The Garden in mid-July 2020

New Sculpture on Loyola Campus

The science hub, the new building on the Loyola Campus of Concordia University, includes a recently installed sculpture. I don't know the artist's name or what the sculpture is called (it hasn't been announced), but it is quite imposing and you get an idea of what it might mean when you approach it from a distance. It looks like a "rough beast", almost an invisible man not wrapped in gauze but in striations of aluminum. This is a formidable sculpture, as though an amorphous human body, one arm bent and protruding from the body making it look like it is slouching towards something; standing beside the sculpture it doesn't seem to be anything but a formless mass. I don't see any celebration of science in this sculpture assuming there should be considering it is located between two science buildings (literal me), it is more of a dystopian impression of the new soulless human being that has been manifesting for the last hundred years or so. The sculpture is hollow so you can step inside and looking up you see the blue sky, windows of the new building, and the endless and infinite universe over one's head. These shapes above one's head remind me of work done by Hans Arp, if I remember correctly. The sculpture is actually a very perceptive and accurate image of an aspect of our new world order, one that is both disturbing and disconcerting.

Now I remember what the sculpture reminds me of, it is the Golem from Jewish mythology; this seems appropriate considering the age in which we live. 

And now (09 October 2020) I know the artist's name, it is Marc-Antoine Cote. 

Walking to Meadowbrook Golf Course

I've deleted a rant and substituted the following more reasoned and watered down commentary: most of the trees on this stretch of Cote St. Luc Road have been cut down, this is the road that ends at Meadowbrook Golf Course. The town of Cote St. Luc is about as soulless a suburb as you can find so no wonder they've destroyed this last bit of country-like area; developers won't rest until they've built condos on every square inch of land. There were alternatives to cutting down trees in this area, the best would have been to just leave things as they were. I am not convinced by the signs warning people of falling trees, or if the branch of a tree did fall then does that warrant cutting down most of the trees in this area? Well, folks, we'll see if they plant a single tree for every tree they've cut down which is what they said was their plan.

Now compare the road as it was with my photographs of what it looks like now:

Here is Google Street View over a twelve year period, 2007 to 2019: https://www.google.com/maps/@45.4564534,-73.6684001,3a,75y,208.22h,94.22t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sY1druHKghkiV9eiUA42kKQ!2e0!5s20070901T000000!7i3328!8i1664

Here is the road today:

Crows in our backyard

The personality of crows

In other words, crows are sociable, independent, proud, and very intelligent.

Discarded Personal Shrines

The Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti wrote that the only thing spiritual about shrines is the spirituality invested in them by believers; this would be disputed by the many true believers. As an experiment he suggested making a little shrine at home and placing flowers or candles in front of it everyday, also maybe say a few words or prayers, and soon this will become a habit and you will believe in the spirituality of the shrine and whatever it was made to represent. Walking by this same personal shrine, as pictured, I noticed that it has already been discarded by whoever made it; it has fallen into disrepair and someone has placed garbage on it. Whatever made it special has disappeared.

Not sure why anyone bothers with this "personal shrine", it's hidden in the middle of some bushes at the City Farm Garden at the Loyola Campus of Concordia University. I walked there yesterday and the shrine (as I've been calling it) has been further broken up... here it is:

On Keats's Axiom of Poetry and the Writing Process

First, I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by Singularity; it should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance. Second, its touches of Beauty should never be half way, thereby making the reader breathless instead of content. The rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural to him, shine over him and set soberly, although in magnificence, leaving him in the Luxury of twilight. But it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it, and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.

                                                    —John Keats, letter to John Taylor, February 27, 1818

In the late 1940s my father bought several boxes of books second hand, among these were volumes on grammar and English literature published by Oxford University Press. A few years after he died I began reading one of these books, The Oxford Book of English Prose (1945), it was the edition chosen and edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, and a letter by John Keats impressed me; it is Keats's letter of 1818 to John Taylor which includes his famous axiom, "That if Poetry comes not as naturally as Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all.” The whole quotation is brilliant, it speaks to us as though it was written only yesterday, and its message is as pertinent today as it was when was first written.

