It's been a very cold winter and it looks like it will continue being very cold until the end of March. Here are photographs from a walk on February 17, on the hidden trail; this winter, beginning in early November, has not been a time for any really pleasant walks. But we're Canadians, we endure. And we wait for spring.
A stained glass window at the United Church of Canada, Huntingdon, Quebec, dedicated to Robert Sellar, author and founder and editor of the now defunct Huntingdon Gleaner newspaper.
How to Improve the World (You Will Only Make Matters Worse).
— John Cage
Whatever we change, we change at the loss of something else, and not every change is for the better. We believe in change and celebrate what is new, but at great expense to ourselves. Some things that we changed for something new we may have considered reforms, but they ended up making life worse, or more complicated, or they destroyed institutions that have supported society for centuries. Not much thought is given to how change will affect us, what we are giving up, what we are replacing, or what we have lost. We are a society that believes in change for its own sake, that what is new is better than what is old, and people cheer for change as though all change is wonderful. What people are cheering for now may be what people will regret in the future.
The reason we adopted the metric system is that it was presumed it would make us more economically competitive with other nations, for instance, with the European Union. Of course, the young accept the metric system, it's all they have ever known for measuring and weighing things, and it is taught in schools. Others among us have never wholeheartedly accepted metrification; fruit and vegetables in grocery stores are weighed in both metric and the imperial system, in ounces and pounds, and measurement for building construction material is still in the imperial system, we buy a sheet of plywood that is eight feet by four feet, a two by four is measured in inches, and so on. Measure twice, cut once, is the carpenter's rule; and it is still done in inches and feet.
Metrification meant giving up an aspect of both our collective inheritance and the use of words that pertain to measurement. But we didn't care, we accepted something that displaced centuries of our history, our way of life, and our language. Metrification moved us further from what is specific and historical, the Avoirdupois system, and into what was conceived in conferences and has very little connection to the everyday life of everyday people. My concern here is not which is the better system of weights and measurement, it the loss of language, history, and our way of life; of course, we assume that we can't go back, that going back will never happen.
The Imperial system is derived from the Avoirdupois system which originated eight hundred years ago, certain words are from Old English, the Romans, and earlier civilizations. An "inch" is 1/36th of a yard, from the Old English "ince" or "ynce"', and it is 1/12th of a foot. A "foot" is from the Old English, it is a linear measurement of a man's foot measured as twelve inches. A "yard" is the length of a man's belt but also calculated by King Henry I as the distance from his nose to the thumb of his outstretched hand, it is 36 inches in length. While a "furlong", a word still used in horse racing, is the length of the average plowed furor, it is 660 feet long. A "mile" is from the Romans and calculated as 5,280 feet; a "country mile" refers to travelling over difficult terrain over a long distance since it is not a straight line.
Meanwhile, the metric system dates back to around the time of the French Revolution, from 1795 to 1799, replacing other systems of measurement. The metre was determined by dimensions of the Earth; the kilogram or unit of mass was based on the volume of the litre. It was not long before France and then the rest of Europe had adopted the metric system. This system of measurement is a child of conferences, both the Treaty of the Metre (1875) and the Conférence générale des poids et mesures continued to invent and increase divisions of the material world according to the metric system.
If our previous system of measurement is ancestral and originated in a pre-industrial rural society, then the metric system is fairly recent, originating in cities, by intellectuals and academics, and based in measurement for science, business, and urban dwellers; it is not a system of measurement with a relationship with the natural world, with the earth, or with anything to do with forests, rivers, wild life, oceans, fish, no coast lines, farming, small towns, hunting, and so on. Perhaps most urban dwellers don't care about forests, rivers, wild life, oceans, fish, coast lines, farming, small towns, hunting, and so on. The metric system does not spring from the earth that we walk on or from our ancestors or a belief in the importance of place or where we live; its origin is an abstract invented system of measurement, it is an inbred system based on itself.
