
that every few weeks Apple is selling a “must have” gadget, a modification of
some other gadget, and people line up the day before to dutifully buy this stuff, I have no idea why they can’t wait a few days before spending their
money. I suspect that immediate purchase, immediate gratification of the retail
gene, precludes the consumer’s awareness
that more of this junk is not necessary...
Life literature
I tell you
I’ve seen and heard
far more
interesting things in
books
than ever I saw
hamburgers in life dancehalls
Beer Campbell Soup
Bingo
Used Cars or shit
salesmen
their
thoughts
dishrag dust stale
cheese albumin
(37)
-o-
There’s a lot of
passion in this first book of Continuation;
it is the passion of writing poetry and having found a voice through which the
poet can speak.
An ecstasy in the
throat...
...
Even on the street,
patches of perfection
...
Poetry is an
experience How you explain it
is something else
Like flying — and
the theory
(38-39)
-o-
Continuation represents a lifelong commitment to the
discipline of writing poetry. Below, as well, a reference to John Cage
in Dudek’s poem:
There is even the
freedom to write bad poetry
No one is obliged to
read
Or listen
Prokofiev’s body
odour, very acrid
John Cage’s
monkeyshines
(40)
-o-
The illusion of any
art form, to make it seem unself-conscious, to make it seem “easy”, while knowing that it is a lifetime’s effort to get to where Dudek can write this poem.
The poetic stream
(at least to make it seem so
like all
appearance)
—streams
of consciousness
(40)
-o-
Dudek`s passion is
poetry but he was also a perceptive critic of contemporary society and changing
values. “We’ve lost the battle” he says, and the evidence surrounding us is
that he is right.
Here is the
passionate Dudek, the poet who is a social critic in his poetry and who
denounces commercialism and
the demise of propriety in general, but also the downfall of high mimetic art and cultural values.
We’ve lost the
battle
against stupidity,
vulgarity
Lost it, Messrs
Joyce, Yeats, Eliot, Pound, etc.
Lost to the Beats,
the Beatles, the Activists, the McLunatics
To Pop & Op
& “multiple media”,
to “total
environment”
To psychedelia &
Flower Power
the New Left, SDU CEGEP,
UGEQ, & MAUT
Lost to the new
barbarian
without a scrap of poetry worth a pin
(42)
-o-
Robin Blaser describes Dudek as a “walking loneliness”. A man isolated in himself, a
person alone. I am not convinced that this is the truth. Dudek was a thinker and
an introvert, but he was also a family man and a professor greatly beloved by
his students. Dudek affected an intellectual isolation that was also
self-isolating, his position seems to be that he was interested in the mind
while everyone else was caught up in what is fashionable and temporary. It is a
curse to be born introverted, it is lonely, but in the second half of life it
is a blessing as it allows one to be alone while others find being alone a
terrible experience. Some people like being alone, in fact if you want to get
anything done you need to be alone a lot of the time. There isn’t much time for
partying, drinking, carousing if you have work to do. One also needs to balance
working for money, looking after one’s family, running a household, and one’s
own creative work. Personal relationships, family and friends, and colleagues, are
very important to someone like Dudek, but he is also a man of solitude. He
missed teaching when he retired, he missed the daily necessity of at least a
minimum of human contact outside the home. He was also physically not well, bad
health understandably made everything worse than had he been healthy. We need
to remind ourselves that as a poet Dudek’s dialogue with the world, his way of
addressing what is important to him, is through poetry.
Life a Tunnel of Terror
(I never
talk to anyone
about what really
concerns me)
The unreality of
things
How everything vanishes
like a vapour
...
The wound in the
psyche bleeds
rubber, ferric oxide, salt . . .
Man the big bacillus
(44)
-o-
Section Four: this
is a section of complaints and anger at the media:
Dudek picks up what
he began late in Section Three, his critique of society and his positioning of
poetry against what society has become. Poetry, for Dudek (and Matthew Arnold), has taken the place
of religion, it is his personal place of meditation, of thinking over what is
truly important to him.
This is not a “large
canvas” on which Dudek writes, he is concise and his concerns are poetry, the journey of the second half of life, and some social commentary.
I would like to tell
Louis, “Not to worry”, you wrote just enough, you wrote prose and poetry, you were an editor and educator, and you were always concerned with poetry and the affect of the
media on cultural values. You exemplified a concept of what it means to be a poet, not only writing poetry, criticism, and poetics, in the tradition of Olson, Corman, Pound, Whitman, the Romantic poets, and others.
He begins by
writing:
I worry I write too
much . . .
(46)
-o-
Why is there so
little truth,
so much crap,
‘entertainment’
and other fake around?
Are they all that
stupid? inveterate liars?
Is it self-interest?
is it that lies pay off?
Or are they scared —
to show what they are?
Is all this misery a
result of misunderstanding?
A belief that
reality is unbearable —
that any lie is better?
(46)
Mainly it’s the
grown-ups are bloody liars
What are they trying
to hide, anyway?
The ravages of time,
on heart and body?
The source of their
filthy money?
