Words from the editor

Welcome to “Demons, Surviving the Poetic Inferno.” In this issue, we will attempt to flush out those petulant if not downright pernicious creatures that take their toll on poetic patience, stamina, and, in some cases, manage to steal away completely with the ultimate prey—a poet’s sanity. It is a discussion in which CV2 hopes unravel a bit of fact from fiction, dispel a myth or two, and look at the discipline of poetry as honestly as possible to find what can whittle away at the physical and emotional well-being of poets.

When I think about the all the trials and tribulations associated with being a poet, these lines from a brief poem come to mind: “The moon is the sum of all my sorrows and the moon is a ball / of all my old bandaids.” The poem from which these lines are taken, “The Blue Man Talks,” is part of a longer series of “Blue Man” poems included in Hoping for Angels, published in 1990 by Turnstone Press, the first collection by Manitoba poet Patrick O’Connell, one of two featured poets in this issue of CV2.

One reason these lines resonate is because when we substitute the word “poetry” for “the moon,” we have the life of a poet in a nutshell. This substitution works not only because the moon is an image that has inspired the imagination of poets for centuries, but also because the power of poetry, like that of the moon, can never be definitively illuminated; the minute it is put to the tongue—to print—it is already transforming into something beyond whatever light it has just given.

If poets can be described as doing anything consistently, it is reaching for the unreachable and grasping at the ungraspable, because that happens to be the nature of the beast. The epiphany of a poem is always the “almost,” the almost-perfect, the fleeting absolute of what an object—a word—or a metaphor means. The primary contradiction of poetry, and perhaps also its ultimate frustration, as Patrick tries to tell us in his poem, is that poetry can both hold or be all of a person’s “sorrow,” and at the same time it can be a means for “healing” that pain.

A good poet like Patrick knows there are no absolute answers to anything. He understands each answer to be valid only until the next one arrives, and that each word or object contains an infinite number of both questions and answers. Poetry is the long vision that language is capable of, if one looks hard into to the interconnectedness of everything, and no matter how small or where that fitting together of things occurs—it could be a leaf and a shoe—if we take the time to examine that connection, no matter how dark or distorted, there is a beauty beyond compare.

It follows that Patrick O’Connell’s lines also reveal the inherent insanity of poetry—the ability of language to express meaning beyond the literal confines of a word and to create an understanding of the universe that we who live in the cosmos of poetry are fond of calling “truth.” But for poets, each “truth,” no matter how concrete, has the same property that the lemniscate does for the mathematician, leading always deeper into the universe.

As a poet, Patrick O’Connell’s instincts were impeccable. As you read his work in this issue, I think you will agree he was the real thing. Sadly, after a life often fraught with turmoil, including a long and exhausting battle with mental illness, Patrick passed away this past June. It is to his memory that CV2 dedicates this issue, and offers its gratitude to his life partner, Heather Armstrong, for talking with CV2 about Patrick, and for allowing us to publish a number of poems he wrote shortly before his death. Poets of Patrick O’Connell’s calibre and dedication are rare, and when they arrive out of the blue, we are blessed—as Patrick proffers: “I the eternal vagabond, bequeathing you this fragment of sky.”

And what CV2 offers in return is the hope that he is now at peace. Patrick O’Connell was a true sage, and he will be missed.

Our other featured poet, Patrick Lane, is revered as one of Canada’s most influential poetic forces since Milton Acorn made his way across our vast landscape. As a poet, Lane has never denied his tumultuous past, nor has he ever allowed that past to undermine the lyric vigour of his writing. The same can be said about his recent award-winning memoir that details his struggle with and recovery from drug and alcohol addiction, published in Canada as There Is a Season and in the United States as What the Stones Remember. Lane continues to be one of this country’s most respected writers, and certainly most prolific. As the author of twenty-eight (soon to twenty-nine and counting) books, Patrick has been indisputably acclaimed by literary critics, poets, and general readers alike as one of Canada’s finest poets. And, as the body of his work attests, it has not been an easy road. From a difficult childhood to an early problematic marriage and a host of gruelling manual jobs, Patrick Lane began writing poetry in the early 1960s. Initially a passion shared with his brother, it developed into beloved obsession for Patrick Lane after his brother’s untimely death. Since then, Lane has been a publisher, a poet, and a teacher, and continues to be a mentor to a whole generation of writers through both his poetry and his other writing. Recently retired from university instruction, he continues to work with others through retreats and writing programs across the country.

