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| Downtown Montreal, 1960s |
This third book, really never more than a proposed book, by Louis Dudek, and continuing his Continuation project, was meant to be his final Continuation statement; the incomplete and unassembled nature of this text coincides with the incomplete nature of the whole project. There isn’t a completed book titled Continuation III; there are bits and pieces, an assemblage of fragments that are significant. Continuation III is the deconstruction of Continuation I and II. It is the intervention of life over art, the separation of artifice and authenticity. The triumph of truth over poetry’s facsimile of authenticity. It is where poetry ends and the last words and absolution begin.
Final lines in Continuation III:
Stand there and remember
the paltriness of worldly claims
and the immensity
that is always now.
--The Surface of Time (2000), p. 84
-o-
The content of Continuation III was published in two installments by Sonja Skarstedt’s Empyreal Press. “Continuation III [Fragment]” and “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]” both appear in The Caged Tiger (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1997). “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]” is the only section of all three "Continuation" that deviates from the style, use of epigrams, and line breaks found in the previous two books. The final poems are in Dudek’s last book, The Surface of Time (2000).
There is no single volume or completed series of poems called Continuation III but there are fragments, and completed sections, of what might have been the text of this non-existent third book. In Dudek's The Caged Tiger (1997) there is "Continuation III (Fragment)"; it has four sections and the fourth section emphasizes the importance of poetry; this is followed by "Notes for Ken" (Norris), these are page numbers and notes explaining some of the references and meaning of this section. Then, Dudek published Surface of Time (2000) and the final Continuation III poems are included here, "Sequence from "Continuation III". This is the conclusion to the Continuation project; it emphasizes the importance, value, and journey of Dudek’s poetry, both writing poetry and reading poetry; in addition to poetry the other topic in the Continuation texts is God, the divine presence, and there are references to both God and poetry throughout all three Continuation books. Suddenly, the poem ends, not in mid-sentence but it ends (as life ends), the various fragments have ended but it still has the feeling of continuation; it might serve as Dudek's literary “last will and testament": it's the gift of the importance of poetry. But it is also a failed completion of the Continuation project and proves my belief that most long, multi-volume poems end in failure, not in completion, and, as Pound said of his Cantos, it does not cohere.
These two books in which the Continuation III poems appear contain other short poems, and this might suggest that the energy for completing Continuation had run out, I suspect that this is the case; perhaps poetry is a young person’s activity, it requires energy the old don’t have; but Dudek might have asked himself why write short poems when the larger and more consequential Continuation project needs to be completed? The obvious answer is that he no longer had the energy or strength, or vision, to sustain a longer poem.
-o-
Continuation III is preoccupied with and describes what it’s like to be old. It has a quality of increasing fragmentation, the body is collapsing, it's closing down,, it is beginning to reach its end.
It is possible some parts of Continuation III were written much earlier and then recycled into the final book. I have tried to indicate both the movement of time and the various insights in these three books; dates for composition remain approximate, for instance, the embryo of Continuation III was in 1990.
-o-
"Continuation III" (this section is found at the end of The Caged Tiger) is divided into four sections with an additional section, “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]” at the very end of the book. Between these two sections is “Notes for Ken [Norris]”, that briefly elaborate Dudek’s vision in personal terms, not abstract ideas but poetry. This writing is Dudek in his old age, in which the theme of youth vs. (old) age is further developed. This is a poem of summation of the important points in Continuation I and II. The fragmentary nature, writing in fragments, is important here. It seems that in old age all there is are fragments; indeed, one doesn’t have the strength to write a long poem without relying on the fragmentary nature of the poem. In old age this is all that’s left of the individual; it’s fragments, not much else but fragments and inevitable death. And death, meditations on death, run throughout this poem. While this is the weakest of the three books—because it is incomplete and published in two separate volumes— it might also be the most moving, written directly from Dudek’s profound experience when he wrote this section.
