"Laurentian Shield" by F. R. Scott

Events and Signals, F.R. Scott,
Ryerson Press, 1954

 

Hidden in wonder and snow, or sudden with summer,
This land stares at the sun in a huge silence
Endlessly repeating something we cannot hear.
Inarticulate, arctic,
Not written on by history, empty as paper,
It leans away from the world with songs in its lakes
Older than love, and lost in the miles.

This waiting is wanting.
It will choose its language
When it has chosen its technic,
A tongue to shape the vowels of its productivity.

A language of flesh and of roses.

Now there are pre-words,
Cabin syllables,
Nouns of settlement
Slowly forming, with steel syntax,
The long sentence of its exploitation.

The first cry was the hunter, hungry for fur,
And the digger for gold, nomad, no-man, a particle;
Then the bold commands of monopolies, big with machines,
Carving their kingdoms out of the public wealth;
And now the drone of the plane, scouting the ice,
Fills all the emptiness with neighbourhood
And links our future over the vanished pole.

But a deeper note is sounding, heard in the mines,
The scattered camps and the mills, a language of life,
And what will be written in the full culture of occupation
Will come, presently, tomorrow,
From millions whose hands can turn this rock into children.

"The Dead Poet" by Al Purdy

 

16 November 2010

I was altered in the placenta
by the dead brother before me
who built a place in the womb
knowing I was coming:
he wrote words on the walls of flesh
painting a woman inside a woman
whispering a faint lullaby
that sings in my blind heart still

The others were lumberjacks
backwoods wrestlers and farmers
their women were meek and mild
nothing of them survives
but an image inside an image
of a cookstove and the kettle boiling
— how else explain myself to myself
where does the song come from?

Now on my wanderings:
at the Alhambra's lyric dazzle
where the Moors built stone poems
a wan white face peering out
— and the shadow in Plato's cave
remembers the small dead one
— at Samarkand in pale blue light
the words came slowly from him
— I recall the music of blood
on the Street of the Silversmiths

Sleep softly spirit of earth
as the days and nights join hands
when everything becomes one thing
wait softly brother
but do not expect it to happen
that great whoop announcing resurrection
expect only a small whisper
of birds nesting and green things growing
and a brief saying of them
and know where the words came from

Cards from my grandmother and her sister, my great aunt Essie, around 1963

Postmarked 1966

 

"The Bull Moose" by Alden Nowlan

 

Alden Nowlan

Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,
lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,
stumbling through tamarack swamps,
came the bull moose
to be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture.

Too tired to turn or, perhaps, aware
there was no place left to go, he stood with the cattle.
They, scenting the musk of death, seeing his great head
like the ritual mask of a blood god, moved to the other end
of the field, and waited.

The neighbours heard of it, and by afternoon
cars lined the road. The children teased him
with alder switches and he gazed at them
like an old, tolerant collie. The woman asked
if he could have escaped from a Fair.

The oldest man in the parish remembered seeing
a gelded moose yoked with an ox for plowing.
The young men snickered and tried to pour beer
down his throat, while their girl friends took their pictures.

And the bull moose let them stroke his tick-ravaged flanks,
let them pry open his jaws with bottles, let a giggling girl
plant a little purple cap
of thistles on his head.

When the wardens came, everyone agreed it was a shame
to shoot anything so shaggy and cuddlesome.
He looked like the kind of pet
women put to bed with their sons.

So they held their fire. But just as the sun dropped in the river
the bull moose gathered his strength
like a scaffolded king, straightened and lifted his horns
so that even the wardens backed away as they raised their rifles.

When he roared, people ran to their cars. All the young men
leaned on their automobile horns as he toppled.

Note: I heard Alden Nowlan read his poems when I was a student at Sir George Williams University, I admired and loved his poems then as I still do today. A few years later I read Louis Dudek's critique of this poem, it was wholly praising the poem. Alden Nowlan is one of our greatest poets.

Montreal on 28 January 2013

 

Mary, Queen of the World Cathedral 
Marie, reine de la monde

Windsor Station, once the head office
of the Canadian Pacific Railroad

St. George's Anglican church, across the street
from Windsor Station

St. George's Anglican Church

A statue of Sir John A. Macdonald, as is
typical today the statue was attacked,
splattered with paint, decapitated several times,
toppled from where it stood, and finally removed

Sir John A. Macdonald

"Epithalamium" by Leo Kennedy

 

This body of my mother, pierced by me,
In grim fulfilment of our destiny,
Now dry and quiet as her fallow womb
Is laid beside the shell of that bridegroom
My father, who with eyes towards the wall
Sleeps evenly; his dust stirs not at all,
No syllable of greeting curls his lips,
As to that shrunken side his leman slips.