In response to There Is a Season, interviewer Ariel Gordon talks with Patrick Lane about the importance of poetry in his life. Ever the literary chameleon, Lane is currently at work on a novel, an autobiography, and a new collection of poetry. In the selection of his work that follows, we have chosen to feature poetry from his most recent collection, Go Leaving Strange, published in 2005 by Harbour Publishing. CV2 is very pleased to have Patrick Lane’s contribution to this issue.

The basic difficulties of being a poet are, I think, similar to those issues experienced by writers working in other disciplines, particularly finding time to write—often much more complicated than just sitting down at the computer for a few hours. That writing time often includes the time it takes to explore an idea, hours to settle into an aspect of that idea or image that captures the imagination, and perhaps the hours, days, weeks, even months—however long it takes—to articulate thought into a living, breathing poem or poems. There is the problem of finding the resources to spend that kind of time, which, for most poets, is to some extent resolved by a job. Paid work may provide for the necessary financial support to keep poets going, but it frequently does not allow for the energy and the concentration required to do the work of poetry on a regular basis. So writing comes second as a matter of physical survival, when for many it is the priority.

Never mind concerns of space—most of us do not live in situations, nor can we afford to, that consistently allow for the concentration it requires to write. There are kids, pets, neighbours, partners, not to mention the cranky, twisted vulture of impatience offering nothing but fatal distraction—”Poetry is not work”; “Get a real job”; “What is this poem about, anyway, and who cares?”; “This is crap”; “This is useless” (I am sure most of you know the drill)—to pick the bones of conscience clean. There is also the reality that when a poet shares space with someone else, there must be time spent with loved ones—and it is not always easy to explain why you need to go into the study for three days straight right after work. Nor is it a straightforward matter to negotiate time with the muse when your real-life partner needs your undivided attention.

So the daily life of a poet can be complicated, noisy, and difficult to negotiate. But one thing remains clear—the writing has to happen. Will you die if you don’t write? Perhaps not; but something will wither inside: that, you can count on.

In science-land, an overwhelming number of researchers who are interested in creativity believe that the primary danger for artists is mental illness—especially for poets. Poets have been awarded the dubious honour of being the group of writers most likely to die before their time. Now, it has to be said that a lot of the research being done in this area is American, and there is a great deal of emphasis placed on the suicide of Sylvia Plath, and, to a lesser extent, Anne Sexton. But in reading through the literature on the apparent intimate relationship of poets and suicide, one has to pause at the number of studies that have taken as their subjects the poets of yore, and which compare poets who have committed suicide and those who haven’t based on conjecture about the poetic process, including the language used by writers, without really understanding the actual literary context of their work.

To illuminate the extent of this misunderstanding, take the example of Sylvia Plath, whose plight has been so well documented. This has often been done with a meticulous, if not downright macabre, fascination that makes a person’s head spin with all the infidelity, craziness, the needs of young children, and the callous irresponsibility of her famous-poet husband, Ted Hughes. On the other hand, few have looked at the possibility that part of her plight was that she was on a creative surge away from existing poetic convention. How would it have felt to stand at what might have seemed the precarious edge of literary sanity?

The ultimate prize for not getting it goes to one prominent researcher who has gone so far as to propose that Sylvia Plath’s poetry was merely a coping mechanism for her mental illness. What then, may I ask, are we to assume of the literary brilliance of Ariel? Is it to be considered nothing more than a collection of inspired suicide notes?

Another problem I noticed in the available research is that most neglect to look at the implications for the walking wounded, listing poets like Edna St. Vincent Millay, who suffered from a host of psychiatric conditions as well as alcohol and heroin addiction. In a study looking at the language of suicidal poets, she was included as a non-suicidal poet; but she died under mysterious circumstances that have been surmised to be accidental, although she was heavily intoxicated at the time. It is my conclusion from situations like this that metaphors are an obvious problem for scientists. Never mind that Millay was raised in extreme poverty by a single mother who was barely present, not to mention just a tad emotionally demanding. Never mind how this experience may have affected her non-poetic means of coping with the ordinary rigours of life.

