Fred Wah, Music at the Heart of Thinking

 

1

Don’t think thinking without heart no such separation
within the acting body takes a step without all of it the self
propelled into doing the thing (for example, the horse) and
on the earth as well picking up the whole circuit feet first feel
the waves tidal and even outside to moon and sun it’s OK
to notate only one of those things without knowing fixed
anyway some heart sits in the arms of

Having appeared as a thread through his work, including through multiple full-length poetry titles, is Vancouver poet Fred Wah’s Music at the Heart of Thinking (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2020), a new volume collecting the one hundred and seventy numbered poems in this sequence-to-date for the first time. The first ten poems in the sequence, as Wah’s notes acknowledge, were “written for and published in an issue of Open Letter (5.7 [Spring 1984]) on notation,” a project originally prompted by bpNichol and Frank Davey (there are at least three Open Letter issues “on notation”). The original handful of poems might have been prompted by an idea on notation, but the poems quickly evolved into a sequence of responses, whether composed as individual pieces or short groupings of pieces, to music, visual art, theory and poetry. The first sixty-nine pieces later appeared as Music at the Heart of Thinking (Red Deer AB: Red Deer College Press, 1987), with a subsequent thirty-five appearing as part of Alley Alley Home Free (Red Deer College Press, 1992). Subsequent pieces collected in the volume originally emerged through numerous literary journals, festschrifts, anthologies and further of his trade titles, existing as a thread across the length and breadth of his work since, encompassing nearly forty years of composition. There is something fascinating about a poetry title composed across four decades, especially one that emerges out of a particular thread excised from the rest of his work. How does this one thread exist in relation to other pieces he’s worked on, across that same period? Perhaps at some point down the road, a similar volume might compile Gil McElroy’s ongoing “Julian Days,” another sequence of poems focusing equally on “response” as well as an attention to form, language and breath. To pull out and compile a single thread, what is the portrait that might emerge? As Wah writes to introduce those original pieces in Open Letter:

THE FOLLOWING ‘DRUNK’ WRITINGS ARE NOTES FOR TALK. IN THE explication of these estranged pieces lies possible coherences for some sense of writing as a notation for thinking as feeling. The difficulty is literal and intentional. I’m wary of any attempt to make it easy. ‘language [the true practice of thought]’ Kristeva says or Jack writing yesterday with reminders all through his letter, mind stumbling over itself not recognizing stuff ‘till later,

That last part of your letter makes me remember Wittgenstein’s saying ‘don’t think, look.’ And if the ‘dogmatic order’ is only in the para-text of perception, then … the syntax of thinking in its (linguistic) periodicity is always going to elide that bump or ‘nipple’ Juan de la Cosa’s eyes included (but you’d have this already from Henry Lee and Benjamin L.).

And then the gates open to the ‘double,’ the binary. Emic. Dialogic.

In many ways, Wah’s “Music at the Heart of Thinking” is built in a manner opposite to a project such as Winnipeg poet Dennis Cooley’s impossibly-large and ongoing “Love in a Dry Land”: where Cooley’s is a single project nearly thirty years in the making, with threads excerpted for book publication, Wah’s appears as a single, occasional and ongoing thread. His is a sequence of occasionals sprung from a shared impulse of improvisation and response; a project that adds poems as they are needed, potentially for as long as he requires them. The idea of “drunk writings” he mentions in his original introduction, is something he referred to in that first trade volume as “drunken tai chi,” the idea of a master craftsman deliberately compromised, forcing themselves to work more intuitively, and allowing the unconscious to take over. In the note at the back of the current collection, he continues that particular thread, writing that “The ‘MHTs’ became, for me, a niche for a compositional attention I wanted to explore in particular ways. I had been attracted to the prose poem through my attempts at the utanikki, the poetic journal. Within the prose poem I was interested in upsetting the tyranny of the sentence as a unit of composition. The resistance to closure and syntactic predictability implicit in contesting the sentence is a dynamic also shared with the long poem.” As his opening note to the current volume, “One makes (the) difference,” begins:

To say: “I don’t understand what this means,” is, at least, to recognize that “this” means. The problem is that meaning is not a totality of sameness and predictability. Within each word, each sentence, meaning has slipped a little out of sight and all we have are traces, shadows, still warm ashes. The meaning available from language goes beyond the actual instance of this word, that word. A text is a place where a labyrinth of continually revealing meanings are available, a place that offers more possibility than we can be sure we know, sometimes more than we want to know. It isn’t a container, static and apparent. Rather, it is noisy, frequently illegible. Reading into meaning starts with a questioning glance, a seemingly obvious doubloon on a mast.

