Reading at Rare Books and Special Collections at McGill University, April 2018

Not sure I'll ever watch this, like some others I don't like seeing myself in videos... This was a reading I gave with some old friends at Rare Books and Special Collections at McGill University, on 26 April 2018.

First there was snow and then, in mid-December, there was no snow

First it was green and lovely and we were all happy, and then there was snow and we weren't as happy, but then there was no snow and it was green and we were happy until there was snow again and we weren't as happy as before and then, today, there is no snow and some of us are happy and don't miss the snow and we're hoping for a green Christmas... well, in fact, we're hoping for either a green winter which won't happen or an early spring, like in January...

December 14 (today)

December 14

December 12



December 12

                                                                                December 10

December 10

December 6

                                   

December 6


And back to snow on December 18th followed by -22 C cold, wind chill feels like -33 C.

Farewell Fall of 2019, today is the Winter Solstice, December 21, and winter it will be...

A Poet's Journey, on poetry and what it means to be a poet

I am very happy to announce the publication of my new book, A Poet's Journey: on poetry and what it means to be a poet, just published by Ekstasis Editions in Victoria, BC. This is a compilation of essays and reviews written since 1975. Thank you, Richard Olafson, for creating such a beautiful book, this means more to me than anyone knows. Here is the cover and the table of contents.

Mid-November, Snow

This year the snow came early, 20 cm. of snow on Remembrance Day and it's unlikely to melt until next spring... five months of cold weather is not something we look forward to...

November 9

November 9

November 11

November 11

November 12

November 12

Farewell, Veeto

Here is Veeto and me at the St. Viateur Bagel Restaurant, our first meeting in many years, July 2005

Audrey Keyes, also known as "Veeto" and "Veeto Wendy" on Facebook, died on October 23, 2019; she was sixty-nine years old. I met Audrey in 1954 when we moved from my grandmother's flat on Girouard Avenue to Oxford Avenue; we were neighbours, both four years old, and we became friends. I'd go to her front door and ask Mrs. Keyes, "Can Audrey come out to play?" As children we had years of playing together, in her home, riding our bikes, always imagining things, always playing, always making up imaginary worlds, always "let's pretend"... I think I am a poet partly because of those years of imagination and play with Veeto. My older brother played with Veeto's older brother, Bobby. Both Veeto and Bobby were adopted, we all knew this and never thought anything of it.

                            

                                        Here we are outside of our respective front doors on Oxford Avenue, 
                                                                      where we lived in the 1950s

Veeto moved to Australia around 1968 and performed in the stage production of Hair; she loved music and she loved those years in Hair and the life-long friends she made at that time  My mother remarried and in 1963 we moved to Montclair Avenue, about a mile from Oxford, and Veeto and I lost touch until the summer of 2005. She had seen my poem "Hoolahan's Flats" in which she is mentioned and she emailed me in July 2005 about this; a few weeks later we met outside of the St. Viateur Restaurant on Monkland Avenue, I recognized her right away.

Veeto and her mom, around 2006, at Manoir Westmount

                                                                              

Veeto came to Montreal fairly regularly to visit her mother who lived at the Manoir Westmount on the corner of Landsdowne and Sherbrooke. Her mom was living a half block from where she grew up on Landsdowne; my dentist's office was located across the street from the Manoir and, had I known, I could have visited both of them when Veeto was in Montreal. Every time I visited my dentist I parked at the top of Landsdowne walked down the street passing where Mrs. Keyes grew up. Her mom was a lovely person, and when she died in 2008 I was at the funeral and met some of the other members of Veeto`s family, some visiting from Australia for this occasion. Veeto's mother, Edith Smith, died on February 28, 2008; Veeto's father, Richard J. Keyes, died on the same day, February 28, but in 1980. They are buried at Cote des Neiges Cemetery. Veeto spoke of walking along the hall of the Oxford Avenue flat and seeing her father praying beside the bed in the master bedroom. She said that her mother spoke of always living within sight of St. Joseph`s Oratory, even when she died in her mid-90s, at St. Mary`s Hospital, the Oratory was in sight outside of her hospital room window. I know the fifth floor on which she was a patient very well.