In modern culture, it seems, we are unwilling to take responsibility for the sometimes desperate situation of artists, and the arts, by association. We live in an economic climate that does not validate the industry of artists. There is an extreme mistrust of artistic contribution as unpredictable, and while we admire those who become well known we at the same time discount, not to mention devalue, the commitment and the intensity of the labour of the artist, partly because of the association of mental illness and creativity.

Perhaps the most maligned in this assessment is the poet, because although poets have been involved in creating some of the most sacred documents in the history of the world (e.g., the Bible), there is a sense since the advent of science that their work has become irrelevant, or emotionally high-strung and misleading, at the very least.

Don’t get me wrong: science is valuable in what it can teach us about human behaviour. On the other hand, scientists, being human and all, are not immune to the seduction of celebrity. In all the studies I looked at, there was an overwhelming preponderance of “A-list” poets. This may make sense from the point of view of the study’s accessibility. However, the only study that proposed to look at a broad spectrum of poets and the extent of suicide across cultural experience suggested, in complete disregard for geographical and cultural differences, that the poetic process itself was to blame for suicidal tendencies. Needless to say, no Canadian poets were prominent in any of these studies. In fact, the only study I could find with a Canadian connection was not specific to poetry, but focused on the biological processes that might provide a more practical rationale for a possible correlation between poetry and mental problems. It is part of an ongoing research project jointly sponsored by the University of Toronto and Harvard University Medical School.

The researchers in this study looked at a biological phenomenon called “latent inhibition,” a biological process that allows animals to focus on survival behaviour, effectively blocking out any distracting stimuli which would put them in danger. By way of explanation, a low latent inhibition score indicates that the subject responds to a variety of different stimuli all at once, while those who score high demonstrate a heightened ability to tune out extraneous distraction, focusing on the task at hand. In tests that included multiple stimuli, intelligent, creative subjects scored significantly lower than those who were not identifiably creative in a traditional artistic sense. Theimportance of this research is that mentally ill subjects also scored low in latent inhibition testing. The researchers stress that more rigorous investigation is needed before definitive conclusions can be made. But in preliminary results, this research indicates that mentally ill subjects and creative people are not as adept at blocking out multiple stimuli, indicating a similar biological process is at work in the two groups. A particular combination of good memory, high intelligence, and heightened creative tendencies is speculated to be one rationale for why some fall victim to mental disease and others don’t.

Obviously, scientific research has a way to go to get beyond popular stereotypes of the artistic personality, especially that of the poet. Interestingly, I found a number of articles disputing the findings of these studies linking creativity and mental illness. According to these articles, the sampling and methodologies of many of these studies are fatally flawed, allowing the researchers to confirm existing assumptions about a positive correlation between artistic creation and madness. One of these review articles reported that of twenty-nine studies, fifteen found no evidence to link creativity to mental illness; nine found a positive relationship; and five had mixed results. Although little hard evidence was found to substantiate a neurophysiological connection between mental disease and creativity, most of the authors of these studies posited just such a relationship. Interesting, eh?

It is not my intention here to prove that creative people aren’t mentally ill, nor that mentally ill people are not creative. Rather, I want to emphasize the importance of doing adequate investigation into all aspects of experience, not just to assume stereotypes about a particular art form or group of artists to make a point.

In looking at why poets are at risk for difficulties, it is also imperative to look at the nature of the artistic discipline itself. Yes, it is true that poets are discriminated against, in that their art is underappreciated. And its importance is not as patently obvious as, say, that of film, visual art, or other genres of writing. But then, the pursuit of art is often not about whether not one establishes a faithful fan base, though it is nice to know that there are those out there who understand the importance of your work. Really, poetry—like other forms of art—is about asking questions that interest the artist. It is only the manner in which the questions are asked that differs.

