Deleted Notes

 

 “The Eviction” by Ray Grathwol, 1946

Notes: 

1. Allen Ginsberg referred to line breaks in poetry as a form of composition that followed the poet's breath; "inspiration" is breathing in spirit while "expiration" refers to breathing out of spirit or, alternatively, of dying; as an aside, "orgasm" in French is referred to as "la petite mort", a little death, to breathing out, a brief loss of consciousness; as we know, poetry doesn't have this affect on people. Expiration isn't a term in poetry, but inspiration can refer to being inspired. 

2. The title of my first book, The Trees of Unknowing (1978), is derivative of The Cloud of Unknowing, a medieval spiritual text on knowing God.

3. Soul resides in you, is always present in you. Poetry is mapping the soul, it is a cartography of the soul. Spirit is outside of you, you breath in spirit, you are inspired. Where does spirit come from? It could be that spirit refers to the Holy Spirit, and this suggests a divine connection between writing poetry, being inspired, and what is the numinous in the world.

4. Poetry (and literature) is insightful into the human condition; many people read Mary Oliver and Billy Collins, their poetry is accessible to most people; intellectuals are critical of both Billy Collins and Mary Oliver but these two poets are popular and speak to the average person. Patti Smith and Jim Morrison, or Arthur Rimbaud and Walt Whitman, are shamans of poetry, their poetry is directed to the spiritual, the inspired, and revelation. Patti Smith and Jim Morrison were influenced by Rimbaud, for instance Patti Smith's song "Radio Ethiopia" and many of Jim Morrison's songs have a shamanistic aspect, it is "to disorder the mind"; read the very young Jim Morrison's  correspondence with Wallace Fowlie, the preeminent translator of Rimbaud's poetry, (see Fowlie's Rimbaud and Jim Morrison, the Rebel as Poet [1994]).

5. The established, mainstream, churches don't give an experience of the numinous except, possibly, during communion, the eucharist; otherwise, I am sorry to say, the mainstream churches are mostly surviving on past glories, on what used to be, and promoting liberal social causes. No wonder some average people who are interested in religion, and a religious experience, have moved on to evangelical churches that give an emotional experience, an experience of the divine, these churches are often identified with a conservative ideology; the mainstream churches are (except for Catholicism) mostly identified with left wing ideologies. Most people are not intellectuals, they want a religious experience and this happens in the mainstream churches during Holy Communion; the evangelical churches emphasize a religious experience, singing, praising, and being one with the divine. 

6. Another aspect of writing a poem is assembling the poem from disparate sentences and phrases one has written. You don't have to write a poem in one sitting, you can go back and piece together sentences that were seemingly dictated to you, or were written by you out of inspiration, and then assemble these into a poem. But whatever one’s approach to writing poetry, whether being inspired, or copying down what was dictated, or automatic writing, or just writing, the main thing is to make an authentic poem, one that is emotionally moving, insightful for the reader, or aesthetically pleasing; writing poetry is done for the joy of making something new and being creative. I use the word “making” because that is the root meaning of the word "poetry".

How do we write a poem?

 

There are at least three approaches to writing poetry. There is writing poetry as though it is prose, you know what you are going to write, or you discover what you are writing in the act of writing, and then do the writing; in this the poet is getting down on paper whatever it is he or she wants to write and possibly following a defined form, narrative or lyric, sonnet, ode, ballad, counting syllables, or most probably free verse. There is nothing philosophical or extraordinary in this down-to-earth approach to writing. This is the way most poets write poetry; we could stop here and say that writing poetry is writing and nothing more. But some poets see more to writing than this and there are two other approaches to writing poetry. The approach to writing is involved with the poet’s approach to poetry. 

The first of these two approaches to writing poetry is that the poet needs to be inspired. John Keats writes, in his "Axioms of Poetry", that real poetry comes naturally, "as leaves to a tree”, it is that poetry should be written spontaneously. This is the approach of poets like Allen Ginsberg and it was Ginsberg, after a reading in Montreal in 1969, who told me of following breath when writing; poetry is related to breath, and line breaks should conform to breath; this relates to “inspiration", "in-spiring", breathing in spirit, breathing out the poem, and composing according to breaths as written on the page, as a form of composition, how the poem appears on the page is how it is to be read. As well, to “in-spire" is to, literally, breathe in spirit; this isn't soul that is being referred to but spirit, soul is not spirit; spirit comes to you when you are inspired, it is external to you, it enters you from the outside world. The idea that inspiration is spirit breathed in by the poet doesn't need Ginsberg's concept of composition following breath, each can stand alone. 