                                Veeto at her family monument at Cote des Neiges Cemetery, summer 2008

Veeto made a life for herself in Australia but here, in Montreal, Veeto also had a life, she had been a student at private schools, first at the Villa Maria, at the top of Monkland Avenue, a former home of three Governors General of Lower Canada; it became the home of a private girls' school in 1854. My cousin, Linda, also a student at the Villa, and who was also a neighbour and lived on Oxford Avenue, used to walk a very young Veeto to the Villa. Later, Veeto was a student at The Study, her parents spared no expense on Veeto.

Veeto visiting the Keyes' family monument at Cote des Neiges Cemetery

Veeto was born on January 15, 1950, the same day as another friend, Artie Gold, and while she never met Artie she knew Mary Brown, Artie's friend and companion for many years, who she met at a summer camp where Mary was working. Where we lived on Montclair Avenue was a half block from a residence for unwed mothers and across the street was the Salvation Army's Catherine Booth Hospital, this is where Veeto`s biological mother gave birth to Veeto. By the way, Veeto's name was given to her by her spiritual teacher, Osho, when Veeto was living in India; "Wendy" is the name Veeto's biological mother gave to her. Veeto was attached to both names.

A few years ago Veeto tried to get in touch with her biological mother; she also wanted to meet her biological mother and possibly her half-siblings and, she said, to see if any of them also sang, like her, as they walked along the street. But this lady, now elderly and living in Toronto, turned Veeto down and wouldn't meet her; it must have felt like a second rejection for Veeto. After that the discussion of finding her birth family ended.

One time, when Veeto was visiting, I took her for a long walk, through Montreal West, down the steep hill to Ville St. Pierre, and along Norman Avenue where we used to ride our bikes; it was all country back then, we both wanted to find some country in the city. We also used to buy fireworks on the main street of Ville St.Pierre; I remember blowing up Mr. and Mrs. Nuttall's tulips with fire crackers, they lived upstairs from us. Veeto remembered the names of all of our neighbours, I have forgotten most of them. We used to ride our bikes everywhere, even to the East End of the city to visit her grandmother; we were ten or eleven years old and it never occurred to us to tell anyone about these bike rides, why would anyone be interested? Truly, Veeto was the sister I always wanted but never had. But I did have Veeto.

Veeto also remembered my father's funeral in November 1956; that day she asked her mother if she could play with me and Mrs. Keyes, always loving to her daughter, said "Not today, not today." She remembered my father waiting for my mother to drive him to work at Windsor Station in downtown Montreal, he would sit on the balcony railing beside our front door; I remember him sitting there and I remember horse drawn milk wagons making their way along the street; I also remember looking up at the clouds and seeing faces that were frightening. Now, no one remembers any of this except for me, and that is why remembering is so important to me; to forget is to lose part of our inner being, part of our lives, part of our soul.

                                                                                                            The statue of Jesus behind Souvlaki George Restaurant

                                                                                corner of Coronation Avenue and Monkland Avenue

A few years ago Veeto and I were walking by Souvlaki George Restaurant and behind the restaurant is a life size statue of Jesus; we entered the backyard to get a closer look and there was a man there with whom Veeto began to talk. This man had worked in construction and so had Veeto, she had driven a large truck and worked on construction sites and even driven a taxi for ten years in Sidney, Australia; class barriers meant nothing to Veeto. This man liked Veeto right away. She treated him with respect and as an equal, even though he was a bit down-at-the-heels. That may have been the day we walked to Norman Avenue. Veeto was always an original, fearless, loving, one who celebrated life and accepted everyone she met.She had married in Australia and had two children, she had several grandchildren, she made her life in Australia; she loved people and music and people responded to her. Veeto loved life; and I ask, why is it the truly exceptional people go first?  

There is so much to say about Veeto but not enough time to say it. She was a strong woman used to hard work, but she was also well-read and knowledgeable about the world; she was highly intelligent and yet she lived, for the most part, a life of physical labour; she was adopted and embraced wholeheartedly the ancestry of her adopted Keyes family; she was named Wendy (I think of Wendy in Peter Pan), then she was named Audrey, and then she incarnated as Veeto. She was born in Canada and yet ended up making her home thousands of miles away in Australia. And this is Veeto, a completely original, caring, and loving person. The worst thing about all of this is that someone as loving and as full of life as Veeto should have left us so soon, and I know that many of us are devastated by her passing.

