Review of Sylvia Brinton Perera's Queen Maeve and Her Lovers: A Celtic Archetype of Ecstasy, Addiction, and Healing.

Review of Sylvia Brinton Perera's Queen Maeve and Her 

Lovers: A Celtic Archetype of Ecstasy, Addiction, and 

Healing. Carrowmare Books, New York, 1999, 490 pages. 

By Stephen Morrissey

Before reading Sylvia Brinton Perera's Queen Maeve and Her Lovers, I thought religiosity in my family was mainly found in three prominent and well known priests who were part of my Montreal-Irish family. My great-great-uncle, Father Martin Callaghan, was the first Montreal-born pastor of St. Patrick's Basilica, serving there from 1875 to 1908. His younger brother, Father Luke Callaghan, was the pastor at St. Michael's Church, which was built in the Byzantine style, after Hagia Sophia. Father Luke was largely responsible for raising the funding and overseeing the construction of this church. Their other brother, Father James Callaghan, served at several Montreal churches as well as being the pastor at Hotel Dieu Hospital and The Royal Victoria Hospital. All three of these priests came from a humble immigrant background, were educated at the College de Montreal, and served the community with distinction. Surely they are the kind of men who are models for the spiritual life. But there was also a darker side to my family tree, including some relatives who were alcoholics.

With this background I found Sylvia Brinton Perera's Queen Maeve and her Lovers insightful and provocative. In this book, Perera's thesis is "that modern addictions represent debased forms of ancient rituals." Of course, she is not the first writer to make the connection between alcoholism and a Dionysian-like spirituality. C.G. Jung was influential in helping the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous formulate a spiritual approach to addiction. In a letter to Bill Wilson, AA's co-founder, Jung pointed out that "alcohol in Latin is spiritus, the same word [used] for the highest religious experience." For Perera, addiction is a corrupted manifestation of the old divine energy that was, in its original form, ecstatic and life-affirming. But we have little place for the old gods, such as Queen Maeve, whom Perera refers to as "one of the grandest figures in Celtic lore." Maeve represents the life-energy, the multiplicity and abundance of life, the sacred force lying behind growth, fertility, and abundance.

It is not possible to return to the ancient gods, even if we wanted to. Maeve represents, for Perera, the psychological and spiritual need for wholeness and oneness with the divine, or with what Jung called the Self. For some people, this is a part of the process of individuation. Addiction, in its many forms, is only a shadow of a spiritual experience. Intoxication in itself is not a spiritual experience, it is merely being intoxicated. Within the context of Celtic society, Queen Maeve and other Celtic deities and the myths about them, provided a very deep sense of spirituality that permeated every aspect of Irish life. Perera writes,

The spirits of the dead revisited the homes of the living after dark and on the festivals marking the open cracks in the agricultural year, especially at Samhain and Beltane when the new winter and summer cycles beganŠcaves, mounds, trees and water [were] places where the veil between this world and the next [were] felt to be easily permeable.

This expression of numinosity in daily Irish life was eventually lost. Perera writes, "As the old ways trickled down through the millennia, they became secularized: rites became revels, gods became 'little people', and sacred wine became intoxicating booze. A similar fate happens to the old gods in each of us."

Perera describes the archetype of Queen Maeve, how Maeve provided a way to experience religious ecstasy that had a socially acceptable place in society. This was a part of the process of individuation for certain people at that time. Perera describes the Tara tests that were administered by the druids to the high king, and some of the points raised by this test are still of value to us today. Perera tells us "they describe what happens to confirm us when we are on our destined path." Although in today's society, we aren't high kings and we aren't druids, the tests are and can still be of value to us. Four points are made: We might ask ourselves if we are "traveling towards a goal that the Self supports?" Is there "a fit between the purposes of ego and Self or destiny?" Can we identify a "primeval unity" existing behind apparent opposites, a kind of yin and yang of daily life? The final test is whether one has entered a stage of authority in one's life. If one has, then "it conveys the deep sense of entitlement and charisma that others intuit and cooperate to support."

