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Paper Trombones: Notes on Poetics
Paper Trombones: Notes on Poetics by Mike Doyle (Ekstasis $19.95)
Time reduces history or magnifies it. Poet and UVic professor Mike Doyle's annotated diary of his literary life in British Columbia since 1969, Paper Trombones: Notes on Poetics, is a rare magnifier for the lower Vancouver Island literary scene.
Some of Doyle's observations of writers, offhandedly made at the time, gather historical weight due to their natural candour.
For instance, having favourably reviewed Milton Acorn's I've Tasted My Blood and contributed to a special award to honour Acorn, Doyle recorded a disastrous midday reading by Milton Acorn at UVic in 1974.
"His face ugly, somewhat misshapen, has the high colour and rough texture of a boozer's,"; Doyle writes. "His eye glaucous, bloodshot, his teeth a mouthful of rotten discoloured stumps. He mumbled irrelevancies and stray remarks of a vaguely Maoist nature.
"Incoherent, deadly dull, nearly inaudible. I believe he 'performed' one poem at the end of an interminable dithyrambl, but by then I had left. I had persuaded my first-year students to go hear him. Tomorrow, must offer humble apologies. Dorothy Livesay, under whose aegis he appeared, must have been embarrassed. Anyone would be.";
More sympathetically, Doyle offers a candid assessment of a wake for poet, critic and anthologist, Charles 'Red' Lillard at the home of Robin Skelton in 1997. Again, it is the jotted down, fly-on-the-wall honesty of Doyle's perspective that appeals.
"The large Victoria Avenue house [was] full,"; he writes. "[There were] many readers and speakers, including George Payerle, Susan Musgrave, Theresa Kishkan and her husband John Pass, Marilyn Bowering, Patrick Lane, several of whom I like, though I am close to none. A moving occasion though some banal poetry. A bit of dopey by-play, celebrat-ing John Barleycorn, spitting into the wind.
"Saw Diana Hayes, P.K. [Page], Phyllis Webb (all to talk with, I mean) and many others, including Rona Murray and Walter Dexter. For Charles' sake, and Rhonda's, I'm glad this happened; there were plenty of tears. Charles, after all, was a good man, a nexus of good happenings in the writing community. Glad to be there, I liked him and he was helpful to my work.
"Insofar as there is a community, I always feel on a remote edge. Rilke said, 'Love your loneliness'; I do, for the most part. Charles will be missed, though, not least by me.";
Some of the names dropped include Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William Carlos Williams, George Woodcock, Earle Birney, bill bissett and literally dozens of other poets.
"As a sketchy memoir,"; Doyle admits, "it does not avoid a certain amount of ego-tripping and name-dropping; after all I haven't lived in a vacuum, but in a world where one must fend for oneself."; 978-1-897430-05-7
[BCBW 2008] "Poetry"
Time reduces history or magnifies it. Poet and UVic professor Mike Doyle's annotated diary of his literary life in British Columbia since 1969, Paper Trombones: Notes on Poetics, is a rare magnifier for the lower Vancouver Island literary scene.
Some of Doyle's observations of writers, offhandedly made at the time, gather historical weight due to their natural candour.
For instance, having favourably reviewed Milton Acorn's I've Tasted My Blood and contributed to a special award to honour Acorn, Doyle recorded a disastrous midday reading by Milton Acorn at UVic in 1974.
"His face ugly, somewhat misshapen, has the high colour and rough texture of a boozer's,"; Doyle writes. "His eye glaucous, bloodshot, his teeth a mouthful of rotten discoloured stumps. He mumbled irrelevancies and stray remarks of a vaguely Maoist nature.
"Incoherent, deadly dull, nearly inaudible. I believe he 'performed' one poem at the end of an interminable dithyrambl, but by then I had left. I had persuaded my first-year students to go hear him. Tomorrow, must offer humble apologies. Dorothy Livesay, under whose aegis he appeared, must have been embarrassed. Anyone would be.";
More sympathetically, Doyle offers a candid assessment of a wake for poet, critic and anthologist, Charles 'Red' Lillard at the home of Robin Skelton in 1997. Again, it is the jotted down, fly-on-the-wall honesty of Doyle's perspective that appeals.
"The large Victoria Avenue house [was] full,"; he writes. "[There were] many readers and speakers, including George Payerle, Susan Musgrave, Theresa Kishkan and her husband John Pass, Marilyn Bowering, Patrick Lane, several of whom I like, though I am close to none. A moving occasion though some banal poetry. A bit of dopey by-play, celebrat-ing John Barleycorn, spitting into the wind.
"Saw Diana Hayes, P.K. [Page], Phyllis Webb (all to talk with, I mean) and many others, including Rona Murray and Walter Dexter. For Charles' sake, and Rhonda's, I'm glad this happened; there were plenty of tears. Charles, after all, was a good man, a nexus of good happenings in the writing community. Glad to be there, I liked him and he was helpful to my work.
"Insofar as there is a community, I always feel on a remote edge. Rilke said, 'Love your loneliness'; I do, for the most part. Charles will be missed, though, not least by me.";
Some of the names dropped include Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Creeley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William Carlos Williams, George Woodcock, Earle Birney, bill bissett and literally dozens of other poets.
"As a sketchy memoir,"; Doyle admits, "it does not avoid a certain amount of ego-tripping and name-dropping; after all I haven't lived in a vacuum, but in a world where one must fend for oneself."; 978-1-897430-05-7
[BCBW 2008] "Poetry"
Submitted on September 5, 2008 in By David.