One of Canada’s best-known poets, Gwendolyn MacEwen, provides a good sense of the creative challenges poets necessarily face in “Let Me Make This Perfectly Clear”:

It is not the Poem that matters.
You can shove the Poem.
What matters is what is out there in the large dark
And in the long light,
Breathing.

And in another poem, “But”:

Out there in the large dark and in the long light is the breathless
Poem,
As ruthless and beautiful and amoral as the world is,
As nature is.

In the end there’s just me and the bloody Poem and the murderous
Tongues of the trees,
Their glossy green syllables licking my mind (the green
Work of the wind).

It’s easy to dismiss what we cannot see for all the distractions in our daily lives. And with the perceived importance of those distractions, it is easy to dismiss the challenge to look beyond the shiny surface of superficial ease provided by those things we are convinced we can’t live without. It is enough to imagine what life would be without cars and cellphones—who has the time or energy to worry about the “bloody Poem,” or a woman who does, and drinks herself to death in the process? Besides, there are real problems to worry about—the war in Iraq, another hurricane in Florida, and the baby who gets beaten to death somewhere on the other side of the country or down the street from us. And so we go on—never thinking that the large dark might have something to do with all of this, that the language we are given to talk about the problems that exist contains only this, and nothing more.

You, the reader, might be wondering if I am about to contradict myself by turning around and talking about the extremity of the poetic process and how it robs the world of poets. But no—people, including scientists, romanticize things because it helps them to accept something that is possibly unforgivable. Good poetry, while it may be beautiful, is not about intentionally trying to make something uncomfortable luxurious, but about showing that almost everything is beautiful too, and that sometimes that beauty is terribly frightening, murderous, and shallow. Sorrow and joy can and often do occupy the same moment, and a person who is writing beautiful poetry can write about a sad or difficult situation with stunning elegance. But make no mistake, this is not about closing something horrible up in brilliant wrapping. It is about opening up language to show how we have closed ourselves off from truly understanding; it is about showing our complacency to our own discomfort and that of others. As most of us know, yet rarely pay attention to, beauty is not always a good thing, nor are the depths to which language can sink particularly well understood.

There is nothing romantic about either alcoholism or suicide, and yet there remains the popular idealization of the poet not so much as an artist but as artistically tragic. Gwendolyn MacEwen was a consummate poet: she knew what she was looking at. She also understood that the vision she saw was undermined by her own human condition. Patrick Lane talks about alcoholism as a disease, and that has certainly been substantiated by research. So when we look at MacEwen’s life and see that her father was an alcoholic, it makes some sense that she could be one too. It also makes sense that, as her mother was mentally ill, her difficulties in relationships, bouts with alcohol, and other factors in her life could be attributed to this. But did they make her a poet? No. Those experiences comprise a person’s life, and it may be what they write about in some fashion, but they don’t make a poet. The poet is what the person writes, how they write it, and how well.

Often, people want their artists to match the romantic notion of what they expect, and poets have many stereotypes to choose from. Patrick Lane talks about the one he has had to deal with for most of his life—the “wild, violent poet who lacks a civilized sensibility.” But as he also shows, there is pain in sensationalizing one’s life, whether the poet does it or someone else does. While there is certainly violence in Lane’s poetry, it is there because violence is something he knows. We live with violence all around us—this is reality, not something added for dramatic emphasis.

That said, one of the biggest myths about poetry is that it is primarily about feelings—hence the idea that poets are overwrought, emotionally temperamental prima donnas who love nothing better than to drone on about themselves. If one picks up a poem by another of Canada’s great poets, the legendary Milton Acorn, there is no sense of emotional grandstanding. It’s not that there isn’t feeling in the poetry, but that it’s part of a larger thing, pulling the reader toward a sense of integration, an understanding of the poet’s subject. Take this excerpt from “I, Milton Acorn”:

The spattered colour of the time has marked me
So I’m a man of many appearances;
Have come many times to poetry
And come back to define what was meant.