How do we define what it means to be a human being and does this definition include a soul? The soul does not resonate to the metric system, the soul demands specificity, place, tradition, and history; the soul includes forests, rivers, wild life, oceans, fish, coast lines, farming, small towns, hunting, and so on. The metric system was imposed on us as so much else has been imposed on us; what is being imposed on us moves us away from tradition, our ancestors, and the ground on which we walk. The metric system does not spring from place, or from our ancestral and historical place.
Metric displaced pounds, ounces, inches, and feet, it displaced what our ancestors knew and lived with, and it displaced words that were used every day by average people going about their lives. We can't go back to the old system but we should remember that change is not always for the best, that what changes displaces what we already have, and in retrospect what we already have may not be all that bad. Today's society is beginning to look very different from what we had, and were happy with, even just five years ago. I am not saying that change is not needed in society, but change and the direction in which our society is now headed is not a place some of us want to go, it looks to be dominated by the State, by globalism, by the deterioration of the family unit, by a laissez-faire morality, by the end of our way of life, by everybody talking at odds with everybody else, and by replacing our vocabulary with new words that, in effect, replace and destroy the past. Anyone opposed to metrification was depicted as a crackpot, reactionary, terrible people, and trying to hold back "progress" (all of the usual reactions by the vocal liberal minority). One day you won't even be able to recognize society because of the changes imposed on us by progressives.
Note: this was originally published here on 22 November 2020 under the title "The Metric System"; it has been edited, expanded upon, and republished here.
I assumed the rabbit lived in one of the backyards adjacent to ours. If you look at our street, or most other streets around here, you'll see people's homes and in front of the homes there is a sidewalk on both sides of the street and an asphalt road running between the sidewalks (I am being simplistic but I want to make a point). It seems to be relentless city but there are backyards behind each of the houses, there are two backyards adjacent to each other; on some blocks this land is taken up with a lane (the lanes of NDG are a great place to take a walk) and some backyards have flower or vegetable gardens, some are just grass, some have a swimming pool, and most aren't used much. So, the rabbit and other urban wildlife have a lot of land to enjoy and a lot of places to live and places where food can be found. And then, looking at our backyard, my Canadian Cottage Garden, I saw the rabbits' footprints, his trail, and it led from where I leave carrots for him to a pile of branches and weeds, I left these in a pile at the rear of the garden not wanting to bag and discard this stuff, but also wanting to add to the diversity of what grows and what is present in the garden. There are flowers and bushes and there is a growing wild space, planned by me last summer, and part of this is a pile of green vegetation. Now I see the rabbit probably lives in this pile of vegetation, people say rabbits live underground, perhaps under the vegetation. Anyhow, I'm happy with his presence and I don't plan on growing vegetables, just flowers and hostas, hydrangeas, and so on, nothing he'll want to eat.
Here are photographs, taken from the second floor bedroom window of our home, of the backyard in winter with the rabbit's path from where I leave carrots for him to where he possibly lives.
Where the rabbit lives.
Where carrots are left for the rabbit.
The rabbits' home?
The rabbit's ears are burning, he knows someone is talking about him...
Someone phoned yesterday, the first thing they asked was "how's the rabbit?"
I am now eating carrots and they're pretty good, not much taste but good.
Yesterday, around 6 p.m., I looked outside and there was the rabbit eating his carrots; he's really just a little guy. When he finished he ran off to a neighbour's backyard.
Note: Top photos were taken on 13 February 2026; other, bottom photos, taken in January 2026.
