"The Cold Green Element" by Irving Layton

 

Irving Layton and Stephen Morrissey, 1997 

At the end of the garden walk

the wind and its satellite wait for me;

their meaning I will not know

                until I go there,

but the black-hatted undertaker

 

who, passing, saw my heart beating in the grass,

is also going there. Hi, I tell him,

a great squall in the Pacific blew a dead poet

                out of the water,

who now hangs from the city’s gates.

 

Crowds depart daily to see it, and return

with grimaces and incomprehension;

if its limbs twitched in the air

                they would sit at its feet

peeling their oranges.

 

And turning over I embrace like a lover

the trunk of a tree, one of those

for whom the lightning was too much

                and grew a brilliant

hunchback with a crown of leaves.

 

The ailments escaped from the labels

of medicine bottles are all fled to the wind;

I’ve seen myself lately in the eyes

                of old women,

spent streams mourning my manhood,

 

in whose old pupils the sun became

a bloodsmear on broad catalpa leaves

and hanging from ancient twigs,

                my murdered selves

sparked the air like the muted collisions

 

of fruit. A black dog howls down my blood,

a black dog with yellow eyes;

he too by someone’s inadvertence

                saw the bloodsmear

on the broad catalpa leaves.

 

But the furies clear a path for me to the worm

who sang for an hour in the throat of a robin,

and misled by the cries of young boys

                I am again

a breathless swimmer in that cold green element.

Bishop's University honours Noni Howard

Irving Layton, Carolyn Zonailo, and Noni Howard, at Layton`s home on Monkland Avenue, Montreal, 1997. Photo by Stephen Morrissey

    Bishop's University's blog has honoured one of their famous alumnus, Noni Howard. Many thanks to Jeremy Audet who initiated and completed this projected. Noni would be both honoured and flattered by this attention to her and her work as a poet.

https://blog.ubishops.ca/remembering-noni-howard/?fbclid=IwAR08fnosxpOnBDm8XtkhKow564VpIUuysKiM4g_-yhX_C8tLADgKJRvLXJM

Four Poems by Montreal Poets

The Improved Binoculars

by Irving Layton

Below me the city was in flames:
the firemen were the first to save
themselves. I saw steeples fall on their knees.

I saw an agent kick the charred bodies
from an orphanage to one side, marking
the site carefully for a future speculation.

Lovers stopped short of the final spasm
and went off angrily in opposite directions,
their elbows held by giant escorts of fire.

Then the dignitaries rode across the bridges
under an auricle of light which delighted them,
noting for later punishment those that went before.

And the rest of the population, their mouths
distorted by an unusual gladness, bawled thanks
to this comely and ravaging ally, asking

Only for more light with which to see
their neighbour's destruction.

All this I saw through my improved binoculars.

[1955]

My Lost Youth

by A.J.M. Smith

I remember it was April that year, and afternoon.
There was a modish odour of hyacinths, and you
Beside me in the drawing room, and twilight falling
A trifle impressively, and a bit out of tune.

You spoke of poetry in a voice of poetry,
And your voice wavered a little, like the smoke of your
Benson & Hedges
And grew soft as you spoke of love (as you always did!),
Though the lines of your smile, I observed, were a little
sententious.

I thought of my birthplace in Westmount and what that
involved
-- An ear quick to recoil from the faintest 'false note'.
I spoke therefore hurriedly of the distressing commonness
of American letters,
Not daring to look at your living and beautiful throat.

'She seems to be one who enthuses,' I noted, excusing
myself,
Who strove that year to be only a minor personage out of
James
Or a sensitive indecisive guy from Eliot's elegant shelf.
'What happens,' I pondered fleeing, 'to one whom Reality
claims . . . ?'

• • •

I teach English in the Middle West; my voice is quite good;
My manners are charming; and the mothers of some of my
female students
Are never tired of praising my two slim volumes of verse.

A.J.M. Smith, Poems, New & Collected, Oxford University Press, 1967

The Break-Up

By A.M. Klein

They suck and whisper it in mercury,
the thermometers. It is shouted red
from all the Aprils hanging on the walls.
In the dockyard stalls
the stevedores, their hooks rusty, wonder; the
wintering sailors in the taverns bet.

A week, and it will crack! Here's money that
a fortnight sees the floes, the smokestacks red!
Outside The Anchor's glass, St. Lawrence lies
rigid and white and wise,
nor ripple and dip, but fathom-frozen flat.
There are no hammers will break that granite lid.

