Ten Notes on Thomas D’Arcy McGee

Thomas D’Arcy McGee

1. Thomas D’Arcy McGee wasn’t a poet, like W.B Yeats, who was also involved in politics. Yeats was a distinguished poet and later, after Irish independence, he became a Senator in Ireland. McGee is a political thinker and activist who also wrote and published poems. Yeats: poet first; McGee: politician first. 

 2. Most of McGee’s poems have little interest for us today; if they do interest us, it is because they were written by Thomas D’Arcy McGee. 

Here I am visiting McGee's mausoleum at Cote des Neiges
Cemetery in Montreal. 

3. McGee makes several very contradictory changes in his life: he was a liberal in Ireland, then a very conservative and reactionary Roman Catholic in the United States, and then a liberal again in Canada. These are all opposing and difficult to reconcile positions. 

4. McGee pointed out that most Irish immigrants in the mid-19th Century did better in Canada than had they gone to the United States. My own family, like many others from Ireland, flourished in Canada. Canada has been a country of opportunities for us. 

5. Psychology, per se, had not yet been invented during McGee’s life. McGee’s psychology seems to have been dominated by the early death of his mother and the subsequent rejection of him by his stepmother. McGee had an unfortunate personal trait of attempting to ingratiate himself with those he felt were his superiors. Perhaps this was caused by his early home life. 

6. McGee was obviously a highly intelligent man—perhaps he was gifted—a man whose career before coming to Canada was distinguished by his writing, his work as an editor, and his political activism for Irish independence. He rose quickly in his career as a writer and orator for his political causes, he was more famous before coming to Canada than most of us realize. 

7. McGee’s assassination, by Patrick Whelan of the Fenian Brotherhood, helped to mythologize McGee’s life. 

 8. I doubt that most of McGee’s poetry has anything other than historical interest. Just compare him to other poets of approximately that time, compare him to Emile Nelligan, the Montreal-born poet. Nelligan’s poetry has depth and sophistication; for the most part, McGee’s poetry doesn’t. 

 

9. What is McGee's achievement? As a politician, he achieved what he worked towards, which is Canadian Confederation, but having achieved that he was also personally less and less popular with his constituency. 

10. Few things help to mythologize a life better than an untimely death; in this case McGee's assassination differentiates him from just about all of the other politicians at that time. The details of his death are that in April 1868, after speaking late into the night in the House of Commons, he returned to the humble rooming house where he lived in Ottawa, here he was murdered by Patrick Whelan. A few days later, over forty thousand people crowded Montreal streets as his funeral cortege passed. This was the beginning of his transformation from historical personage to mythological character. In this, he does what few poets, or politicians, achieve: he is remembered.

Thomas D'Arcy McGee, April 21, 2010

In this row of four mausoleums, located at Montreal's Cote des Neiges Cemetery, Thomas D'Arcy McGee's mausoleum is the second from the right. Several years ago McGee's mausoleum was renovated, perhaps by the Canadian government. This visit was on an overcast day--on April 21, 2010--not far away, I found wild flowers (mostly triliums) beginning to flower.

I've written here before about McGee, he was a great orator, one of the Fathers of Canadian Confederation, and a poet.

A store window on Cote St. Luc Road

Apple Tree on Belmore

My interest in trees as an archetype goes back at least to my first book, The Trees of Unknowing (Vehicule Press, 1978), and probably before. The obvious allusion in the title of my book is to The Cloud of Unknowing that I first read in the early-1970s. While in Mexico in 1984 I found a copy of The Cloud of Unknowing and read it again with great interest. Just a few months ago I returned to this book, and read it with even greater interest than the other two times. It is a part of the via negativa , with (curiously) some suggestions of Krishnamurti's philosophy.

Trees. Roots; earth. Branches; sky. Union. The mundane unites with the divine, and mundane, coming from mundo, world, earth, is the appropriate word. And then the discussion of the divine. What seems lacking in contemporary poetry is a discussion of the divine, of God, and our relationship with the Divine. It seems to be totally absent from the discussion of poetry by poets. No wonder the soul of the poet is never discussed, but without a poet's soul how can we have poetry?