The sewage of
commerce —
selling crap they make
to
cover the truth?
Or is it just
death? Inevitable death
they
try to deny?
(47)
These preceding
comments give some indication of a different, passionate side of Dudek. But
anger, especially the anger of an older man, is easy to criticize. Indeed.,
anger as an emotion is not a substitute for compassion, love, kindness (all of
which one experienced when with Louis; he had an old-world charm and quality of
courtesy that is lacking in most people). But Dudek was not only an older man but
a man with position in society. This makes him an easy target in a politically
correct society such as ours.
We have what Dudek
wrote, but is something missing? If there is an
emotional levelling-off in this poem, a dearth of emotions in this poem (for
instance, where are the love poems?) we excuse this because we expect Dudek to
be rational and intellectual at all times, always falling back on the belief in
“reason over passion”, and possibly he might be correct in this. But this is
poetry and the intellect will only take you so far, thinking does not generally
move the heart. Dudek’s emotions, here, are a revulsion with the
commercialization of society, how we’ve sold out our values to the interests of
the media, the corporations, and what we’ve received in return is “The Big Lie
of the NEWS-papers/in 72-pt Gothic...” (47) Today, we say that the MSM is biased, it’s fake news.
-o-
Robin Blaser writes:
“Thus, Dudek’s phrase “by God today we mean poetry” is neither a religious nor
anti-religious statement. But it does have to do with the work of meaning and
with an open reality in which the human record is all we have to go on.” (11)
Actually, I think Dudek meant what he wrote, poetry had replaced God for Dudek,
poetry was Dudek’s spirituality.
But we always return
to a source of redemption, poetry.
And the indifference
of the world to God, God
(by God
today we mean poetry)
which is reflection,
upon death, reality . . .
I mean what the
prophets always said,
turn your face against
vanity, turn from your “false gods”
The media, spreading
their shit music,
shit talk, shit
advertising
flowing with simple
lukewarm consistency
through the long hot
afternoon
Voices of vanity,
incurable vanity,
of triviality
become the real, the
commonplace, the everyday!
(48)
-o-
We have sold out our
economic interests for the Made-in-China junk that fills our store shelves
(”Nearly all the things you buy are unnecessary/ as well as poisonous” 49). We
have bought into the triviality of social media. We buy, buy, buy, and none of
it brings us lasting peace or satisfaction at any level but the most immediate,
while what we had is gone. The universities have also experienced “The spread
of illiteracy”. For Dudek redemption is in poetry, a place of thinking,
communion, and emotional and spiritual depth.
Salesmen with shit
on their tongue Can’t stop.
lickety-click
lickety-click lickety-click,
America
One half salesmen
the other half suckers
one of each
born every minute
Land of the fuckin’
free-for-all
(49)
-o-
Dudek has some kind
of mystical belief in poetry that seems to contradict his other statements regarding
the rational mind. Alas, poets have always made incredible statements and
claims for poetry. It is a matter of faith.
(.0001 percent read
poetry,
200 out of twenty
million)
To change their
minds . . .
. . .
Point 0-0-0-one — as
many as get killed
on a good holiday
week-end
(100 in Canada, May
20/68)
Drowned themselves
in liquor, out of emptiness
crashed
in their cars
(50-51)
-o-
Section Five, the
final section of Continuation I:
This section gives
us a philosophical monologue on God, poetry, money, and the decline of society’s
values. Dudek finds himself exhausted by the “new age” in which he lives.
Poetry as forbidden
music
La musica proibita
The black lynx of
art
(54)
And then this
interesting statement on indeterminacy that also refers to the writing of Continuation I:
Chance exists only
in the mind, not in nature
(54)
-o-
This is followed by
various epigrammatic statements; for instance:
The man who respects
his superiors
is more likely to have some respect
for the general
Equality is contempt
for the differences
that make us human
Tho’ you can learn
more from ordinary people
than you can learn from
intellectuals
or
from books
Anyhow, virtue is
sad
We live in God’s eye
(55)
-o-
The following is a
beautiful passage about Montreal. There is real love for
Montreal in this, this love for place in which, almost Whitman-like, the listing of
places evokes the place, the name seems to contain the essence of the place.
There is also the importance of place for a poet, for a poet is connected to a
geographical place just as surely as to the time in which he lives:
A bird’s eye-view
It shoots down
Atwater like a salmon
to its river and its
lake-like curves
turning to spume at
Ville LaSalle
Around it meanders
from the city’s long shoulders
Baie d’Urfé & Ile Bizard
the Lakeshore
shallows sleeping around Ste Anne
Then descends, a
shot-silk around the body
of the beautiful island, thickening
at the thighs
Back River, Ile aux
Coudres, Ile Jésus,
Pointe aux Trembles,
Bout de L’Ile
Here in front of us
below the rapids
Au Pied du Courant—
opening the port to
al the seas,
lovely and lyrical,
like a long-legged Lilith
she raises her
breasts and lifts you to love
(57-58)
-o-
Place defines the
poet and the poet’s work. A poet not connected to place— and this is
increasingly common in a society in which people move every few years—cannot
possibly know the place well enough so that the place is a part of his soul.
