Believe Nothing

When did I become a nihilist? I was born this way.

Inner Space is a hinterland of cosmic waste; here, everyone is either a nihilist, a poet, or both.

My defense is suited to one whose motto is "Believe nothing".

Poets used to be referred to as "ground breaking" or "visionary"; now they want to be referred to as "award winning poets", the visionaries are gone. 

I am well known in the territory of Inner Space.

About what am I incredulous? On most days, just about everything.

A whole new cohort of poets has arrived,  they are ambitious, self-conscious, and dedicated to self-promotion; in other words, younger versions of older poets.

The opposition of nihilists to all forms of censorship is famous in the history of Inner Space.

I am not the Pope's nose but I can still smell shit when it's all around me.

As we cross the green archetypal fields of poetry we reach the borders of Inner Space.

I have lived the nihilist's life: anonymous, introverted, and appalled.


Mister, in Inner Space we don't have room for anybody but poets and nihilists, so you'd better high tail it outta here before you're discovered.

Most religious and political beliefs offend my sense of nothingness.

A poet's apprenticeship can never be replaced with sitting in a classroom workshopping someone's poems.

Believing anything makes people stupid.

Photo taken at the Montreal Botanical Gardens, 2009

R.G. Everson's "Everson at Eighty"

R.G. (Ron) Everson was a prominent poet back in the 1950s and 60s, he is also one the founders of the League of Canadian Poets. Like many of the older generation of poets you don't hear much about Everson today. I just read Everson at Eighty (Oberon Press, 1983) which also has an introduction by his friend Al Purdy. Purdy is supposed to have edited this selected poems, but it's a bit confusing if he really did and there are parts of his introduction that are also confusing; for instance, he writes of going on a trip to Newfoundland with the Eversons but also present on this trip was Purdy's wife and her husband, but the husband he is referring to might in fact be Purdy himself, referred to in the third person, or it might be some other man who is married to Purdy's "wife". It just doesn't make sense. Thirty-five years after it was published, Everson at Eighty is still worth reading.

As an aside, in the early 1970s I heard Al Purdy read his work at Loyola College (now the Loyola Campus of Concordia University) and after the reading, in the faculty lounge, I met Everson who had been talking with his friend Al Purdy. Poetry was a small world in the old days but that small world was populated with a pretty talented group of poets.

1983

R.G. Everson, 1903-1992

I've been reading and enjoying R.G. Everson's poetry for many years. Ron Everson (1903 - 1992) was a Montreal poet, he was also a lawyer who never practised law and who spent most of his career in public relations. His extensive literary archives are at McMaster University; he has a voluminous correspondence with other well-known poets, he published more than ten books of poetry, he was published in important periodicals (for instance, in Poetry (Chicago). Al Purdy, Earle Birney, Irving Layton, and Louis Dudek were all his friends, other poets thought highly of his work. His poetry is accessible without being simplistic, and despite all of this he's largely forgotten or ignored. The only missing ingredient, and possible failing, in Everson's body of work is a single (or several) highly impressive poems by which he can be recognized and known. He was a good technician although not a great poet, but still a poet who is enjoyable to read. He published most of his books in his last twenty years, I guess he was trying to catch up on lost time after spending so many years away from the Muse and toiling in the PR business. In 1960 Everson and his wife lived at 4855 Cote St. Luc Road, apt # 608, in Montreal; they spent their winters in Florida.  

1976

1969

1978

1965

1957

R.G. Everson's home in this apartment building,
on Cote St. Luc Road, Montreal

Is F.R. Scott a Major Poet?

A few months ago I made the comment on Facebook that F.R. Scott is a "minor poet". Right away I knew I had committed some kind of Canadian Literature heresy; what? F.R. Scott is a minor poet? This led me to wonder about the criteria for how we categorize poets as "major" and "minor". T.S. Eliot in his essay, "What is Minor Poetry?", writes that the whole of the body of work by a major poet is greater than that same poet's individual poems. The opposite is true of the minor poet; the minor poet has a few really good poems but the majority of the minor poet's body of work is not equal to the excellence of a few individual poems. Eliot says that we need to read all of a major poet's work. All we need to read of a minor poet are the poems that are anthologized, the rest of the body of work is unimportant for the average reader. It is very difficult to categorize a poet as "major" because the criteria for categorizing poets is different for each poet; someone who is a major poet may not be "major" for the same reasons some other poet is considered "major". There is no single set of criteria for identifying a major poet; however, minor poets are easily identified. Returning to Frank Scott, I read The Collected Poems of F.R. Scott Toronto, McCelland and Stewart, 1981); he is a surprisingly original and compassionate poet and worth reading today. I can't bring myself to say that Scott is a major Canadian poet but (despite Eliot) I would suggest reading all of Scott's work, there isn't a lot of it but it's worth reading.

1981

Believe Nothing

I wanted to be a part of something and I thought I was. I thought I was on the great journey of individuation, or that I believed in God, that I was a part of something connecting me with the great ideas and experiences shared by so many people. But, in truth, I wasn't a part of anything. If you "believe nothing" then all of the old constructs of life, the scaffolding that supported your existence, have collapsed. Belief was, in retrospect, nothing real or lasting, it was a pretence or an illusion of belief—mostly it was a pretence, as intellectual assumptions, beliefs, and considered analyses end up being. The doctors are wrong in their diagnoses, the Ivy League educated poets and intellectuals have fooled even themselves with their self-importance, the imams, priests, and gurus are deluded, the politicians are obviously liars, the social workers want to break up families, the teachers are selling a lot of preconceptions based on their idea of what they stand for, the intellectuals are filled with book learning but no wisdom or practical knowledge. There is no satori, no heaven, no hell, no enlightenment, no god, no prophet, there is nothing. I asked myself, what if nothing I believe is true? What if all of my beliefs and assumptions about life are wrong? Very few people are willing to say, "Look! The Emperor has no clothes! He's naked and everything he stood for is a lie and a cheat of belief." I did not decide to believe nothing, I accepted it with difficulty; in fact, it was what I always believed but never admitted to myself. But then, one day, the scaffolding of belief collapses, there is no free will, there is no certainty about anything except that the Emperor has no clothes. Believe what you want after this, but for now, believe nothing.