So far, I have dealt with Perera's description of the positive experience suggested by a belief in Queen Maeve and I have only touched on the negative consequences. Many people who know intoxication do not experience individuation. The book' discussion and description of the psychology of addiction is disturbing. Perera, who is a New York-trained Jungian psychoanalyst, has worked with many addicts and has an intimate knowledge of the psychology of addiction. Anyone wanting to know more about addiction, the behaviour and psychology of addicts, whether it is to alcohol, drugs, sex, or gambling, should read what Perera has to say. However, this is distressing material, as Perera describes manipulative behaviour and a psychology that is probably beyond the ability to be dealt with by anyone but a specialist.

This is an over-long book that would have been well served by the work of an editor. Perhaps there are two shorter books here, one on Queen Maeve as a Celtic archetype with some importance for people today; and a second book on addiction. The book grew out of Perera's insight that "the archetypal form patterns supporting the myths still resonate in deep and embodied layers of the human psyche and affect our modern response." With this in mind we see expressions of spirituality, whether truncated by addiction or in those who have done the work of individuation, all around us. This book helps us to understand more deeply this important aspect of life today; as well as what our ancestors might have experienced; and of the life of some of those we love, who struggle with addiction.

Published: The C.G. Jung Society of Montreal Newsletter, August 2002.

I'll take a "bad poem" over a "fake poem" any day...

Some thoughts on bad poems and fake poems:

Fake poems are contrived, pretending to be the real thing.

But a bad poem is just what it is, naive, a failed attempt by someone who is trying to write a poem, someone who is sincere.

A fake poem is a pretense that even deceives the author of the fake poem. They think they've created something, they've pulled the wool over our eyes and their own eyes. But it isn't a real poem they've written, it is a fake poem.

A bad poem lacks depth; a fake poem has depth but it's a lie, it's trying to fool the reader into believing it has depth. A fake poem will always be fake, contrived, pretentious. A bad poem is an effort that didn't work; a fake poem is a lie.

We all know a bad poem when we read it, but people don't want to admit that the Emperor has no clothes, they'll sit and admire the fake poem.

Happy New Year! 2016!

Another year of living in one of the best countries in the world. Canada.

Girouard Avenue (2009) now at the Internet Archive

2226 Girouard Avenue is the door on the right
leading to the upstairs flat

A few years ago I decided to digitize my out-of-print books and make them available as free downloads online. Only recently have I begun this project, it's long term and I'm slow at getting it off the ground...

I know doing this seems counter-intuitive to most people (especially poets), giving away the books, but I feel it is only common sense. Poetry has a very limited and ever-diminishing audience and "popularity". Copies of my books that I have left, hard copies, are doing nothing sitting in our basement in cardboard boxes.

Putting these books online (as is my plan) gives them a second life. It might even find a few readers for them.

So, here is a link to Girouard Avenue (2009), one of my favourite of my books. It got a lot of positive reaction from people who could relate to the content and I liked this very much. Someone living in Arizona told me it is a "holy" book, and that is how I feel about it. When I was preparing this book to put it online, digitizing it, I realized that it is some of my better work. It is the work I did during the late 1990s and 2000s, my first book since my Selected Poems in 1998. It is poetry inspired by my extensive family history work. There is also an essay that came out of writing this book, "Remembering Girouard Avenue" (also available at archive dot org) that explains something of the importance to me of Girouard Avenue.

In sum, the physical location called Girouard Avenue in Montreal became a spiritual place for me, it is my psychic center. As I wrote elsewhere, "This memoir ("Remembering Girouard Avenue") is an addendum to my book of poems, Girouard Avenue (2009). This is my psychic center, this is where I began in life and where I often return in dreams, poems, and memories." 

November 2015 visit to Thomas D'Arcy McGee's mausoleum

Proverb quoted by Chinua Achebe

                    Until the lions have their own historians,

                    the history of the hunt will always glorify

                    the hunter.

                                   —Proverb quoted by Chinua Achebe

John Cage, "Autobiographical Statement", 1990

I once asked Aragon, the historian, how history was written.

