The Province of Poetry & Prayer

 

Lane behind Girouard Avenue, 22 October 2009 

there is a listing or taking of priorities

these things as i have noted them here

are taking place have taken

are the true & proper province of poetry & prayer

                                                             —bpNichol

                                                            The Martyrology, Book Three

 

 

                                                Make my dark heavy

                                                Poem light, and

                                                light

 

                                                —John Donne

                                                “The Progresses of the Soule”

 

 

 

 

1.

only love

has moved me

 

2.

this is my long stopover, my

place in the journey /

 

3.

What is the progress

of my soul? The tree of life,

Adam's fall, Isak Dinisen's

"Sorrow Acre"

 

the skyline, clouds on the horizon

 

the strata of years, the smell

of the air on an October morning,

 

the melting snow in March,

the inflection of words

of what is said, places and streets

places and streets

where my family lived

 

the generations are buried here,

like layers of sediment

where water washed silt across the shore,

 

broken pottery, cracked mirrors,

rust and bones, boxes of soil,

places and streets

 

4.

I woke in Dante’s dark forest

distant from when I was young,

 

surrounded even then by shadows,

someone is dragging in the sacrificial bull,

the stag, the lamb, the erosion of truth

 

could a little corruption

do that much damage?

 

it seemed minimal, collateral

damage to the soul, but no one gets off lightly:

we wait for the apocalypse on our acre of dust

 

that is when

I was delivered up 

to grief and regret

 

5.

a long winter moved across this land,

my life

 

            where the trees

                        had been cut down,

 

a northern storm

like an army in retreat

 

fled across a hundred acre field,

fear blows down

 

from the frozen north,

 

snow hardened into dunes

by the blowing wind,

 

            and beneath the frozen earth

 

                        a sheet of ice,

where houses were abandoned

like wooden ships

 

whose crews had fled

and where empty windows

 

stare blankly

at my approach

 

Written: 15 April 2018; retrieved, 04 February 2026

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