Lo! these are two of unabated worth
Who in the shallow bridal bed of earth
Find youth's fecundity, and of their swift
Comminglement of bone and sinew, lift
— A lover's seasonable gift to blood
Made bitter by a parched widowhood —
This bloom of tansy from the fertile ground:
My sister, heralded by no moan, no sound.

Late January 2018

 

"Mississippi" by Bob Dylan

 

2016

Every step of the way we walk the line Your days are numbered, so are mine Time is piling’ up, we struggle and we scrape We’re all boxed in, nowhere to escape City’s just a jungle; more games to play Trapped in the heart of it, trying' to get away I was raised in the country, I been working’ in the town I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down Got nothing' for you, I had nothing' before Don’t even have anything for myself anymore Sky full of fire, pain pouring’ down Nothing you can sell me, I’ll see you around All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme Only one thing I did wrong Stayed in Mississippi a day too long [ Well, the devil’s in the alley, mule’s in the stall Say anything you wanna, I have heard it all I was thinking’ 'bout the things that Rosie said I was dreaming I was sleeping' in Rosie’s bed [Verse 6] Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees Feeling like a stranger nobody sees So many things that we never will undo I know you’re sorry, I’m sorry too Some people will offer you their hand and some won’t Last night I knew you, tonight I don’t I need something strong to distract my mind I’m gonna look at you ’til my eyes go blind

Well I got here following' the southern star I crossed that river just to be where you are Only one thing I did wrong Stayed in Mississippi a day too long Well my ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinking' fast I’m drowning in the poison, got no future, got no past But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free I’ve got nothing but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me Everybody moving if they ain’t already there Everybody got to move somewhere Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow Things should start to get interesting' right about now My clothes are wet, tight on my skin Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in I know that fortune is waiting’ to be kind So give me your hand and say you’ll be mine Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way Only one thing I did wrong Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

"The Railway Station" by Archibald Lampman

Montreal West train station, 1950s

 

The darkness brings no quiet here, the light

    No waking: ever on my blinded brain

    The flare of lights, the rush, and cry, and strain,

The engines' scream, the hiss and thunder smite:

I see the hurrying crowds, the clasp, the flight,

    Faces that touch, eyes that are dim with pain:

    I see the hoarse wheels turn, and the great train

Move labouring out into the bourneless night.

So many souls within its dim recesses,

    So many bright, so many mournful eyes:

Mine eyes that watch grow fixed with dreams and guesses;

    What threads of life, what hidden histories,

What sweet or passionate dreams and dark distresses,

    What unknown thoughts, what various agonies!

"What is it that a Poet Knows" by Louis Dudek

 

Louis Dudek

What is it that a poet knows

                that tells him ­­ 'this is real?'
Some revelation, a gift of sight,
granted through an effort of the mind ­­
                                    of infinite delight.

All the time I have been writing on the very edge of knowledge,

heard the real world whispering
                    with an indistinct and liquid rustling­­
as if to free, at last, an inextricable meaning!
Sought for words simpler, smoother, more clean than any,
                            only to clear the air
of an unnecessary obstruction
Not because I wanted to meddle with the unknown
        (I do not believe for a moment that it can be done),
but because the visible world seemed to be waiting,
                            as it always is,
somehow, to be revealed

Kathleen Raine on poetry and life

Kathleen Raine

                                                     

Kathleen Raine's Autobiographies (1991) is made up of her three earlier autobiographical books published in the mid-1970s. I always underline passages in books that I am reading and I underlined passages--single words, phrases, sentences, and paragraphs--in Raine's book; later, it occurred to me to compile some of these passages on this blog, these are passages that deal with poetry and being a poet. But typing out these passages today I was surprised at Raine's prescient references to the dark age in which we now live. This is even more pertinent today when the world of order and stability seems to be unraveling; the old order is passing away and the new order seems barbaric and chaotic, anarchic in its worst sense, and everywhere we see the disintegration of values, order, and stability. The barbarians are entering the city and we, the inhabitants, know they have no good intentions for us, they want to destroy us and everything we represent. At least, that is how it seems in the days post October 7th when terrorists invaded Israel intent on killing, mutilating, and raping women, and then celebrating and advertising their violence. But I digress from Kathleen Raine’s Autobiographies; it is a beautifully written book and it should be of interest to those who want to know more about Raine's life, poetry, and ideas about life.