He said, "You have to invent it." When I wish as now to tell

of critical incidents, persons, and events that have influenced

my life and work, the true answer is all of the incidents were

critical, all of the people influenced me, everything that

happened and that is still happening influences me.

                                    —John Cage, "Autobiographical Statement", 1990

A Place of Contemplation in Loyola Park

Soccer, baseball, exercise machines, wading pools for children, these and other activities are available at Loyola Park just a few blocks from where I live. But, also, the City has created some areas for contemplation and quiet, for instance this quadrangle entered through one of four gates. There was also an attempt to restore a small pond from the lost underground St. Pierre River that runs through the park to Wentworth Golf Course. Plants suitable for an aquatic "garden" were planted. The pond failed but the vestiges of it are still present near the baseball diamond. Acknowledging that not everyone is interested in physical exercise is important; it allows for a greater diversity of activities at Loyola Park and other places in Montreal.

In a store window on Westminster Avenue

In a store window on Westminster Avenue this morning...

Morning walk in Montreal West

As of spring 2019 the Orchid Dry Cleaner (above) on Westminster Avenue has closed.

The platform at Montreal West train station.

Rowan tree.

 A November walk in Montreal West... the train station, Westminster Avenue.

Poems are reports from inner space

Squirrels screwing

I will have to copy the essay here. Meanwhile, 

Thank you to Mark McCawley for publishing this minimalist essay, "Poems are reports from inner space."

http://urbgraffiti.com/writing/poems-are-reports-from-inner-space-by-stephen-morrissey/#more-6185

This is what is seriously wrong with online publishing.  There is no permanence online and what was originally published can be changed, deleted, altered, rewritten, gone. I will repost this essay.

Online publishing is worth about 10% of hard copy publishing. 

SM

11/05/2018

Poems of a Period, 1971 chapbook

For a long time I have felt that some of us poets might be better served if we made our work available, online, and free. Of course, as long as a book is in print we have an obligation to the publisher to promote the book, sell copies, and do all we can to make the book a success (that's an obligation to both publisher and to ourselves). But I have books that have been out of print for the last thirty and more years, they are on library shelves but otherwise unavailable to anyone who might be interested in the work. It seems to me that it would be practical to put the book online and give access to the book without cost. It's also possible to digitize and sell the book on Amazon, but my purpose is more to find readers than to make money through meager sales... A new paradigm exists for selling music and something similar is true of publishing poetry. So, there it is, this is my plan and I'm going to stick with it.

Here is my first chapbook, published in August 1971.

Patrick Morrissy and Mary Phelan, some of their descendants and relatives in Canada

This is Beaubear Island, just off Newcastle and Chatham, NB; 
Patrick Morrissy and some other members of the family worked here
when they first arrived in the Colony of New Brunswick,
Beaubear Island was the site of ship building.

This is a history of the descendants, and some of the descendants' relatives, of Patrick Morrissy and his wife Mary Phelan. Patrick and Mary and their family moved to New Brunswick around 1837 from County Tipperary, Ireland. I have placed particular emphasis on the descendants of their son Laurence Morrissey, my great great grandfather, who moved to Montreal from New Brunswick in the early 1840s. The generations this history deals with are Patrick Morrissy and Mary Phelan who emigrated to New Brunswick; their son Laurence Morrissey and his wife Johannah Meany who moved from New Brunswick to Montreal; Laurence and Johannah's son Thomas Morrissey who married Mary Callaghan; Thomas and Mary's son John Martin Morrissey who married Edith Sweeney; Martin and Edith's son Edgar Morrissey who married Hilda Parker; and then a brief discussion of their two sons, John and Stephen Morrissey. 

Remembering Girouard Avenue

This

 is the history of the Morrissey family of Montreal during their residency at
2226 Girourd Avenue—it includes family history, births and deaths, holidays at
their country cottage, evenings playing cards, the generations of Morrisseys who 

lived there, and the presence of Edith Sweeney Morrissey for whom the door was always 

open for any family member who needed a place to live—from the mid-1920s to the late 

1960s. 

That's me, in the late 1990s, standing in front of my grandmother's flat at
2226 Girouard Avenue.

