Word as Sound

A couple of evenings ago I walked into the Artword Artbar late because I wanted to take a quick listen to a group I had heard making some intriguing music the weekend before. The Blues Explosion (Sarah Good et al.) had finished one set; in the interval a group calling themselves slowly, slowly were performing. I thought they sounded interesting enough to wait through until the last set. It turned out that they were the ones who impressed me.

The five person collective performed on a number of various instruments, interspersed by vocal phrasings rather than typically structured “songs.” With the interplay between voice and instrumentation and the minimal of layering over and against each other, it made for a presentation quite intriguing to the ear.

Most interesting to me as a poet and spoken word aficionado was one piece when the group read text as part of the presentation. The music faded out (it did not stop abruptly) and the focus became the speaking voice, first by a few and then involving the whole collective. As this continued it felt to me that the content, the subject matter, the meaning, were not as important as the voices as they wove together. It felt like overhearing conversation at a party but standing away from direct involvement with it.

Later I wondered if this had any relationship to what sound poets do. They take words and parts of words, combinations of sounds that usually have specific meanings, and turn them into a pattern that may not have been there before. These musicians took ordinary words and sentences and did not change anything except the presentation as music, placed them in a different context and asked you to hear them in an unusual way.

It’s one thing to read aloud a newspaper article and, through emphasis, inflection and intonation, make it sound like poetry. (I have heard/seen that done.) It’s another to take the banality of the human voice in conversation and make it music. But then there’s the creative spirit that joins the poet and musician. There is not and should not be a wall between artistic disciplines, no cubbyholes to hold and contain.

Just as a postscript, when Sarah Good returned to the stage (alone this time) and began a series of electronic sound manipulations I slipped away. It seemed almost common compared to what I had experienced.

The "I" of Poetry

Anyone reading or writing poetry should keep in mind that when using the first person singular pronoun "I" the writer is not necessarily speaking for himself or about himself.
Granted, so much of poetry is about personal expression. Poets describing their feelings and reactions to the world around them in imagery and language will most naturally use that pronoun. Sometimes, however, it may begin to interfere; egotistically the poet can become so self centered that his reader/listener begins to feel left out. However impressive the use of language and the skillful use of poetic devices, the poetry loses its audience and thereby becomes redundant, another "blowing in the wind."

A skillful poet will often use a mask. Rather than lay his own persona open before the world, he will create an "other," someone or something he can hold at arm's length. Whether such a character is named or remains nameless doesn't matter. What does matter is the poet's stance: this needs to be said but don't pin it to me as a person. Another way he may do this is by using the second person, "you." Then it becomes necessary for the reader/hearer to decide if he is referencing "me" or "not me." Either way, the poem implies that the self of the poet is not the main thrust of the poem.

And then there is the impersonal "I" where the poet puts himself in the place of a group of voices that includes his own. He may use the imperial plural "we" but more often remains with the first person singular. We are asked to see him as representative, the voice of the voiceless expressing truths held in common. This is the ancient and honoured function of the poet. He is everyone of us, speaking for the tribe, the voice of his people.

A great responsibility, but a great honour.

Al Purdy Day, April 21

It's "Al Pudy Day" in Canada, and the league of Canadian poets suggests parties to celebrate the great poet. I'm not much of a party animal but I have been thinking of him throughout the day, leafing through his books, reading his poems. I decided I should write an entry for this space; then decided to publish here a posthumus letter I wrote to him. It's a summary of a presentation I did for last year's "Pudy Fest" in Marmora.

Hey Al,

I never knew how much your presence in my life meant to me until I was left holding your absence. Like they say, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” Now you’re gone, I felt I had to inspect this poet I call myself, and look closely at the way you helped shape me.

Remember Yorkville in the sixties? With my developing thirst for poetry I was hanging out there with a bunch of out-of-towners. The others looked for folk musicians; I looked for poets. And found them.

They didn’t congregate in the Yorkville and Avenue Road clubs, they hung out at the Bohemian Embassy in an alley off Yonge. It was not only a place for musicians, it was the haunt for writers, actors, poets. One evening one of the featured readers was this Al Purdy who had won the Governor-General’s prize for poetry. When you read, I was spellbound.

You reminded me of the Beat poets I had heard in the States, rough and uncouth in appearance with the sounds of everyday words coming from your mouth. And I suddenly realized that to express myself in poetry, I didn’t need flowery language and classical allusions to gods and muses. Carefully crafting common language made your poetry feel and sound natural. I approached you afterward, got you to sign a copy of a book. I told you my name but you never spoke it.

The next time we met face to face was over dinner ― for ten. I had persuaded the local Arts Council that a reading by the great Canadian poet Al Purdy would be a wonderful way to end a week of literary celebrations, and now I was plunked among the artistic movers and shakers in a fancy restaurant. I don’t remember the dinner conversation. I remember little of the reading you did.

I did, however, come away with a concept that has stuck in my mind ever since, always connected to your words at that time. Over dinner and during the reading, you emphasized how poetry and individual poems build community: in exploring common experience they build an intrinsic, common bond that is easily recognized.

Through the years there were several of your readings and other gatherings I attended. Only one really stands out, again here in Hamilton, and that because you brought home to me another simple but vital concept.

Poetry is truth, you claimed. No, not the legal, factual definition of truth. Its strength lies in its ability to connect, to connect over distance and across time. It holds the truth that is not “out there” but inside everyone. That wasn’t the way you expressed it. I don’t remember your words, not even an approximation, but that is the lesson I retain.

Three very important and fundamental concepts for this poet’s development, and for this I thank you, Al. I never got the chance to do so in person. We never got that close.

Our paths crossed several times over the years and one small thing keeps irritating me. You never gave any indication that you recognized me or knew my name. Will you do me a favour?

The next time we meet, greet me by name.

With gratitude and respect,

Jefferson

And it's not just me; in some way or other he influenced most of the poets who followed him. He has become an icon in Canadian letters, but remains so human, so much a poet of the people and the voice of this land.