They get up every morning and they go to work He sells cars and she's a nurse Workin' long hours is the devil's curse Things are gettin' tight, but it could be worse
She tries hard to ignore the news Nothing makes sense and she gets confused Between what is false and what is true And she worries they won't get through
Come on, baby, we gotta be strong Dark days are getting long Looking for comfort in a song Everybody knows the world's gone wrong Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
They can see what's going down Empty houses all over town So many lost are never found And bad, bad signs are all around
A lot of people being put on the street It's gettin' harder to make ends meet He comes home every night feelin' beat And wonders how long he can take the heat
Come on, baby, we gotta be strong Dark days are getting long Looking for comfort in a song Everybody knows the world's gone wrong Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
She stares out the window and shakes her head She can't believe the things she's read She can't believe what's being said Some days she can't get outta bed
She hopes this won't last forever She needs to believe it's gonna get better It's getting hard to keep it together They need each other now more than ever
Come on, baby, we gotta be strong Dark days are getting long Looking for comfort in a song Everybody knows the world's gone wrong Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
She holds him tight and softly smiles Says, "Baby, let's put on some Miles" And dance barefoot across the tiles And forget our troubles for a little while
Everybody knows the world's gone wrong Everybody knows the world's gone wrong Everybody knows the world's gone wrong Baby, the world's gone wrong Baby, the world's gone wrong Everybody knows the world's gone wrong Everybody knows the world's gone wrong Everybody knows the world's gone wrong
Note: Aboveis Lucinda Williams performing her song.
Below: Lucinda Williams was interviewed on PBS's evening news, 7 p.m., February 19, 2026. It is worth watching and hearing what she says has to say; Lucinda Williams is a highly talented and intelligent person.
At the IGA today, two pound bags of carrots were selling for 87 cents a bag, of course I bought three bags for our resident rabbit; that’s $3.00 for six pounds of carrots while five pounds of carrots is usually $5.00. This should last me over a month or so of daily feeding the rabbit. Yesterday, I saw the rabbit running across the backyard, the days are getting longer and the crepuscular light he favours is later in the day. This morning, after I finished shovelling last night’s snow, I saw what looked like a small dog running along the sidewalk on the other side of the street; then I realized it was the rabbit. He’s a busy little fellow! He's also avoiding the crows who would love to swoop down and fly away with a rabbit; however, I suspect he's too heavy for that.
I wrote "The Great Year" in the mid- to late- 1990s. Here is the complete, edited, version available on the internet archive.
The Great Year is a collection of poems that celebrate a period of time that lasts 25,868 years during which Earth passes through the twelve zodiacal signs, and the Great Months, each lasting approximately 2,500 solar years. Poetry is the voice of the human soul, and like astrology and mythology, it is also the language of the unconscious mind, of dreams, symbolism, irrationality, and intuition.
This third book, the parts were written but never collected to make a book out of them, let's call it "a proposed book", by Louis Dudek, and continuing his Continuation project, was meant to be his final Continuation statement; the incomplete and unassembled nature of this text coincides with the incomplete nature of the whole project. There isn’t a completed book titled Continuation III; there are bits and pieces, an assemblage of fragments that are significant. Continuation III is the deconstruction of Continuation I and II. It is the intervention of life over art, the separation of artifice and authenticity. The triumph of truth over poetry’s facsimile of authenticity. It is where poetry ends and the last words and absolution begin.
Final lines in Continuation III:
Stand there and remember
the paltriness of worldly claims
and the immensity
that is always now.
--The Surface of Time (2000), p. 84
-o-
The content of Continuation III was published in two installments by Sonja Skarstedt’s Empyreal Press. “Continuation III [Fragment]” and “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]” both appear in The Caged Tiger (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 1997). “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]” is the only section of all three "Continuation" that deviates from the style, use of epigrams, and line breaks found in the previous two books. The final poems are in Dudek’s last book, The Surface of Time (2000).
There is no single volume or completed series of poems called Continuation III but there are fragments, and completed sections, of what might have been the text of this non-existent third book. In Dudek's The Caged Tiger (1997) there is "Continuation III (Fragment)"; it has four sections and the fourth section emphasizes the importance of poetry; this is followed by "Notes for Ken" (Norris), these are page numbers and notes explaining some of the references and meaning of this section. Then, Dudek published Surface of Time (2000) and the final Continuation III poems are included here, "Sequence from "Continuation III". This is the conclusion to the Continuation project; it emphasizes the importance, value, and journey of Dudek’s poetry, both writing poetry and reading poetry; in addition to poetry the other topic in the Continuation texts is God, the divine presence, and there are references to both God and poetry throughout all three Continuation books. Suddenly, the poem ends, not in mid-sentence but it ends (as life ends), the various fragments have ended but it still has the feeling of continuation; it might serve as Dudek's literary “last will and testament": it's the gift of the importance of poetry. But it is also a failed completion of the Continuation project and proves my belief that most long, multi-volume poems end in failure, not in completion, and, as Pound said of his Cantos, it does not cohere.