The “Music at the Heart of Thinking” poems, a project that emerged out of Wah’s attention to improvisation and response [something we discussed as part of an interview I conducted with Wah for Jacket2], appears to be the thread of his work where he more overtly explores the possibilities of improvisation alongside ekphrastic movement, allowing the poems a looseness, and trusting them to land as they should. Set together for the first time, the ebb and flow of the series is interesting, as the poems expand and contract, reach out and retreat; from compact prose poems to sentence-stanzas, exploring both the breath-line and the poetic sentence. “The plateau of the poem,” he writes, to open “127,” “pulling a story from a fire / smouldering under foot / on a periphery of words / as things while sentenced [.]” The series also evolves from more general explorations to specific responses, whether to specific people, artworks or thinking, such as “Music at the Heart of Thinking Eighty-Something,” after Christine Stewart, that includes: “Where to go to get the word rubble now or as you say fair / producing sky weather may eventually.” Wah’s has always been a poetic simultaneously engaged with breath and quick thought, language and deep meditation on being, identity and theory, and Music at the Heart of Thinking provides an ongoing example of just how powerful a master can be, even as he allows himself the quick line, the quick sketch; allowing himself to relax, and let go.

90

On the weekend I got into anger talk about landscape and the hunger of narrative to eat answer or time but space works for me because place got to be more spiritual at least last felt now this water/genetic I suspect passions like anger suprafixed to simply dwells I mean contained as we speak of it believe me I’d like to find a new word-track for feeling but language and moment work out simply as simultaneous occurrences so I don’t think you should blame words for time-lapse tropism e.g. ethics is probably something that surrounds you like your house it’s where you live

 

Open Letter: A Canadian Journal of Writing and Theory: “Spirit, Experimental Poetry & 21st Century” (final issue)

The tradition of avant-avant was historically & culturally predisposed towards many theological predilections, we agree and admit. Okay, so hello to a logic of ‘of course-ness.’ Even if the every-act of allusion was denial and subversion and impulse. But the roundness is a lineage and the veins thin and ebb, but never sever: … Four Horsemen, bill bissett, D.A. Levy, Gary Snyder, … Susan Howe, And now we can consider Darren Wershler’s the tapeworm foundry as confessional liturgy and Jonathan Ball’s Ex Machina as souled text robot-god. History persists in our mystical ever-present. (kevin mcpherson eckhoff and Jake Kennedy, “Editorial Invocation: Hearts are Words Living Inside Everyone’s Language-Spirit!”)

It’s sad to see the final issue of Frank Davey’s Open Letter: A Canadian Journal of Writing and Theory hit the stands after some five decades of publication [see the profile I did on Davey and Open Letter over at Open Book: Ontario this past spring, here]. Through its lengthy run, overseen by editor, publisher and founder Frank Davey, Open Letter has critically explored and encouraged the Canadian and international avant-garde through essays, interviews, manifestos, festshrifts, conference proceedings and the publication of works that would be difficult to find otherwise, and the loss of the journal, despite the possibilities of the internet (online journals such as Jacket2 and Lemonhound have since picked up some of what was, for years, a mandate nearly exclusively seen in Open Letter), will be felt for some time. The fall 2013 issue of Open Letter (15^th Series, No. 4) is “Spirit, Experimental Poetry, & 21^st Century,” guest-edited by frequent collaborators kevin mcpherson eckhoff and Jake Kennedy. The collection of pieces, set into sections “Meditations,” “Mediums,” “Epistolaries” and “Rites,” is quite magnificent, including essays, interviews and creative work by, with and about Marie Annharte, bpNichol, Andrew McEwan, Robert Majzels, Jordan Scott, M. NourbeSe Philip, Jeremy Stewart, Mat Laporte, Fenn Stewart, Sina Queyras, Tim Lilburn, Ken Belford, Kathleen Brown, Jonathan Ball, Robert Fitterman and Mark Goldstein. The mixture is lively, energetic and even confusing, managing a fantastic energy that make me wish that perhaps these two could have even taken over the journal.