These photographs (and many others that I have taken) of this apple tree in our backyard remind me of the many hours of pleasure I have had sitting looking out at this tree. In the evenings I can see neighbours' lights through the trees. Seeing these things is a pleasurable activity, it is a feeling of being in the country in the city, a feeling of calm and, oddly enough, of transcending time.

Gates at the Bridal Path, Toronto

                                     This is not the presidential palace of a banana republic but someone's home 

                                                                             in the Bridal Path area of Toronto.

                                                 So, this is what is behind those heavy gates...

Dream Journeys: Visits from Psyche

Visits from Psyche
1.

I dreamed of a girl driving
her old blue Volkswagen
through a deep pool,
water spraying up
on both sides of the Beetle.
When I complained
the car might stall
she threw the keys at my face.
I could feel them hit my glasses.
This was Psyche visiting me,
water the depth of dream and memory:
the old car this body,
a vehicle carrying me
through the streets of life;
the keys to open a lock,
a mystery to which I was blind,
even wearing glasses.

2.

Then came a second dream:
a ten foot tall brown bear
standing on its hind legs
trying to escape a backyard
confinement, one leg almost
over the top of the chain link fence.
I walk faster, afraid of the bear
attacking me. Then from behind
a frightened kangaroo appears,
emaciated and mangy-looking.
It is hopping in long strides,
fleeing from abuse.
Suddenly the owner arrives
to return the animal to captivity.
I tell him the kangaroo needs a vet
to heal his wounds.
The owner speaks only Russian,
his behaviour is intimidating.
I enter another yard
where a horse is tied down,
held on the ground by ropes.
As I stand looking
at the horse’s still body
I notice a single, large eye
move warily and look at me,
the horse unable to struggle,
legs bound by ropes and fear.

3.

The third night I dreamed
of a wooden tower,
half of it sealed off
for fifty years.
The nuns who use the tower
never enter the sealed-off side
but know it exists.
I go inside it,
find a few old desks
and chairs, the panelled walls,
windows that allow you
an obscured view
of the nun’s quarters.
Later, I stand outside
looking at the wooden tower.
It is in a Scandinavian country,
where the landscape is austere.
The tower stands alone.
In the distance is where I live,
in a grey, wooden house
that has not been painted
for many years,
it seems to be typical
of the places where people live
in these parts.

The Making of Collages

A collage juxtaposes images or parts of images that seem to have little association with each other; the collage presents these images in an unexpected and seemingly random way. Profound images, for instance images of human suffering and hurt, become images describing our age. Archetypal images juxtaposed beside each other give a new association, a new idea of the age. The random aspect of the collage is also interesting, this is interesting because any image placed beside any other image gives a third and new image, a new idea or insight coming from the collage. These collages are a kind of Tarot card reading, or divination, of our age, there is the sudden appearance of some insight in the collage.

Collages are similar to Brion Gysin's cut-up technique which works with words and sounds instead of images. I think you could take any issue of TIME magazine, which has excellent photo-journalism, take the images and cut or tear them up at random, and then glue them to a surface in any order that they occur, and you will have a collage that reveals something of the age in which we live. This is what I did with the collages I am putting up here. There is no "thought" in the making of any of these collages. Gradually gluing down the images becomes a system, a process, for instance beginning every collage at the bottom right hand corner, or trying to impose some kind of order or intelligence on the collage as it is being made. When this happens you have to stop and eliminate this thought interference in the making of the collage.

Then, you can also take the collage and ask what does it suggest? What ideas are there in the collage? Archetypal images contain their own energy, their own impetus in driving the unconscious mind. They are an entrance into the collective unconscious and as such they can be very powerful. My suggestion is always to begin with the archetype and then proceed from there; you can try but you can never really defeat the authority of archetypes that are innate in the human psyche.

Toronto City Hall, 10:30 p.m. on June 11, 2010

I took the usual tourist photographs earlier in the day, then we had meetings all afternoon, and on my way back to where I was staying I found Toronto's City Hall ominous and purple, and strangely alien, towering over me.

