What Gets Left Out

Sussing out trends during a round-up of new Canadian poetry, Evan Jones reminds us that there is always unseen "variety" beyond the large reputations:.

In the 90s in Toronto, there were only two poets any young buck with his tail in the air talked about: Al Purdy and bpNichol. I remember because I was reading George Seferis at the time. Purdy and Nichol were opposites, sort of, in a way, signs of kids hanging out in different kinds of crowds. The one a poet of the nation and the land, of horse-piss beer and backbreaking days, the other zany, inventive, in cahoots with St. Ein and St. Anza. Purdy had shit on his boots, Nichol was barefoot. Both had lived in Toronto, at least for a spell. Neither was very good. But at least we knew where people stood, on one side of the fence or the other. Or, as in my case, wondering why all these people were standing round a stupid fence. These were the starting points, the gateway drugs, for many of the Canadian poets of my generation, following either Purdy into the country or Nichol into conceptualism. That such a small country—there are more Texans than Canadians—locks onto certain figures, invests in them, holds them up and hopes for more than the best, shouldn't surprise. The problem has always been what gets left out when there is only room for the select few.

Lazy Bastardism Review III

Two months ago, Kimberly Bourgeois asked me a bunch of very good questions about my new book Lazy Bastardism and I did my best to answer them. The result appears in the Spring 2013 issue of the MRB. One point that keeps coming up with readers and friends is how I've "mellowed." Kimberly, for instance, found my earlier essays (collected in A Lover's Quarrel) far more aggressive and wanted to know what had happened. My answer:

Age. I was younger then, and angrier. I was burning to change everything around me. I’ve since grown older, and realize that it’s harder—and more effective, in terms of the long game—to write essays and reviews that can so persuasively advocate their bias they’re able to change a reader’s mind about a poet, or cause readers to second-guess their assumptions. I now want to be in the persuasion business, not the pissing-off business. Though I do recognize that, sometimes, it’s impossible to do the former without the latter.

Raymond Souster's Neglect

Brian Palmu tries to understand it:

"The only theory I can come up with is Souster's timing. His poetry is in line with the times, and (indeed) one of his two best books is entitled The Colour of the Times (1964). His poetic sensibility was formed in the lean thirties, and any poet who didn't get blown away on a shifting wind was—the same as every poet in England—writing about deprivation, human frailty, metaphysical bafflement and/or anger, social injustice, and hidden graces. But Souster's tentative, plainspoken realism was an awkward fit since his best work was hitting the street just as postmodernism was touching down, and would also have little in common with the later Canada-Council-juiced confessional anecdotes of scores of other poets who would, at first glance, appear natural cohorts."

(Portrait of Raymond Souster by Barker Fairley.) 

Sunday Poem

 

TO THE CANADIAN POETS, 1940 

Come, my little eunuchs, my tender virgins,
it's high time you were home and in bed.
The wind's cold and strong in the streets now,
and it's almost ten o'clock.

Soon whores will be obvious at corners,
and I wouldn't want you accosted or given the eye;
soon drunks will be turned out of beverage rooms
and you could be rolled or raped up a dark lane. 

So quickly find your houses, turn the latch-key, set the night-lock,
remember to dress with the blinds down. Then safe in bed you may dream
of Pickthall walking hand in hand with her fairies,
of Lampman turning his back on Ottawa.

From Collected Poems of Raymond Souster, Vol. 1: 1940-55 (1980) by Raymond Souster.