Remembering Hilde by Dennis Johnson

Remembering Hilde by Dennis Johnson: I edited letters from Dennis Johnson to make this short memoir of Dennis's wife, Hilde Johnson. and published it online back in 2004 on the Coracle Press website. Of course, it's not only about Hilde Johnson, it's about their relationship and Dennis's love for his wife. Included is my preface to the memoir and Carolyn Zonailo's "The Turtle Poems" dedicated to Hilde and Dennis.

Living with Animals

Last spring when I began working in the garden I wondered why birds and squirrels were afraid of me but not afraid of each other. Then I thought of Walt Whitman's poem (section 32 of "Song of Myself") about living with animals. Do we need to be like St. Francis of Assisi to be on friendly terms with animals? I soon realized the simple answer, just be outside a lot and the birds and squirrels will soon get used to you and not run from your presence. In fact, they'll ignore your presence. Today I began feeding the birds again for the winter. Soon I had a beautiful red cardinal and then chickadees arrived and then some squirrels who didn't seem to like each other. Here is Whitman's poem:

I think I could turn and live with animals, they are
so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with
the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that
lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
So they show their relations to me and I accept them,
They bring me tokens of myself, they evince
them plainly in their possession
I wonder where they get those tokens,
Did I pass that way huge times ago and negligently drop them?

William Carlos Williams: Experiment in Autobiography

From last summer's reading: in I Wanted to Write a Poem, The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet (1958) William Carlos Williams discusses each of his many books with some additional commentary on his life. When he was sixteen or seventeen Williams had a cardiac event and during his convalescence he began to read and then write poetry. Towards the end of the book he writes: "Among the younger poets, I should like to pay tribute to Irving Layton, who seems to me the most accomplished writer of verse in Canada who has come to my attention in the past year." He also discusses his greatest work, Paterson, and complains about some negative reviews by Randall Jarrell and Marianne Moore... Poets have long memories. Do people still read Williams' fiction? Personally, it never interested me, but most fiction doesn't interest me.

Visiting St. Philip's Anglican Church in Montreal West

A quiet walk on a November morning and visiting St. Philip's Anglican Church in Montreal West.