These two books in which the Continuation III poems appear contain other short poems, and this might suggest that the energy for completing Continuation had run out, I suspect that this is the case; perhaps poetry is a young person’s activity, it requires energy the old don’t have; but Dudek might have asked himself why write short poems when the larger and more consequential Continuation project needs to be completed? The obvious answer is that he no longer had the energy or strength, or vision, to sustain a longer poem.
-o-
Continuation III is preoccupied with and describes what it’s like to be old. It has a quality of increasing fragmentation, the body is collapsing, it's closing down,, it is beginning to reach its end.
It is possible some parts of Continuation III were written much earlier and then recycled into the final book. I have tried to indicate both the movement of time and the various insights in these three books; dates for composition remain approximate, for instance, the embryo of Continuation III was in 1990.
-o-
"Continuation III" (this section is found at the end of The Caged Tiger) is divided into four sections with an additional section, “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]” at the very end of the book. Between these two sections is “Notes for Ken [Norris]”, that briefly elaborate Dudek’s vision in personal terms, not abstract ideas but poetry. This writing is Dudek in his old age, in which the theme of youth vs. (old) age is further developed. This is a poem of summation of the important points in Continuation I and II. The fragmentary nature, writing in fragments, is important here. It seems that in old age all there is are fragments; indeed, one doesn’t have the strength to write a long poem without relying on the fragmentary nature of the poem. In old age this is all that’s left of the individual; it’s fragments, not much else but fragments and inevitable death. And death, meditations on death, run throughout this poem. While this is the weakest of the three books—because it is incomplete and published in two separate volumes— it might also be the most moving, written directly from Dudek’s profound experience when he wrote this section.
-o-
The most difficult time in a person’s life is when they are at their weakest, it is when we are old. If one is a sensitive or intelligent person old age is a time of physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual decline to inevitable death. As one grows old the body wears out, just as the body of an old car rusts, parts wear out and have to be replaced, and nothing works as well as it used to. After a lifetime of stress one’s ability to handle emotional conflict is at its lowest; we’ve survived death, divorce, betrayal, but there isn’t much left to us, our nerves are shot... The brain is also wearing out, thought processes are not as fast as they used to be, there is the possibility of dementia and senility. As well, one wonders if the spirituality that was once a support is now viable, facing the end one might wonder if religion was never more than a fairy tale; or, one’s spirituality is strengthened by the circumstances of one’s life. Around you, all of your old friends and family members are dying, you are more and more alone, and you must face your own inevitable death. There is the chance that one’s family, one’s own children, have turned on you and invented a rift, the very people you loved the most have become the biggest disappointment of your life. Do they care? Perhaps not at all. This is a dismal picture of old age. This is what Dudek is writing about when he says that old people are either always smiling or always scowling; that the older one gets the more one looks like a corpse. Some old people are strong and resilient, they have the support of loving families and have a positive outlook on life; however, many others become bitter as they grow old, and some become insane, gags, with their inability to handle the terrible final demands of their existence.
-o-
Note the fragmentary nature of Continuation III, note that it is a fragment in a fragment. Life has dissolved into its separate parts, there isn’t the energy to work on a larger manuscript.