Here is Google's "AI Overview" of the word "inspiration":

The word "inspiration" comes from Latin inspirare (to breathe into), combining in- (in) and spirare (to breathe), meaning to "blow into" or "breathe upon". It entered English via Old French around the 1300s, initially meaning divine influence, especially for scripture, linking to the idea of God "breathing life" or words into people. This root connects to "spirit" (breath/soul) and evolved from a divine concept to a more secular idea of creative or emotional motivation.

We live in a society that is secular, so these ideas of a spiritual or divine connection to poetry are alien to most people, including many poets. Matthew Arnold said "the strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry" and "...what passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry"; for some, poetry is their religion, but we don't worship poets, we don’t worship poems, but we do know the valuable insight literature offers readers, insights that were once the message of organized religion and can now be discovered in literature. We want to read poetry that is significant and meaningful--whether spiritually, emotionally, or intellectually--we like poetry and literature that explains or illuminates something about human experience, that helps us to understand life, that affirms life, for this reason T.S. Eliot and W.B. Yeats, and Rilke, are more significant as poets than Ezra Pound and Charles Olson who, for many readers, are obscure and "do not cohere". 

Rimbaud and Jim Morrison

It is also possible to understand writing poetry as "dictation". Inspiration and dictation in writing poetry are closely associated but different; however, in both approaches one never censors what the poem is saying; never censor oneself despite one’s fear of expressing something important, never censor oneself whether for personal or some other reason. We've seen what inspiration means; dictation means listening for the poem then writing it down. Indeed, it may be quibbling, or a minor difference, to differentiate between inspiration and dictation because they are similar, but dictation is not necessarily inspired writing, dictation it is more about listening or being dictated to, it is related to spontaneous writing, riffing on words or a phrase, going where the poem, the words, take you, listening as though the poet is an outsider to what the poem is saying. 

Poetry is one of the few places in our desacralized society where we can talk about inspiration, spirit, soul, the mystery of life, and the divine. This doesn't mean referring to traditional aspects of organized religion, it means understanding some aspect of the human condition. Years ago I read a biography of George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement; here is the Google AI Overview on George Fox:

George Fox (1624–1691) was the English founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), a movement born from his spiritual experiences emphasizing an "Inner Light" or direct connection with God, rejecting formal clergy and rituals in favor of inner guidance and silent worship, establishing principles like equality, pacifism, and plainness that shaped Quaker beliefs and practices despite persecution.

A Quaker meeting, a religious service, is held in silence until someone feels moved by God to speak, not in "tongues", but in plain English, inspired by the divine, and this is similar to what we do when writing poetry. I spent many years sitting most evenings and writing whatever came to me, with no preconceived ideas as to what to write, but writing without prior thought. For some poets writing poetry requires waiting for the poem to make itself known and this approach may or may not produce real poems. After many years of writing, not just learning the "craft" ("The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne", as Chaucer wrote in "The Parliament of Fowls") opening consciousness to poetry, I wrote a real poem, and then several real poems, and these poems are in my first book The Trees of Unknowing (1978). One of the signs of writing a "real poem" is that one can stand behind this poem for years after writing it, not just for days or a few months; it is the beginning of one's lifetime body of work. Sitting, waiting, and listening for the divine, is a foundational aspect of Quakerism; it is also an approach to writing poetry. Quakers "quaked", trembled, they experienced a physical manifestation of being moved by God, by the Holy Spirit; their lives were illuminated with an inner light. Dictation doesn't mean hearing a voice speaking to you, it is the delay between the act of writing and the words that are given to you; in my experience there is a momentary gap--perhaps a millisecond--between what is "dictated" and what is written down. I think we can all agree on the importance of not censoring what we write if we want to write real poems, not second hand and contrived poems. The message is: follow where the poem takes you and one day you will possibly arrive at a real poem.                                                             

The Library of Lost Interests, 1

Here are two boxes of Krishnamurti books, destroyed when our basement flooded.

When our basement flooded two years ago I lost books, literary papers, archives, old family photographs, manuscripts, and old diaries. Losing these things was strangely liberating, I didn't really care as much as I thought I would. I had already begun discarding books; years before the flood I began downsizing my library; I kept poetry and books on poetics, biographies of poets, books on poets’ work, books of interviews with poets, and some other books that still meant something to me. But fiction was easy to discard, except for a few novels--Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, novels by Margaret Laurence, and other Canadian novelists--most of the rest were discarded.

Years ago I read all of Henry Miller's books, some were purchased second hand, some new, some remaindered, and some from antiquarian book stores. I read books that Miller recommended, for instance, the diaries and novels of Anais Nin and I heard her speak at Sir George Williams University; I read Blaise Cendrar and other writers that Miller knew. Read Henry Miller's The Books in My Life (1952); I am pretty sure that I discovered J. Krishnamurti because of Miller's essay on him in this book. I remember late one day, taking a city bus home, and meeting Louis Dudek on the same bus; he had planned to publish something by Henry Miller but decided against it; he writes, somewhere, that the big influence on his writing was Matthew Arnold and Henry Miller. He liked Miller’s conversational style of writing and that Miller was intelligent but not academic.