I send my deepest condolences to Veeto's family, to her daughter, her son, her granddaughter and other grandchildren, to her great grandchildren, and to her friends. She often spoke of her family in Australia of whom she was proud and loving. There is no turning the clock back, no recovering the torn off pages of the calendar, we've been blessed with her presence and now we must be the light in our own lives and the lives of others, just as Veeto was a light in our lives.

After Reading Guy Birchard's Valedictions

Home of Mary Brown and Artie Gold at 3667 Lorne Crescent

 

Before George Bowering was GB there was Guy Birchard, maybe the first GB, both named as such by AG, Artie Gold. Valedictions (2019), published by rob mclennan's above/ground press, is Guy's farewell to three deceased artists, poet William Hawkins, musician and visual artist Ray 'Condo' Tremblay, and our mutual friend, poet Artie Gold. I met Guy in the spring of 1973, I met Artie through Guy. I never met Ray Tremblay but one day my brother took a taxi in Ottawa that was driven by William Hawkins; somehow the subject of poets came up and Hawkins said that he had heard of me. It's a small world; we were all a lot younger in those days, we knew a lot of people. And now Guy's memoir has caused me to think about Artie once again, he was an imposing and domineering figure for many of us in the early 1970s.

Life seems to be a series of coincidences and cumulatively they can add up to something meaningful, or nothing at all. For instance, Guy says that he first encountered Artie at a reading by Michael Benedikt, but I was also at that reading, it was on 16 March 1973 in the Hall Building, the ninth floor I believe, and it may have been at this reading that I also met Guy, sitting a few rows behind me. Around that time, winter-spring 1973, Hopeton Anderson invited Guy to read at Karma Coffee House and that was the occasion on which Guy met Artie Gold; to get this sequence of events accurate, it was also at Guy's reading at Karma that Richie Carson, another poet of that era, invited Guy to read again at Karma. By then I knew Guy and he extended to me an invitation to read after he read (the reading was on the third week of April 1973), just as Hopeton Anderson had extended a similar invitation to Guy, all of these readings taking place at Karma. Karma Coffee House was located in the basement of the Sir Williams University Student Union Building. 

Artie was an extraordinary person, there was an aura of excitement surrounding him, he was a genuinely creative person; I doubt most of us meet someone like Artie Gold more than once in a lifetime. One winter day he and I and my first wife took a train to Ottawa and visited the National Gallery of Canada. For years I had a copy of The Far Point, bought on that occasion, an article in that issue was my introduction to what was happening in poetry in Vancouver where many of the most innovative poets were living at that time. There are other, happy memories of Artie; it was a seminal time when we were apprentices as poets. But now, after reading Guy's memoir of Artie, what is for me an unpleasant and pivotal memory has surfaced. It is a memory that explains what happened to my relationship with Artie. I remember talking with Artie and him telling me that he had published more than I had and that he was more important as a poet than I was. It may have been true but do we say that to a friend?  I have never said that to another poet and no other poet has said it to me, except Artie.

Remembering that comment by Artie I also realized that it is may have been around this time that my relationship with him began to diminish.  Artie was getting ahead in poetry, considering his talent and his intelligence the only thing that could hold him back was himself, the baggage of his life; the baggage eventually won: he was now being published by Talon Press in Vancouver; he was giving readings in BC, Ontario, and Quebec; other better known poets had heard of him and made him a celebrity of sorts; he was one of three poetry editors at Vehicule Press, the other two editors were Ken Norris and Endre Farkas. Artie had now become a "somebody". I benefited by Artie's ambition, Artie, Ken, and Endre published my first book, The Trees of Unknowing (Vehicule Press,1978) and I am grateful to them and to the press for that.

So, Artie moved on and was an important poet with a future. Then, Si Dardick, the owner of Vehicule Press, fired his three poetry editors and installed someone else in the job; I don't know the details of this firing but I do know that the books the new editor published never interested me; the emphasis was now on formalistic poetry.