-o-
There is still poetry and “shining”, what is brilliant, mysterious, against the world of appearance, is a counterpoint to the world of appearance and possible illusion. The infinite, one of Dudek’s favourite words, seems to be a part of life, for those able to perceive it, as well as the experience of poetry. Some excerpts:
We are tied to a chariot called time
and dragged along the road
(58)
Well, you’re old only once
Something to be said for that
And thanks to the collection of manuscripts
we now know, before we die
what our friends really thought of us
(59)
Against this, he writes:
There are days when
whatever is is bright
(63)
An Appearance Erscheinung
not “mere appearance”
but a shining
EPIPHANEIA
(64)
Why should I bow to authority?
The poem is my authority
if I want truth.
(65)
-o-
Tragi-comedy, comic-tragedy
Let’s see how you will laugh
when your time comes.
(69)
And accept everything that is given—
pain, darkness, death.
So I am living it
for the last time
like the young
who are living it
for the first time
Ah!
The lilacs falling over themselves
on the garage roof,
and the trellis of trees, making their leaves
for a new summer.
(70-71)
-o-
the one you lie to is the one you love.
“Santuzza, criedi mi!”
cries out Turridu
and died with the lie on his lips.
“Santuizza, credi me! Santuzza, credi me!”
If it’s the truth it fits like a glove,
but the one you lie to is the one you love.
. . . .
Where are the kind friends that used to pass,
and the lovers, with laughing loves—
where are they gone from this world of glass?
(71)
-o-
I am a hole in space,
empty as matter, hungry as death—
can eat up the universe in my maw.
I push into unknown infinite world...
(Came to the sun, came to the earth
and wedged into matter)
I am an interloper,
even now as I push my pencil in the dark
and write this poem.
(76-77)
-o-
His advice:
Keep pushing ahead
with all the language arts,
developing new brain cells
And the reader rubbing his bald pate
in irritation—
Canadian (or American)
“entreprenoors”
sipping their “kreem the menthe”
to their “déjà voo”—
Some of this is beautiful, simply exquisite writing.
(I don’t remember what the event was all about but in the mid-1990s I was driving Louis and a few others to a Greek restaurant (on the corner of Northcliffe Avenue and Sherbrooke Street West), I remember Dudek correcting me on my pronunciation of “déjà vu”... it was the same restaurant where the poet Keitha MacIntosh used to spend hours correcting student papers and drinking tea. She lived across the street in the large apartment building on the northwest corner, on the corner next across the street from the restaurant. Alas, she, too, has departed (in August 2012) this veil of tears... this vale of soul-making.). Actually, I think Keitha may have been there when we entered the restaurant, but not sure about that.
-o-
Ah, the tears, the tears of forgetfulness
for all our sorrows
For all the good we leave behind
(Even you, my dear,
whom I love more than myself
—the self that I despise)
(82)
-o-
Back, for a minute, to epigrams:
The New Yorker has set a very high standard
for perfume advertising
So has “the Booker Prize”
for best-sellers.
(86)
-o-
Underlying the whole poem is the importance of poetry, but also of languages, of knowing several languages possibly in order to be a literate and educated individual. In his old age Dudek was translating Greek poetry using a bilingual dictionary; he told me, “it’s simple”, just follows the order of the words and look them up in a dictionary.
-o-
The second section in Continution III is “Bits & Pieces [A Recitation]”. This section is made up of “Bits & Pieces”, but it’s an interesting poem. It posits two voices of the same person speaking with some directions or instructions as to how it should be read (for instance, “cut here”, “pause”, “break”, “long pause”, and so on). The voice that is italicized could be Dudek’s thinking while the voice in plain type could be Dudek addressing an audience; there are other variations of this. Italics could indicate answers or responses the one speaking, the unconscious mind, the fragmentation of the speaker’s voice, and so on.
The world is always full
of the young.
(99)
The body breaks down. If one medicine fails
you try another.
In the end they all fail.
But you keep on trying.
Only youth
never fails.
(106)
-o-
“Sequence from Continuation III” appears in The Surface of Time (Empyreal Press, Montreal, 2000). This is the final “sequence” and conclusion of the poem. It is fragmentary, as thinking is fragmentary, moving from one thought to the next but always overshadowed with Dudek’s concerns: poetry, infinity, youth vs. age, and so on. Poetry seems to be one approach to an awareness of eternity:
Time and space are a construct,
we know it.