Also, I must have read all of the novels of Jack Kerouac, and then I moved on to other Beat writers, Corso, Burroughs, Michael McClure, Ferlinghetti, and Diane di Prima. It used to be that when I would read someone whose books I liked I read all of their work, their novels, poems, essays, letters, books on their writing, and biographies. And I’ll read the books they recommend or books that influenced them. 

I began reading Jack Kerouac in the fall of 1969, around the time I heard Allen Ginsberg read his poems at Sir George Williams University where I was a student; by then, Kerouac had fallen into obscurity, he drank his way into oblivion, and then he died; by then the public had moved on from the Beatniks to the Hippies and left Kerouac behind. Back then, in 1969, I found it difficult to find Kerouac's books; today, they're in the remaining bookstores that we have. But now I have no real interest in Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg. As bpNichol said to me, when he read his work at the college where I was teaching, Kerouac is for when you are young, when you get older you want something more substantial. I'm no longer interested in reading Kerouac's novels but I kept his poetry, I still like Kerouac's poetry.                                 

I remember the evening of 21 October 1969, a dark and rainy evening, I was downtown on McKay Street when I heard that Kerouac had died. But death was good for his reputation as a writer, over the following years and decades his popularity has grown and his unpublished manuscripts have been published; books on Kerouac, biographies and memoirs, have also been published. 

Back in the late 1960s there were still people around who had known Kerouac from his visits to Montreal. A professor and friend, it was Scotty Gardiner at SGWU, told me that he expected Kerouac to come for supper at a friend's home but Kerouac never arrived. It was the usual story of a drunk Jack Kerouac disappointing people and not caring, he could be belligerent and argumentative when drunk. Ginsberg also read in Montreal, in November 1969, and from where I was sitting I could see George Bowering in the first row with Peter Orlovsky. The years passed and Ginsberg returned to read in Montreal (I can't find documentation for this visit) but Ginsberg's readings were no longer important cultural events, it was golden oldies, and people demonstrated against Ginsberg's advocacy for adult men having sex with young boys. Ginsberg discredited himself advocating for this issue, he was not ahead of his time, he was out of touch with society, its norms, and values. Here is something ironic: a few days ago I read that when Ginsberg was young, he lived for a while with William Burroughs, and when he moved out he complained to Burroughs that he didn't want to have sex with some old man... Actually, Ginsberg said a lot worse about Burroughs' private anatomy than I will repeat. Ken Norris writes in a poem that, when he was young, poets were our heroes, and they were. A friend, Trevor Carolan, wrote on Ginsberg in Giving Up Poetry: With Allen Ginsberg At Hollyhock (Banff Centre Press, 2001). Ginsberg, like Kerouac, is a writer of one's youth, not one’s older years. 

Our flooded basement:

Flooded basement, July 2023

On Keats's Axiom of Poetry and the Writing Process

First, I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by Singularity; it should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance. Second, its touches of Beauty should never be half way, thereby making the reader breathless instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him, shine over him and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the Luxury of twilight. But it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it, and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.

                                                    —John Keats, letter to John Taylor, February 27, 1818

In the late 1940s my father bought several boxes of books second hand, among these were volumes on grammar and English literature published by Oxford University Press. A few years after he died I began reading one of these books, The Oxford Book of English Prose (1945), it was the edition chosen and edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, and a letter by John Keats impressed me; it is Keats's letter of 1818 to John Taylor which includes his famous axiom, "That if Poetry comes not as naturally as Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.” The whole quotation is brilliant, it speaks to us as though it was written only yesterday, and its message is as pertinent today as it was when was first written.

            Keats's axiom anticipates Jack Kerouac's essay on "Elements of Spontaneous Prose" (1958), both describe a similar approach to writing. Spontaneous writing can begin as unself-conscious jottings, scribblings, automatic writing, not censoring what one writes, and then proceeds to being soul-making as it reveals to the poet aspects of the imagination that have not been made conscious. Poetry is not prose and, while both use language to express something, poetry and prose are very dissimilar; Keats is writing about poetry but Kerouac's approach to writing can apply to either poetry or prose. James Joyce was a favourite writer of Jack Kerouac's but "spontaneous prose" is not the same as Joyce's "stream of consciousness" which is a narrative technique, Joyce sought to duplicate the monologue of a character's inner voice. Kerouac's emphasis is on writing as a process, it is a spontaneous approach to the composition of a text.

