{"id":78,"date":"2011-03-29T00:12:04","date_gmt":"2011-03-29T00:12:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/test\/?page_id=78"},"modified":"2012-03-01T00:55:45","modified_gmt":"2012-03-01T00:55:45","slug":"rob-mclennan","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/writings\/essay\/rob-mclennan\/","title":{"rendered":"rob mclennan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Call and response: a note on Phil Hall, and 52 flowers<\/em> (or, a perth edge<\/em>)<\/h1>\n
rob mclennan<\/h6>\n

joining the extremes, a nun
\ntable, clawhammer
\nbanjo<\/p>\n

what has managed to twist,
\nto give meaning<\/p>\n

or perhaps, require<\/p>\n

if only, cant
\nout of circle<\/p>\n

using broken pieces
\nof dreams & family<\/p>\n

, houses
\n, a museum<\/p>\n

of conjoined myth<\/p>\n

ad nauseum; kindled<\/em><\/p>\n

to pass off as truth
\n, becoming<\/p>\n

The best response to a poem is another poem. Margaret Atwood, or perhaps Phyllis Webb, once said this, but it feels like one of those phrases repeated so often, we are lost to its original attribution. My fifty-two page sequence 52 flowers (or, a perth edge)<\/em> \u2013 an essay on Phil Hall \u2013<\/em> (Koriyama Fukushima, Japan: obvious epiphanies press, 2011), subtitled \u201can essay on Phil Hall,\u201d was the result of weeks pouring over the work of Toronto poet Phil Hall, and, more specifically, a day long visit the poet Wanda O\u2019Connor and I had with Phil and his wife Ann at their summer cabin in August 2005.<\/p>\n

My initial response to Hall\u2019s poetry was a series of questions. I was fascinated by his process, fascinated in just how his poems became what they were. Might he be interested in an interview, possibly? He wasn\u2019t entirely comfortable with such, instead suggesting I come out and spend a day with him at their summer house on the Rideau Lakes, a cottage just outside Perth, an hour or so drive west of Ottawa, for the purposes of escaping Toronto (they have since moved there full-time). I\u2019d long been fascinated by Hall\u2019s poetry, intrigued by the long stretches of small moments, the strung-together phrases and halting images. I was intrigued by the poem-sequence \u201cAn Oak Hunch: Essay On Purdy\u201d from his newly-released An Oak Hunch<\/em> (London ON: Brick Books, 2005), a collection later up for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Could you do that? Write a series of sequence of phrases, halting lyric and collage-as-poem as an essay?<\/p>\n

There was an element of realizing his poetry a matter of deliberately-placed found materials, crafted phrases, accumulated, collected and sorted over an extended period of attention. There was the idea that poets such as his friend and contemporary Erin Mour\u00e9 had also been presenting in her own work, that poetry and essay could be intertwined, simultaneously both. I was intrigued by his accumulation of highly charged phrases, intrigued that so much could be packed into such a small space. Early on in Hall\u2019s sequence on Purdy, he writes:<\/p>\n

BETWEEN THE BODY & LANGUAGE<\/p>\n

a ravine of call & response<\/p>\n

\u00a0 if you look down the well for the moon
\nyour head eclipses the shine<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 hurting myself is a still they’ll never find<\/em><\/p>\n

The morning after a late-night gathering of poets on the upper floor of O\u2019Connor\u2019s apartment, we woke late and drove the hour west, picking up a pie at a farmer\u2019s market en route. Once discovering their nearly-hidden driveway, there were the conversations about poetry, the conversations about his collections of found materials\u2014including wood carvings, ancient Ontario tools, antique postcards, a 1960s issue of Life<\/em> magazine that Wanda poured over (specifically, a cover article on actress Elizabeth Taylor)\u2014the accumulated barn (there was a drawer filled with, for example, door-knobs). We talked of music, his interest in learning the clawhammer banjo; the annual visit he has with writer Stan Dragland, usually around Kingston, geographically half-way between their summer retreats. At one point, Ann offered to take us out in the canoe, and she and Wanda made their way across the surface, soon disappearing behind a further shoreline; Hall and I remained, watched from the shore. Hall\u2019s collections of found materials and folk-archives seemed closely associated to his poetic, one of working to respect the original intent of discovered or recovered phrases, as well as infusing a new life and new kind of energy through his own considered touch. From my response poem, here is one of the early sections of such, writing:<\/p>\n

imagine an inside a poem
\nimagine bob caygeon a man<\/p>\n

, bob caygeon a brutal man<\/p>\n

roughneck vancouver past
\non yellow gloves, writing<\/p>\n

i am writing; all
\nthat i am left<\/p>\n

is writing<\/p>\n

smells deliberate; yesterday
\nthe ottawa rain smelled<\/p>\n

ocean; saying as much
\non tape [laughs]<\/p>\n

or grown out of<\/p>\n

i am three-quarters here<\/p>\n

We stayed, talked, sat out in the August sun; invited to remain for dinner, corn on the cob, even sharing the pie we brought. Once home from our day, the poem occurred rather quickly, as a direct response to both his writing and the day itself, fifty-two pages wrapping around a reference to his collections of found playing cards he\u2019d arranged into sets, and one of his own touchstones, Louis Zukofsky\u2019s 80 Flowers<\/em> (1978). As I repeated, the best response to a poem is another poem, responding to a book or even a series of books through the composition of another. Should I have further addressed the killdeer, his token-bird, his bird-totem? Still, once begun is half done; I wanted to explore the country-rhythm of Hall\u2019s ouvre, to see what was possible. I wanted to compose my own pieces through his: clawhammer banjo, found objects, Bobcaygeon, the Rideau Lakes, his ubiquitous killdeer\u2014these were all touchstones. Once home from our day, I worked through the engine of his poems, exploring. One can argue that any poem is a study in form, and writing through and from Hall\u2019s work was a particular kind of entry point into his writing as a whole.<\/p>\n

joining the extremes, a nun
\ntable, clawhammer
\nbanjo<\/p>\n

what has managed to twist,
\nto give meaning<\/p>\n

or perhaps, require<\/p>\n

if only, cant
\nout of circle<\/p>\n

using broken pieces
\nof dreams & family<\/p>\n

, houses
\n, a museum<\/p>\n

of conjoined myth<\/p>\n

ad nauseum; kindled<\/em><\/p>\n

to pass off as truth
\n, becoming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Call and response: a note on Phil Hall, and 52 flowers (or, a perth edge) rob mclennan joining the extremes, a nun table, clawhammer banjo what has managed to twist, to give meaning or perhaps, require if only, cant out of circle using broken pieces of dreams & family , houses , a museum of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":46,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"authorpage.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-78","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/78\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":906,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/78\/revisions\/906"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}