But it will come! Some dead of night with boom
to wake the wagering city, it will break,
will crack, will melt its muscle-bound tides
and raise from their iced tomb
the pyramided fish, the unlockered ships,
and last year's blue and bloated suicides.

[1945-46] [1948]

Lyrics of Air

by Louis Dudek

This April air has texture
of soft scented ocean on my face --
no ripple against the skin
but open waves, parabolas from some April place
in the sky, like silk between the fingers
from old Cathay, blown about, or like gigantic roses
whose petals, waving, fall on my face
with a faultless petaline smoothness.

Delicate as a pear, this milk-white air,
to pour over the crust of windy March.
Give me a mouthful of such air, digestible as water,
to rarify in the bones and flow
upward, until
from the bud of my cold lips poetic leaves may grow.

Small Perfect Things (DC Books, Montreal, 1991)

"The Improved Binoculars" by Irving Layton

Fire at the port of Montreal

The Improved Binoculars
by Irving Layton

Below me the city was in flames:
the firemen were the first to save
themselves. I saw steeples fall on their knees.

I saw an agent kick the charred bodies
from an orphanage to one side, marking
the site carefully for a future speculation.

Lovers stopped short of the final spasm
and went off angrily in opposite directions,
their elbows held by giant escorts of fire.

Then the dignitaries rode across the bridges
under an auricle of light which delighted them,
noting for later punishment those that went before.

And the rest of the population, their mouths
distorted by an unusual gladness, bawled thanks
to this comely and ravaging ally, asking

Only for more light with which to see
their neighbour's destruction.

All this I saw through my improved binoculars.

[1955]

A.M. Klein's "Heirloom"

 

Map of Montreal from 1910

1.

Looking through an old notebook from 2010 I found a poem I had written about the poet A.M. Klein. Then I remembered that in my first book of poems, The Trees of Unknowing (1978), I had a poem entitled "Heirloom"; when I was young I had been very impressed with Klein's poem of the same title. I wondered when it was that I wrote "Heirloom", probably sometime in the early 1970s but I thought it was much earlier. Then I also remembered that Sandra Goodwin, Bill Goodwin's widow, had told me that she grew up near where Klein lived; that was before Klein became a recluse due to mental illness and she and the other children in the street would greet Klein by saying "Good morning, Maitre Klein" ("Maitre" being the formal way to address a lawyer or notary in Quebec). Sandra was married to Bill Goodwin who was Irving Layton's nephew and best friend for eighty years; I knew Bill because I taught in the same English Department as him and when he retired he said he had retired so I could hold on to my job. Anyhow, I wondered where Klein had lived, I found two addresses in Lovell's Montreal City Directory, one on Clarke (in the Mile End neighbourhood) and one on Querbes in Outremont. The address on Querbes says his employment was as "Public relations counsellor Seagram's"; the Bronfmans certainly supported Klein, they were wonderful patrons of the arts. I taught Klein's "Heirloom" poem for many years; one day I reread my own "Heirloom" poem, it is almost an embarrassment when compared to Klein's.

2.

That generation of poets, Layton, Dudek, Smith, Scott, Klein, welcomed young poets, after all,  who would want to be a poet? Bill Goodwin was Irving Layton's nephew but they were more like brothers. My mother lived on Montclair Avenue and, on occasion, I used to see Bill walking along Monkland Avenue on his way to Irving Layton's home on Monkland; that was in the 1990s when Irving wasn't well and Bill and several others looked after him, it was before Irving entered Maimonides long term care residence. Bill was very kind to me in so many ways; one day, soon after my son was born in January 1979, he phoned to say that it was too cold to take a baby outside, as my wife and I had planned, and he was right. Whatever Bill taught it included poems by Irving Layton and every year he would have Irving in to the college to give a reading. Some times after the reading I would get a lift downtown with them. Poets, like Irving Layton and Louis Dudek, focused on the young, especially if they were poets, so while Irving was talking in the front seat of the car he'd turn around and include me in the conversation. He was always polite and considerate. He'd ask what I was writing and show some interest, despite his famous enormous ego he was also concerned with mentoring young poets; Layton was a natural teacher. But that's what the older poets were like, it wasn't all prizes and ego, they mentored younger poets; it was a small community and anyone wanting to be a poet was treated with some respect. I mention this as it is an heirloom from those days when poets were few but they were dedicated to the Muse and to the life of being a poet.

