On Louis Dudek’s "Continuation"

Cross-Section: Poems 1940-1980 (Coach House Press, 1980), Louis Dudek

 

My copy of Louis Dudek’s  Cross-Section: Poems 1940-1980 (1980) used to belong to my friend Sonja Skarsteft, it is one of several books given to me by Sonja’s husband, Geof Isherwood, after Sonja’s passing and it is a book that I treasure because it was Sonja's and it was inscribed to her by another friend, Louis Dudek. Cross-Section is a selection of Dudek’s previously unpublished poems, organized in chronological order from 1940 to 1980. A poem entitled "Fragment of Continuum", the final poem in the book, immediately caught my attention, written in 1980 it is similar to Dudek's Continuation poems in its form and content; the poem is conversational, it is a stream of consciousness that easily fits as a part of Continuation, albeit not quite as good as Continuation, but there must be some connection between this poem and Continuation.

Dudek was uneasy about publishing Continuation, it is idiosyncratic, unlike anything else he wrote, and either readers are willing to extend their idea of what poetry is or they dismiss it as obscure and without artistic value. Continuation was not well received even by Dudek's friends; for instance, Mike Gnarowski was condescending about the poem when I mentioned it to him a year or so before he died. But Louis persevered, as any poet must persevere who writes something considerably out of the main stream of contemporary poetry or their usual work; however, Continuation is also similar to Dudek’s previously published long poems and it is a development on his previous poems. It was years in creative gestation before it was finally published; it also parallels Dudek's growth as a poet.  

Here (revised) is the publishing history of Continuation from my essay, "Reading Louis Dudek’s Continuation: An introduction to a major Canadian poem", published in "Montreal Serai" around December 2013: 

The publishing history of Continuation is interesting; Continuation I ( 1981) and Continuation II (1989) were published as separate volumes by Vehicule Press; Continuation III was never completed but parts of it were published in two separate books, they are:

Continuation III, found in The Caged Tiger (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1997), has four sections; “Bits and Pieces”, included in The Caged Tiger, was section five of Continuation III.

Dudek’s last book, The Surface of Time (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 2000), concludes with "Sequence from 'Continuation III', which would be section six of "Continuation III".

In Dudek's "White Book", his Collected Poetry (1971), there is an excerpt from "Continuation I" which he subtitled "An infinite Poem in Progress". Dudek’s explanation of "Fragment of Continuum", published the year before Continuation I was published, is also explained but in a footnote to the poem, and it could also describe what he is doing in Continuation; a "continuum" he defines as "Something in which a fundamental common character is discernible amid a series of insensible or indefinite variations". As in Continuation.

There should have been Continuation III, not only excerpts published in two of Dudek’s books.  I am told that Dudek’s literary executor was Mike Gnarowski, but probably due to old age or dislike of Continuation, Professor Gnarowski never published a complete three volume Continuation; there should be three volumes to this work--it should be triadic--the number three suggesting completion, a creative and archetypal manifestation of the creative spirit. Continuation remains incomplete as two volumes; the number two as an archetypal number suggesting the absence of completion, and this reminds us that the poem remains unfinished.

Multiple book length poems are difficult to write and to get published, and difficult to sustain to completion; for instance, some long poems do not cohere, think of Pound's Cantos or Olson's Maxiumus Poems. Dudek's Continuation ends in the poet's acknowledgement that old age preoccupies his thinking and his daily activity and the poem shows the effect of being old; with the exception of William Carlos Williams' Paterson, the long poem is not the domain of old poets as Dudek experienced. Of course, there are exceptions, there always are, but still, few old people have the energy required to maintain a sustained creative effort such as the long poem. That’s just common sense.

The Shrouding by Leo Kennedy

I just finished reading Leo Kennedy's The Shrouding, originally published in 1933, this edition was re-published by Michael Gnarowski's Golden Dog Press in 1975. I am so impressed by Kennedy's work, I think he's brilliant and he's the real thing, a real poet. He always presented himself as a poet and I thought this rather specious when reading Patricia Morley's biography of Kennedy, but I can see the validity of it now. This one book is Kennedy's (almost entire) body of work, as Leon Edel writes in his Introduction, "...all writers in reality have only one book within them." This may be true, or not true, but we would still have liked a few more books by the same person. Kennedy is a formalist in his writing, there is rhythm and music in his poems, many of the poems are unfashionable as they rhyme, and the first poem in the book is a sonnet. Kennedy writes in his Introduction, "These poems were written when the world was more formal and poets thought a lot about scansion and almost as much about rhyme." I bought my copy of The Shrouding from Dundurn Press, delivered it cost $13.80, cheap! https://www.dundurn.com/books/Shrouding