Poetry as a Spiritual Endeavour

In the small mostly white Albertan city where I grew up, most kids went to Sunday school even if their parents didn’t attend church. I rejected that God a long time ago. I couldn’t reconcile my Chinese grandma going to hell, and there was already a lot of hell on earth in my childhood and I didn’t have time to worry about the one that would come later. So, although I’m not religious, I do see poetry as a spiritual endeavor.

            For me poetry functions as a cathartic and catalyzing force. Whether to make space to mourn, to learn, to think through, this is the affective strategy and spiritual intent of my poetry. It is imbued with the same sense of hope I derive from seeing the eagles soaring over the Women’s Memorial March every year. The march, which began in 1991 in response to the murder of a Coast Salish woman in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, honours the lives of missing and murdered women, and reminds the public that poor and racialized women continue to be disappeared and murdered. I don’t know what to believe in when I see so much injustice. But when I bear witness to the eagles guiding us at the march year after year, that they know, then I believe all is possible. (Mercedes Eng)

There is an interview-conversation between Toronto writers Mat Laporte and Fenn Stewart that is quite striking, some thoughts on Walter Benjamin by Mark Goldstein, and some very cool visual works by Robert Fitterman, Billy Mavreas and Kathleen Brown. One the real highlights of the issue has to be Jordan Scott’s interview with M. NourbeSe Philip, “Witch is Which?: Sycorax and Setaey within Zong!” in which the interviewer renders himself (on the surface, at least) invisible, allowing the author to speak without interference:

Prospero calls her out of her name – the “blue ey’d hag,” “the damn’d witch” who lay with the “devil himself.” She is Sycorax, Caliban’s mother – the cipher, named yet unseen, who stands in for all that is subterranean and subaqueous. Sycorax’s genealogy stretches back and forwards to include those like her who carry a certain kind of knowing; within that genealogy I place Setaey Adamu Boateng (she is identified as the voice of the Ancestors on the cover of Zong!) – she who recounds the story that can only be told by not being told; the story that can never, yet must, be told. Perhaps, it is she who is the story that is always told yet never told.

Another highlight has to be the magnificent “Alternative Approaches to Indigenous Literary Criticism and Resistance Writing Practice” by Marie Annharte:

What if there was no longer need to refer wistfully to a “renaissance” because of the great frequency that Indigenous authored works now enter the North American literary canon or bookstore? What to read and study might equally confound any novice or advanced academic scholar. Because many published Indigenous authors are university instructors or educators, the continuance of their literary careers would certainly help multiply publications. They could buddy up with other Canadian writers to enjoy the fruits of labour rewarded by a government-subsidized publishing industry and writing awards or grants. Personal resources like a higher and regular income would no doubt further ensure latent abilities to voice one’s own story or even that of others. This elite corps would provide leadership and inspiration to attain more representation of diversities within the ranks of both aspiring and established Indigenous writers. Moving right along to join the ranks of political leadership, the Indigenous writer or “word warrior” would be an impressive force for change. It is all to the good except for the nagging question: would they necessarily be engaged in a resistance writing practice? Would understanding the diversity of Indigenous literatures alone be enough momentum to increase the participation of Indigenous writers? Would engaging in literary criticism increase more of a readership base within Indian Country itself? What if the continuous nature of Indigenous everyday reality was to intrude into a developing phenomena of more Indigenous writers and more writing?

Perhaps the only frustration over the years with Open Letter over the past number of years has been in terms of relative availability, given the possibilities of the internet, and the limitations of print (and Canada Post). We will both celebrate and mourn you, Open Letter; and we will strive to do better at what you managed to do so very well for so very long.