I still knew Artie after he was no longer an editor at Vehicule Press; I gave him readings for several years, beginning in 1976, at the college where I was now teaching, I knew he needed the money. From these readings he would go home with a little money and office supplies from the college. But there were other changes happening in Artie's life; his decline into poverty, worsening health, and increasing drug dependency is usually dated from when Mary Brown, who supported Artie, ended their relationship by moving a few doors away but still on Lorne Crescent; later she moved to a house she helped build in the country. Mary Brown died in 1999. But now I wonder if  Artie's decline might also be dated from when he was no longer an editor at the press.

My long forgotten memory of Artie's comment to me had other repercussions on our relationship; it explains to me my distance from Artie in the years that followed. For instance, I continued knowing Artie but on a more formal basis, the old familiarity we once had was gone. Nothing lasts forever, everything changes. When he stored his boxes of archives in our basement, around 2005, I offered to give him a receipt (of all things!) and this surprised Artie as much as it surprised me at the time; however, I didn't want any problems with Artie and I didn't want Artie coming back at me saying I had polluted his papers with cat dander, an alleged trigger for his COPD (not asthma).  When I bought groceries for Artie, or clothes, or what have you—this was when he had friends supporting him so he could remain living autonomously—if I said I didn't have the time to go to several shops that day to buy him croissants or cans of chick peas he wouldn't push me to do it, he just agreed and let it go, in fact, I noticed he was uncharacteristically meek in accepting what I said. No good deed goes unpublished is one of my mottoes and it included Artie Gold.

Artie died in February 2007 and later that year a small group of us scattered Artie's ashes at places we thought significant to Artie. One of the people at this gathering told me that when she separated from her husband Artie phoned to offer his sympathy, at first this was an incredible thing for Artie to have done, she must have felt supported by Artie's phone call; but, more importantly, it must have at first felt doubly compassionate as it was from someone who was rarely compassionate about anybody. The point of this anecdote is that literally thirty seconds after Artie expressed his sympathy he returned to his favourite subject, himself. We both laughed at this, it was "good old Artie" being himself.

When I first saw Artie's cover drawing on his last chapbook, The Hotel Victoria Poems (above/ground press), I thought it was prescient, that this was the same bed in which the police discovered his body on Valentine's Day in February 2007. But I was wrong, Guy tells me this image appeared on a postcard he received when Artie was still living on Lorne Crescent, it is not the same room and bed where he died in 2007. Artie was a friend of our youth, he was one of the first real poets some of us met on this journey in life.

                                                                 October 2019, revised version

Mid-October and out for a walk

It's the Canadian Thanksgiving and we're headed into a federal election, the choices are minimal and not too exciting. So far it's been a lot of promises paid for with taxpayer money, endless speeches, scandals that blew over, and the whole thing descended into a comedy that is not funny or even entertaining.

Winter is not far off, this is the last chance for honey bees to stock up on pollen

Concordia University has made this mini-park just outside the rear gates of Loyola Campus 

Also at the mini-park

The baseball diamond is in the rear, at Loyola Park between Fielding and Somerled

Home sweet home... 

Poetry Is A Calling

 Calliope, the muse of epic poetry; detail from a Pompeii fresco

No one makes a conscious decision to be a poet—poetry is a calling, a metaphysical event— poetry calls you. To deny a calling is to step out of the current of life, it is to deny life and the direction in which life is sending you. To deny a calling is to betray your life, it's that fundamental. There are only a few times when you will have a calling in life, perhaps only once, and there aren't many people who have a calling, so to turn down what life has given you is to deny the basic integrity of one's life. Being a poet has always been the biggest event in my life; if you follow a calling you are affirming life at a very basic level; to be a poet is not a conscious decision, poetry calls you to be a poet.

Gardening, Mid-September in 2019

I've added a new section to the garden, as seen above

And now planted, cone flowers, bee balm, irises, day lilies, mint, and by the path raspberries. I planned this last summer, that's what gardening is, other than work in the garden, it's thinking and planning what you're going to do next year...