"This memoir is an addendum to my book of poems, Girouard Avenue (2009). This
is my psychic center, this is where I began in life and where I often return in dreams, 

poems, and memories." 

Darrell Morrisey essay on the Internet Archive

The Morrisey Family:
Darrell, TL, Syd & Clara outside Hazelbrae,
85 Churchill Avenue, Westmount

I've just posted my essay on Darrell Morrisey (no relation to me), a "lost" member of the Beaver Hall Group of artists, at the Internet Archive. Included is a postscript with photographs of two paintings by Darrell that were discovered in May 2014; these painting are, so far, the only paintings we have by her.

Review of The Irish Bull God by Sylvia Brinton Perera

The Irish Bull God: Image of Multiform and Integral Masculinity
Sylvia Brinton Perera, Inner City Books, Toronto, 2004, 155 pages
ISBN 1-894574-08-7

Review by Stephen Morrissey

The Irish Bull God is Sylvia Brinton Perera’s most recent book exploring Irish mythology. Perera is a pre-eminent Jungian thinker on this subject. In a previous book, on Queen Maeve, and now in this book, on the Dagda, she has helped bring attention to the relationship of ancient Irish mythological figures to our contemporary society. While her work on the Celtic Queen Maeve dealt with the problem of addiction, The Irish Bull God deals with defining a more balanced, whole, and sophisticated concept of the masculine.
     Perera’s book evolves from a period of her life in which she dealt with personal crisis, “the deaths of my brother, father, former analyst, and life partner.” At a less personal level, and as a resident of New York City, Perera also struggled with the “massacres of 9/11”. What helped her during this period of her life was the image of the Dagda, a male figure from ancient Irish mythology. Perera writes from her “personal sense of loss as well as my Western culture’s dishonoring and dismemberment of much that the Dagda represents.” This book, then, is Perera’s endeavour to restore the Dagda, or “the Good God”, the “Great Father”, the “Father of All”, and what he represents as an archetypal masculine figure, to public awareness.
     It is too complicated to recount the many stories that make up the legend of the Dagda, but the general theme has to do with his exuberant appetite for food, sexuality, and life. The Dagda is the High King of the Tuatha de Dannan, the fairy folk and supernatural beings who inhabited Ireland before the arrival of the Celts. His famous harp is made of oak, a magical tree for the Celts, that when played puts the seasons in their proper order. He is a figure of immense power who has a magic club with which he is able to kill nine men with a single blow, as well as return them to life if he desires. His cauldron is capable of feeding innumerable numbers of people. He is a protector of his tribe and his family, a father figure, but a figure who is large enough, and comfortable enough in his masculinity, that he is able to embrace equally the feminine. Placed in the context of contemporary American society, it is no wonder Perera finds solace in the Dagda; America has been attacked by terrorists from outside of the country and the masculine archetype is being redefined, and not necessarily for the better, by people inside the country. Placed in the context of her personal life, Perera has suffered the loss of the male presence that was so important for her. The urgency of her message is that we need a renewed image of the masculine and to this end she suggests that the Dagda provides such an image.
     For Jungians, one of the central qualities of the Dagda is that he unifies opposites. Perera writes,

[The Dagda] embodies a primal wholeness that vividly encompasses some of the mutually dependent polarities that humans are consciously struggling with today: life and death, nurturance and war, containment and rejection, creativity and destruction, ugliness and beauty, chaos and order, wisdom and ineptitude, male and female, receptivity and aggression, grief and comedy, refined sensitivity and lusty coarseness, ruling and submitting, abundance and deprivation spiritual enlightenment and chthonic power. (143)

