"Song on a May Morning" by John Milton

 

18 May 2014

Now the bright morning star, day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip, and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that doth inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire;
Woods and groves are of thy dressing,
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing,
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

The view from the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 21 April 2024.

                                      

                                        

                                                

                               

                                     

A tiny garden

On the corner Nelson and Westminster, a tiny garden, always beautifully maintained and attractive to pedestrians; 9 May 2024.

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14 May 2011, driving home from work

The old Champlain Bridge

Cranes used during the construction of the super-hospital

See those cranes on the horizon? That was the first major construction in Montreal
for many years; what we call the "neverrendums", two referendums on Quebec 
separation from Canada, had killed investment in Quebec

Pictures of my grandmother’s home

On this day in 2009, it was 14 May 2009, I visited my grandmother's home at 2226 Girouard Avenue for the first time since 1969. My grandmother died in 1965, just a few days before my fifteenth birthday, she was one month short of her 90th birthday as my Auntie Ivy told my mother that morning when she phoned to tell her that my grandmother had died. For years, when driving passed the Girouard Avenue flat on my way to work, I would look up at her living room window remembering the many memories of my grandmother. It wasn't until 2009 that the flat was being sold and I had the opportunity to take these photographies. It was the last time I would visit my grandmother's home, where she had lived since the mid-1920s. 

Walking up the stairs to the flat

In the living room facing the Girouard Avenue

Entrance to the flat from the stairs.

In the living room.

The bathroom with the original
claw foot bathtub.

This was my Great Aunt Essie's bedroom,
she was my grandmother's sister.

The back porch facing the lane.

The kitchen.

This room off the kitchen, at the 
rear of the flat, was where my grandmother's
father slept after he moved to Girouard Avenue.

To the left was my Auntie Mable's bedroom,
to the right was the living room.

The living room, facing Girouard Avenue.

Entrance to the foyer from the living 
room; in this room, to the right was a maroon 
couch covered with a white sheet, the springs
touching the floor; to the left in this room
is where an upright piano stood.

The stairs and front door.

The upstairs is 2226 Girouard Avenue.

Review: A Poet's Journey: on poetry and what it means to be a poet by Stephen Morrissey

                               

Published on The League of Canadian Poets website, March 3, 2020.

Reviewed by Cynthia Coristine

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