An Inventory of Trees

Out most mornings for a walk, I noticed these trees about five years ago. Then I began photographing them, they were too interesting not to photograph. They are located on the corner of Brock North and Fielding Avenue. Here is a selection of my photographic inventory of trees.

November 2014

November 2014

November 2014

November 2014

May 2018

May 2018

March

March

March

January

Mid-November

Mid-November

Review of Janet O. Dallett's The Not-Yet-Transformed God.

Review of Janet O. Dallett's The Not-Yet-Transformed God. 

Nicolas-Hays, Inc. 1998. 

146 pages. 

By Stephen Morrissey

After hearing Janet Dallett speak before an audience of the C.G. Jung Society of Montreal last November 2001, I knew that this was an author and lecturer whose books would be important for me. Dallett's The Not-Yet-Transformed God is both engaging and moving. Indeed, as with the work of some other Jungian writers, the experience of reading Dallett's work is that it becomes a part of the reader's personal meditation, a part of the reader's life. Written from the urgency of personal insight and experience, Janet Dallett's The Not-Yet-Transformed God offers a perceptive insight into "depth psychology and the religious experience," which is the sub-title of her book.

Dallett begins with C.G. Jung's observation that "every patient over the age of 35 who had come to him for help during the preceding thirty years was suffering from a religious problem." Framing the psychological need for help as a religious problem immediately changes it; we are not then dealing with pathology but with the need for a religious perception that may transform the individual. Dallett suggests that we begin by examining what we find "numinous." Indeed, what we find numinous is an opening or a gateway into the psyche and self-understanding. She writes, "If you want to know what is numinous to you, consider what you find fascinating, compelling, thrilling, mysterious, horrifying, gripping, tremendous, terrifying, dreadful, or awesome. Think about the things with which you are preoccupied in spite of yourself."

An example of numinosity Dallett refers to is the death of Princess Diana. Many of us who previously had no interest in Princess Diana were so deeply moved by her death and funeral that we wept as though a much loved friend or family member had died. The extent of our grief suggests that something more was happening than the death of a priveleged young woman thousands of miles away. Dallett writes, "As I see it, the former princess was destroyed by the dark side of the spirit, which she let out of the bottle by leaving the royal family and setting out to live an individual life." Dallett offers a fascinating discussion of the phenomenon of Princess Diana, but since the writing of Dallett's book the horrendous events of September 11th must also be included, not only as a tragedy but also as a significant numinious experience for many people. Dallett writes that "the energy of divinity is rarely where we expect it to be." We are like Jacob in Gauguin's painting "The Vision after the Sermon" reproduced on the cover of Dallett's book. We struggle in darkness with events that seem to overwhelm us, but like Jacob, when we finally become more conscious, we discover that it is the angel or the numinous with which we are wrestling.

What is 'the not-yet-transformed God'? Dallett writes, "When he (Jung) refers to God...he means the image of God in the psyche, which at other times he calls the Self." She explains the Self more fully; Jung, she writes, "speaks of it paradoxically as both the center and the circumference of the total personality, including both conscious and unconscious aspects. The Self is an archetype that carries the numinosity of the image of God. It is often used as a synonym for the God within." When Dallett writes about God, she is always, "strictly speaking, referring to the image of God in the psyche" and "does not in any way preclude the existence of a God outside the psyche."

At some point in our lives many of us are called to reflect on the inner life, to begin the process of individuation. Dallett writes, "the instinct to individuate often appears first in a negative form: life-threatening illness, severe depression, an extramarital affair, a psychotic episode." Individuation is not only self-transformation, it is also the transformation of our concept and experience of the divine. Dallett discusses Jung's "description of historical changes in the Western God-image", moving from how "Yahweh displaced the ancient nature gods and goddesses" and later the God-image changed again by incarnating in Christ. Dallett writes, "Today, says Jung, the incarnation wants to take place in many people through the process of individuation."

In the final chapters of The Not-Yet-Transformed God Dallett gives the reader some insight into how the process of individuation takes place. She writes, "the process of individuation entails the gradual discovery, through trial and error, of exactly how much and what kind of power rightfully belongs to a particular individual, in the course of which the unconscious God-image inside becomes conscious and is tempered until it can be lived in a mature and responsible way." Helping the individual with the "gradual discovery" of the Self are Jung's important concepts of the Shadow, the complementarity of opposites, and so on. These concepts form the foundation of Dallett's discussion of individuation and it is always rewarding to hear Jung's key concepts discussed from a different author's perspective.