The structure of the psyche, of the soul, must also be connected to place.
-o-
A nomadic life is
probably not best suited to writing poetry, we need stability to be poets—we
need to live for many years in a single place—it is a conservative art given to a vision of
place, but it is one place, at one time, to create one poetry. A poet can write
of different places, but the psyche and the poet’s voice is the creation of a
single place. We identify with one place, it is our psychic center. There is a soul to the city, any city, and the soul is different
in each city; every city is defined by its astro-cartography. Voice is the
manifestation of resolution of opposing forces in the psyche, in a single
place. Speech is also a part of voice, and speech is identifiable with
place.
-o-
An imaginary,
sentimental connection to place is not the same thing as a psychic connection to
place; you have to live in a place, or have lived there for number of years, to know a place as well as one knows one’s own existence, so
that one’s existence is a part of that place. You have to love that place of
your poetry. A poet should be able to walk down the street and be able to say
this is where this event happened, a different building used to stand here, this is
where my ancestors first lived, this is where my great great uncle was priest
to a large congregation. Dudek has this connection to Montreal, a city in which
he lived all of his life.
-o-
See Chapter 4, “The
Problem of a Total Commitment” and Chapter 17, “More on the Context of
Locality”, in The Poetry of William
Carlos Williams of Rutherford by Wendell Berry for more on the importance
of a poet’s life-long commitment to a specific geographical location. Dudek is
at home in Montreal, he’s not travelling and not escaping himself in travel.
That’s why Continuation is his
greatest poem, in his own estimation, because it is the most accurate
expression of his own psyche, the most faithful to his authentic voice which is
an extension of geography, of locale, of where this individual comes from.
Ronald Sutherland, in The New Hero, Essays in Comparative Quebec/Canadian
Literature (Macmillan of Canada, Toronto, 1977), refers to an author’s intimate
knowledge of his geographical place as “a sphere of consciousness, an inside
awareness of subtle peculiarities.” (p. 89).
-o-
Olson had Glouester;
Williams had Paterson; Bunting had Northumbria; Zukofsky has New York and Dudek
has Montreal. It does not necessarily mean repeated references to place, but
that soul is a product of that place, that one maps the very soul and psyche
emanating from the soil, history, language, and essence of that place.
-o-
Back to rationality:
But the manic
vision, is it the best of poetry?
(60)
-o-
And the question of
aging, of getting old:
When you get up to a
certain age
you cease to
be ambitious
Uncomfortable enough
without wanting other to
plague you
(60)
-o-
And back to poetry:
Poetry is dream
pouring over
in to life
(61)
The love of art—
what rounds the ring
in the circle of oblivion
Listen to the sweet
sounds
the far echoes
Is it God—the
gods—or transcendence?
Is it
eternity?
(62)
-o-
And then more on poets—they
are the same as the old poets—lusting after the gravy train, money, grants,
etc. But surely, why not? A poet needs time in which to write, so why not a professor’s
job, or better yet, a teaching job in a junior college with no committee work
and just twelve hours a week of teaching repeating the same old lectures year
after year?
But poets love the
gravy train
O yes, they
do
They love the gravy
train
as much as lawyers,
pimps, and con men do
Despite their moral
fervour (in youth)
they love
the gravy train they do
(63)
-o-
Then, towards the
end of Continuation I, we conclude
with lines that move us into Continuation
II, which is a description of students crashing down the halls, almost
knocking over anyone in their way. All
of us have seen this, especially at the end of a semester.
Volleying down
corridors
arms spread and
screaming
the young have taken
over
with LSD
(64)
This is so descriptive that it must have come from a lived experience; anyone who has taught at the undergraduate level has a similar experience.
-o-
Continuation I is a series of
fragments, statements, and epigrams. Every part of the poem, like a Jackson
Pollock painting, is its own centre, it has no narrative, only the present
moment. Each “statement” is the totality of the poem, so if there is a centre
to the poem it can be found on every page. What Dudek has written is a single
sustained poem in a voice that is unique in poetry. One of his concerns is the
poet in society and how (as he once said to me) the only real critic is time.
But poets are avaricious for any recognition they can get, they want the kind
of criticism and praise of their work reserved for the very few who make a name
for themselves. The only “glory” is at the moment of writing a poem. The only
motivation for writing is love for words, for poetry, for creativity. Dudek
knew all of the emotions poets feel, he was not immune to the pettiness of
poets. But he thought his way through these emotions and combined with his own
self-effacing introversion, he rightly decided on rejecting the ego-centrism of
poets like Irving Layton.
Let other poets
thrive (as we grow older
memories
thin)
—who want the final
judgement in their time
We’ll have each
other
and wait for this,
while violence and wars increase
As for glory,
get the moment down
on paper
for an eternal slumber
And if anything
remains, remember—
there was love, also a
remnant
(64)
-o-
Montreal, 2012. Revised in October-November 2024. Note: I often go back and edit what I've written and will probably edit this commentary in the future.