            Allen Ginsberg's phrase "first thought, best thought" is also concerned with the process of writing. The emphasis in both Kerouac's and Ginsberg's method of writing is on being spontaneous, on composing poetry that is original and true to the poet's vision. Spontaneous writing may even be useful, efficacious, for the poet in discovering his or her authentic voice, the voice in poetry that speaks from the soul and inner being of the poet. Ginsberg's approach may not result in consistently well-written poems, but for him a poem is like a Zen garden that includes apparent imperfections.  

            Let's also not forget that all poets have a foundation to their work that precedes writing poems, it is a poet's apprenticeship and is comprised of studying literature, years of writing to learn the poet's craft, and years of thinking about poetics. Whether formal or informal, extensive or limited, this foundation precedes and informs what the poet writes; with it there is an intelligence that is brought to each poem that is written. Can you induce spontaneity necessary to write a poem? Some poets have tried to do this by writing poems under the influence of alcohol or drugs believing that it will short circuit the ego's intervention when writing; other poets have tried to enter a trance-like state when they write. These are shamanistic approaches to writing; approached this way a poem seems to write itself and each poet will have their own experience of this. In effect, the poet's foundation as a writer—experiential and intellectual—will always inform what is written spontaneously or otherwise.

            Keats's axiom also reminds us that poetry is a part of the natural world; Keats mentions leaves on trees so let's briefly consider the symbolism of trees. While a tree's roots may be deep its branches reach into the sky, this is the joining of earth with heaven. It is Hades that is beneath the surface of the earth, a place of darkness but also creativity and growth, plant seeds and in a few days green shoots appear, visit Hades and you will have something to write about in your poems. For poets to mature it is necessary to visit the Underworld, as Persephone did; this is a journey into darkness and, if the poet has the courage, it is also a place of great creativity, of exposed truth, of revealing what has been hidden and disguised.

            The sky is also important, the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars, even the clouds, they suggest the archetypal and symbolical world that pre-exists the intellect; in the archetypes we find depth and insight, vision and clarity. Both the earth and the sky are a single movement of seasons and the complexity of psychological discovery is not one of embracing one or rejecting the other, but of embracing both, of embracing opposites. This is the natural environment of poetry and it is the attraction of poetry; meaningful poetry comes from deep in the unconscious mind, the same place of imagination as dreams and our unconscious thought processes. No one can force an articulation of this world, it speaks for itself without the intervention of the ego or the conscious mind, it must come to consciousness as naturally as leaves to a tree.

            C. G. Jung is one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, he is a brilliant assimilator of ideas, an explorer of inner space, and a spiritual guide. Mythology has always been important to poets, for instance in both William Blake's and John Keats's poetry, and Jung wrote about mythology in the context of his study of psychology; his followers have continued this work. As well, Jung's use of archetypes as a way to understand human behaviour speaks directly to our inner being; one of the important writers on this subject is Maud Bodkin who taught at Oxford University and wrote Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination (1934). There are other concepts that Jung popularized and that have resonated with a large contemporary audience, they are especially relevant to poets; for instance, the human Shadow, alchemy, anima and animus, the collective unconscious, dream work, introvert and extravert, and even Jung's interest in astrology all help to expand the poet's vision. Jung's study of consciousness is rich in ideas and images for poets, it can be a necessary part of the poet's foundation that I spoke of above.

            My reaction to Keats's statement when I was sixteen or seventeen years old and reading it for the first time was one of recognition, "of course, that's how poems are written." Keats's axiom  was something that I knew but as a memory remembered. The axiom is still important for poets; the alternative is to suffer a loss of connection to what makes real poetry that is not just fashion, entertainment, or formalistic writing. Keats states what is obvious to poets: poetry should come as naturally to the poet as leaves grow on a tree, you cannot make leaves grow and neither can you force a poem to be written.

                                                            17 - 28 May 2020 

A.J.M. Smith of Chesterfield Avenue, Westmount

Poems, which are the spiritual blood of a poet,

Renew themselves in an eternal April,

And renew us also who take them into ourselves.

Thus the poet becomes as one of the gods

And in the church of the poem we communicate.

                            —A.J.M Smith, "In Memoriam: E.J.P. 26 April 1964"

                            Poems, New & Collected, p. 142

1.

