Commentary on Louis Dudek's Continuation I

 

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 ourselves better in the act of creativity. Creativity is 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.

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 still 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. 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-

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.