Nelson Ball (1942-August 16, 2019)

Sad news from Stuart Ross: that Paris, Ontario poet, editor and former publisher and bookseller Nelson Ball died yesterday afternoon in Brantford after an extended illness.

In my review of his Chewing Water (Mansfield Press, 2016) [see that here] I mentioned how Cameron Anstee has referred to Ball as “Canada’s greatest practicing minimalist poet.” Ball emerged in the 1960s in Toronto as part of an enormous wave of poets and small press editors and publishers, and his Weed/Flower magazine, which quickly flourished into Weed/Flower Press, was one of the more memorable operations throughout the period, and one that published books and chapbooks by a growing generation of exciting poets from both sides of the Canadian/American border (and occasionally beyond). Some of the authors he published included John Newlove, bpNichol, Anselm Hollo, William Hawkins and Rosemary Eckert (and if you dig through his Weed/Flower magazine, you can even find an early poem or two by Bruce Cockburn). His books and his poems and his letters and his editing were all given equal weight, and Nelson employed such a quiet and deceptive simplicity that could only emerge from a lengthy and detailed attention.

For those familiar with Ball’s work—produced over the years through numerous small press books, chapbooks, pamphlets and leaflets—his precision and timing is unmistakable, composing sublime poems that are infamous for their capacity to hold both volume and breath in such small spaces. However quiet and unassuming both he and his work might have appeared (Nelson was notoriously both deeply humble and generous), Ball’s work went on to influence multiple generations of Canadian poets, including jwcurry, Gary Barwin, Stuart Ross, Mark Truscott, Kemeny Babineau, Michael e. Casteels and Cameron Anstee, among so many, many others.

Seemingly retiring from poetry during the 1980s for the sake of bookselling (as a collector/antiquarian bookseller of literary ephemera), he reemerged to enjoy a second chapter as a poet with the publication of With Issa: Poems 1964-1971 (ECW Press, 1991), a book followed by Bird Tracks on Hard Snow (ECW Press, 1994), The Concrete Air (The Mercury Press, 1996), Almost Spring (The Mercury Press, 1999), At The Edge Of The Frog Pond (The Mercury Press, 2004) and In This Thin Rain (Toronto ON: Mansfield Press, 2012), as well as a large array of smaller publications through Apt. 9 Press, BookThug, Curvd H&z, MindWare, fingerprinting inkoperated, Letters, Rubblestone Press, above/ground press and Laurel Reed Books.

With the publication of his selected poems, Certain Details: The Poetry of Nelson Ball, selected with an introduction by Stuart Ross (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2017) [see my review of such here], Ball was almost in the midst of a third chapter, one that included new levels of attention (as well as the bpNichol Chapbook Award). He continued to quietly write and publish (in 2015, Niagara This Week even referred to Ball’s prior two year period as “prolific”), and even self-publish, from a new volume with Mansfield Press to small chapbooks to a volume of poems for children, each put together with careful detail. It was a chapter that coincided, as well, with his official retirement from bookselling, allowing his attention to focus, again, on the page and to the quiet spaces between so much noise that distracted, it would seem, just about everyone but him.

He was always quite kind, and he was more than kind and generous to me, having long been a supporter of and subscriber to above/ground press (he even allowed me to produce his chapbook Scrub Cedar back in March 2003). I’m sure a list of those he was generous to in similar ways would most likely be a rather comprehensive history of small poetry publishing in Canada. To reach out to him was to have him reach back.

I was only able to spend time with him once, during a visit years ago to Toronto. I had gone to see a show by his wife, Barbara, and saw a quiet man standing on one side of the room. I introduced myself, and he seemed both surprised and pleased to be recognized. He seemed like a quieter version of jwcurry, somehow; same beard, same lanky figure at the side of the room, attempting to be present but somehow invisible, taking in as much as he could.

His most recent publication appeared this past year through Cameron Anstee’s Apt. 9 Press, A Letter to Amanda Bernstein and a Checklist of Weed/Flower Press (Apt. 9 Press, 2019), something I wrote briefly about here. And, given I’m away for the weekend (caregiving my father, who has ALS), I haven’t my library around me, so I offer this poem of Nelson’s, pilfered from a review I did moons back of Stuart Ross’ Hardscrabble:

Still

a

crow

hangs

in the air

facing

the strong wind

still

there

Nelson is predeceased by his wife, the artist Barbara Caruso, who died on December 30, 2009 [see my obituary for her here].