                                      29 December 2023

Kathleen Raine on poetry and life:

My mother did not send me to school until I was six years old; and if I have been a poet I owe it to my mother's protection of my sanctuary of solitude in those years of early childhood when three small fields between the advancing fringe of London's East-End suburbs, and the wooden fence of Dr. Bernardo's Homes was space enough for earthly Paradise. (p. 50)

Conversely, in order to escape the silent demands of dignified and beautiful proportions, barbarians must desecrate and violate, smash the stained glass and deface the statues and paint defiant slogans on walls that tell us too clearly, in their beauty and harmony of proportion, that we might be better than we are. (p, 120)

Strange (so it seems to me, writing in 1974 of my youth nearly fifty years ago) that the very premises of civilization should stand in need of defense. (p. 123)

Let me say here, since I use the term the 'soul' very often, that I am perfectly aware of the possible alternatives, such as psyche, brain, drive, complex, ego, and the behaviousistic terms . . . I believed in the soul as that specifically human life in us of which the body is the vehicle. It seemed then self-evident that this represents our 'higher' nature, and no less self-evident that what passes in that living consciousness--that being in us which we immediately feel to be our 'I am"--is of greater import than our physical functions. The experiences of the soul, for good or ill, I still supposed made up the matter of poetry; and indeed of all the arts, these being the expression and the record of the soul's knowledge. (p. 138-139)

But I have been able to speak from my heart only in my poems. (p. 325)

...--and I do not enjoy that dropping of barriers of the world where 'poets' (usually very minor ones, for any serious artist must live a life in some sense disciplined) move to a kind of promiscuous gregariousness. ... The poet must protect his wildness as best he may, with whatever, camouflage he can create; a principle inherited from the shy animal world from a millennial past. And for a poet whose theme was the city, the city, also must be his protective disguise. (p. 329)

Art is the city of the soul. (p. 339)

I can now myself say that I have learned nothing from experience, from my mistakes, from trial and error, or from the mere passage of time: only through rifts in these clouds, as if from another order of knowledge altogether. Tragedies, after all, however nobly enacted and grandly endured, are, as seen by wisdom, the storms of illusion, the webs woven in ignorance and passion by those who 'do but slenderly know themselves'. In tragedy we can finally admire only the grandeur of humanity's never abandoned struggle to attain the moment of transcendence; without which there can be no catharsis, no liberation. (p. 344)

Of all the teachers of my generation I am perhaps most indebted to Jung. ... for Jung points the way to a living access to the originals of which myths and symbols of religion are formulations. (p. 351)

In the generation before my own, T.S. Eliot remained within the tradition he would have wished to see continue; he, and David Jones, were perhaps the last poets of that tradition. Yeats saw the darkness approaching, the tide rising; but his hope lay not in any turning or stemming of the tide, but in that which lies beyond civilization, the mystery of the gyres, the Indian Brahman whose outbreathings create worlds and whose inbreathings withdraw them from existence. But Yeats too was still among the artificers of Byzantium, the Graeco-Christian civilization, preserved in Ireland beyond its time elsewhere. It is my generation which has seen the end. (p. 356)

The great tree is at this time showering down its leaves in a process of death which cannot be arrested, and whose record is everywhere to be read in the nihilism of the arts, of social life, in a thousand images of disintegration, in the reversion of civilized society, it may be, to a state of barbarism. (p. 356)

But since it has been above all poetic truth I have followed, tried to discover always that good, that best Socrates never ceased to speak of, poetic justice it must have been (the only kind I have ever acknowledged) that brought me at last to stand my judgement in Greece itself. (p. 357)

The poets are always blamed, more or less, for the same thing: they are ruthless, or that which drives them is. (p. 363)

Raine, Kathleen. Autobiographies. San Rafael, Coracle Press, 1991.

"A January Morning" by Archibald Lampman

 

Archibald Lampman

The glittering roofs are still with frost; each worn

Black chimney builds into the quiet sky

Its curling pile to crumble silently,

Far out to westward, on the edge of morn,

Glimmer faint rose against the pallid blue;

And yonder, those northern hills, the hue

Of amethyst, hang fleeces dull as horn,

And here behind me come the woodman's sleighs

With shouts and clamorous squeakings; might and main

Up the steep slope the horses stamp and strain,

Urged on by hoarse-tongued drivers--cheeks ablaze,

Iced beards and frozen eyelids--team by team,

With frost-fringed flanks, and nostrils jetting steam.