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| A Poet's Journey: on poetry and what it means to be a poet, Ekstasis Editions, 2019 |
A Poet's Journey: on poetry and what it means to be a poet, Ekstasis Editions, 2019.
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A Poet's Journey: Notes on Poetry and What it Means to be a Poet
My life long journey is writing poetry. The poet’s journey is a calling, a mission, a commitment to creating a body of creative work; it is at the core of the poet’s inner being. Being a poet is central to everything the poet does. If the poet is a person of spirit, then poetry is also an aspect of a life awake to the voice of the unconscious mind and an intimate conversation with the Divine. Every poet’s journey is different and unique to the individual poet, but all poets have the same mission: to write their poems and express something of their vision of life.
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I was born at the Montreal General Hospital at 6:23 p.m. on April 27, 1950. This was when the Montreal General was called The Western Hospital and was located in what is now the Montreal Children’s Hospital, near Atwater and Ste. Catherine Street, below Cabot Park, in downtown Montreal. It is a half block away from the old Montreal Forum, the former home of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, and a bus terminus across the street from the Forum.
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Some of the factors that defined my existence include my parents, my brother, my extended family, my race, social class, genetic makeup, physical constitution, the historical time in which I was born, and my own free will. World War Two had ended five years before I was born and we were entering the decade of the 1950s. As well, astrologically, I was born with the sun in Taurus; the moon in Virgo; and my ascendant in Scorpio.
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When I was about fourteen years old—sitting in Miss Poole’s English literature class at Monkland’s High School in Montreal—John Steinbeck’s novella The Red Pony made a deep and lasting impression on me. In this book, Steinbeck describes one of his characters as feeling “collapsed inside.” This phrase from Steinbeck was my first memorable and profound literary experience. I understood Steinbeck’s description right away because at times I, too, felt “collapsed inside.” I recognized what he described as something I had experienced in life. This phrase opened several doors to my thinking. One door was to the power of literature—indeed, to the power of a single phrase—to communicate experiences or nuances of feelings that were familiar and moving to me. This made literature an experience that I was eager to repeat by writing poems of my own and by reading the work of other writers. The other door that opened was to psychological and spiritual truth; Steinbeck’s phrase identified how I felt in life and became so much a part of my reflection on my life’s journey that I am quoting from him over forty years later. I believe that this phrase from Steinbeck’s story also contributed to opening the door to my becoming a poet of confession and witness. I wanted to do in my poetry what Steinbeck did for me in this single phrase of his novella: to accurately describe in words an emotional state that I had experienced and to find order in the confusion of my inner being by describing it in words.
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A Poet's Journey: Notes on Poetry and What it Means to be a Poet
My life long journey is writing poetry. The poet’s journey is a calling, a mission, a commitment to creating a body of creative work; it is at the core of the poet’s inner being. Being a poet is central to everything the poet does. If the poet is a person of spirit, then poetry is also an aspect of a life awake to the voice of the unconscious mind and an intimate conversation with the Divine. Every poet’s journey is different and unique to the individual poet, but all poets have the same mission: to write their poems and express something of their vision of life.
__________________________
I was born at the Montreal General Hospital at 6:23 p.m. on April 27, 1950. This was when the Montreal General was called The Western Hospital and was located in what is now the Montreal Children’s Hospital, near Atwater and Ste. Catherine Street, below Cabot Park, in downtown Montreal. It is a half block away from the old Montreal Forum, the former home of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, and a bus terminus across the street from the Forum.
__________________________
Some of the factors that defined my existence include my parents, my brother, my extended family, my race, social class, genetic makeup, physical constitution, the historical time in which I was born, and my own free will. World War Two had ended five years before I was born and we were entering the decade of the 1950s. As well, astrologically, I was born with the sun in Taurus; the moon in Virgo; and my ascendant in Scorpio.
__________________________
When I was about fourteen years old—sitting in Miss Poole’s English literature class at Monkland’s High School in Montreal—John Steinbeck’s novella The Red Pony made a deep and lasting impression on me. In this book, Steinbeck describes one of his characters as feeling “collapsed inside.” This phrase from Steinbeck was my first memorable and profound literary experience. I understood Steinbeck’s description right away because at times I, too, felt “collapsed inside.” I recognized what he described as something I had experienced in life. This phrase opened several doors to my thinking. One door was to the power of literature—indeed, to the power of a single phrase—to communicate experiences or nuances of feelings that were familiar and moving to me. This made literature an experience that I was eager to repeat by writing poems of my own and by reading the work of other writers. The other door that opened was to psychological and spiritual truth; Steinbeck’s phrase identified how I felt in life and became so much a part of my reflection on my life’s journey that I am quoting from him over forty years later. I believe that this phrase from Steinbeck’s story also contributed to opening the door to my becoming a poet of confession and witness. I wanted to do in my poetry what Steinbeck did for me in this single phrase of his novella: to accurately describe in words an emotional state that I had experienced and to find order in the confusion of my inner being by describing it in words.
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