Anselm Hollo: April 12, 1934 – January 29, 2013

Sad news from the United States: Finnish poet Anselm Hollo died yesterday morning.

Some Canadian readers might recall that the much-published Hollo, who lived in the United States from 1967 onwards, also published a chapbook with Nelson Ball's infamous Weed/Flower.

Here is the notice posted yesterday on Harriet, the Poetry Foundation blog:

We are very sorry to hear the sad news today of Anselm Hollo’s passing. We reported recently that he was recovering from post-operative pneumonia and in the care of his family. Robert Archambeau offers a brief remembrance at his blog Samizdat:

    I am very sad to have heard from Mark Johnson that Anselm Hollo died this morning.

    give up your ampersands & lowercase ‘i’s
    they still won’t like you
    the bosses of official verse culture
    (U.S. branch) but kidding aside
    I motored off that map a long time ago

    Those lines come from one of two poems from Anselm Hollo’s “Where if Not Here” we published in Samizdat back in the 1990s, and they capture some of my favorite things about Hollo’s viewpoint: his lack of pretense, and his complete disregard for the laurels, prizes, and jockeying-for-position that had already become endemic in the little demimonde of American poetry.

    Hollo’s grasp of the gulf between the sublimity of which poetry is capable, and the absurdities into which poets fall in pursuit of that chimera, a “career in poetry,” made him the ideal person to hold the title of United States Anti-Laureate, to which he was elected by the Buffalo POETICS list back at the turn of the century.

The announcement from the POETICS listserv follows.

We’re sure many remembrances will be flowing in, which we’ll post on as they post. Until then, we’ll leave off with these poems from the April 1967 issue of Poetry, and these from the January 1969 issue. Hollo will certainly be missed by many.

Nelson Ball, In This Thin Rain

Together

In the low breeze

two trees squeak

In Paris, Ontario poet Nelson Ball’s poems, every word is essential, and, as editor Stuart Ross said at the recent Ottawa launch of Ball’s newest trade poetry collection In This Thin Rain (Toronto ON: Mansfield Press, 2012), even the slightest edit could make enormous changes. As the back cover attests, “compressed meditations” might be the best way to describe Ball’s compact poems on his immediate, composing pieces on birds, trees, death, rain, colour and bookshelves. Ball began publishing in the 1960s, and was editor/publisher of the infamous Weed/Flower, publishing important early works by William Hawkins, George Bowering, Victor Coleman, Anselm Hollo, bpNichol, John Newlove, Carol Bergé, David W. McFadden and a number of others. As a writer, his own works include publications from 1965 to 1971 produced by Weed/Flower, Ganglia Press and Coach House Press before a gap of twenty years, during which he was involved in other activities, predominantly building up his bookselling business.

Since he returned to publishing in the early 1990s, he has published a small stack of items through presses small and smaller, from the trade collections With Issa: Poems 1964-1971 (ECW Press, 1991), Bird Tracks on Hard Snow (ECW Press, 1994), The Concrete Air (The Mercury Press, 1996), Almost Spring (The Mercury Press, 1999) and At The Edge Of The Frog Pond (The Mercury Press, 2004), as well as numerous smaller publications through Curvd H&z, MindWare, fingerprinting inkoperated, Letters, Rubblestone Press, above/ground press and Laurel Reed Books. There is a packed simplicity to Ball’s poems, more happening in his sharp densities than anyone could have imagined possible, and his influence has been seen since in a number of poet’s works, including the late Toronto poet bpNichol, Ottawa poet/bookseller jwcurry, Toronto poet/publisher Jay MillAr, Mount Pleasant, Ontario poet/publisher Kemeny Babineau and Toronto poet Mark Truscott, each attempting their own sharp densities from Ball, saying as much as possible with the very least.

Walking

Early

October, mild

walking

at The Ponds

sunny

no clouds

breeze

enough to make

trees

restless

as

I am

some

leaves

are

falling

For the past decade or so, Ottawa poet Seymour Mayne has been producing a number of what he calls “word sonnets,” attempting a brevity not nearly as clear, dense and elegant as the poems of Nelson Ball, and, much like Montreal poet Leonard Cohen composing eighty verses to boil down to a final four or five, Ball’s compositional process is a lengthy, detailed one of carving, slow and patient and considered.

