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Remembering Milton
Your Literary Visitors issue brings to mind my own encounter with a literary presence.
The year was 1967 and we were partying with a group of Israeli university students in their rented Cornwall Avenue bungalow. Suddenly, in the doorway, stood one of the ugliest men I had ever seen. His rugged weather-beaten face looked like it had been cleft by a harsh force of nature from sheer igneous rock. Ragged discoloured teeth, red nosed, a thatch of thick reddish-gray hair, he stood, all six feet of him, inside the doorframe looking us over, wondering perhaps, if he should join us or not. One look at him was enough. If anybody had Genius written all over him with all the word's eccentric implications, it was Milton Acorn.
He joined us on the floor, drank from a bottle of wine, and we began to talk. I can't remember the gist of the conversation. The place was noisey with dancing, drinking, laughing Thank God Its Friday-nighters. I think the topic was poetry. He might have spoke a few lines. Not many weeks later, Irving Layton came to UBC and gave a talk to about 300 students. The bard from Montreal declared that Milton Acorn was "the finest lyric poet in Canada.";
Conversation didn't seem to be Milton's forte. He spoke in expletives, most of them angry denunciations of everything "Booge."; (I didn't know until years later that Milton came from a perfectly respectable bourgeois family back on PEI.) He said he was a Communist. Spent many hours in the Labour Hall in Vancouver. Thought my paintings would fit into the decor there very suitably. I was painting a lot of figures at the time. I invited Milton to read some of his work at the opening of my first exhibition of paintings in the old Vancouver Arts Club on Seymour Street. He came, looking like one of those Tolkien ents, in brown work pants cut off at the knee, his reddish bare legs, gray rumpled work socks and work boots representing some sort of logger-come-street-person. He read The Mighty Elephant Has A Five Pound Brain, standing in the centre of the room, his voice, strangely gentler, much gentler, yet emphatic, than appearance would expect. Polite applause. Later, a couple of "Booge"; men told me the show was fantastic, but the only thing that spoiled it was Milton. He just didn't fit in.
I'd meet Milton in Stanley Park now and then. Once stood him to lunch in the "Booge"; dining room overlooking the rose garden. The effuvia of cigarillos fragrant enough to settle the aura of eccentric more solidly about his work-shirted, somewhat narrow shoulders like motes of dust. People looked. Some smiled. Others frowned. Being with Milton was a self conscious thing. You couldn't help looking around to see who was looking. Sort of like a white woman with a black man in that era of the 40s and 50s when the sight was not as common as it is today.
I didn't know that Milton had a literary reputation in Canada. I hadn't read his poetry. I'd only heard him recite some of it on the street as we walked up Trafalgar in Kitsilano. Or at Kits Beach, his rugged head on my lap. "You're a Booge,"; he told me once, looking up into my face with rheumy eyes, "but you're a nice Booge.";
Esther Darlington MacDoanald
BC BookWorld, 2009
The year was 1967 and we were partying with a group of Israeli university students in their rented Cornwall Avenue bungalow. Suddenly, in the doorway, stood one of the ugliest men I had ever seen. His rugged weather-beaten face looked like it had been cleft by a harsh force of nature from sheer igneous rock. Ragged discoloured teeth, red nosed, a thatch of thick reddish-gray hair, he stood, all six feet of him, inside the doorframe looking us over, wondering perhaps, if he should join us or not. One look at him was enough. If anybody had Genius written all over him with all the word's eccentric implications, it was Milton Acorn.
He joined us on the floor, drank from a bottle of wine, and we began to talk. I can't remember the gist of the conversation. The place was noisey with dancing, drinking, laughing Thank God Its Friday-nighters. I think the topic was poetry. He might have spoke a few lines. Not many weeks later, Irving Layton came to UBC and gave a talk to about 300 students. The bard from Montreal declared that Milton Acorn was "the finest lyric poet in Canada.";
Conversation didn't seem to be Milton's forte. He spoke in expletives, most of them angry denunciations of everything "Booge."; (I didn't know until years later that Milton came from a perfectly respectable bourgeois family back on PEI.) He said he was a Communist. Spent many hours in the Labour Hall in Vancouver. Thought my paintings would fit into the decor there very suitably. I was painting a lot of figures at the time. I invited Milton to read some of his work at the opening of my first exhibition of paintings in the old Vancouver Arts Club on Seymour Street. He came, looking like one of those Tolkien ents, in brown work pants cut off at the knee, his reddish bare legs, gray rumpled work socks and work boots representing some sort of logger-come-street-person. He read The Mighty Elephant Has A Five Pound Brain, standing in the centre of the room, his voice, strangely gentler, much gentler, yet emphatic, than appearance would expect. Polite applause. Later, a couple of "Booge"; men told me the show was fantastic, but the only thing that spoiled it was Milton. He just didn't fit in.
I'd meet Milton in Stanley Park now and then. Once stood him to lunch in the "Booge"; dining room overlooking the rose garden. The effuvia of cigarillos fragrant enough to settle the aura of eccentric more solidly about his work-shirted, somewhat narrow shoulders like motes of dust. People looked. Some smiled. Others frowned. Being with Milton was a self conscious thing. You couldn't help looking around to see who was looking. Sort of like a white woman with a black man in that era of the 40s and 50s when the sight was not as common as it is today.
I didn't know that Milton had a literary reputation in Canada. I hadn't read his poetry. I'd only heard him recite some of it on the street as we walked up Trafalgar in Kitsilano. Or at Kits Beach, his rugged head on my lap. "You're a Booge,"; he told me once, looking up into my face with rheumy eyes, "but you're a nice Booge.";
Esther Darlington MacDoanald
BC BookWorld, 2009
Submitted on June 16, 2009 in By David.