If you know anything about Milton Acorn, you know that in Canada, he is regarded as the “People’s Poet.” You know that he started off his professional life as a carpenter, a calling he eventually gave up to devote his energy to poetry. You will also know that he suffered, off and on, from severe depression, and that he drank too much. Acorn’s life was a hard one, but he didn’t just use his “feelings” as a means to carry the poem; he used skill, intelligence, and talent. Poetry is about language—it is language as medium, it is the beauty of the way words are carefully selected, placed, and reshaped by the poet to pull at the reader on all levels of awareness.

Finally, there is also Canadian poet Pat Lowther, who published two collections of poetry and had a third accepted for publication before she was brutally murdered by her husband, Roy Lowther, also a writer, in 1975. For over thirty years, her death has completely overshadowed any genuine critical discussion of her work. Here was a woman who was a high school dropout from a working-class family, who worked menial jobs and raised several children, whose love of poetry evolved into a literary legacy of seven books. Patricia Lowther’s first collection of poetry, This Difficult Flowring, was published by Verse Stone, a publishing house co-founded by featured poet Patrick Lane; the seventh, when Time Capsule: New and Selected, was published posthumously by Polestar in 1996.

Even within what must have been the horrific constraints of a violently abusive relationship, Pat Lowther continued to write. And while the following excerpt from her poem “Random Interview,” published in Time Capsule, hints at the nightmare her life had become, even so, she continues to focus on honing her poetics, on intensifying the momentum of the language she use to draw the reader ever closer.

the fear
the fear is of everything
staying the way it is
and only i changing

the fear is
of everything changing
and i staying the same

the world expanding
branch tunnel cell
more and more
precious and terrible

while i grow only more
fragile and confused

Whether we like it or not, one of the most valuable lessons poetry can teach is the grace of patience—that surfaces are not all that we are, and being fully alive is not always about being comfortable or happy, no matter what TV commercials tell us. Don’t get me wrong: poets are not saints. Far from it. They drink, smoke, take drugs, have affairs, get sick, go mad, get married, get divorced, yell at their kids, work themselves to death. They live in abject terror that they will wake up one morning to find the muse has left them high and dry, never to write again. Perhaps worst of all is that, to the consternation of readers and loved ones alike, they will write about it all.

The stereotype of the poet inspired by madness, either from mental illness or from some other tragic force, is as damaging as saying that poetry is a disease, like alcoholism or diabetes, a statement I am sure a lot of general readers would be relieved to hear, as it would provide a good reason to steer permanently clear of it. No doubt there are some who would welcome a medical reason to switch to writing fiction; but don’t forget that fiction writers are the second-most likely to pass on before their time.

So yes, there are poets who struggle with alcoholism and drug abuse and the like, and perhaps that might be something to look at poetically, but it doesn’t a poet make. Nor can a poet expect that poetry is a magic bullet for all that ails them. Personal problems cannot be resolved merely by writing them away; appropriate care should be sought by artists who find themselves in difficult personal circumstances. And while it might be easier to focus, soothe the painful memories, trick that critical vulture on your shoulder with a couple of drinks, a snort, or some other kind of medicated refreshment, or perhaps something more extreme—the reality is that you are the writer, and the vision is yours, and the voice that will disappear with you, under all that duress, is one that will be missed if you don’t take care of yourself.

Socrates was reputed to have said

If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness
of the muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good
poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are
utterly eclipsed by the inspired madman.

Remember that what Socrates is talking about is not mental disease in the way we think of it now, but the idea that creativity requires the poet to take risks, to push the self beyond what he or she might think is the limit of their senses, if there is any hope of transcending the tried and true.

And of course, it is impossible to leave out Aristotle, whose theory of poetic inspiration offered in Problemata XXX is the impetus for many who try to connect artistic endeavour with mental-health issues. Aristotle (or, more likely, a later Aristotelian writer) offered that poetic inspiration was indicative of “melancholic” temperament, a condition precipitated by an organic cause—a particular imbalance of “black bile,” one of the four “humours” believed by the Greeks to determine human physiological and psychological health. It’s interesting to add that Aristotle’s theory didn’t go over that well with the poets of the time. Apparently, Horace made a particular point of making fun of Aristotle’s conclusions in a footnote to his opus Ad Pisones (also known as Ars Poetica).