            Keats's axiom anticipates Jack Kerouac's essay on "Elements of Spontaneous Prose" (1958), both describe a similar approach to writing. Spontaneous writing can begin as unself-conscious jottings, scribblings, automatic writing, not censoring what one writes, and then proceeds to being soul-making as it reveals to the poet aspects of the imagination that have not been made conscious. Poetry is not prose and, while both use language to express something, poetry and prose are very dissimilar; Keats is writing about poetry but Kerouac's approach to writing can apply to either poetry or prose. James Joyce was a favourite writer of Jack Kerouac's but "spontaneous prose" is not the same as Joyce's "stream of consciousness" which is a narrative technique, Joyce sought to duplicate the monologue of a character's inner voice. Kerouac's emphasis is on writing as a process, it is a spontaneous approach to the composition of a text.

            Allen Ginsberg's phrase "first thought, best thought" is also concerned with the process of writing. The emphasis in both Kerouac's and Ginsberg's method of writing is on being spontaneous, on composing poetry that is original and true to the poet's vision. Spontaneous writing may even be useful, efficacious, for the poet in discovering his or her authentic voice, the voice in poetry that speaks from the soul and inner being of the poet. Ginsberg's approach may not result in consistently well-written poems, but for him a poem is like a Zen garden that includes apparent imperfections.  

            Let's also not forget that all poets have a foundation to their work that precedes writing poems, it is a poet's apprenticeship and is comprised of studying literature, years of writing to learn the poet's craft, and years of thinking about poetics. Whether formal or informal, extensive or limited, this foundation precedes and informs what the poet writes; with it there is an intelligence that is brought to each poem that is written. Can you induce spontaneity necessary to write a poem? Some poets have tried to do this by writing poems under the influence of alcohol or drugs believing that it will short circuit the ego's intervention when writing; other poets have tried to enter a trance-like state when they write. These are shamanistic approaches to writing; approached this way a poem seems to write itself and each poet will have their own experience of this. In effect, the poet's foundation as a writer—experiential and intellectual—will always inform what is written spontaneously or otherwise.

            Keats's axiom also reminds us that poetry is a part of the natural world; Keats mentions leaves on trees so let's briefly consider the symbolism of trees. While a tree's roots may be deep its branches reach into the sky, this is the joining of earth with heaven. It is Hades that is beneath the surface of the earth, a place of darkness but also creativity and growth, plant seeds and in a few days green shoots appear, visit Hades and you will have something to write about in your poems. For poets to mature it is necessary to visit the Underworld, as Persephone did; this is a journey into darkness and, if the poet has the courage, it is also a place of great creativity, of exposed truth, of revealing what has been hidden and disguised.

            The sky is also important, the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars, even the clouds, they suggest the archetypal and symbolical world that pre-exists the intellect; in the archetypes we find depth and insight, vision and clarity. Both the earth and the sky are a single movement of seasons and the complexity of psychological discovery is not one of embracing one or rejecting the other, but of embracing both, of embracing opposites. This is the natural environment of poetry and it is the attraction of poetry; meaningful poetry comes from deep in the unconscious mind, the same place of imagination as dreams and our unconscious thought processes. No one can force an articulation of this world, it speaks for itself without the intervention of the ego or the conscious mind, it must come to consciousness as naturally as leaves to a tree.

            C. G. Jung is one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, he is a brilliant assimilator of ideas, an explorer of inner space, and a spiritual guide. Mythology has always been important to poets, for instance in both William Blake's and John Keats's poetry, and Jung wrote about mythology in the context of his study of psychology; his followers have continued this work. As well, Jung's use of archetypes as a way to understand human behaviour speaks directly to our inner being; one of the important writers on this subject is Maud Bodkin who taught at Oxford University and wrote Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination (1934). There are other concepts that Jung popularized and that have resonated with a large contemporary audience, they are especially relevant to poets; for instance, the human Shadow, alchemy, anima and animus, the collective unconscious, dream work, introvert and extravert, and even Jung's interest in astrology all help to expand the poet's vision. Jung's study of consciousness is rich in ideas and images for poets, it can be a necessary part of the poet's foundation that I spoke of above.