But before time and space, what was there?
Eternity is the surface of time.
(80)
What started things, what
was there before the creation
in unknowable to us.
But it shines
from a leaf, from a letter
on the perfect page.
Poetry is a wandering search
an escape from gravity—
a space-walk in the open.
(81)
-o-
And then we have a memory, an anecdote, regarding the “many funerals” Dudek attended as a child. It is the beginning of his sense of mortality, of the utter transience of life. It is the positioning of youth and age beside each other, of an awareness of temporality, an awareness of death. But with this awareness is also a more difficult awareness, it is of the magnificence of life, the multiplicity of existence, the “shining” features of life, the transcendence of temporality found on poetry and life.
Then, he gives us another memory from childhood, “How you fumbled in class,/ how you failed in arithmetic” (83), and then the final, compelling and deeply moving words of this monument of poetry. For, as I remember thinking as we left Dudek’s funeral (on the side of Mount Royal, within walking distance of St. Joseph’s Oratory) that cold March day in 2001, we had greatness among us, we had a Colossus (as Henry Miller referred to a writer friend of his) among us, and now we are alone to face the demands of “savage modernity”:
Go out in the sun
some Sunday morning
when the clouds are melting
over St. Joseph’s,
look down from Mount Royal
to that other world.
It is far off and glorious—
at the heart of creation—
no tin-can world
of savage modernity,
but the everlasting
world of a present
where you stand
in the pale light of allness.
Stand there and remember
the paltriness of worldly claims,
and the immensity
that is always now.
(83-84)
-o-
Postscript: Just last night I was reading some comments on Dudek's poetry, written by another poet who was a fan of Dudek's poetry. This poet praised Atlantis and sections of his other long poems, but nobody (not even my poet contemporaries) will stand up for Continuation; one critic, who knew Dudek, didn't even have the correct title of the poem, throughout his discussion of the poem he refers to it as Continuations. My God, can't we even get the title right? Most critics disparage or ignore Continuation and yet, if you read interviews with Dudek, read what he said about the poem, the whole project took over forty years to write, it is meticulously written, and it is Dudek's longest piece of writing. Continuation should have been three books, and it should be republished as such but in one volume. It is Dudek's most experimental writing. And yet, it is ignored, it is treated as something critics wish had never been written, it's an embarrassment. My contention has always been that Continuation is a significant poem in Dudek's body of work. Well, times have changed and we've entered a very dark time in western civilization, not just in Canada but in the west; in Canadian poetry the (golden) days of Modernism, of Irving Layton, Al Purdy, include F.R. Scott in this short list, and others has ended and what we have today is the irrelevancy of poetry and poets; not one poet today has the public status of earlier poets, not one poet is a public personality or presence in the media, not one poet is listened to. It could be that one day people will read Continuation and understand exactly what Louis Dudek is saying, that's what happens with difficult literature, with time the educated public find what was formerly difficult fairly obvious in its meaning. 13/02/2026
Note: Written in 2012; revised October - November 2024, 2025. Thought: the best final statement is to put in writing what one is thinking, don't leave it up to chance or the possibility that someone might understand what you are saying. Suggestion for poets: be your own critic because the critics may never write about your work and you need to explain what you are doing.