     Perhaps the Dagda is a kind of ideal archetypal figure. He is neither a puer
aeternus nor a Senex in his archetypal role. In some ways he is a trickster, but if he is a
trickster then it is the kind of amorality suggested by the trickster who ends up revealing
a deeper message or lesson for the one on whom the trick was played. The Dagda’s
lesson is one that unifies opposites and suggests a subtlety to our awareness of truth.
Honour is the Dagda’s morality, and maintaining his honour in the collective
consciousness is important to him. But he is not solely an avatar of power and
destruction; he can restore life to those he has defeated, and he does this. This dual role of
masculine energy, creative and protective, is missing in geo-political conflict today.
     The Dagda is, of course, an idealized representation of the masculine archetype. If
one accepts archetypes as a template or pattern for the unfolding and realization of the
dynamics of life—something basic, essential, and preconscious—then the Dagda
provides a very powerful and authoritative ideal of the masculine. The Dagda’s authority
is not restricted to the mundane but encompasses the cosmic. Perera writes, “The Dagda
is master of all the arts that made up druid lore—the technical and magical control of
natural forces, music, poetic incantations, healing and prophecy.” (126)
     Perera assumes in her book that the reader has some familiarity with Irish
mythology. Of course, this is not usually the case, and perhaps Perera could have given
more back ground information on the Dagda. Some readers will have to do additional
research to get the full meaning of Perera’s book; however, this research is well worth the
time it takes. An objection to the book might be that the Dagda is really an old fashioned
father figure, albeit an ideal one. I don’t think this is the case at all; Perera writes,

The grandeur of the Dagda offers us a perspective to refocus and enlarge our sense of what masculinity could be. We can see that his attunement with relational, flowing process has a very different quality than it holds in patrifocal models. (141)

     In mythological figures such as the Dagda we find a life affirming and dynamic
vision of what it means to be truly masculine. It is through Perera’s work—by returning
the Dagda to consciousness—that she restores the masculine to its archetypal definition,
one that contains opposites, nurtures, protects, creates, and recognizes without fear an
equal partnership with women.
 
                                                                          St. Patrick’s Day, 2004

2004

Published: The Newsletter of the C.G. Jung Society of Montreal, 2004.

Joseph Schull

From Google Street View, Joseph Schull's mother's home on 11th Avenue in St. Eustache, QC, in 2009

Joseph Schull with Helene Gougeon on their honeymoon

Joseph Schull was once a prominent writer, he was a playwright, novelist, historian, and poet; today, he is almost completely forgotten. In the late 1950s Schull and his mother lived in a house next door to us on 11th Avenue in St. Eustache. Our cottage was behind the Goodyear's (or is it spelled Goodier?) house and across the street from my grandmother and aunt and uncle's cottage; those were wonderful summer days in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I remember Joseph Schull from those summer days, he had a small cottage behind his mother's house and I could hear him typing there. A few weeks ago I was reading An Anthology of Canadian Poetry (edited by Ralph Gustafson and published in 1942); Schull has some poems in this book. As well, Schull's extensive literary archives are deposited at Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. I remembered Schull from our summers spent in St. Eustache. He is the first person I was conscious of as a writer; he was at the beginning of my journey as a poet. 

My friend, Paul Leblond, retires from teaching

                      

                                                      Champlain College, St. Lambert Campus

Here is one of my last social engagements, my speech at the retirement party for my friend Paul Leblond hosted at the home of our colleague Susan Woodruff. I loved teaching and I loved socializing at our office, we had a great long run with both! But everything comes to an end. 

RETIREMENT SPEECH FOR PAUL LEBLOND

I taught at Champlain College from November 1976 to January 2012. 

For most of that time I shared an office with Susan, John, and Paul.

I can honestly say I never went to work unhappy that I had to be there. I always loved teaching, the students, and the three people with whom I shared an office.

I met Susan first because she was on the hiring committee when I was interviewed.

                                         View of the Jacques Cartier Bridge from our office window

A week after I was hired and sitting in my tiny first floor office, John (who I'd never met before), came and welcomed me to the college.

A few weeks later I met Paul at a department meeting at the home of Ricky Zurif, our department head. It was evening and Paul came running in when the meeting was almost over, he was breathless and animated,  he'd been to a political demonstration and he had lots to say about the demonstration still going on in the streets.

