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 Cross-Section is a selection of Dudek’s previously unpublished poems, organized in chronological order from 1940 to 1980.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.

Louis Dudek's "white book"

Here I am with Louis Dudek, not sure who took the photograph; it is 1993 
at the Loyola Campus of Concordia University, at the League of 
Canadian Poets' AGM, when Louis was made a life member of the
League (an organization he helped to found)

1.

 

One day in the mid-1970s, Louis Dudek came to our graduate seminar with copies of his Collected Poems, (1971); "Does anyone want to buy a copy?" he asked; it was $5.00. I never had any money and passed on buying his Collected Poems, but a few months later I bought a second hand copy of Dudek's Atlantis at The Word Bookstore and I forgot about the Collected Poems of Louis Dudek. Over the intervening years I bought most of Louis' other books as they were published and around 1997, when the League of Canadian Poets AGM was held in Montreal, and I had nominated Louis for a life membership, I brought at least ten of his books with me to the AGM for him to sign. That was a bit much but Louis went along with it, we sat together, he signed his books, he gave his speech, and he left. He mentioned that one of the books of his that I had brought with me that evening had not been distributed, hang onto it, he said, it will be worth something one day, but I forget which book he was referring to. Like all good teachers, Louis was good with fatherly advice. He told me that my M.A. degree would get me a teaching job, and it did and that set me up financially and employment-wise for thirty-five years of my life. Then it was 2020, twenty years later, and I was at Stephanie Dudek's estate sale;  Stephanie was Louis' first wife and, although he died in 2001, many of his books were still stored at the Vendome Avenue home where he used to live. There were copies of Atlantis, in pristine condition, still unwrapped from when they were printed in the UK and shipped over to Montreal. I bought a few copies just for old time's sake and as I left I asked if they had any copies of Louis' Collected Poems; someone, I was told, had just bought all the copies they had, I was out of luck. And then, finally, I found a copy on Amazon; you don't often see Dudek's Collected Poems, 3,000 copies were printed but it didn't sell many copies when it was published and it wasn't widely reviewed. I finally found a used copy for sale by a book seller in Vancouver, for $10.00; I placed my order and a few days later received a phone call, the book was missing a page, did I still want to buy it? Of course I did. The price was reduced to the original $5.00 it had been in 1975 and my copy, a former library copy, was sent to me.