 

A Tribute to Louis Dudek

Note: This is the text of my speech prepared for the Louis Dudek Tribute held in the Writers' Chapel at St. Jax Church, 1439 Sainte-Catherine Street West, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1S6, on 12 October 2018.

Louis Dudek was one of the most generous people I have known; his generosity touched many people in significant ways. For me, he wrote an introduction to my first book of poems; because of his letters of reference I was awarded several Canada Council writing grants and I was hired to teach English literature at Champlain Regional College where I taught for 35 years; but the most important gift was his generous spirit, that he gave freely of himself. He was a wonderful person, a friend, a teacher, and a mentor, and we all miss him. I enrolled as a graduate student at McGill University in 1974 because I wanted to study with Louis Dudek and it was one of the best decisions I've made in my life. This evening we honour Louis, one of our greatest poets, he enriched many people's lives, my own included.

          I must tell you of a meeting I had with Dudek on March 10, 1975 because it is still important to me. At this meeting in his office he read some of my poems which he liked very much. There is no time to go in to the details of the meeting but Louis gave me something that afternoon that only an older poet can give to a younger poet; I was 24 years old at the time, and what he gave me was confirmation that I was a poet. I left that meeting feeling that I had nothing to worry about, just keep writing and life as a poet would unfold. And that's what I did. The day on which that meeting took place becomes more poignant for me, my father died in 1956 and March 10th was his birthday.

          Another event—it was the afternoon of January 9, 1979—I was with Louis Dudek and Lionel Kearns, who named his son "Louis" after Louis Dudek. We had something to eat at a food court after Lionel’s reading. My then wife was pregnant but was not expecting to give birth for another four weeks. This was the one time I went off by myself, other than going to work, while my wife was pregnant. I arrived home around 5 p.m., the flat on Northcliffe Avenue was in darkness, and I found an almost illegible note scribbled by my mother-in-law telling me to go to the hospital, my son had been born prematurely. This is where I was when my son was born, not in the birthing room at a major hospital, but with Louis Dudek and Lionel Kearns talking about poetry in a food court in downtown Montreal. Life can be very strange.

          Think of Louis' contribution to Canadian poetry. On my book shelf I have almost forty books either written by Louis or about his writing. His books have been an inspiration to many people, they communicate an infectious love for poetry. There are several selected poems; books of his criticism and book reviews; his thoughts on poetry; his epigrams; his 1941 diary; a book on philosophy and another on the mass media; also, several anthologies of poetry that he edited, one that was widely used as a college text book and another one co-edited with Irving Layton; and a collection of texts and essays that he edited with Michael Gnarowski; a book on  "CIV/n", a literary magazine edited by his future wife, Aileen Collins, in the 1950s; also his 1967 "First Person in Literature" talks that were broadcast on CBC radio's "Ideas" programme; and don't forget his book of letters from his friend Ezra Pound. There is also Frank Davey's book on the poetry of Louis Dudek and Raymond Souster; special issues of at least two periodicals dedicated to his work; Robin Blaser's excellent selection of Dudek's poetry; a book remembering and honouring Louis, Eternal Conversation; and Susan Stromberg-Steins' biography of Louis Dudek. Susan and I were in Dudek's graduate seminar in the fall-winter semester, 1974-75. He was certainly the best and most influential teacher I ever had; I learned so much from being Dudek's student and friend, things he said to me decades ago are still remembered today.  

          Dudek is a poet whose major work, Continuation, a long poem that he worked on for over forty years, will one day be better recognized for its importance. Dudek began writing Continuation when he was 49 years old, a month later he turned fifty; however, the concept for how to write the poem was discovered by Dudek in 1956, when he was only thirty-eight years old. Dudek tells us that he could only write Continuation after he discovered his authentic voice, one that was a memory of his thought processes when he was a child. With this in mind, Continuation is Dudek’s life-long work. The theme of Continuation is poetry, what it means, its importance, and the poet's dedication to his work; indeed, poetry is Dudek's religion. When he championed Ezra Pound, and he told me he never convinced anyone to like Pound's Cantos, what he really championed was great poetry.