-o-
The most difficult time in a person’s life is when they are at their weakest, it is when we are old. If one is a sensitive or intelligent person old age is a time of physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual decline to inevitable death. As one grows old the body wears out, just as the body of an old car rusts, parts wear out and have to be replaced, and nothing works as well as it used to. After a lifetime of stress one’s ability to handle emotional conflict is at its lowest; we’ve survived death, divorce, betrayal, but there isn’t much left to us, our nerves are shot... The brain is also wearing out, thought processes are not as fast as they used to be, there is the possibility of dementia and senility. As well, one wonders if the spirituality that was once a support is now viable, facing the end one might wonder if religion was never more than a fairy tale; or, one’s spirituality is strengthened by the circumstances of one’s life. Around you, all of your old friends and family members are dying, you are more and more alone, and you must face your own inevitable death. There is the chance that one’s family, one’s own children, have turned on you and invented a rift, the very people you loved the most have become the biggest disappointment of your life. Do they care? Perhaps not at all. This is a dismal picture of old age. This is what Dudek is writing about when he says that old people are either always smiling or always scowling; that the older one gets the more one looks like a corpse. Some old people are strong and resilient, they have the support of loving families and have a positive outlook on life; however, many others become bitter as they grow old, and some become insane, gags, with their inability to handle the terrible final demands of their existence.
-o-
Note the fragmentary nature of Continuation III, note that it is a fragment in a fragment. Life has dissolved into its separate parts, there isn’t the energy to work on a larger manuscript.
-o-
There is still poetry and “shining”, what is brilliant, mysterious, against the world of appearance, is a counterpoint to the world of appearance and possible illusion. The infinite, one of Dudek’s favourite words, seems to be a part of life, for those able to perceive it, as well as the experience of poetry. Some excerpts:
Well, you’re old only once
Something to be said for that
And thanks to the collection of manuscripts
we now know, before we die
what our friends really thought of us
(59)
Against this, he writes:
There are days when
whatever is is bright
(63)
An Appearance Erscheinung
not “mere appearance”
but a shining
EPIPHANEIA
(64)
Why should I bow to authority?
The poem is my authority
if I want truth.
(65)
-o-
Tragi-comedy, comic-tragedy
Let’s see how you will laugh
when your time comes.
(69)
And accept everything that is given—
pain, darkness, death.
So I am living it
for the last time
like the young
who are living it
for the first time
Ah!
The lilacs falling over themselves
on the garage roof,
and the trellis of trees, making their leaves
for a new summer.
(70-71)
-o-
the one you lie to is the one you love.
“Santuzza, criedi mi!”
cries out Turridu
and died with the lie on his lips.
“Santuizza, credi me! Santuzza, credi me!”
If it’s the truth it fits like a glove,
but the one you lie to is the one you love.
. . . .
Where are the kind friends that used to pass,
and the lovers, with laughing loves—
where are they gone from this world of glass?
(71)
-o-
I am a hole in space,
empty as matter, hungry as death—
can eat up the universe in my maw.
I push into unknown infinite world...
(Came to the sun, came to the earth
and wedged into matter)
I am an interloper,
even now as I push my pencil in the dark
and write this poem.
(76-77)
-o-
His advice:
Keep pushing ahead
with all the language arts,
developing new brain cells
And the reader rubbing his bald pate
in irritation—
Canadian (or American)
“entreprenoors”
sipping their “kreem the menthe”
to their “déjà voo”—
Some of this is beautiful, simply exquisite writing.
-o-
Continuation III is preoccupied with and describes what it’s like to be old. It has a quality of increasing fragmentation, the body is collapsing, it's closing down,, it is beginning to reach its end.
It is possible some parts of Continuation III were written much earlier and then recycled into the final book. I have tried to indicate both the movement of time and the various insights in these three books; dates for composition remain approximate, for instance, the embryo of Continuation III was in 1990.
-o-
"Continuation III" (this section is found at the end of The Caged Tiger) is divided into four sections with an additional section, “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]” at the very end of the book. Between these two sections is “Notes for Ken [Norris]”, that briefly elaborate Dudek’s vision in personal terms, not abstract ideas but poetry. This writing is Dudek in his old age, in which the theme of youth vs. (old) age is further developed. This is a poem of summation of the important points in Continuation I and II. The fragmentary nature, writing in fragments, is important here. It seems that in old age all there is are fragments; indeed, one doesn’t have the strength to write a long poem without relying on the fragmentary nature of the poem. In old age this is all that’s left of the individual; it’s fragments, not much else but fragments and inevitable death. And death, meditations on death, run throughout this poem. While this is the weakest of the three books—because it is incomplete and published in two separate volumes— it might also be the most moving, written directly from Dudek’s profound experience when he wrote this section.