I've been thinking about A.J.M. Smith's poetry lately, longer than "lately", maybe a few years and I'm still divided re. if I like it or not. Smith grew up on Chesterfield Avenue in Westmount and my friend Paul Leblond also grew up on Chesterfield, across the street from Smith, but that was thirty years later (long after Smith had moved down to the States). This reminds me that Paul's father, Dr. C.P. Leblond, who was head of the anatomy department at McGill, was famous for his discovery of stem cells. Up to a few years ago if you had a doctor educated at McGill they would have been at one time a student of Dr. C.P. Leblond. He didn't retire from McGill until the early 2000s and I remember Paul telling me of his visits, as a child, to his father's office in the Strathcona Anatomy and Dentistry Building. His office was two stories and had previously been the office of Dr. Hans Selye, famous for his studies of stress and distress. In 1943 Dr. Selye had commissioned Marian Dale Scott to paint a mural in his office and a few years after that this became Dr. Leblond's office. The mural is entitled "Endocrinology" and is 12' by 16', enormous. At any rate, as we all know, Marian Dale Scott's husband, F.R. Scott was good friends with A.J.M. Smith from the mid-1920s and they formed the Montreal Group of poets who brought modern poetry to Canada.

2.

If I read someone I like, or someone who interests me, then I'll read everything they've written including whatever has been written about them. A.J.M. Smith's Poems, New & Collected (1967) is probably the first book of poems that I ever bought; I still have reservations about his work but (as we say) such is life. It's difficult to find much on Smith's life, for instance did he have any siblings? Maybe this shouldn't matter but I am a nosy Parker, literally since my mother was a Parker, and I have a lot of the old Irish police detective in me that likes to figure things out. Years ago I found a copy of Smith's anthology (he is an excellent anthologist) Seven Centuries of Verse, English and American, From the Early Lyrics to the Present Day (1947). The book's inscription suggests that Smith had at least one possible sister, Dorothy Brown, and that she lived in or near Huntingdon, QC. Maybe this is common knowledge but it was new to me. Smith is pretty closed mouth about his personal life. The Huntingdon High School is now a grade school and where my grandsons are students. Another anthology edited by Smith, this time with M.L Rosenthal of NYU, is Exploring Poetry (1955). If every home should have several good poetry anthologies (which I believe) then these two would fit the bill. Smith and Rosenthal are from a time when poetry really mattered, they aren't writing out of an ideology or an attempt to exploit something that is timeless, they are writing out of love for poetry. For this reason alone I'll continue reading Smith's poems and when I find something by Rosenthal I'll buy it and discuss it here.

3.

I had forgotten about English Poetry in Quebec (McGill University Press, 1965) which I read in high school. The idea for the Foster (Quebec) Poetry Conference originated with A.J.M, Smith and Frank Scott and was organized by John Glassco (who also edited the proceedings, as pictured). It's interesting that the idea for this conference came from three members of the Montreal Group of Poets, they helped bring Modern poetry to Canada back in the 1920s; this ongoing involvement in poetry also emphasizes their literary importance. It's interesting that the Foster Poetry Conference was held in October 1963, just two months after the Vancouver Poetry Conference held at UBC; for different reasons both poetry conferences are important in Canadian literary history and it might be worthwhile to discuss these events together. These older Quebec poets were not stodgy old men, they believed in the importance of poetry; this is especially true in the essays by Smith and Layton, both of whom have a passion, urgency, and intelligence in their discussion of poetry. For background information on the conference read Brian Busby's excellent biography of John Glassco, A Gentleman of Pleasure: One Life of John Glassco, Poet, Memoirist, Translator, and Pornographer (2011), it's one of the best literary biographies that I've read. 

4. 

I write the date inside the book that I am reading and I see that I read A.J.M. Smith's On Poetry and Poets (NCL, 1977) in July 1980. The whole book is a fascinating discussion of Canadian poetry. In some ways it reminds me of John Sutherland's Essays, Controversies and Poems (NCL, 1972) but also of Louis Dudek's book reviews, criticism, and commentaries on poetry. In Smith's book there are two essays that need to be mentioned; the first is "The Confessions of a Compulsive Anthologist" written in 1976; this is about as autobiographical as you'll get from A.J.M. Smith and you can see his passion for poetry was present even when he was a high school student reading a poetry anthology under his desk. The second essay was given at the Foster Poetry Conference, it is "The Poet and the Nuclear Crisis" (1965). He concludes this essay by writing "it is the arts and the humanities, and particularly poetry, the most humane of all the arts, that can offer that education in sensibility and virtue that we must submit to if we are to live." That's the kind of passionate statement that leads me to read more of Smith's writing. In fact, passion is something we don't talk about these days, maybe passion sounds naïve and if so, then we need more passion among our poets. So, let's talk about something that people don't talk about anymore and that is passion, and passion includes enthusiasm and a sense of urgency regarding the importance of poetry. It is passion in a poet's work that changes people, it makes the reader realize he or she is in the presence of something greater than what is normally experienced. When I was seventeen years old and an apprentice poet I read Allen Ginsberg's statement that poets should "Scribble down your nakedness. Be prepared to stand naked because most often it is this nakedness of the soul that the reader finds most interesting."  With this one statement Ginsberg changed my life. Where are the poets of passion today? There are no Earle Birneys, no Al Purdys or Dorothy Livesays, no Alden Nowlans or Gwendolyn McEwens. Where are the poets who change the reader's life because that is what real poetry does, it changes one's life. Our most passionate poet, Irving Layton, has become a solitary historical figure, a voice that is no longer listened to.  Smith's passion makes his poetry and criticism worth returning to and reading.