Oh I'll send you a telegram Oh I have some information for you Oh I'll send you a telegram Send it deep in the heart of you Deep in the heart of your brain is a lever Oh deep in the heart of your brain is a switch Oh deep in the heart of your flesh you are clever Oh honey you met your match in a b_tch
Deep in the heart of Deep in the heart of
There will be no famine in my existence I merge with the people of the hills Oh people of Ethiopia Your opiate is the air that you breathe All those mint bushes around you Are the perfect thing for your system Aww clean clean it out You must rid yourself from these, these animal fixations You must release yourself From the thickening blackmail of elephantiasis You must divide the wheat from the rats You must turn around [and look oh God]
When I see Brancusi His eyes searching out the infinite abstract spaces In the [radio] rude hands of sculptor Now gripped around the neck of a [duosonic]
[I swear on your eyes no pretty words will sway me]
Oh look at me aah cannot move ahh so much aahh everything I am possible Aah Feel so f_cked up
much too I know I know
tell him to get out of here go down to the sea if he would just tell me he appreciates Brancusi's space the sculptor's mallet has been taken in place
When I get home, late afternoon, the first thing I do is put out a carrot, cut into pieces, for the wild rabbit. The other day the rabbit was already there and as soon as he saw me off he ran. It's lots of fun looking out of the dining room window and seeing the rabbit there, eating a carrot and then sitting for a while before leaving. Here is a short video of the rabbit.
Of course, Continuation II begins where Continuation I ends. Here we have twenty-one sections, each
one an enlargement and development on the totality of the poem. The quotation from Baudelaire at
the beginning of this second book defines Dudek’s ambition in Continuation; it is to write “a poetic prose, musical without metre
and without rhymes, subtle and staccato enough to follow the lyric motions of
the soul...” That is, this is a poetry of the psyche, of the poet’s soul, the
poet’s meditation on what enters the field of his perception and then becomes a part of
this long poem. This is Dudek’s project, not necessarily influenced by Ezra Pound but Dudek’s original vision and voice.
Yes, volleying down
corridors
with arms spread out
and screaming,
the young have taken
over
(9)
All of us who have taught at a post secondary level will appreciate this image! Dudek wisely deleted mentioning LSD, found in the previous text, it was a bit of an overreach and its deletion improves the poem.
-o-
This section begins
with observations on teaching art, the modern age, The youth have given up even
cursory respect for the elders, “Leaving historians who grace us with dignity/
to note/ some trivial shifts in domestic arrangements” (9); our society is
portrayed as “A dying insect, twitching his legs, to keep alive” (9).
Then Man in the
massgroup thinking
—infantile,
ferile, insane
with concentration
camps
(a sick inmate supported by friends
to save him from
being shot
for not standing)
(10)
-o-
But always the
concern for art, even with this beginning detailing some of the horrors of
modern man. Note the use of the word “shining” that is prominent in Continuation III; and despite the
negative comment regarding mysticism, there is a mystical sensibility in Dudek
regarding writing poetry and the perceptions of one growing old. It is “art
a forward urge”.
Art attempts to
exteriorize the psyche
to internalize the ego —
submerge in the
oldest self
But mysticism is
regressive
and art a forward
urge
Cruelty the inner
hell
as action, without
control
Yet there is also
light, shining on the mind,
a great kindness
(11)
-o-
This first section
ends with a prayer; Dudek is seventy-two years old when he published Continuation II; his attention is turned
to several things: a world in which cruelty and war are ever-present; the
changing relationship between children and adults; an unknown future; the
necessity of the creative mind to penetrate the dark future.
Does it cohere? That’s one of the tests of poetry. How many poets, after writing some of their most significant work, ask this question? Pound. Olson? But not W.C. Williams.
-o-
What is banal and trite has its place here, in Continuation II, unfortunately, it detracts from Continuation I; this is regrettable because it is difficult enough to string together all of these epigrams without the distraction of inferior epigrams, it makes you doubt the validity of the whole work and the reader thinks “Dudek’s lost it, the inspiration of Continuation I is lost on Continuation II”, and I think this may be the case (see note below). Continuation II is a longer book than Continuation I, and the projected Continuation IIIwas never completed and what was published is incomplete. Continuation II is almost a separate book, it is as though Dudek is trying to find his way, his direction, in the second Continuation book.
