Some say horsemen, some say warriors,
Some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest
Vision in this dark world, but I say it’s
What you love.
It’s easy to make this clear to everyone,
Since Helen, she who outshone
All others in beauty, left
A fine husband,
And headed for Troy
Without a thought for
Her daughter, her dear parents…
Led astray…
And I recall Anaktoria, whose sweet step
Or that flicker of light on her face,
I’d rather see than Lydian chariots
Or the armed ranks of the hoplites.
The discovery of a poet’s voice brings authenticity to the poet’s work, that the work communicates the content and form of the poem as well as the poet’s inner being, his or her soul or psyche.
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It isn’t the sound of your voice or how well you read a poem out loud that is voice. It isn’t a poem for several voices. It isn’t slam poetry or performance poetry. It’s the essence of who you are as it is expressed in the way you write, it is your own original distinctive individual voice.
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Voice in poetry, to be authentic, must be true to the self of the poet, to the inner, subjective, self-perception, self-knowledge, of the poet. Voice has to be authentic and true to the poet’s inner perception. Poetry happens when psyche has access to the world.
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The point is to discover one’s voice, and then you continue writing and voice changes in what one writes, but the discovery of one’s authentic voice is a border one needs to cross in order to write the work that follows, work that one can stand behind, that gives one the self-assurance to expresses one’s vision.
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Voice is a vehicle for the content of poetry; content expands when an authentic voice is discovered. Voice is not style, style changes but voice is the expression of the inner, psychological dimension of the poet; voice is the expression of psyche. Voice changes just as our bodies change with age, but once an authentic voice is discovered then voice will remain authentic to the poet, no matter what the poet is saying or in what form it is being said.
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There is no way to find one’s voice, it must be discovered by the poet, but not all poets find their voice in poetry; in a way, an authentic voice finds the poet. After voice is discovered the person writing poems is a real poet, not someone who also happens to write occasional poems. Voice in poetry comes to you, you can work on your poetry but that doesn’t guarantee you will find your voice; voice is like any other creative work that comes to the person. If someone who writes poems never finds his voice, he or she is not a poet. How can they be when writing poetry is predicated on writing from an authentic voice? This does not diminish what a poet writes before the discovery of voice, some great poems can be written before voice is discovered as a prelude to finding one’s voice, as a precursor to the discovery of the poet’s authentic voice.
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First, you have to be born a poet and realize you are a poet by writing poetry, then you have to put in your 10,000 hours of apprenticeship. There’s nothing romantic or fun about being a poet. It’s a lot of hard work to be a poet and as you get older it gets harder and harder, not only because it is solitary work but because of all the additional work that comes with writing and building a body of work; for instance, the time consuming work of organizing and placing one’s archives, working on one’s selected poems, keeping up correspondence, managing what you have created over a lifetime, and the effort to meet the demands of life as one gets older. If you live long enough you, too, will not be immune to the demands of old age.
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Voice is the expression of the poet’s integrity as a poet. Voice is the expression of the poet’s character, sensibility, and integrity as a human being. This is why it has such importance to poets.
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Discovering one’s voice does not disqualify or negate what the poet wrote before this discovery, but it is a sign of the poet’s maturity as a poet.
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Voice is when we speak from the heart, from the soul, without pretension or affectation, but with honesty and truth without censoring ourselves, with only one conviction, to be true to our inner necessity, to what we have to say (not what we want to say or should say, or think we should say) but abandoning these things of the self, to speak from the real and authentic self, not the layers of self, but from the heart and from the soul.
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The genesis of both the content of the work and the voice expressing the work are simultaneous, they can’t be separated. An authentic voice is discovered in writing poems.
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Stephen Morrissey
November 2012 – June 2013, Montreal
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| View from the MMFA, April 2024 |
Morrissey: Is your motive in answering questions actually advertising for wealthy clients to see how popular you have become?
ChatGPT: Nope, that's not my motive at all! I'm here to help and provide information to the best of my abilities, regardless of who's asking. Whether it's a question from someone wealthy or not, my aim is to offer useful and accurate responses. If anything, the more people I can assist, the happier I am!
Published on The League of Canadian Poets website, March 3, 2020.
Poetry is the voice of the human soul, speaking across time and distance
– Stephen Morrissey
In A Poet’s Journey Montreal native Stephen Morrissey shares four decades of insight about what it means to be a poet and the process by which a poet can discover his “authentic voice”. The book includes astute impressions of other poets Morrissey has met along the way, among them George Johnston, Keitha Macintosh and Artie Gold who, like Morrissey, was one of “The Vehicle Poets” in Montreal, beginning in the mid-1970s.
What makes Morrissey’s book such a fascinating read is the thing which makes his poetry so indelible: accessibility, and a hard won, pared-down wisdom.