Open Letter: A Canadian Journal of Writing and Theory: “Surrealism in Canada”

Importantly, for the mandate of Open Letter, we present here several articles and interviews, which break new ground in the area of critical and historical writing on Surrealism. Some of the articles explore the positioning of Surrealism within the larger context of modern literary history, exploring influences from other movements (Romanticism, Symbolism), and Surrealism’s influence on other tendencies (Oulipo, Magic Realism, Situationism). A need to class Surrealist expression is a persistent current in many of these articles and interviews, often attempting to place it inside a timeline, usually within, or in opposition to André Breton’s orbit of influence. Invaluable original research is presented here, including an exhaustive examination of the origins of Breton’s famous work Arcanum 17. (Beatriz Hausner, “What can be”)

I’m not entirely sure when Frank Davey’s Open Letter: A Canadian Journal of Writing and Theory comes to an end [see the profile I wrote on the journal for Open Book: Ontario here], but it can’t be that long, now. The loss will be substantial. Until then, the most recent issue, “Fifteenth Series, Number 3, Summer 2013” is “Surrealism in Canada,” guest co-edited by Gregory Betts and Beatriz Hausner, both of whom have approached the idea of surrealism from different vantage points, including interviews, essays, poems and other materials to give an overview of some of the activity that has occurred within the boundaries of Canada over the past century. Part of the appeal of this particular issue as a whole is in the way it attempts to engage with a variety of threads of what could fall under the umbrella of “Canadian Surrealism,” from contributions on and of fiction, poetry, theatre and the visual arts by Ray Ellenwood, Peter Dubé, Lillian Necakov, Gregg Simpson, Ludwig Zeller, Karl Jirgens and Claude Gauvreau.

The Ensemble of Sleep

What night demands on Monday

sour hand half minutes

when we enter this paradise

love and arms resemble

the ear that I told you yesterday

there is not much to your street

I let my coat enter your hands

with this, amiable

all is tempered by human time

we assemble sleep

my love with fur stars

the sky above us like a drop

I reclose your many hands

and also the tents that tremble love

watch us longingly

in the ensemble of sleep. (Lillian Necakov, “Translating dead French guys”)

The collection also includes Toronto poet and critic Stephen Cain’s lengthy essay, “André Breton in Canada,” exploring the possible connections produced through and by Breton’s brief stay in Quebec in 1944, where he infamously “was inspired to write his last novel, Arcane 17, in the three months he stayed.” As Cain writes, early on in the essay:

But why did Breton come to Gaspé in the first place? There appear to be several contradictory reports but, perhaps understandably, Quebecois literary and artistic criticism has been more precise about Breton’s trip to Canada than international critics and biographers.

For some time, considerations of surrealism in Canada have been limited to relatively unrelated considerations and self-contained pockets, from Betts’ work on poet W.W.E. Ross, the Montreal Surrealists, Brion Gysin, Ludwig Zeller and the predominantly Toronto poets Stuart Ross collected (including Necakov) in his anthology Surreal Estate: 13 Canadianpoets under the influence (Toronto ON: The Mercury Press, 2007). Both editors include introductions to the collection, with Hausner’s “What can be” providing more of an introductory overview to the contents of the issue, and Betts’ “The Nonnational Boundaries of Surrealism in Canada” providing an intriguing overview of how surrealism has impacted upon and through the boundaries of Canada. As he writes, “I approach this issue and this topic not as an attempt to resurrect or invent boundaries by nationalizing the Surrealist movement, but to provide a venue for Surrealist expression and to recognize the wealth of activity that happened in and most often against these borders.” He writes:

It was not until the expats and exiles began seeping into French Canada while avoiding the war over there that the essentially and metaphysically disruptive implications of Surrealism revealed itself here. Borduas, Pellan, Renaud, Leduc, les frères Gauvreau, Sullivan, and all of the other stalwarts of the first active generation of Surrealists in Canada knew very quickly that they had tapped into a powder keg. Unlike in Toronto, the weird abstractions and nonrepresentational experiments in art (including literature, theatre, painting, dance, and music) were recognized as a disruption of reason, which was recognized by revolutionary artist and reactionary critics alike as an affront to God and country. It took a more Catholic context to make that link (and also one far more aware of the Paris scene). In the beginning was the word; the logos, the divine word. But the Greek term ‘logos’ does not just translate as the English ‘word’: it marks the reason and the divine ratio that keeps the universe in balance. If nothing else, Surrealists have always been unreasonable. Thus Borduas decreed in the founding manifesto of the Montreal Automatists, “To hell with holy water and the French-Canadian tuque!” (30). If rationalism and nationalism were the problem behind burning Europe, prudish Canada, and fascist Quebec, then the Surrealists would turn to irrationalism and nonnationalism as antidote.