Janet Dallett's The Not-Yet-Transformed God is a significant book. In light of the events of September 11 we ask: How are we to live? What are we to do? Many of us can still turn for comfort to the old image of the divine, but we know that we must also look within ourselves, that we can change in a fundamental way, that we can become conscious individuals. The alternative is that "everything suppressed, repressed, denied, or simply unseen in a person will eventually come out." Dallett writes: "By carrying my portion of untransformed God-energy consciously, I believe that I remove it from the general supply, thereby reducing the collective pressure toward war, terrorism, mass murder and other out-of-control forms of violence." Every age is important, but each age feels that the urgency of change is now more pressing than any preceding it. We feel traumatized since September 11, and it is the duty of all people of good will to begin or continue the important work of individuation. The alternative, unfortunately, is a future of conflict, turmoil, and suffering.

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

A Tribute to Louis Dudek

Note: This is the text of my speech prepared for the Louis Dudek Tribute held in the Writers' Chapel at St. Jax Church, 1439 Sainte-Catherine Street West, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1S6, on 12 October 2018.

Louis Dudek was one of the most generous people I have known; his generosity touched many people in significant ways. For me, he wrote an introduction to my first book of poems; because of his letters of reference I was awarded several Canada Council writing grants and I was hired to teach English literature at Champlain Regional College where I taught for 35 years; but the most important gift was his generous spirit, that he gave freely of himself. He was a wonderful person, a friend, a teacher, and a mentor, and we all miss him. I enrolled as a graduate student at McGill University in 1974 because I wanted to study with Louis Dudek and it was one of the best decisions I've made in my life. This evening we honour Louis, one of our greatest poets, he enriched many people's lives, my own included.

          I must tell you of a meeting I had with Dudek on March 10, 1975 because it is still important to me. At this meeting in his office he read some of my poems which he liked very much. There is no time to go in to the details of the meeting but Louis gave me something that afternoon that only an older poet can give to a younger poet; I was 24 years old at the time, and what he gave me was confirmation that I was a poet. I left that meeting feeling that I had nothing to worry about, just keep writing and life as a poet would unfold. And that's what I did. The day on which that meeting took place becomes more poignant for me, my father died in 1956 and March 10th was his birthday.

          Another event—it was the afternoon of January 9, 1979—I was with Louis Dudek and Lionel Kearns, who named his son "Louis" after Louis Dudek. We had something to eat at a food court after Lionel’s reading. My then wife was pregnant but was not expecting to give birth for another four weeks. This was the one time I went off by myself, other than going to work, while my wife was pregnant. I arrived home around 5 p.m., the flat on Northcliffe Avenue was in darkness, and I found an almost illegible note scribbled by my mother-in-law telling me to go to the hospital, my son had been born prematurely. This is where I was when my son was born, not in the birthing room at a major hospital, but with Louis Dudek and Lionel Kearns talking about poetry in a food court in downtown Montreal. Life can be very strange.

          Think of Louis' contribution to Canadian poetry. On my book shelf I have almost forty books either written by Louis or about his writing. His books have been an inspiration to many people, they communicate an infectious love for poetry. There are several selected poems; books of his criticism and book reviews; his thoughts on poetry; his epigrams; his 1941 diary; a book on philosophy and another on the mass media; also, several anthologies of poetry that he edited, one that was widely used as a college text book and another one co-edited with Irving Layton; and a collection of texts and essays that he edited with Michael Gnarowski; a book on  "CIV/n", a literary magazine edited by his future wife, Aileen Collins, in the 1950s; also his 1967 "First Person in Literature" talks that were broadcast on CBC radio's "Ideas" programme; and don't forget his book of letters from his friend Ezra Pound. There is also Frank Davey's book on the poetry of Louis Dudek and Raymond Souster; special issues of at least two periodicals dedicated to his work; Robin Blaser's excellent selection of Dudek's poetry; a book remembering and honouring Louis, Eternal Conversation; and Susan Stromberg-Steins' biography of Louis Dudek. Susan and I were in Dudek's graduate seminar in the fall-winter semester, 1974-75. He was certainly the best and most influential teacher I ever had; I learned so much from being Dudek's student and friend, things he said to me decades ago are still remembered today.  