Stephen Morrissey’s father died when he was six, his life abruptly and permanently reconfigured by fatherlessness. Unable to verbally articulate his emotional devastation, at the age of 15 Morrissey began to express his feeling of being “damaged” and “different” from his peers (and from people in general), in poems. The inexpressible had become expressible. Profoundly “dispirited and disempowered”, he had found a way to connect / re-connect with his “spirit”, and to empower himself, by himself – through poetry. He instinctively knew that this was his only way forward.
A section from Morrissey’s poem The River:
Because I did not grieve
when I was a child,
I have spent a lifetime
grieving, always on the edge
of sorrow
and from My Shadow:
always the shadow
of Father who died-
always the presence
of the knowledge
of death – my burden
I carried even as a child,
my shadow
Morrissey analyzed his life, in his diaries and poetry, during the years in which his stepfather was dying (when Morrissey was in high school), and following the dissolution of his first, early marriage. During these years he came to the realization that “real art lies in the insecurity of life” – in the ability of art to capture life’s fragility and evanescence.
Early on, Morrissey made the decision not to self-censor. This was due to his belief that, as he writes In A Poet’s Journey, “A poem that has been censored, that does not hold within it emotional, psychological or spiritual insight, has lost its poetic truth.”
As expressed in these lines from "Divisions" (1983):
all along I have worked at
emancipating my being
cutting through to the truth
this for me was always
the point the single point
Uncovering his “authentic voice” has lead Morrissey to a meticulous, lifelong examination of his Shadow. The pursuit of that Shadow, together with his decision against censoring what he writes, has taken him to places in his life that other poets might just as soon forget. Forgetting is not an option for Morrissey, however. He believes that “to forget is to lose part of our inner being, part of our lives, part of our soul.”
That includes not forgetting “the ancestors” who have come before. Some of Morrissey’s most evocative poems feature vignettes of who his family members were as individuals. Not having had the opportunity of getting to know his father, Morrissey was determined “to remember as much as possible” about his ancestors, in order to “keep an accurate record against time”. During the process of which he became, in his words, “an archivist of memory.” These poems are an exploration of human nature and of the interconnectedness of family over generations – in Morrissey’s case, as set against the backdrop of 20th century Montreal. He calls them “poems of witness”.
“The ancestors visit us if we listen to them,” he writes, “whether it is in our dreams or by their actual presence”.
As exemplified in these lines from "The Dead of My Life":
how often I return to them
the dead in my life
who inhabit dreams
memories while rocking
my son to sleep or a
dream that my Uncle Alex
was alive although we
thought (in the dream)
that he had been dead
these seven years
they are like flies
beating against an autumn window
… this ever diminishing
circus parade of old
people I hang onto
as though without them
I too would cease to be
As an undergraduate in college (Louis Dudek would later become a mentor at McGill), Morrissey intuited that the “central myth” of his life, and the central theme of his poetry was the Garden Myth – the “fall from innocence to experience”. As he has said, “My nine published books follow the progression of my life as it fits the template of the Garden Myth.” The Garden Myth is inherently fascinating and may be one reason why Morrissey’s poetry is so compelling.
Although a life-long observer “of the architecture of darkness” as he puts it (in his poem "Waking at 4 a.m.") in another important sense Stephen Morrissey’s poetry is, as he writes, “an affirmation of the life force , the triumph of the spirit, and the survival of the individual despite what has been experienced. This is the foundation on which my poems are written.”
The following extract from "Reincarnation" is reflective of this:
We meet again, again flesh
and blood, again bone, tendon
and memory. Events of old lives,
clothes divested as I divested
the past in meeting you,
in meeting you again
and again and again
into infinity.
Forty years of waiting for you,
a dark delirium of the soul;
we met apparently for the first time
but home is where we are together
in this room, this house,
the two square feet we occupy
in a single embrace
The “mapping of the soul” is Stephen Morrissey’s signature – and his genius. His ability to transform the “the personal” into the “the universal” in his poetry is also what makes A Poet’s Journey an invaluable resource for anyone who aspires to become a poet.
About the reviewer: A native of Montreal, Cynthia Coristine currently lives in Ottawa. She is co-author of From Griffintown to the Square Mile: The Life James Coristine
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| Edna St. Vincent Millay |
April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago,
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.
There rings a hammering all day,
And shingles lie about the doors;
In orchards near and far away
The grey wood-pecker taps and bores;
The men are merry at their chores,
And children earnest at their play.
The larger streams run still and deep,
Noisy and swift the small brooks run
Among the mullein stalks the sheep
Go up the hillside in the sun,
Pensively,—only you are gone,
You that alone I cared to keep.
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| Meadowbrook Golf Course, 31 March 2022 |
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| 2012 |
Morrissey: Please write a post for my blog at https://stephenmorrisseyblog.blogspot.com/
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| 2012, Loyola Campus of Concordia University |
