At my recent Erland Lee poetry readings two poets, James Deahl and Michael Mirolla, each made a passing reference to the University of British Columbia, Creative Writing Program begun in the mid-1960s by poet Earl Birney, the one in reference to poet Michael Bullock, a founding poet-member, and the other in praise of its effect on his own artistic development. Poet and blogger Joseph Hutchison has also related to me the enormous influence of UBC teacher George McWhirter, to whom he's dedicated the "Thread of the Real" poem in his recently published book by the same name. It did strike me as interesting (and I hardly doubt I'm the first) that here was a relatively little-heard writing school, praised enthusiastically by its students still, that had been all but eclipsed by that other West Coast Canadian literary movement associated with the very popular Simon Fraser "Black Mountain" poets & poetics and the well-known 'Tish' magazine by which the whole movement's mostly remembered.
It struck me, indeed, that the Simon Fraser and UBC presence served as a sort of symbolic representation of the state of Canadian letters in which we still find ourselves today. A 'Modernism' of the Layton, Birney, Souster and P.K.Page variety mindful of national tradition, attuned always to modernist realities and the music of the lyrical heart, still competes against the wildly 'Postmodernist' 'Tish' poetics fostered and nurtured by Black Mountain and its stable of Objectivist authors Creeley, Olson, Duncan, Levertov, et al. Simon Fraser is credited still with being the putative breeding ground of Canada's own avant-gardist version in the form, among others, of Frank Davey's Open Letter and the once popular Toronto Research Group of bpNichol and Steve McCaffery. An 80's offshoot of the American L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E school has also taken root in the Kootenay School of Writing in Vancouver Canada. The results of these heady experimentalist days are too numerous to mention (the writings of poets like Christian Bök and derek beaulieu come immediately to mind). To narrow the poetic practice of an entire nation to a field of two may be a unwarranted generalization--since there are bound to be intersections between competing literary credos--but I believe it's generally true. It's so typically Canadian.
I'm inclined to believe that Canadian poets seem condemned to stand somewhere in between, regarded as either wild-eyed imitators of their American literary masters (as Robin Mathews and Keith Richardson contend) or guardians still of a distinctively Confederation poetics suited to modernist times. UBC may have been intended as a check on the poststructuralist wildfires spreading from the south but in terms of its own influence on literary development and student following it's lagged far behind Simon Fraser. Tish is, for example, a far more recognizable name than Prism though both serve as archives of their best literary efforts. I can't (as I'm often prone to do) tie the popularity of Simon Fraser to any academic advantage either since the poet-professor was to be found in both places. In any event Canada has a pretty long tradition of the student- and academic-poet coupling movements with their own signature publications, such as the McGill group in the 20s of F.R.Scott, A.J.M. Smith and their pro-Modernist The McGill Fortnightly Review.
And so here we are, again: UBC (of high Modernism) or Simon Fraser (of the poststructuralist poesies of American invaders)? There have certainly been more offshoots of the latter than the former: again, Kootenay but also the Toronto New School of Writing. I'm not aware of any UBC-style writing programs springing up anywhere in the country. The idea of a Modernist (or Formalist) revival (pace Timothy Steele) almost seems silly in our day. So where do I belong exactly? Where do any of us in Canada? I can't rightly say since so much with me has been the result of both happenstance and a case of following my own personal instincts. Yes, Birney's writing school paradigm--and even more so Simon Fraser-- was a novelty in its day and nothing like it came to the very conservative English faculties I attended in the 70s: McMaster University was once a Baptist college! But counteracting the horiible elitism of the Brits who taught me my English (and who always made me feel stupid!) were the wonderful poststructuralist theories of Derrida and Deleuze. The Net later provided both a technology and market share I could never have enjoyed in the old 'paper' regime.
So I trace my own poetical development to an early Modernist education (largely frustrating), growing allegiances to Continental language theory and an Internet forum for both discussion and publication. I guess it's regrettable that I can't seem to favour any one literary influence. I rather envy those (like Michael Mirolla and Joseph Hutchison) who can.
3 comments:
Conrad, I just wanted to register one clarification. I wouldn’t say I favor only “Modernist” influences. Creeley and Levertov had a huge impact on me, as did Duncan (in a different way); I have remained immune to Olson and Zukofsky, both of whom bore me. I suppose one could say that not being bored is my first measure as a reader; it involves primarily the images, the music, and the force of the poem’s intellectual/emotional arc.
Of course, I’ve read many not-boring poems that haven’t inspired me to return to them, so there’s something else—something I think of as revelatory humanity. Poetry games, no matter how well executed, bore me. Poems springing from anti-humanist theory bore me; that is, most of post-modernist practice, which aligns itself with the mechanical, the roll of the dice, the fear of authorship, the vacuity of process. Almost any process can produce art, but process itself is not art, just as the medium itself is not art. The artfulness of “Guernica” lies neither in the paint nor the process Picasso used to execute the painting; it’s only the anti-humanist fascination with process and media that make post-modernists reject both authorial intention and the interests of readers—so much so that they want to dispense with both.
Anyway, how UBC and “Tish” and the other influences you mention fit into this, I just don’t know. My feeling is that categorizing poets by even self-declared schools is misleading. Rae Armantrout may be a “Language poet” but at her best she’s a delight to read. Lorine Niedecker wrote for years in the gaunt shadow of L.Z., but stepped away from it into her own considerably more interesting accomplishment. And what do we do with uncategorizable poets like Alden Nowlan, Ted Hughes, Kent Johnson, and George McWhirter, all of whom I find myself reading again and again? We simply have no idea what of all this will survive. All we can do is enjoy what pleases us and encourage others to see the value in it, too.
Joseph,
of course, the categories such as I've presented them (useful really only for discussion purposes) will always tend to oversimplifications. For example, is Creeley really only Objectivist or even a lyricist with a minimalist heart? Duncan, to my mind, is not an Objectivist at all: the man wrote some wonderfully moving verses despite his allegiance to "poetry by field" theory. Genres have fluid (even porous) borders. I'd give you the case of Ed Baker, whose work masterfully encompasses haiku and haiga influences.
It did strike me as interesting that UBC has existed all along, side by side with Simon Fraser,to remind us perhaps of what threatened to be lost in the 'Black Mountain' invasion. I still believe that Cdn Modernism has never really had a chance to fully play itself out. I'll even suggest that the contemporary People's Poetry Movement of Chris Faiers, James Deahl and Allan Breismaster, et al is perhaps the sole survivor of that Tish tidal wave.
Just a thought...
thanks for the 'nod my way'
that "haiku/haiga" ""stuff"" is a side-show re: what I mostly do/ have done ain't that…. I think. But, any conclusions about anything
that I produce is beyond me ! I mostly abandon things that are seemingly nearly
& the move on.... until I can't.
I have only two rules:
- don't explain
- learn the rules then drop the rules
almost as boring as reading (other's) boring poetry
is going to museums and looking at the dead stuff hanging on nails...
what is really exciting is
trying to catch that cute girl at mile 25
of a marathon
and at the finish she coming back to give me an hug....
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