          I remember Louis showing me the manuscript of his Epigrams before it was published, typed on onion skin paper, in his office at McGill. The key to Continuation, and the foundation on which the poem is written, are Dudek's epigrams. Dudek writes, “Epigrams are one-line poems. A lot of them together are like a long poem” (Dudek, 1975, p. 38). That “long poem” is Continuation. Another key to Continuation is Dudek's admiration for Henry Miller; Louis' ideal for his own poetry is to write in the conversational style of Henry Miller but always maintaining the critical faculty of Matthew Arnold. In Continuation Dudek is able to combine what he learned from Miller and Arnold in order to communicate his poetic vision.

          Louis Dudek devoted his life to writing poems, to the literary community, to teaching, and to his family and friends. I am grateful for having known him, he changed my life for the better and what greater praise can be given to a fellow human than that they changed your life, they made it better, they helped you fulfill your promise and destiny? It is an honour to have known Louis Dudek and to have contributed this evening to this Dudek Tribute.

-- Stephen Morrissey

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.

Noni Howard at Casa Bella

This must have been 1997 when Noni Howard stayed with us at Casa Bella. Here we are at the side door with Noni. Maybe it was just after this we walked up the street to visit Irving Layton at his home on Monkland Avenue. See Noni's last collection of poems at www.coraclepress.com.

This was back when poets were characters, personnages, not politically correct award winning creative writing graduates... Now, "characters" are not wanted, just bland career building "poets"... Even Layton was a character back then...

Visiting Irving Layton in 1997

Irving Layton, CZ, Noni Howard.

Irving and Noni.

Irving Layton and SM.

Irving Layton lived in his old age on Monkland Avenue, just a few blocks from where we live. I knew Layton's nephew/best friend, Bill Goodwin, who taught at Champlain College when I first began teaching there. Bill would have Irving read at the college every year. I remember, after one reading, driving home with Irving and Bill and talking with Irving. Noni Howard is a poet and an old friend Irving Layton's, she is also an old friend of CZ's,  so when she came to visit in 1997 (or 1998) we all went down to Irving's and visited. These photos are from that occasion.

Coracle Press will publish a chapbook of Noni Howard's poems this summer: visit Coracle Press.

A walk in N.D.G., Summer 2008

A walk in our neighbourhood, Notre Dame de Grace, is always interesting and fun. Here, beside the apartment where Artie Gold used to live, is a painted billboard from the 1920s-1930s, pristine and clear after being protected and hidden for many decades by another building that was destroyed by fire a few years ago. The debris has now been removed from where the old building used to stand. I see others have posted photographs online of this same painted billboard. 

Montreal isn't Ville Marie--the City of Mary--for nothing. Here, a few blocks east of the Turret cigarette advertisement, is a statue of Mary (to the left of the huge statue of Jesus), in someone's back yard. 

A few hundred feet east from the statues of Jesus and Mary, on Monkland Avenue, is the former home of poet Irving Layton; it has been renovated by the new owners. I remember visiting Layton here, with CZ and Noni Howard, in his living room. Sometimes, when I would walk or drive by Layton's place, I'd look at his home and see him sitting at his dining room table writing poems, smoking his pipe.

On the Loyola Campus of Concordia University, near where Irving Layton used to live, is this statue of Mary, with a water fall and water circulating around the statue.

Next, we walk down Elmhurst Avenue from Sherbrooke, cross the railway tracks, and then walk along St. Jacques by the old Griffith-McConnell nursing home; the building has fallen in disrepair and neglect since they moved to their new location in Cote St. Luc. The old place is still standing, but since these photographs were taken, in 2008, construction has begun behind the building and I suspect it will be demolished.

Poetry, spirituality, lilacs blooming in spring, lanes that are like the country, history and people, they all make N.D.G. one of the nicest neighbourhoods in Montreal.




On the way home we stop by Rosedale-Queen Mary Road United Church, at Terrebonne and Rosedale, where they have constructed a labyrinth outside of the adjoining community centre. I gave a reading here once, all very nice people. The labyrinth is open to the public and has an amazing affect when walking on it. You are almost immediately plunged into profound questioning on the meaning of mortality. I never expected this but it certainly had this affect on me. As you walk the labyrinth, you are removed from the everyday, you find yourself in the spiritual.

There is a lot more to see than this on our walk in N.D.G.; this is just a part of the less trendy western part of N.D.G. For instance, there is a miniature Chinese garden directly across the street from the labyrinth; this is a wonderful creation someone has lovingly made and maintained in their front garden, it is a city and landscape all in miniature, with Oriental statues, running water in a little river, and tiny houses.