NOTE: The conclusion of this was published on this blog in July 2019 under the title "A Reappraisal of A.J.M. Smith". 

Beginning With Allen Ginsberg

1977

1.  

I began writing poetry before I heard of Allen Ginsberg but Ginsberg is the first poet whose work influenced me as a poet. He was an important influence for me as he was for many other young poets. 

2.  

Beginning with Allen Ginsberg's poems. Beginning with "Howl", "Kaddish", "Siesta in Xbalba", "Who Be Kind To", and others.

3.

Beginning with a statement by Ginsberg that I read in a newspaper in November 1967 that expressed what I wanted to do in my writing; Ginsberg's advice was to "Scribble down your nakedness. Be prepared to stand naked because most often it is this nakedness of the soul that the reader finds most interesting." Ginsberg's advice is to write the poems of your soul, to do this be fearless, be visionary.

4.

We forget that Ginsberg is both a poet of social change and a confessional poet. He is a poet who teaches through his writing and he is a poet who always entertains. He is one of the important poets of the second half of the Twentieth Century. People listened to what he said because he was a poet; how many poets can this be said about today?  Go back and read his Playboy interview.

5.

Allen Ginsberg was influenced by Walt Whitman and by William Blake; I don't know if Ginsberg is an influence on younger poets today, but he was from the 1950s to the 1990s. Ginsberg's lineage as a poet is Whitman and Blake. I learned from Ginsberg that poets have a lineage, it is made up of the poets who influence us as poets, our poet ancestors.

6.

The poets you begin with are not necessarily the same poets you end with, but who you begin with is still important at the end. For this reason Allen Ginsberg will always be a part of my journey as a poet, he will always be important to me. The important poets speak to our soul even when it is many years since we first read them.

7.

I think of Ginsberg as a poet of my youth, but he is not someone whose work interests me much now. Another writer of my youth is Jack Kerouac and I remember talking about Kerouac with bpNichol in the late 1970s; bp felt that Kerouac was a novelist of his youth but no longer of great interest to him. Ginsberg is a poet of my youth, not of my adulthood, but his influence has lasted a lifetime.

8.

One of the amazing things about Ginsberg's body of work is how extensive it is. His Collected Poems 1947-1997 (2003) is over a thousand pages long. Ginsberg's Deliberate Prose: Selected Essays 1952-1995 (2001) is a compilation of his essays, public addresses, and personal reflections on various subjects. I find everything that Ginsberg writes is interesting because it is Ginsberg who is writing it. His Indian Journals (1974), that I read when it was published, is also essential reading for fans of Ginsberg's writing.

9.

I met Ginsberg at a reception after his 1969 Montreal reading at Sir George Williams University. He was surrounded by his followers. There was nothing shy about Ginsberg.

10.

Ginsberg was the first important poet many of us read and came into contact with on our journey as poets; he introduced us to new ideas, new and exciting writers, and the example of a life committed to poetry. Ginsberg wrote, "widen the area of consciousness" which I always took as "be a conscious person" and not about using psychedelic drugs which was his intention; either way it remains that the message is only by being conscious can we fulfill our destiny as human beings.  

                                                            Stephen Morrissey

                                                            22 August 2018

Mapping the Soul, Selected Poems, 1978 - 1998

Preface to Mapping the Soul, Selected Poems, 1978-1998 (Muses’s Company, Winnipeg, 1998)

When I was growing up, I had two dreams that profoundly affected the shape of my life. I was six years old when my father died; the first of these dreams occurred three years after his death. I dreamed two men from an orphanage came to take me away. They were waiting for me at the back door; they were going to put me in a wooden cage. This dream made a deep and lasting impression on me, not only as a reminder of the insecurity and transience of life, but also as an encounter with the powerful depths of the unconscious. In retrospect, this dream began my awareness of the imagination, vision, and what psychologist C.G. Jung calls “the shadow.” It also informed me of my own separateness from the world in which I lived.

The second dream came when I was around thirteen years old, and it is responsible for my embarking on a lifetime of being a poet and diarist. In this dream I was imprisoned in a room where the windows were covered with mud. Once I could see outside, but now I was enclosed and cut off from the world. However one may interpret this dream, my own interpretation as an adolescent was that I had to write down the truth as I knew it--what people had done and what I had done. Only by writing could I see things clearly. I knew intuitively that writing could clarify, order, and give perspective to experience. My concern was with saving my inner being, which I was afraid would be lost if I were unable to remember events. My conviction, even then, was that there is a heroism and bravery to the average person’s life and I was responsible for recording as much of what I perceived of this as possible. I awoke from this dream knowing I had to write and ever since this dream I have written poems as well as kept a diary.

