"North of Belleville" by James Deahl: and some reflections on Canku

James Deahl is to Ontario (Canada), and to those who've known him, what Alden Nowlan is to Nova Scotia or Jack Hodgins to British Columbia: so unmistakably iconic, so reverentially a part of the literary landscape it's hard after awhile to tell them apart. And, of course, he's been so long the ear into which the dusky Muse of downtown Hamilton has poured her song it's harder to imagine the town without him now that he's moved to Sarnia.

Whether at the Blue Angel Gallery or Artbar--the two spots I've been accustomed to seeing him in the past-- or the many local book launches and even my own Niagara poetry readings, Deahl always is wherever he happens to be. I just can't imagine reading poetry anywhere without him. He seems to be able, almost intuitively and without the usual artifice, to attest to place uniquely in his quintessentially 'people's poetry' style. His latest work North of Belleville (Hidden Brook Press, 2011), with photography, layout and design, by Richard M. Grove, is no less a deeply affectionate homage, in haiku verse, to several distinctive regions in Ontario, some of which I happen to know particularly well, such as Red Hill Valley and McMaster Trail. In this regard I think also of the haibun work of Chris Faiers, the presiding genius of ZenRiver in Marmora, Ontario (on the outskirts of the Canadian Shield).

Haiku and locale (and, of course, season) always work well together; in fact, the congruence in Deahl's work is quite remarkable. Let's look at some Red Hill Valley haiku, particularly the first two:

1) Under storm clouds
  the voice of Albion Falls -
cold as ice

2) Deep in King's Forest
  the creek lies buried
      in yellow leaves

I'd like to suggest that Deahl  has assimilated a Japanese artform to hostile shores. Michael Ondaatje once said Canada is not a country for haiku, which may have been true until, of course, Deahl brought them together and revealed some interesting energies of the Canku form (a type of haiku developed by poet Ian Gordon ). In both the impression of beauty lies under a sort of cover that is more menacing than nutritive. I'd qualify Ondaatje's statement by saying it isn't haiku so much as metaphor that doesn't belong. Whatever gives shelter in the Canadian literary psyche is always literally condemned to appear surly and ill-mannered: a creature of weather and topography (like most Canadians). Poetic voice appears either frozen or muffled altogether and yet therein lies its beauty and strength as an art form. To know the poem is to know the place.

I've been to both Albion Falls and King's Forest many times, particularly in my childhood. Albion's forbidding precipice gives off precisely that cold-as-ice chill like the breath in winter while scarcely any of a once regal expanse of pine, now that it's been sheared to make room for an expressway, can hide the King's winding brook. A few leaves will easily cover it. Deahl's haiku leave the "chill" and "fragility" of local landscapes intact and yet present them, at the same time, as startlingly revelatory. It's an almost comical incongruity good Canadian haiku must register. On the surface all's haiku form; however,  churning and twisting beneath the surface is the real poem.

James Deahl celebrates place since, perhaps, the place has already known him, as Marmora has always waited for Chris Faiers. Haiku in Canada will be seen as a  parody of Wordsworthian nature mongering only if you've been used to thinking in those silly Wordsworthian terms already. Canada's only laughably suitable for Lake District verses. Deahl's made sure to change the language of it forever. Water falls in winter don't just freeze but exude their own cold stinky metallic breath and forests stationed beside a major roadway do look like industrial parks, burying more than they reveal. The celebrated 'break' kireji of classical haiku is nowhere better felt than in a Forest's busted guts. I really can't help but see all that in six short lines though, of course, Deahl's only given an initiatory language of things "cold" and "buried". Again, to know the poem is to know the place, and now the poet.

I'd like to thank James Deahl for the gift of North of Belleville and, above all, for an opportunity to take another look deep into the most incomprehensible and intactile of artforms: the Canadian haiku. How grateful we should be for the master poets who've done nothing but look.