-o-
The most difficult time in a person’s life is when they are at their weakest, it is when we are old. If one is a sensitive or intelligent person old age is a time of physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual decline to inevitable death. As one grows old the body wears out, just as the body of an old car rusts, parts wear out and have to be replaced, and nothing works as well as it used to. After a lifetime of stress one’s ability to handle emotional conflict is at its lowest; we’ve survived death, divorce, betrayal, but there isn’t much left to us, our nerves are shot... The brain is also wearing out, thought processes are not as fast as they used to be, there is the possibility of dementia and senility. As well, one wonders if the spirituality that was once a support is now viable, facing the end one might wonder if religion was never more than a fairy tale; or, one’s spirituality is strengthened by the circumstances of one’s life. Around you, all of your old friends and family members are dying, you are more and more alone, and you must face your own inevitable death. There is the chance that one’s family, one’s own children, have turned on you and invented a rift, the very people you loved the most have become the biggest disappointment of your life. Do they care? Perhaps not at all. This is a dismal picture of old age. This is what Dudek is writing about when he says that old people are either always smiling or always scowling; that the older one gets the more one looks like a corpse. Some old people are strong and resilient, they have the support of loving families and have a positive outlook on life; however, many others become bitter as they grow old, and some become insane, gags, with their inability to handle the terrible final demands of their existence.
-o-
Note the fragmentary nature of Continuation III, note that it is a fragment in a fragment. Life has dissolved into its separate parts, there isn’t the energy to work on a larger manuscript.
-o-
There is still poetry and “shining”, what is brilliant, mysterious, against the world of appearance, is a counterpoint to the world of appearance and possible illusion. The infinite, one of Dudek’s favourite words, seems to be a part of life, for those able to perceive it, as well as the experience of poetry. Some excerpts:
We are tied to a chariot called time
and dragged along the road
(58)
Well, you’re old only once
Something to be said for that
And thanks to the collection of manuscripts
we now know, before we die
what our friends really thought of us
(59)
Against this, he writes:
There are days when
whatever is is bright
(63)
An Appearance Erscheinung
not “mere appearance”
but a shining
EPIPHANEIA
(64)
Why should I bow to authority?
The poem is my authority
if I want truth.
(65)
-o-
Tragi-comedy, comic-tragedy
Let’s see how you will laugh
when your time comes.
(69)
And accept everything that is given—
pain, darkness, death.
So I am living it
for the last time
like the young
who are living it
for the first time
Ah!
The lilacs falling over themselves
on the garage roof,
and the trellis of trees, making their leaves
for a new summer.
(70-71)
-o-
the one you lie to is the one you love.
“Santuzza, criedi mi!”
cries out Turridu
and died with the lie on his lips.
“Santuizza, credi me! Santuzza, credi me!”
If it’s the truth it fits like a glove,
but the one you lie to is the one you love.
. . . .
Where are the kind friends that used to pass,
and the lovers, with laughing loves—
where are they gone from this world of glass?
(71)
-o-
I am a hole in space,
empty as matter, hungry as death—
can eat up the universe in my maw.
I push into unknown infinite world...
(Came to the sun, came to the earth
and wedged into matter)
I am an interloper,
even now as I push my pencil in the dark
and write this poem.
(76-77)
-o-
His advice:
Keep pushing ahead
with all the language arts,
developing new brain cells
And the reader rubbing his bald pate
in irritation—
Canadian (or American)
“entreprenoors”
sipping their “kreem the menthe”
to their “déjà voo”—
Some of this is beautiful, simply exquisite writing.
(I don’t remember what the event was all about but in the mid-1990s I was driving Louis and a few others to a Greek restaurant (on the corner of Northcliffe Avenue and Sherbrooke Street West), I remember Dudek correcting me on my pronunciation of “déjà vu”... it was the same restaurant where the poet Keitha MacIntosh used to spend hours correcting student papers and drinking tea. She lived across the street in the large apartment building on the northwest corner, on the corner next across the street from the restaurant. Alas, she, too, has departed (in August 2012) this veil of tears... this vale of soul-making.). Actually, I think Keitha may have been there when we entered the restaurant, but not sure about that.