It was always lively in that office of ours, you could depend on it, we talked constantly, whether about Quebec and Canada, American politics, our students, the administration at the college, teaching, and schedules that had four hours of back-to-back classes! And when John wasn't there (he was "off to meet the kiddies" as he sang leaving the office, to a tune from the Wizard of Oz) Paul (or "Paulium" as John called him) and I continued to talk. And talk. And talk.

Few teachers have more students congregate around them than Paul, these were animated group meetings during which time young people could say anything they wanted, and some of them probably experiencing for the first time an adult taking them seriously and listening to what they had to say. It was a free-for-all for students visiting Paul. Students meeting with Susan all seemed responsible and charming young women who read Jane Austen and would no doubt go on to respectable and responsible careers. Students visiting me were more or less normal people, including one young man who brought along his five foot tall Italian grandmother who wanted to give me a hug. Paul's students were a motley crew who sometimes had outrageous opinions. And when they finally left it was back to work for Paul, he had to organize the half dozen tapes or media he was bringing to class, photocopy and staple elaborately made hand-outs on green, pink, or blue paper, and go over his class preps before he left for class. One semester when Paul's students arrived to talk, this time a particularly loud and large group, I was happy to go off to the library and work there.

                                                                             From a classroom window....

Paul gave so much of himself to his students. He is a genuinely kind and caring person. We often had the same students; I always recommended Paul's or John's or Susan's classes when students asked me for advice about the next semester. There was Patrick who had cerebral palsy and was in a wheel chair. Because of his illness it was difficult to understand what Patrick was saying but he visited Paul at least once a week for several years. We'd hear Patrick coming, his voice down the hall, and then he'd manoeuvre his wheel chair into the office. Patrick relied on Paul's help because no one would help him as Paul did. Paul was kind and caring to this young person, more than most people would have been.

Another memorable student was "Big Robert" who sweated profusely and filled the office with his presence. He was also intelligent and opinionated, but better to have students with passion and interest who actually read books and think for themselves than students sitting bored at the back of the class. Robert went on to earn several graduate degrees including his PhD and he returned to Champlain to teach for a few semesters. Again he visited our office and he was as opinionated as ever.

When students would apply to McGill University's medical school, Paul put in many hours helping each student individually with their applications. His father, Dr. Charles Leblond, was an eminent physician and medical cancer researcher at McGill and I always enjoyed hearing Paul's stories of growing up, including visiting, with his two brothers, the morgue at the McIntyre Medical Building (or some other building at McGill).

And then, every August, Paul would arrive at the office from travelling somewhere exotic in the world and we all listened to his adventures, looked at his photographs, and shared his enthusiasm for countries he'd visited, including over the years India, China, Japan, South America, South Africa, all across Europe, and numerous road trips by car across North America à la Jack Kerouac! There was always some curious bit of trivia he'd marvel over, for instance, do you know how many dozens of flavours of yogurt you'll find in a Paris grocery store? As someone who prefers to stay at home and read a book, or write a poem, it all sounded quite fascinating!

Here is Paul in our office, early May 2011

Paul was always kind and compassionate to his students and I know they responded to this quality in him. They knew he was a good person and they trusted him, they could rely on him, he brought out the best in them. Paul's classes and meetings during his office hours provided students with an environment that gave them the freedom to be themselves, to feel empowered to express themselves freely. No wonder he was considered one of the best teachers at Champlain.

And now, on behalf of Paul's colleague's in the English Department, and especially on behalf of Susan and John and myself, I would like to congratulate Paul for his many years of dedicated service to the students at Champlain College and thank him for being our wonderful office mate, a true friend, and for being himself.

Stephen Morrissey

August 19, 2013

Updated on 22.09.2019, 06.11.2019

"Sorrow Acre" by Isak Dinesen

Sorrow Acre

By Stephen Morrissey

Many things influence a poet's development, for instance what we read can enlarge our concept of ourselves as poets as well as our idea of what we can do in poetry. One of these influences for me occurred around 1970 when I read a short story entitled “Sorrow Acre" by the Danish author Isak Dinesen. Dinesen's story was important to me for two reasons: first, it showed me the importance of mythology and archetypes as a way to critique literature; second, it introduced me to the "Garden Myth" and this was significant for me at a personal level as well as influencing  the poetry I was writing. This myth expresses a psychological truth, it is about how we lose the unself-conscious innocence of childhood. As we get older we "fall from innocence" into the world of self-consciousness. My father's death when I was six years old introduced me to the world of grief, loss, and regret. I knew at an early age that life is finite, that death takes away from us people we love. Indeed, we all suffer loss in some form and eventually leave the idyllic world of innocence.  