Final three photos, honey bees in the garden. It wasn't always this way, only for the last three years or so, but now honey bees are common in the city.

A poets' body of work: how much is too much, how much is too little?

One of complaints made by critics about A.J.M. Smith is that his body of published work is too small for him to be considered an important poet; if a poet hasn't done the writing, they reasoned, then how can that poet be considered significant? At first this view seemed valid to me; however, I also felt that Smith had written some individual poems that are the work of genius, he was too good a poet to be dismissed on this one point. Indeed, except for A.M. Klein none of the members of the Montreal Group of poets have large bodies of published work; Smith was not a prolific poet but he published more poems than Leo Kennedy and about as many as John Glassco, both members of the Group. Consider the following citation:

      After a life of persistent devotion to literature, he has left enough poems to make a single small volume (less, certainly, than a hundred poems in all), a single volume of prose, a few pamphlets, and a prose translation of the poems of Poe.

This could be a description of A.J.M. Smith's literary writing (omitting the reference to Poe) and yet the citation is taken from Arthur Symons' ground breaking book on the French symbolists, The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1919), and it is Stéphane Mallarmé who is being referred to. Symons affirms Mallarmé's work; E.K. Brown is critical of Smith's work.

Some poets have small bodies of work, these include Elizabeth Bishop who published 101 poems, Stéphane Mallarmé who published less than 100 poems, Jay MacPherson, John Thompson (who published two books), Patrick Kavanaugh, and of course A.J.M. Smith who published 100 poems. Is the poet who publishes a small highly crafted body of work, each poem the result of many drafts, the product of considered editing, better or worse than the poet who publishes a lot including a few brilliant poems? I suspect that some poets need to write a lot in order to arrive at a few good poems; others need to write very little but do endless edits and revisions to arrive at a few good poems of their own. Ezra Pound said, regarding Walt Whitman, that when he was young he found a small number of Whitman's poems worth reading but now that he is older he can't find those few poems. Many would say the same thing about Pound's poetry but few would say it about Elizabeth Bishop's work.

Some poets are proud of not writing much and I suspect that this is sometimes a pretention on their part, a kind of snobbery found among both individuals and little in-groups of poets. I have known people like this. Perhaps these poets have higher standards than the poet who cranks it out, they would have us believe this. What are some of the reasons these poets don't write more than they do? Perhaps they are not very good poets; perhaps writing poetry was just a lot of talk and socializing; talent without hard work isn't worth much. Poetry is an art of inspiration and work, not what could or might have been.  

Poets who write "too much" are also open to criticism; it is difficult to say how much is "too much" but the number of books published by established Canadian poets may be more than most of us think. Here is a list of several important Canadian poets and the number of poetry books they published, but with a proviso, I am not saying that they all published too much, only that  the number of books poets publish varies widely. Irving Layton published 51 books; Al Purdy published 33 books; Dorothy Livesay published 25 books; Louis Dudek published 23 books; Phyllis Webb published 23 books; Earle Birney published 21 books; Margaret Avison published 11 books; P.K. Page published 14 books; and George Johnston published eight books. All of these poets have made a substantial contribution to Canadian literature.

When I was a university student in the early 1970s, I would visit the poetry section at Classic's Little Book Store on Ste. Catherine Street West here in Montreal. The store had expanded from one floor to two, and then to a third floor where the poetry books were displayed at the top of the stairs. I remember seeing Clayton Eshleman's books, one title in particular stood out, Indiana (Los Angeles: Black Sparrow Press, 1969), a hefty book of almost 200 pages. And I remember my first reaction to this book: wasn't it a bit presumptuous to publish such a lengthy tome? Who had that much to say? My ideal for poets at that time, but not my personal reality, was a small body of meticulously crafted work. Over time I changed my opinion about Eshleman, in fact I became a fan of Eshleman's work and, in May 1978, I invited him to Montreal to read at the college where I worked as well as at Vehicule Art Gallery where I organized readings with John McAuley. Unfortunately, this gesture on my part, of friendship and respect for Eshleman, backfired on me. I found him to be a difficult person, not very friendly, and I don't remember hearing from him again after he left Montreal. I think there was a misunderstanding as to whether he would be paid in Canadian or American money, a difference of a few dollars that I regret not having made up at my own expense. Let me just say that Eshleman is a highly talented and gifted poet and translator, his work is original and visionary.