-o-
Ah, the tears, the tears of forgetfulness
for all our sorrows
For all the good we leave behind
(Even you, my dear,
whom I love more than myself
—the self that I despise)
(82)
-o-
Back, for a minute, to epigrams:
The New Yorker has set a very high standard
for perfume advertising
So has “the Booker Prize”
for best-sellers.
(86)
-o-
-o-
Ah, the tears, the tears of forgetfulness
for all our sorrows
For all the good we leave behind
(Even you, my dear,
whom I love more than myself
—the self that I despise)
(82)
-o-
Back, for a minute, to epigrams:
The New Yorker has set a very high standard
for perfume advertising
So has “the Booker Prize”
for best-sellers.
(86)
-o-
Underlying the whole poem is the importance of poetry, but also of languages, of knowing several languages possibly in order to be a literate and educated individual. In his old age Dudek was translating Greek poetry using a bilingual dictionary; he told me, “it’s simple”, just follows the order of the words and look them up in a dictionary.
-o-
The second section in Continution III is “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]”. This section is made up of “Bits & Pieces”, but it’s an interesting poem. It posits two voices of the same person speaking with some directions or instructions as to how it should be read (for instance, “cut here”, “pause”, “break”, “long pause”, and so on). The voice that is italicized could be Dudek’s thinking while the voice in plain type could be Dudek addressing an audience; there are other variations of this. Italics could indicate answers or responses the one speaking, the unconscious mind, the fragmentation of the speaker’s voice, and so on.
The world is always full
of the young.
(99)
-o-
The second section in Continution III is “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]”. This section is made up of “Bits & Pieces”, but it’s an interesting poem. It posits two voices of the same person speaking with some directions or instructions as to how it should be read (for instance, “cut here”, “pause”, “break”, “long pause”, and so on). The voice that is italicized could be Dudek’s thinking while the voice in plain type could be Dudek addressing an audience; there are other variations of this. Italics could indicate answers or responses the one speaking, the unconscious mind, the fragmentation of the speaker’s voice, and so on.
The world is always full
of the young.
(99)
The body breaks down. If one medicine fails
you try another.
In the end they all fail.
But you keep on trying.
Only youth
never fails.
(106)
-o-
“Sequence from Continuation III” appears in The Surface of Time (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 2000). This is the final “sequence” and conclusion of the poem. It is fragmentary, as thinking is fragmentary, moving from one thought to the next but always overshadowed with Dudek’s concerns: poetry, infinity, youth vs. age, and so on. Poetry seems to be one approach to an awareness of eternity:
Time and space are a construct,
we know it.
But before time and space, what was there?
Eternity is the surface of time.
(80)
What started things, what
was there before the creation
in unknowable to us.
But it shines
from a leaf, from a letter
on the perfect page.
Poetry is a wandering search
an escape from gravity—
a space-walk in the open.
(81)
-o-
And then we have a memory, an anecdote, regarding the “many funerals” Dudek attended as a child. It is the beginning of his sense of mortality, of the utter transience of life. It is the positioning of youth and age beside each other, of an awareness of temporality, an awareness of death. But with this awareness is also a more difficult awareness, it is of the magnificence of life, the multiplicity of existence, the “shining” features of life, the transcendence of temporality found on poetry and life.
Then, he gives us another memory from childhood, “How you fumbled in class,/ how you failed in arithmetic” (83), and then the final, compelling and deeply moving words of this monument of poetry. For, as I remember thinking as we left Dudek’s funeral (on the side of Mount Royal, within walking distance of St. Joseph’s Oratory) that cold March day in 2001, we had greatness among us, we had a Colossus (as Henry Miller referred to a writer friend of his) among us, and now we are alone to face the demands of “savage modernity”:
Go out in the sun
some Sunday morning
when the clouds are melting
over St. Joseph’s,
look down from Mount Royal
to that other world.