-o-
Note: On writing poetry in old age
What needs to be addressed here is the affect of old age on writing poetry and on poets. There are exceptions but, as far as I can see, and what I have experienced, is that old age is the termination of writing poetry, of writing good poetry. Dispute this if you want, and I will be the first to agree with you, but my experience is that writing poetry takes energy and old people often don't have the necessary energy for this work; writing poetry takes time, to let the unconscious transform experience and thought into poetry. The old, in my experience, are concerned with the ending of life and what leads up to this: this is what they talk about: loss of health, loss of family and friends, loss of one's old position in society, sickness and death. There are significant exceptions to this but my impression is that old age is of such magnitude that concern with it takes over one's life. This may account for Dudek's Continuation declining as it did.
Written in 2012; revised: October-November 2024 and January 2026.
Note: I had planned to return to Continuation II and complete this project but, as they say, "life got in the way". I have some notes on "Continuation III” and will publish them here, but so far, they, too, are incomplete. It is still a worthwhile task, the textual analysis and discussion of Dudek's Continuation books. Continuation is a doorway into many discussions. As it is, Continuation doesn't cohere; but, if the first two books and the completed work in Book Three were published as a single book, or even just Book Three published as a single book, or even just put this work online, perhaps that would let readers see the significance of the work as a whole, completed, and not just disparate writings.
1. Allen Ginsberg referred to line breaks in poetry as a form of composition that followed the poet's breath; "inspiration" is breathing in spirit while "expiration" refers to breathing out of spirit or, alternatively, of dying; as an aside, "orgasm" in French is referred to as "la petite mort", a little death, to breathing out, a brief loss of consciousness; as we know, poetry doesn't have this affect on people. Expiration isn't a term in poetry, but inspiration can refer to being inspired.
2. The title of my first book, The Trees of Unknowing (1978), is derivative of The Cloud of Unknowing, a medieval spiritual text on knowing God.
3. Soul resides in you, is always present in you. Poetry is mapping the soul, it is a cartography of the soul. Spirit is outside of you, you breath in spirit, you are inspired. Where does spirit come from? It could be that spirit refers to the Holy Spirit, and this suggests a divine connection between writing poetry, being inspired, and what is the numinous in the world.
4. Poetry (and literature) is insightful into the human condition; many people read Mary Oliver and Billy Collins, their poetry is accessible to most people; intellectuals are critical of both Billy Collins and Mary Oliver but these two poets are popular and speak to the average person. Patti Smith and Jim Morrison, or Arthur Rimbaud and Walt Whitman, are shamans of poetry, their poetry is directed to the spiritual, the inspired, and revelation. Patti Smith and Jim Morrison were influenced by Rimbaud, for instance Patti Smith's song "Radio Ethiopia" and many of Jim Morrison's songs have a shamanistic aspect, it is "to disorder the mind"; read the very young Jim Morrison's correspondence with Wallace Fowlie, the preeminent translator of Rimbaud's poetry, (see Fowlie's Rimbaud and Jim Morrison, the Rebel as Poet [1994]).
5. The established, mainstream, churches don't give an experience of the numinous except, possibly, during communion, the eucharist; otherwise, I am sorry to say, the mainstream churches are mostly surviving on past glories, on what used to be, and promoting liberal social causes. No wonder some average people who are interested in religion, and a religious experience, have moved on to evangelical churches that give an emotional experience, an experience of the divine, these churches are often identified with a conservative ideology; the mainstream churches are (except for Catholicism) mostly identified with left wing ideologies. Most people are not intellectuals, they want a religious experience and this happens in the mainstream churches during Holy Communion; the evangelical churches emphasize a religious experience, singing, praising, and being one with the divine.
6. Another aspect of writing a poem is assembling the poem from disparate sentences and phrases one has written. You don't have to write a poem in one sitting, you can go back and piece together sentences that were seemingly dictated to you, or were written by you out of inspiration, and then assemble these into a poem. But whatever one’s approach to writing poetry, whether being inspired, or copying down what was dictated, or automatic writing, or just writing, the main thing is to make an authentic poem, one that is emotionally moving, insightful for the reader, or aesthetically pleasing; writing poetry is done for the joy of making something new and being creative. I use the word “making” because that is the root meaning of the word "poetry".
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