But what Aristotle meant was not depression as we might run from it today, but the ability of the poet to see beauty in all of its facets, not merely in the bright and sunny way people sometimes seem to think is the true measurement of sanity. You know what I mean—the “chin up, keep on smiling even if you are stuck three times a day by lightning, life’s not so bad” approach. Aristotle was an astute reader of poetry: he understood its ability to move readers, to tear at a person’s soul.

One way to understand poetry is to follow the evolution of the English word “demon” back to its origins in Ancient Greek. A daimon or daemon was a kind of under-god, who occupied the space between the great pantheon of Gods like Zeus, Demeter, and the like, and the lowly human-type creatures. Daimons, like their over-gods, were capable of great acts of benevolence as well as fairly petty and not-so-nice trickery—kind of like poetry: so far from being just-plain dastardly, these guys and gals kept things hopping in the in-between interstice between the sun and the earth. The thing is to try to see the world as only you can see it. That’s not insanity, it’s called vision. But a word of warning: if the words on the page of the poem start to go blurry and you’re having trouble reading your watch, it is definitely time to see a doctor!

Of course, no discussion of demons would be complete without a mention of the beast of love. Not only is the word “love” an anathema to poet, who must, if they are brave enough, take on this unruly creature, but it is also an iconic experience that is a devil to get right, whether you are writing about the good stuff or the bad—to find some other way to talk about it is not an easy task. No matter how romantic you might think poetry is, it is allergic to the inclusion of that four-letter catchall that most everyone else gets away with. Even if you use it, you must appoint it perfectly.

So I’ve included the winners of CV2’s Great Canadian Love Poem Contest, the magazine’s first-ever kick at the amour can. CV2 would like to offer profound congratulations to Chris Nikkel, who not only won first place but also received an honourable mention. John B. Lee came in a very strong second, and Ben Murray crossed the line close behind at third. As judging contests is never easy, I would like to thank Rob Budde for doing us that honour. I am sure you will enjoy all their efforts.

Before I call it a wrap, I have a few items to address, then I’ll let you move on to the fun part. First of all, I need to offer an apology to poet Fiona Tinwei Lam for the goofs we made with both the cover text and the shape of the poem as it appeared in the “Poetics of Space” issue, volume 27, issue 3. You will find in this issue a proper rendition of her poem “Park.” Just to clarify, on the cover of that issue, it said that Fiona graduated from law school, gave birth, and published her first book the same year. Actually, she graduated with an MFA from UBC that year. Her law-school graduation was more than a decade ago. And, as was noted in interview, she had to go through law school, practise law, and get divorced before finally resuming writing, a decade-long process. Also, she had her child on her own, some years after the divorce. So many apologizes to Fiona for these mistakes.

CV2 would also like to offer condolences to the family and friends of Manitoba-born Saulteaux poet and playwright Douglas Nepinak, who succumbed to cancer on August 13. At the time of his passing, he was looking forward to the September premiere of his much anticipated play, Coo-coosh, by Theatre Projects.

Douglas was a dedicated member of Manitoba’s literary and Aboriginal communities. He served as an editor at Weetamah. He was also the driving force behind As the Bannock Burns Theatre Company in Winnipeg and a dedicated member/co-founder of the Aboriginal Writers’ Collective. As well, Douglas worked as Communications Advisor to the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs. At the time of his death, Douglas was working on a spoken-word CD for the Aboriginal radio network NCI. His good friend and the General Manager of NCI, David McLeod, said at the time of Douglas Nepinak’s death: “A big talent has been lost, not just in the Aboriginal community, but in the literary community.” To honour this important Canadian voice, CV2 will be publishing a section of the interview that Douglas did with David in our upcoming “Memory” issue, as well as a sample of his poetry.

What I remember about Douglas was the magnificence of his voice. In one of the first literary events I attended in Winnipeg—many years ago, now—he was one of several featured readers, but the power of his reading and his poetry has completely burnt all recollection of the other performances away. He was that good, his command of the audience that complete. He will certainly be missed.

So, for now, I wish everyone out there peace. Next up is CV2’s 30th-anniversary issue, “In Translation.”

— Clarise Foster