How Poets Think and an Introduction to Dream Journeys (1)

Here is William Blake's home when he lived in Felpham, near Bognor Regis, on the coast south of
London. I often walked passed here while visiting with my friend R.R. Skinner.
This is one of the first selfies, that is my finger ruining the photo...

(1)

How do poets think? Not all poets, but how do some poets think? How do poets experience the world? According to Peter Ackroyd`s biography of William Blake, the first morning Blake was in Felpham, his home for two years on the coast south of London, “Blake came out of his cottage and found a ploughman in an neighbouring field. At this moment the ploughboy working with him called out ‘Father, the gate is open.’ For Blake, this was an emblem of his new life, and the work he was about to begin.” (234-235) Blake perceived this experience as an auspicious sign from the universe, one indicating a future of openness, creativity, and the presence of the divine intervening in his life. At that moment Blake knew that he had made the right choice in moving to Felpham; the universe told him as much. This is one example indicating how poet’s think.


(2)

How poets think, as it is sometimes shown in their work (and in their lives), can be acausal, sometimes synchronistic, sometimes symbolical and metaphorical, sometimes analytical, sometimes archetypal, and often poet’s thinking works simultaneously on at least two levels of meaning. The usual linear thinking that we all do, thinking that is grounded in cause and effect, is of secondary importance in writing a poem, or thinking poetically.


(3)

I have written elsewhere of how two dreams, when I was young, changed my life. One dream told me to remember my life, and that this could be done by writing a diary; a second dream revealed to me the insecurity of life. Both were profound and life changing dreams. I always assumed that everyone had “big dreams,” but this was a mistake. Everyone dreams but most people don’t listen to their dreams, they forget them as soon as they wake, or if the dream is remembered it is either ignored or sloughed off. They don’t want to be disturbed by dreams, or by re-visioning their life, or by becoming more conscious, or by the discomfort of psychological insight. This is how poets think: they allow for the presence of dreams as a form of communication from the unconscious, and the dream is then listened to.


(4)

God communicates to people in two ways: through angels and through our dreams. If you want to communicate with God, or receive a message from God, then be open to your dreams. Dreams coming from God are the “big dreams,” and we may have only a few of these during our whole life. Dreams have some interest for poets and artists, dreams are psychic collages juxtaposing images that one would probably never put together. They are of interest in an aesthetic sense, as a curiosity, and importantly for therapists as a door into the psyche of their client. Discussing a dream is a way into the psyche, it is a catalyst for discussion. Surrealism as a movement grew out of Freud’s positioning of dream interpretation as an important part of therapeutic work. The Surrealists were more fascinated by the dream as an aesthetic event than by its therapeutic value. Dreams, then, as life changing events, can be an important aspect of how poets think; as well, dream imagery can be transformed into a poem.


(5)

Two other minor examples of poetic thinking: when I returned to live in the neighbourhood where I grew up, I would regularly see people who I used to see in the streets when I was young. They were not older versions of themselves, they were the same people that I used to see, as though, over the intervening years, they had never changed. I no longer see these people, they seem to have departed, where they have gone to I don’t know, but I would often see them, just as they were so many years ago. A second example: I have always believed that when we think of someone we used to know, but have lost contact with them, and they suddenly come to mind, for no reason at all, at that same moment they are thinking of us. For example, sometimes we think of an old friend with whom we have lost contact and then, only a few seconds later, the phone rings and it is the person we have been thinking of.

(6)

It is the essence of the shamanic journey that what is perceived is not a product of the imagination but is “real.” The important thing is the experience in which our awareness and consciousness is not always subject to cause and effect. Dreams juxtapose images that are usually not associated with each other. In essence the dream is a collage or a "cut-up" (as invented by Brion Gysin). Dreams fascinate us when they open the door of archetypal association. A door, for instance, allows us to enter a room, but a "door" for William Blake is an image opening our awareness and our perception of the symbolical world of the psyche. Almost two hundred years later Jim Morrison resonated to Blake's perception and the music of The Doors followed.