Anomaly

Cement

angels

Part of this book has the added layers of losing both his wife, the artist Barbara Caruso, and his mother during composition, and both women are evident in various shades of the text, such as the small and graceful poem “Colours,” subtitled “thinking of Barbara.” Another part of the collection that intrigues is part of the author’s “Notes and Acknowledgments” at the back, which might shed further light on Ball’s compositional process:

Since writing the poem “Reprieve”, I’ve found “rooves” as an alternative plural of “roof” in two large dictionaries and one shorter one. It appears in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (6^th edition, 2007) and Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (updated to 2002), and, oddly, in the Gage Canadian Dictionary (1983). “Rooves” doesn’t appear in The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary [microprint] (1971) nor in the Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2^nd edition, 2004) nor the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (11^th edition, revised, 2006). The Oxford Guide to Canadian English Usage (2^nd edition, 2007) by Margery Fee and Janice McAlpine gives “roofs” as the accepted plural. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11^th edition, 2007) gives only “roofs”. It’s interesting that concise dictionaries are created by omitting not only main entries, but also variant plurals. My survey was informal and far from complete.

It was interesting, also, that the morning I began to slowly work through Ball’s new collection, an envelope from Quebec poet D.G. Jones arrived in the mail, carrying a few new poems. The comparisons are evident, as both are senior poets known but not as well known as admirers would like, and both poets are revered for their quiet modesty, sharp and sudden line breaks, and the density of their thoughtful, uncomplicated brevity.

Obituaries

Lately

I’ve been reading obituaries

don’t quite

know why

lives are

always ending

always

new from above/ground press

a reissue of bpNichol's The True Eventual Story of Billy The Kid
with an afterward (below) by carl peters
(originally published in 1970 by Nelson Ball's influential Weed/Flower Press)

$3 (+$1 for postage; +1$ more & in US funds please outside Canada); payable to rob mclennan, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario K1R 6R7

also still available from above/ground press

bpNichol's KON 66 & 67 (for jiri valoch (2002)
originally appeared as GRONK number 1: series 2

only $4 (+$1 for postage; +1$ more & in US funds please outside Canada); currently $30 (outside Canada, $30 US) for 2006 subscription, including broadsides, chapbooks + STANZAS magazine (next issue: Sharon Harris).

bpNichol is the author of The Martyrology, a life-long poem of 10 books, including an opera; Nichol explored and experimented with every conceivable form -- he wrote children's books, criticism, theory and novels. A list of his major publications would include: love: a book of remembrances (1984), Zygal: A Book of Mysteries & Translations (1985), art facts: a book of contexts (1990) and Truth: A Book of Fictions (1993). He co-won the Governor-General's Award in 1970 for four books of poetry: Still Water, Beach Head, The Cosmic Chef, and The True Eventual Story of Billy the Kid (the other winner was Michael Ondaatje for his collection The Collected Works of Billy the Kid).

carl peters wrote his MA thesis and doctorate on bpNichol, Kabbalah & the practice of the sacred; he is the editor of bpNichol Comics (2002). He is currently writing a critical study on Gertrude Stein's prose, and another on bill bissett for Talonbooks.

bpNICHOL'S THE TRUE EVENTUAL STORY OF BILLY THE KID: MODERN FICTION & THE DECAY OF HISTORY
by carl peters

Naming comes from seeing, or vision; it comes from sight and observation: "billy the kid was born with a short dick but they did not call him richard (1)."

In that same part we read: "they called him the kid because he was younger & meaner & had a shorter dick." This is an observation uv sorts; it is de-scriptive in a classical sense: "could
they have called him instead billy the man or bloody bonney? would he have bothered having a faster gun? who can tell."

Craig Owens, in "The Allegorical Impulse: Towards a Theory of Postmodernism," writes "[the Allegorist] lays claim to the culturally significant, poses as its interpreter. And in his hands the image becomes something other (allos = other + agoreuei = to speak). He does not restore an original meaning that may have been lost or obscured; allegory is not hermeneutics. Rather, he adds another meaning to the image. If he adds, however, he does so only to replace: the allegorical meaning supplants an antecedent one; it is a supplement" (205). The first untitled part of bpNichol's short epic reads: "this is the true eventual story of billy the kid. it is not the story as he told it for he did not tell it to me. he told it to others who wrote it down, but not correctly. there is no true eventual story but this one. had he told it to me i would have written a different one. i could not write the true one had he told it to me." Finally, nonetheless: "all other stories will appear untrue beside this one." Truth is a supplement uv the false. That is fiction.