In addition to these two dreams there was a third influence to the kind of poet I became. In 1967, when I was still in high school, I read an article in a newspaper; in it the American poet, Allen Ginsberg, gave advice for poets. He said, “Scribble down your nakedness. Be prepared to stand naked...” This statement made a lasting impression on me. It validated what I was already trying to do in my own poetry. For the first time I realized that the kind of subject matter I was grappling with as a teenager--content that was personal and confessional--belonged to a literary tradition and had meaning to other people. Even if I hadn’t read Ginsberg’s statement I would not have been deterred from continuing the writing I was doing--writing that attempted to understand deeply felt experiences. However, to discover that there was a public context for this kind of writing was enormously empowering, and allowed me to identify myself as a poet. My first chapbook, Poems of a Period (1971), published when I was in second year university, contains poems that have a thematic continuity extending from those early poems up to the work I am writing now. This present collection, Mapping the Soul: Selected Poems 1978 - 1998, presents a selection of twenty years from my body of writing. This selection is chronological, beginning with my first published book, The Trees of Unknowing (1978) up to the present selection from new, unpublished poems.

For years I struggled in my writing to express early experiences of grief and failure. I wrote many poems on these subjects, but none articulated exactly how I felt, or dealt adequately with what I needed to say, until I wrote the long poem “Divisions.” This poem is central to my early work--in it I was finally able to deal aesthetically and personally with the experience it discusses. Everything came together in the writing of “Divisions”: content, form, and the insight necessary for its writing. This was a breakthrough poem for me, written over a three day period in April 1977. I was finally able to express in poetry what I was attempting to do since I was fifteen years old. I photocopied “Divisions” and mailed it out to other poets and critics, including Northrop Frye and Louis Dudek, both of whom responded generously: Frye with a letter, and Dudek with an offer to publish the poem. In 1983 bp Nichol published the poem in my book Divisions, with Coach House Press.

There are two more factors that I believe have contributed to my writing. The first is the fact of being born in Montreal of a large, but dwindling, family of Irish descent. This Irish background is rich in experience and family history; names such as Callaghan, Flanagan, and Sweeney are all a part of the family which has been in Montreal since before 1840. They were not wealthy people, although a few made names for themselves, but they were hardworking and improved conditions for the lives of their descendants. Their values, religious faith, and large families made them what they were. I am grateful for being a part of this ancestry.

A final factor that has helped shaped my poetry is the tradition of writing poetry in English-speaking Montreal. Growing up in Montreal in the 1950s, I always took for granted that poets lived and worked in the community in which I lived. Poets were never “someplace else”—they were right here. So the idea of becoming a poet was never unusual. Just as I appreciate my Irish heritage, I also benefited from the poetry community into which I was born. In the 1970s I was associated with Vehicule Art Gallery where I attended and organized readings while a graduate student at McGill University. I associated with other poets, and my first full-length collection of poems was published.
I have always aimed at a directness of statement and emotion in my poems, to communicate an image and a strong emotion; to merge the personal self with the archetypal self. Poetry is the voice of the psyche speaking through the poet. These poems, selected from twenty years of published work, map the convolutions, terrain, and geography of the soul.

My poetic journey, from the early dreams and writing to the publication of this Selected Poems, has been a reaching out to other people. From the initial isolation as an adolescent poet until now, I have been blessed with meeting certain individuals who have encouraged and inspired me. My association with poet and editor Carolyn Zonailo began in 1989 with the publication, by Caitlin Press, of my book Family Album. CZ has edited my poetry and helped to prepare manuscripts for publication. We have shared a collaboration in writing and in life, living most of the year in Montreal, but spending as much time as possible each year in her native Vancouver, British Columbia. I would like to thank CZ for selecting the poems in this collection, urging me to write this preface, and for editing.

I would like to thank Louis Dudek for being my teacher and friend from McGill University days to the present. George and Jeanne Johnston extended to me friendship and the joy of discussing poetry and literature. Ken Norris, a colleague since the early 1970’s, has offered on-going encouragement. Jake Morrissey has often listened with appreciation to my work. Sonja Skarstedt and Geof Isherwood began Empyreal Press in Montreal in the early 1990s; with bravado and a belief in the importance of poetry they published each volume of The Shadow Trilogy. I would like to thank Endre Farkas and Gordon Shillingford for offering their support through the Muses’ Company. Finally, I would also like to thank the Canada Council for writing time during two grants, and for project grants in support of individual books.