(7)

Dreams, Tarot cards, Sabian Symvbols, the Aquarian Symbols, archetypal images, paintings by Odilon Redon (and others), photographs by Man Ray, all help open an entrance into the deeper levels of the psyche; at this deeper level we become conscious of people, events, and a narrative not always available to the conscious mind. I would include fairy tales and mythology in this list of ways to access the unconscious mnd.


(8)

Poetry, in essence, deals with the soul and soul making. Just about any subject can be transformed into poetry, but a poet’s soul is needed for this transformation of the everyday into poetry. Poetry is transformation. Dreams, in essence, transform everyday reality into an expression of the psyche or the soul, and these dreams can sometimes give us access into our own souls. This is also a beginning of a definition of how poets think.
________________________________

In the coming weeks I will include here various poems inspired by dream imagery, under the heading of Dream Journeys.

Mark Rothko at the MOMA

No. 16 (Red, Brown, and Black) (1958) No. 3/ No. 13 (1949) No. 10 (1950) 

These photographs of paintings by Mark Rothko were taken at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City last year. Rothko's magnificent paintings are a favourite, a perennial favourite, with many people including myself. One of the great aesthetic experiences I've had, about twenty-five years ago, was at the Tate Gallery in London, when entering a room filled with (I believe it was nine) enormous Rothko paintings. This is when the aesthetic overlaps with the spiritual.

 

Claude Monet's "Water Lilies," also at the MOMA, is an equivalent aesthetic experience, but without the experience of the first two decades of the second half of the 20th Century that is found in Rothko's paintings at the Tate Gallery. This particular exhibition of Monet's paintings is an extraordinary lesson in reeducating our way of looking at nature, how light changes what we see, and how emotion is evoked by light.

Underpass on Cote St. Luc Road

These photographs of an underpass on Cote St. Luc Road in Montreal, near where we live, seem at first like they could be any urban scene. It is a rather unpleasant place with a peculiar ordour that I have never been able to identify, but almost like the smell of corn. Equally unpleasant is the pigeon poop on the sidewalk, and the pigeons overhead nesting in the underpass. Nevertheless, there is also an architectural quality to the place, the eleven columns, the four lanes divided by the supporting columns, and the descent and ascent of the road. There was also, that day, a quality that I am always aware of when it happens, or when it makes its presence known to me, and that is a quality of silence or quiet that can sometimes be found in places like this, or anywhere it makes itself known. That quiet is what I am trying to evoke in my photographs. There is the moment between traffic, the quiet, the presence of quiet for the pedestrian if he or she is open to this experience. I am conscious of an experience of quiet and silence in the urban environment that changes the quality of life in cities and is part of an aesthetic or spiritual experience that I try to express in photographs.

Poets at Toronto City Hall

At Toronto City Hall, during the League of Canadian Poets' AGM, 11 June 2010; from left to right: Chris Lowther, David Day, Gloe Cormie, Stephen Morrissey, and Cathy Ford. Photo by Sonja Dunn.

Flying into Vancouver yesterday, Rothko

Taken from an airplane window at 39K feet.

Atwater Library, March 2010

I've mentioned, and written about, the Atwater Library before. This skylight, above a stairwell that allows you to look down from the second floor to the main desk on the first floor, has always held a fascination for me. I have always appreciated the aesthetic quality of the skylight, the repetition of the windows, and even the electric light hanging from the middle of the skylight. On the second floor walls adjacent to the open area that the sky light is above, are photographs of the original founders and administrators of the libray, back from when it was called the Mechanics Institute and located in a different part of Montreal. The library is an important part of our English-speaking history and presence in this city.

Vehicule in Vancouver

A few weeks ago I was doing some research at UBC's Rare Books & Special Collections and University Archives. Part of this research was reading Brian Fawcett's "NMFG," an acronym for "no money from the government." NMFG, a magazine of poetry and poetics, ran from 1976 to 1979.