          Dudek is a poet whose major work, Continuation, a long poem that he worked on for over forty years, will one day be better recognized for its importance. Dudek began writing Continuation when he was 49 years old, a month later he turned fifty; however, the concept for how to write the poem was discovered by Dudek in 1956, when he was only thirty-eight years old. Dudek tells us that he could only write Continuation after he discovered his authentic voice, one that was a memory of his thought processes when he was a child. With this in mind, Continuation is Dudek’s life-long work. The theme of Continuation is poetry, what it means, its importance, and the poet's dedication to his work; indeed, poetry is Dudek's religion. When he championed Ezra Pound, and he told me he never convinced anyone to like Pound's Cantos, what he really championed was great poetry.

          I remember Louis showing me the manuscript of his Epigrams before it was published, typed on onion skin paper, in his office at McGill. The key to Continuation, and the foundation on which the poem is written, are Dudek's epigrams. Dudek writes, “Epigrams are one-line poems. A lot of them together are like a long poem” (Dudek, 1975, p. 38). That “long poem” is Continuation. Another key to Continuation is Dudek's admiration for Henry Miller; Louis' ideal for his own poetry is to write in the conversational style of Henry Miller but always maintaining the critical faculty of Matthew Arnold. In Continuation Dudek is able to combine what he learned from Miller and Arnold in order to communicate his poetic vision.

          Louis Dudek devoted his life to writing poems, to the literary community, to teaching, and to his family and friends. I am grateful for having known him, he changed my life for the better and what greater praise can be given to a fellow human than that they changed your life, they made it better, they helped you fulfill your promise and destiny? It is an honour to have known Louis Dudek and to have contributed this evening to this Dudek Tribute.

-- Stephen Morrissey

Peace and Quiet at the City Farm Garden

This part of the City Farm is located behind Hingston Hall on the Loyola Campus of Concordia University. This is what it was like in 2018-19; by 2020 it had been destroyed to make way for a new building and other construction...

This is the solar house; April 2018, demolished in the fall of 2019 or early spring 2020

Same place but in May 2018

Bee balm, cone flowers behind; photo taken in July 2018; most of this was ploughed under or other wise destroyed

City Farm, July 2018; none of this exists now

City farm, July 2018

Now it's August 2018

Honey bees at the City Farm, August 2018; in fact, I saw only one or two honey bees, summer 2020

Honey bees, August 2018

Honey bees, August 2018

Honey Bees in Flight

Photos taken in mid-August 2018 at the City Farm garden on the Loyola Campus of Concordia University in Montreal. One of my favourite activities, watching honey bees in flight collecting nectar and pollen.

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

A Place of Quiet in Loyola Park

The new soccer field at Loyola Park has been completed and the children's area has been moved and improved, but thankfully nothing has been done to this quiet area; some things don't need to be improved, they're perfect just as they are.

Let's begin our walking tour of places of peace and quiet in this part of our neighbourhood. 

Believe Nothing

When did I become a nihilist? I was born this way.

Inner Space is a hinterland of cosmic waste; here, everyone is either a nihilist, a poet, or both.

My defense is suited to one whose motto is "Believe nothing".

Poets used to be referred to as "ground breaking" or "visionary"; now they want to be referred to as "award winning poets", the visionaries are gone. 

I am well known in the territory of Inner Space.

About what am I incredulous? On most days, just about everything.

A whole new cohort of poets has arrived,  they are ambitious, self-conscious, and dedicated to self-promotion; in other words, younger versions of older poets.

The opposition of nihilists to all forms of censorship is famous in the history of Inner Space.

I am not the Pope's nose but I can still smell shit when it's all around me.

As we cross the green archetypal fields of poetry we reach the borders of Inner Space.

I have lived the nihilist's life: anonymous, introverted, and appalled.


Mister, in Inner Space we don't have room for anybody but poets and nihilists, so you'd better high tail it outta here before you're discovered.

Most religious and political beliefs offend my sense of nothingness.

A poet's apprenticeship can never be replaced with sitting in a classroom workshopping someone's poems.

Believing anything makes people stupid.

Photo taken at the Montreal Botanical Gardens, 2009

R.G. Everson's "Everson at Eighty"

R.G. (Ron) Everson was a prominent poet back in the 1950s and 60s, he is also one the founders of the League of Canadian Poets. Like many of the older generation of poets you don't hear much about Everson today. I just read Everson at Eighty (Oberon Press, 1983) which also has an introduction by his friend Al Purdy. Purdy is supposed to have edited this selected poems, but it's a bit confusing if he really did and there are parts of his introduction that are also confusing; for instance, he writes of going on a trip to Newfoundland with the Eversons but also present on this trip was Purdy's wife and her husband, but the husband he is referring to might in fact be Purdy himself, referred to in the third person, or it might be some other man who is married to Purdy's "wife". It just doesn't make sense. Thirty-five years after it was published, Everson at Eighty is still worth reading.