Stephen Morrissey
Vancouver, British Columbia
August 7, 1998

"Scribble down your nakedness." -- Allen Ginsberg

Article from 11 November 1967

Back in 1967, two years after I began writing poems, I read the following article in the Montreal Star (published on 11 November 1967). This was around the time when I first heard of Allen Ginsberg and the other poets and artists who are also mentioned in this article. It was Allen Ginsberg's advice that was enormously important to me: "Scribble down your nakedness. Be prepared to stand naked because most often it is this nakedness of the soul that the reader finds most interesting." It was terrific advice--and certainly epiphanal--it gave a direction for my writing that was probably already present but not consciously thought out. The article also directed my reading to a generation of writers and artists who were an intellectual and creative community for many of us at the time. They inspired many of us in our life-work. Here, then, is the complete text of that article:

Scribble Down your nakedness, said Ginsberg -- and he did

By Peggy Polk

New York

Conrad Rooks, the rich boy who went from beatnik to alcoholic to drug addict to moviemaker, is going even further soon -- to the Indian province of Dharmasala, home of the exiled Dalai Lama.

His first film "Chappaqua," winner of the Silver Lion at the 1966 Venice film festival, opened at a New york theatre Sunday and is scheduled to make the rounds of art movie houses throughout the country, but Rooks is preparing to retire to the study and filming of Tibetan metaphysics.

"Chappaqua" -- named for the Indian burial place -- is a full color, baroque nightmare based on the cure which its 32-year-old author -- director-producer-principal player took in Zurich six years ago to rid himself of his addictions.

The Kansas-born Rooks traces his taste for narcotics to a series of operations he underwent at the age of 9. He says he began drinking when at 13 he started to frequent bars on New York's West 52nd Street to listen to jazz and at 14 he was an alcoholic.

Expelled from four prep schools, given a medical discharge from the Marines and arrested at 21 on a marijuana charge, he tried to learn the craft of writing from his beatnik friends. But it was not until his father died in 1961 that Rooks decided to take the 30-day "sleep cure" he was to tranbscribe to the screen in a rich melange of sound, color and stunning technique.

To make the film, Rooks assembled the patron saints of the beat and hippie world -- poet Allen Ginsberg, writer William Burroughs of "Naked Lunch" fame, French actor Jean-Louis Barrault, Moondog and Swami Satchidananda. Ornette Coleman played the saxophone and Ravi Shakar the sitar. Robert Frank, the avant garde photographer, was camerman.

The movie, from its inception as a poem, took four years and $750,000 of Rook's Avon Cosmetics fortune to film. It was one of the few such personal ventures to emerge from the underground to commercial distribution.

Rooks, who sports a Buster Brown haircut and a didactic manner, says he is delighted with the venture but has no intention of joining the filmmmaking establishment.

Business, he says, is corrupting and "businessmen have pretty much managed to run commercial moviemaking into a baloney factory.

"Of course I want to reach mass media. But I want to change mass media."

Hoping to avoid the baloney business entirely and to continue the process of self-education he began in the 1950s at the "baby end of the beat generation," Rooks, who has been married and divorced, says he will leave for northern India before Christmas with his young son, his girl friend and his crew.

There, he says, he will experiment with "pure film" under the aegis of the Dalai Lama. "He's interested in me," the movie maker said. "I've already spent some time with him in India. My guru took me. He wants me to come back; he is interested in my ideas of film."

One of those ideas is that filming should proceed like writing. A writer may experiment by constructing a paragraph a dozen ways. A film maker should do the same, Rooks says, by taking a variety of shots and putting them together in a variety of ways.

"Film isn't expensive," he says. The most you can spend if you shoot all day is $100,000.

Rooks is also convinced that the movie maker has no business trying to reproduce a novel on film. He must originate his own material.

"Chappaqua," he says, is a result of advice Ginsberg once gave him:

"Scribble down your nakedness. Be prepared to stand naked because most often it is this nakedness of the soul that the reader finds most interesting."

"Chappaqua" is autobiographical in the same way that Burroughs' "Naked Lunch," Ginsberg's "Howl" and Jack Kerouac's "On the Road" are autobiographical, Rooks says.

But in his next film, Rooks wants to go outside of himself and "through some sort of simplicity, reveal some of the teaching which Asia is about to let us learn.

"We are basically uncultured races that are now coming into contact with the vastly more subtle races of the east and their cutlural knowledge is beginning to conquer us," he says. "Look at the Beatles running after their guru. Look at Mia Farrow going to India for spiritual teaching.

Working with the Tibetan exiles also has its practical advantages.

"There are 90,000 refugees all willing to do this kind of labor," Rooks said. "There are 20,000 artists doing nothing but sitting in front of tents now waiting for the Indian government to feed them. We'll put them to work."