1. "this is the true eventual story of billy the kid." So begins bpNichol's novel (or anti-novel, if you prefer). So it begins again: "eventually all other stories will appear untrue beside this one." The true and eventual story opens with a demonstrative: "this." "there is no other story but this one." Well, it really says: "there is no true story but this one" - the one you are reading - a supplement, remember. "true" and "this" are meant to go together. "this" one makes it the "true" one; the true one is this one. So the story goes.

2. The author doesn't have any answers, authors just don't, authors do. Emphasis on the verb. billy the kid doesn't have any answers either, he's just a character in this true story, like the author. Neither does the narrator have any answers. What is told is always going to be different than what is written down. What is told is also going to be different than what you're reading. That is history. Rumour & legend are faster than history. Truth resides in this. What is this, again? Right.

3. Gertrude Stein was bpNichol's great mentor; she loved that there was no such thing as repetition, only insistence, emphasis in that sense; readers didn't understand why she repeated a lot. The phrase "the true eventual story" of billy the kid is repeated at least 3 times in this short epical beginning - more if you consider its many versions and permutations. What does all this self-reference mean? It means that we are reading the true eventual story of billy the kid, and that the true eventual story of billy the kid is a reading, something made. Maybe billy the kid is an every-body sort uv character. Or, construction. i wonder if the true eventual story of billy the kid is another way uv writing the real autobiographical historical fiction uv everyone? Like i sd, allegory.

4. There are explanations. "billy was not fast with words so he became fast with a gun." "the true eventual (nice word, that, "eventual") story is billy became (nice word, that, "became") the faster gun." Gradually, billy the kid became the kid, the kid with the fastest gun - the kid who wasn't much for small talk, even tho he had a small, well. Did you catch the word even in the word eventual? That's interesting when you think about it. "this" story doesn't have a lot uv ups & downs in it, it's pretty flat as epics go. Even, even.

5. HISTORY plays a role in the novel, that's obvious. It is also a kind uv character. Of course it is. What makes history? How is history made? Time and place. There is a section in this true anti-epic novel and allegory that is about the town in which billy died. This is getting interesting even more. "this" true story of.

"history says that billy the kid was a coward." Legend, which is different than history, says that billy the kid was a hero. billy, the truth is, didn't take either all that seriously. How can you when they are the same and different? "rumour is billy the kid." That's probably true; this is the true eventual story of billy the kid after all. billy the kid, superman. Well. Or if he had had his portrait painted; if anyone could paint the true eventual story of billy the kid it would be Andy Warhol. Repetition as insistence is narrative; repetition as insistence as narrative is truth.

6. Craig Owens writes: "Allegory is consistently attracted to the fragmentary, the imperfect, the incomplete - an affinity which finds its most comprehensive expression in the ruin, which [Walter] Benjamin identified as the allegorical emblem par excellence. Here the works of man are reabsorbed into the landscape ["Place"]; ruins thus stand for history as an irreversible process of dissolution and decay, a progressive distancing from origin" (206). Remember what bpNichol, or the narrator, said: "it is not the story as he told it to me for he did not tell it to me. i could not write the true one had he told it to me." Naming, seeing and vision make allegory; reading makes allegory, too. They do not make history. There are too many holes.

7. billy the kid is meek in death. Eventually, and then he is not. "as he lay dying he said to the sheriff goodbye & the sheriff said goodbye. billy had always been a polite kid." 2 versions uv the word kid again; billy the ruthless killer with the fast gun and. billy the kid with the small. Now billy is in heaven. Observe the word even in the word "Heaven." Neat, eh? He's not off the hook yet! He's like God's brightest star. He questions God's authority. "if billy had had a gun he'd of shot god full of holes." Not fast with words, eh? Look again. Observe how many holes there are in that sentence. What does this say about the religious stance of this short epic anti-epic?

George Bowering sz that "Literature cant hurt you but reading can." i have always liked hearing that, even tho it establishes an artifical boundary between the writing process and the reading act. Barrie Nichol loved to tell stories; that made him the greatest story-teller uv our time; his stories are parables. Walter Benjamin: "This is the form in which man's subjection to nature is most obvious and it significantly gives rise to not only the enigmatic question of the nature of human existence as such, but also of the biographical historicity of the individual. This is the heart of the allegorical way of seeing" (cited in Owens).

Works Cited

Owens, Craig. "The Allegorical Impulse: Towards a Theory of Postmodernism." Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. Ed. Brian Wallis. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984. (203-235).