The Garden Myth is a major theme found in the work of many poets and writers, it is found in the work of a poet I was reading at the same time I read Isak Dinensen's short story; this is William Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Blake perceived that our life's journey includes both the fall from innocence and later the effort to find a higher innocence, a meaningful existence

Years ago, Isak Dinesen's “Sorrow Acre" was important to me. In the 1990s I wrote "The Shadow Trilogy" (The Compass, 1993; The Yoni Rocks, 1995; The Mystic Beast, 1997) which was influenced by C.G. Jung's concept of the human "shadow", that dark fallen side of our inner being that we either keep hidden or we project onto other people. However, preceding my interest in Jungian psychology was Isak Dinesen's short story.

This is where Élizabeth Robert enters this essay with her wonderful translation of The Mystic Beast as La bête mystique (Editions Tryptique, Montreal, 2004). Now Élizabeth knows something more of what was "going on in my mind" that influenced the text that she translated in the early 2000s.

23 04 2014

Note: I wrote this for a panel discussion on "Dans la Tête de L'auteur/ In the Mind of the Writer", a panel discussion presented by the ATTLC-LTAC, held on April 23, 2014 here in Montreal. I was invited by Élizabeth Robert, my friend and translator: "Three authors pen short texts, and their translators “translate” the imagined text, sight unseen. Trois auteurs écrivent un court texte. Leur traducteur respectif produisent simultanément la traduction de ce qu'ils pensent être les textes en question." This (above) was my text; unfortunately, I was ill that evening and, with regrets, missed the event. 

Review of In the Writers' Words, Conversations with Eight Poets

Laurence Hutchman on Grand Blvd near Somerled, Montreal, March 2016

                                 

Laurence Hutchman 

In the Writers' Words, Conversations with Eight Poets

Guernica Editions, Toronto, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-5507-309-1

Conversations with Eight Poets

by

Stephen Morrissey

             Laurence Hutchman's In the Writers' Words, Conversations with Eight Poets is a valuable addition to our knowledge of modernist Canadian poetry. The poets interviewed in these conversations are Ralph Gustafson, George Johnston, P.K. Page, Fred Cogswell, Louis Dudek, Al Purdy, Anne Szumigalski, and James Reaney. All eight of these poets have made important contributions to Canadian literature—they are all distinguished members of the Canadian poetry canon—and several have also contributed as translators and publishers.

            There is an easy intimacy between Laurence Hutchman and the poets he is interviewing. It feels as though we are listening in on good friends having a friendly but serious conversation on a subject about which both of them are passionate. Each interview is prefaced with a vivid and detailed description of the poet's home or place of work where the interview took place. When Hutchman is invited into Ralph Gustafson's Eastern Township's home he sits by a warm fire in late December; he describes the "chilly November morning in Saskatoon" when he rode a borrowed bicycle to interview Anne Szunigalski and entered her home where he admired paintings "everywhere on the walls, mostly done by her own family."
            Just before the interview which takes place in James Reaney's university office, Hutchman notes, "We sit on a green couch for the interview. On the wall facing us there is a painting of Reaney's, of The Nihilist Spasm Band. Above us is a picture, 'A Well Organized Athletic Meet on Centre Island, 1907 two women carrying eggs on a spoon.' Above those are topographical maps representing Grand Bend, St. Mary's and Stratford." Hutchman's awareness of the minutiae and detail of the place where the interview takes place enhances each interview that follows. In these interviews we are invited to know the human side of the eight different poets. Indeed, these conversations are an invitation for new readers to explore each poets' work.
            Scholars will find In The Writers' Words, Conversations with Eight Poets a valuable source of insight into these poets' work; recent criticism I've written on Louis Dudek's major long poem "Continuation" has been deepened by reading the interview with him. I can hear Dudek's voice—engaging and inquiring—in his discussion with Hutchman; Dudek states,

                        In Continuation 1 and Continuation 2, I at last found a voice where

                        I could say exactly what I want to say, and everything I want to say,

                        in the most amazing fragmentary way... you have to take risks in poetry.