Many poets are critical of self-publishing but it has a long history and is a valid option for many poets; Louis Dudek recommended a number of approaches to publishing that included self-publishing (Whitman's first book was self-published), setting up a literary press, and being published by a small literary press. I have been published by established presses, I have been published by presses just getting off the ground, and I have self-published one of my books. My work has always been guided by the central myth of my life, discovered when I was young, and that is the Garden Myth, the fall from innocence into experience. My nine published books follow the progression of my life as it fits the template of the Garden Myth. I am working on two manuscripts, by the end of my literary career I will have written a medium sized body of work of eleven or so books of poetry, maybe these two final books will be self-published online but at least I will have done the work and completed my life mission.

In itself publishing too much or too little is not a valid basis on which to critique someone's life work; at best, it may be a way to qualify one's statements about the work, perhaps as an addendum to other more serious criticism; at worst it is lazy criticism and does little to evaluate a poet's work. I agree with Louis Dudek and T.S. Eliot (whose body of published poems is fairly small), both said that the final critic or judge of a poet's work is time. It isn't how much or how little you publish, it's how good the work is that you publish; it's not possible to know what poetry will last and what poetry will be forgotten, that's determined by unknown variables in a future that is also unknown.

                                                            Stephen Morrissey

                                                            September 2019

Honey Bees and Flowers in Mid-August

Mid-August and everything is lush and full of life. Honey bees are visiting hollyhocks, flowers are blooming, life is good. 

John Glassco, Ralph Gustafson, and F.R. Scott

Montreal by John Glassco, DC Books, 1973

Certain books, even certain groups of artists, seem to occur in clusters. Here are three long poems all published in 1972-1973 and all similar in expressing social criticism; they are poems of passion written in an open-ended form atypical of each of these poets' other work. First is one of my favourite poems, John Glassco's Montreal (DC Books, 1973); this is Glassco's history of Montreal and his criticism of the city for discarding the past in favour of urban development; many old mansions, all of importance to our heritage and all irreplaceable, were demolished in the 1960s. This has only gotten worse and the present city would be unrecognizable to Glassco as it is to me and many others. Despite what the crtitics say, this is one of Glassco's most interesting and certainly most idiosyncratic poems; it shows Glassco's love of language, it is Glassco having fun despite his lament for the lost city of his youth; Glassco's linguistic "fun" may not appeal to everyone... Louis Dudek, who published this chapbook, wrote "The Demolitions", a poem dedicated to Glassco, also lamenting the loss of Montreal that was charming, historical, and a place of artists, poets, and culture.

These and Variations for Sounding Brass
by Ralph Gustafson, self-published, 1972

Next is Ralph Gustafson's chapbook, Theme and Variations for Sounding Brass (self-published, 1972) in which Gustafson laments the loss of our collective innocence in several violent political events in the late 1960s and early seventies; these include the Prague Spring of 1968, Kent State in 1970, and the political terrorism of 1970 that lead to the War Measures Act in Quebec. I was never a big fan of Ralph Gustafson's poetry but this chapbook seems to me some of his best and most passionate work.

The Dance is One by F.R. Scott,
McCelland and Stewart, 1973

In my opinion F.R. Scott would have been a better poet had he written more long poems like his "Letters from the MacKenzie River", published in The Dance is One (M&S, 1973). This long poem has ten sections and is based on his 1956 trip to the North West Territories with his friend, our future prime minister, Pierre Eliot Trudeau. It is a truly magnificent poem that is also not typical of Scott's other work in poetry; it is my opinion that Scott would have been more significant as a poet had he written more poems like this and omitted some of the satire that he is known for; it is also better than Al Purdy's poems (published in 1966) about visiting the Baffin Islands, a place he didn't like.

According to some critics none of these chapbooks (or poems) are Glassco's, Gustafson's, or Scott's best work; however, these poems are among their most appealing and accessible work and can be read as a significant statement on the times in which they lived.

Revised: 17 January 2020