Vancouver was especially important back in the 1970s, that's where contemporary poetry was happening in Canada. This is no longer the case and I suspect there is no single place in Canada that is the center for new and important poetry in this country. I remember visiting with Richard Sommer, who was a poet and had been one of my professors at Sir George Williams University, after he and his family had visited Vancouver and been influenced by the poetry scene there; Vancouver, truly, seemed like a Mecca as compared with Montreal at that time. Richard was a little bit of Vancouver in Montreal, someone who made a significant impression on me back then.

I need to qualify these comments on NMFG and the Vancouver poetry scene by saying that NMFG represents only one aspect of the Vancouver poetry scene back in the second half of the 1970s; there were other groups, other poets, other poetry scenes in Vancouver. My impression has always been that Vancouver was a pretty open and welcoming place for poets. It has always seemed to me to support and welcome poets, support a literary community, and not try to drive poets away. I can't say the same for Montreal, where a literary community exists but it is fragmented and divisive. I remember receiving a letter from bpNichol commenting on this. This is also one reason why the Vehicule Poets were so important in Montreal, we had no single aesthetic commonality but we were inclusive and supportive to each other.





I noticed two items of interest in NMFG's back issues that I want to mention here: first is a short message from Artie Gold, suggesting that the gay content in the journal was detracting from commentary on poetry. Good old Artie, you wouldn't make this comment in today's politically correct world. But you also wouldn't get away with the "boy's club" of poetry found in NMFG; check out how many women poets are published in its pages, in many issues it's none. These intellectual men running NMFG come across as embarrassingly mysognynistic. As well, another comment, while American poets found a welcome home in Vancouver back then some of them don't seem to have thought Canadian poetry worth their time. I wonder if some of these same people will one day be seen as little more than long-term visitors to Vancouver, as footnotes, and not really part of the poetry tradition in Canadian Literature? Maybe someone will address this issue in Anvil Press's forthcoming Making Waves: Reading BC and Pacific Northwest Literature, edited by Trevor Carolan at the University of the Fraser Valley.

The second item is Brian Fawcett's review of the first anthology of English poetry in Montreal (English Montreal Poetry of the 1970s) published by Vehicule Press back in the mid-1970s. I know the anthology very well, I taught it for several years to my college-level Canadian Literature students, and I know personally many of the poets in the anthology. The review misses the point of the anthology which was a gathering of what was happening in English poetry in Montreal back then; we'd had years of the poetry community growing smaller and smaller, and finally there was a kind of Renaissance going on mainly due to our efforts at Vehicule Art Gallery. The anthology's editors (Norris and Farkas) were fairly democratic in choosing who would be in it, and it was the first evidence in print that Montreal poetry was coming back to life. You might trace the more open and inclusive aspects of the present-day poetry scene in Montreal back to this anthology, it was one of the signs that things had begun to change for the better. We'd had Dudek and Layton's public quarrel before Layton left for Ontario and Louis seemed to stop making public statements until he wrote the introduction to my first book, The Trees of Unknowing (Vehicule Press, 1978). As well, the separatist movement was growing in Quebec and the English-speaking community was being increasingly marginalized. The Vehicule Poets, beginning around 1974, were the first poets in Montreal at that time who were awake to contemporary poetry whether in the States or in the rest of Canada; however, NMFG couldn't have known any of this.

A Store Window in Vancouver (three)

This magical window is located near Milestones Restaurant on West 4th Avenue in Vancouver. Things float in the air, is that a photograph of the Queen Mother, and flowers give some colour.

A Store Window in Vancouver (two)

A Store Window in Vancouver (one)

"Each day and each night"

2010

Each night in each dream,
each day God speaks to me,
Each day I open a door
through which comes
sunlight & greet the presence
of the Holy Spirit—
Each night in darkness
I enter a world
parallel to this,
Each day and each night
my heart opens,
a door or window,
through which comes
starlight, moonlight, sunlight—
Each night I am visited by spirits,
by the ancients,
by ancestors;
Each day I walk
these streets, visiting
the homes of spirits,
the streets they know;
Each day and each night
we are a presence
in the dream world.

4 March 2000