                        What is poetry trying to do on the page? It's trying to represent the

                        poet's thought.

                        Many of us have fond memories of having met these eight poets. I remember meeting James Reaney at a League of Canadian Poets AGM in Toronto; he was wearing a tie decorated with books that I liked so much it took me a year before finding a similar tie for myself. In Edmonton, a few years ago, Mark Abley's excellent keynote address at the League's AGM was on Anne Szumigalski and it brought her life and work to a new audience. Elsewhere, I heard Fred Cogswell and Ralph Gustafson read their poems and from time to time corresponded with them. I sat and talked with Al Purdy after one of the times I heard him read. Louis Dudek, besides being my professor, was a friend until the end of his life. I remember being a first year graduate student at McGill University and walking into the English Department's staff lounge and seeing Laurence sitting discussing his own poetry with Louis Dudek. Dudek's DC Books published Hutchman's first book, Explorations (1975). George Johnston was a good friend, we both lived in rural south-western Quebec after he retired from teaching at Carleton University. In addition to many discussions on poetry George taught me the basics of the art of bee keeping which I did for many years. George and his wife Jean were both good friends and warm-hearted people, over the years of knowing them I also got to know some members of their family. During their careers all of these poets that Hutchman interviews readily made themselves available to newer poets. Reading Hutchman's conversations with them reminds me of the generosity and welcoming spirit of this modernist generation of poets, many of whom made an indelible impression on me.
                  All eight of these poets began writing and publishing during the 1930s to the1950s. Individually and collectively they made a significant contribution to Canadian poetry. P.K. Page, reminiscing about when she lived in Montreal, reminds us of poets we may have forgotten but who are still important for their role in Canadian literature, they include Patrick Anderson and John Sutherland. She also remembers with fondness Montreal poet A.M. Klein; Page says,

            ... he was only nine years older than I but he seemed to belong to a different generation. This had to do with a series of things, I think, with the fact that he was married, had children, and a law practise. He was already established as a poet... I find him a  wonderful poet and can't think why people today don't see it. But they will again.

            In his interview George Johnston discusses the literary scene back in the 1930s when he was a student and had just begun writing; Johnston states, "To tell the truth, I was hardly aware of a literary life in Toronto, except at the university. There was one intellectual sort of magazine which came out once a month..." This comment by Johnston reveals to us how far Canadian literature has progressed over the last sixty or seventy years.

            The eight poets Hutchman interviewed spent a lifetime writing poetry and thinking about poetry; theirs was a life centered on literature and poetry. The New Brunswick-based poet Fred Cogswell, who did a tremendous service for poets across Canada during his many years of running the literary small press, Fiddlehead, makes this statement on "the philosophical nature of ... poetry":

           

The particular philosophical nature of poetry is that its function is to illustrate the  qualities of the human mind that are the basis for the attitudes we have as human beings. Keep going farther than you've already gone, or you become a victim of what you've written up until that moment.

            In the interview with P.K. Page, living at the west coast edge of the continent, in Victoria, BC, a clap of thunder is heard as the interview comes to an end. PK says to Hutchman, "You're conjuring up gods that we don't normally have." This is what Hutchman does in all of these interviews. He conjures the gods of poetry. Hutchman's interviews with each of these eight poets is an intimate conversation with each individual. We hear their voice, their commitment to poetry, and their example of a life lived for poetry. Hutchman's book stays vivid and lively and brings the reader directly into the personality and writing of each of the eight poets. For anyone of any age, either scholar or reader, who is interested in the modernist poets of Canada, this book is an indispensable companion to the poets' collected works. That is part of the magic of this book.

                                                                        Stephen Morrissey

                                                                        Montreal, September 3, 2013