As an aside, in the early 1970s I heard Al Purdy read his work at Loyola College (now the Loyola Campus of Concordia University) and after the reading, in the faculty lounge, I met Everson who had been talking with his friend Al Purdy. Poetry was a small world in the old days but that small world was populated with a pretty talented group of poets.

1983

R.G. Everson, 1903-1992

I've been reading and enjoying R.G. Everson's poetry for many years. Ron Everson (1903 - 1992) was a Montreal poet, he was also a lawyer who never practised law and who spent most of his career in public relations. His extensive literary archives are at McMaster University; he has a voluminous correspondence with other well-known poets, he published more than ten books of poetry, he was published in important periodicals (for instance, in Poetry (Chicago). Al Purdy, Earle Birney, Irving Layton, and Louis Dudek were all his friends, other poets thought highly of his work. His poetry is accessible without being simplistic, and despite all of this he's largely forgotten or ignored. The only missing ingredient, and possible failing, in Everson's body of work is a single (or several) highly impressive poems by which he can be recognized and known. He was a good technician although not a great poet, but still a poet who is enjoyable to read. He published most of his books in his last twenty years, I guess he was trying to catch up on lost time after spending so many years away from the Muse and toiling in the PR business. In 1960 Everson and his wife lived at 4855 Cote St. Luc Road, apt # 608, in Montreal; they spent their winters in Florida.  

1976

1969

1978

1965

1957

R.G. Everson's home in this apartment building,
on Cote St. Luc Road, Montreal

Is F.R. Scott a Major Poet?

A few months ago I made the comment on Facebook that F.R. Scott is a "minor poet". Right away I knew I had committed some kind of Canadian Literature heresy; what? F.R. Scott is a minor poet? This led me to wonder about the criteria for how we categorize poets as "major" and "minor". T.S. Eliot in his essay, "What is Minor Poetry?", writes that the whole of the body of work by a major poet is greater than that same poet's individual poems. The opposite is true of the minor poet; the minor poet has a few really good poems but the majority of the minor poet's body of work is not equal to the excellence of a few individual poems. Eliot says that we need to read all of a major poet's work. All we need to read of a minor poet are the poems that are anthologized, the rest of the body of work is unimportant for the average reader. It is very difficult to categorize a poet as "major" because the criteria for categorizing poets is different for each poet; someone who is a major poet may not be "major" for the same reasons some other poet is considered "major". There is no single set of criteria for identifying a major poet; however, minor poets are easily identified. Returning to Frank Scott, I read The Collected Poems of F.R. Scott Toronto, McCelland and Stewart, 1981); he is a surprisingly original and compassionate poet and worth reading today. I can't bring myself to say that Scott is a major Canadian poet but (despite Eliot) I would suggest reading all of Scott's work, there isn't a lot of it but it's worth reading.

1981

Believe Nothing

I wanted to be a part of something and I thought I was. I thought I was on the great journey of individuation, or that I believed in God, that I was a part of something connecting me with the great ideas and experiences shared by so many people. But, in truth, I wasn't a part of anything. If you "believe nothing" then all of the old constructs of life, the scaffolding that supported your existence, have collapsed. Belief was, in retrospect, nothing real or lasting, it was a pretence or an illusion of belief—mostly it was a pretence, as intellectual assumptions, beliefs, and considered analyses end up being. The doctors are wrong in their diagnoses, the Ivy League educated poets and intellectuals have fooled even themselves with their self-importance, the imams, priests, and gurus are deluded, the politicians are obviously liars, the social workers want to break up families, the teachers are selling a lot of preconceptions based on their idea of what they stand for, the intellectuals are filled with book learning but no wisdom or practical knowledge. There is no satori, no heaven, no hell, no enlightenment, no god, no prophet, there is nothing. I asked myself, what if nothing I believe is true? What if all of my beliefs and assumptions about life are wrong? Very few people are willing to say, "Look! The Emperor has no clothes! He's naked and everything he stood for is a lie and a cheat of belief." I did not decide to believe nothing, I accepted it with difficulty; in fact, it was what I always believed but never admitted to myself. But then, one day, the scaffolding of belief collapses, there is no free will, there is no certainty about anything except that the Emperor has no clothes. Believe what you want after this, but for now, believe nothing.