            My reaction to Keats's statement when I was sixteen or seventeen years old and reading it for the first time was one of recognition, "of course, that's how poems are written." Keats's axiom  was something that I knew but as a memory remembered. The axiom is still important for poets; the alternative is to suffer a loss of connection to what makes real poetry that is not just fashion, entertainment, or formalistic writing. Keats states what is obvious to poets: poetry should come as naturally to the poet as leaves grow on a tree, you cannot make leaves grow and neither can you force a poem to be written.

                                                            17 - 28 May 2020 

Mid-June at the Garden Center

It's mid-June 2020 and we're just coming out of Wave One of Covid-19. Walking along Cote St-Luc Road yesterday I was surprised, but shouldn't have been, at seeing so many restaurants and stores closed for good. But Vincelli's Garden Centre is busy with happy gardeners buying shrubs, trees, annuals and perennials. And I was one of them!

Four Poems by Montreal Poets

The Improved Binoculars

by Irving Layton

Below me the city was in flames:
the firemen were the first to save
themselves. I saw steeples fall on their knees.

I saw an agent kick the charred bodies
from an orphanage to one side, marking
the site carefully for a future speculation.

Lovers stopped short of the final spasm
and went off angrily in opposite directions,
their elbows held by giant escorts of fire.

Then the dignitaries rode across the bridges
under an auricle of light which delighted them,
noting for later punishment those that went before.

And the rest of the population, their mouths
distorted by an unusual gladness, bawled thanks
to this comely and ravaging ally, asking

Only for more light with which to see
their neighbour's destruction.

All this I saw through my improved binoculars.

[1955]

My Lost Youth

by A.J.M. Smith

I remember it was April that year, and afternoon.
There was a modish odour of hyacinths, and you
Beside me in the drawing room, and twilight falling
A trifle impressively, and a bit out of tune.

You spoke of poetry in a voice of poetry,
And your voice wavered a little, like the smoke of your
Benson & Hedges
And grew soft as you spoke of love (as you always did!),
Though the lines of your smile, I observed, were a little
sententious.

I thought of my birthplace in Westmount and what that
involved
-- An ear quick to recoil from the faintest 'false note'.
I spoke therefore hurriedly of the distressing commonness
of American letters,
Not daring to look at your living and beautiful throat.

'She seems to be one who enthuses,' I noted, excusing
myself,
Who strove that year to be only a minor personage out of
James
Or a sensitive indecisive guy from Eliot's elegant shelf.
'What happens,' I pondered fleeing, 'to one whom Reality
claims . . . ?'

• • •

I teach English in the Middle West; my voice is quite good;
My manners are charming; and the mothers of some of my
female students
Are never tired of praising my two slim volumes of verse.

A.J.M. Smith, Poems, New & Collected, Oxford University Press, 1967

The Break-Up

By A.M. Klein

They suck and whisper it in mercury,
the thermometers. It is shouted red
from all the Aprils hanging on the walls.
In the dockyard stalls
the stevedores, their hooks rusty, wonder; the
wintering sailors in the taverns bet.

A week, and it will crack! Here's money that
a fortnight sees the floes, the smokestacks red!
Outside The Anchor's glass, St. Lawrence lies
rigid and white and wise,
nor ripple and dip, but fathom-frozen flat.
There are no hammers will break that granite lid.

But it will come! Some dead of night with boom
to wake the wagering city, it will break,
will crack, will melt its muscle-bound tides
and raise from their iced tomb
the pyramided fish, the unlockered ships,
and last year's blue and bloated suicides.

[1945-46] [1948]

Lyrics of Air

by Louis Dudek

This April air has texture
of soft scented ocean on my face --
no ripple against the skin
but open waves, parabolas from some April place
in the sky, like silk between the fingers
from old Cathay, blown about, or like gigantic roses
whose petals, waving, fall on my face
with a faultless petaline smoothness.

Delicate as a pear, this milk-white air,
to pour over the crust of windy March.
Give me a mouthful of such air, digestible as water,
to rarify in the bones and flow
upward, until
from the bud of my cold lips poetic leaves may grow.

Small Perfect Things (DC Books, Montreal, 1991)