It is far off and glorious—
at the heart of creation—
no tin-can world
of savage modernity,
but the everlasting
world of a present
where you stand
in the pale light of allness.
Stand there and remember
the paltriness of worldly claims,
and the immensity
that is always now.
(83-84)
you try another.
In the end they all fail.
But you keep on trying.
Only youth
never fails.
(106)
-o-
“Sequence from Continuation III” appears in The Surface of Time (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 2000). This is the final “sequence” and conclusion of the poem. It is fragmentary, as thinking is fragmentary, moving from one thought to the next but always overshadowed with Dudek’s concerns: poetry, infinity, youth vs. age, and so on. Poetry seems to be one approach to an awareness of eternity:
Time and space are a construct,
we know it.
But before time and space, what was there?
Eternity is the surface of time.
(80)
What started things, what
was there before the creation
in unknowable to us.
But it shines
from a leaf, from a letter
on the perfect page.
Poetry is a wandering search
an escape from gravity—
a space-walk in the open.
(81)
-o-
And then we have a memory, an anecdote, regarding the “many funerals” Dudek attended as a child. It is the beginning of his sense of mortality, of the utter transience of life. It is the positioning of youth and age beside each other, of an awareness of temporality, an awareness of death. But with this awareness is also a more difficult awareness, it is of the magnificence of life, the multiplicity of existence, the “shining” features of life, the transcendence of temporality found on poetry and life.
Then, he gives us another memory from childhood, “How you fumbled in class,/ how you failed in arithmetic” (83), and then the final, compelling and deeply moving words of this monument of poetry. For, as I remember thinking as we left Dudek’s funeral (on the side of Mount Royal, within walking distance of St. Joseph’s Oratory) that cold March day in 2001, we had greatness among us, we had a Colossus (as Henry Miller referred to a writer friend of his) among us, and now we are alone to face the demands of “savage modernity”:
Go out in the sun
some Sunday morning
when the clouds are melting
over St. Joseph’s,
look down from Mount Royal
to that other world.
It is far off and glorious—
at the heart of creation—
no tin-can world
of savage modernity,
but the everlasting
world of a present
where you stand
in the pale light of allness.
Stand there and remember
the paltriness of worldly claims,
and the immensity
that is always now.
(83-84)
-o-
Postscript: Just last night I was reading some comments on Dudek's poetry, written by another poet who was a fan of Dudek's poetry. This poet praised Atlantis and sections of his other long poems, but nobody (not even my poet contemporaries) will stand up for Continuation; one critic, who knew Dudek, didn't even have the correct title of the poem, throughout his discussion of the poem he refers to it as Continuations. My God, can't we even get the title right? Most critics disparage or ignore Continuation and yet, if you read interviews with Dudek, read what he said about the poem, the whole project took over forty years to write, it is meticulously written, and it is Dudek's longest piece of writing. Continuation should have been three books, and it should be republished as such but in one volume. It is Dudek's most experimental writing. And yet, it is ignored, it is treated as something critics wish had never been written, it's an embarrassment. My contention has always been that Continuation is a significant poem in Dudek's body of work. Well, times have changed and we've entered a very dark time in western civilization, not just in Canada but in the west; in Canadian poetry the (golden) days of Modernism, of Irving Layton, Al Purdy, include F.R. Scott in this short list, and others has ended and what we have today is the irrelevancy of poetry and poets; not one poet today has the public status of earlier poets, not one poet is a public personality or presence in the media, not one poet is listened to. It could be that one day people will read Continuation and understand exactly what Louis Dudek is saying, that's what happens with difficult literature, with time the educated public find what was formerly difficult fairly obvious in its meaning. 13/02/2026
Note: Written in 2012; revised October - November 2024, 2025. Thought: the best final statement is to put in writing what one is thinking, don't leave it up to chance or the possibility that someone might understand what you are saying. Suggestion for poets: be your own critic because the critics may never write about your work and you need to explain what you are doing.
Note: Written in 2012; revised October - November 2024, 2025. Thought: the best final statement is to put in writing what one is thinking, don't leave it up to chance or the possibility that someone might understand what you are saying. Suggestion for poets: be your own critic because the critics may never write about your work and you need to explain what you are doing.
Edited: 13 February 2026.
