After Acorn.
Meditations on the Message of Canada's People's Poet
by Terry Barker
Mekler
& Deahl Publishers, 1999
Reviewed by
Shane Neilson
Milton Acorn.
People's Poet. Icon. Iconoclast. Alcoholic. Mentally ill. Biographical
subject (twice). Critical study.
Terry Barker
has collected in one volume his writings on Milton Acorn, attempting
to provide a critical articulation of Acorn's "message". He mostly
avoids biography, so casual readers should beware: academics are
the source of blurbs on the book's back cover. Barker does not
soft-pedal the lengthy bibliography he provides at the end of
the book. In order to understand what he's getting at (and I am
very familiar with Acorn's poetry), one must be versed in texts
unavailable at the local library. In some cases, his references
are international. This makes for good research legwork, but as
corollary a heavy tax on the reader.
What is unforgivable
about this volume is turgid prose made even more awful by poor
punctuation. Barker is difficult enough to comprehend without
upping the vague ante by flawed grammar. In his preface, traditionally
a lyrical place preceding the toil of learned discussion, he writes
(sics intact, italics mine, deep breath):
"I returned
to Dublin in 1971, at the suggestion of the scholar of
the literary background of the Easter Rising of 1916,
William Irwin Thompson, to research the apocalyptic tradition
in Ireland in the nineteenth century, which I learned had origins
in the northeastern part of the country extending back into
Celtic times."
Such grammar
is omnipresent throughout the book, preventing an Acorn enthusiast
- the other potential audience for After Acorn besides
academe - from understanding what Barker has to say. Try this
on for size: Barker accuses Ed Jewinski, author of ECW
Press' short volume Milton Acorn and His Works, of
writing "an obscuring study." He then writes, immediately following
this statement (typographical/ grammatical errors left in place):
This is so,
for, in attempting to see Acorn's poetical/ political enterprise
as something that 'shifted Canadian poetry into the contemporary
world- hurly burly, immediate, direct, personal, private' (page
48), rather than as the failure that the evidence in the book
suggests, Jewinski robs the reader of the political vision that
Acorn actually expressed.
Hmmn. I will
never be able to understand prose so garbled as the above. These
essays are well-intentioned and even convey their intent to varying
degrees; yet one can only yearn for a more digestible prose, one
that dances lightly among theory and history. Barker simply cannot
do it.
I do feel
robbed: Barker bleats that Acorn was a Red Tory/ Left Nationalist
- he uses the terms interchangeably - yet provides no evidence
in Acorn's poetry to support this claim. Where is the supporting
poetic argument? Acorn was affiliated with the Canadian Liberation
Movement, but if the result isn't manifested in his poetry, should
anyone care? No poems are provided as justification. He takes
Jewinski to task for being oblivious to Acorn's politics; Jewinski
may have been. Alternatively, Jewinski may have been on to something:
in the end, political leanings don't matter, the work does. Al
Purdy, editor of Acorn's best collections, once said that he had
never met a poet more wildly uneven. No doubt he had in mind Acorn's
anthemic and overtly political writings, most of which is doggerel
verse. Barker conceals these works as a dirty secret, since none
of them are found in After Acorn.
Barker's first
essay is most lively when providing biographical details of Acorn's
life (and no wonder - Acorn had a fantastic one). He makes a tenuous
linkage in attempting to "prove that there is an abiding interest
in the People's Poetry tradition" by citing as evidence a recent
poetry reading in the back of a bar, presumably one with Acorn
in some capacity as a spiritual grandfather. Is Barker unaware
that poetry readings occur all the time? A single reading isn't
enough to prove anyone's importance. He does, however, quote some
bona-fide examples of Acorn's legacy: Toronto's People's Poetry
Newsletter and Charlottetown's Acorn-Livesay poetry festival.
Yet the viability of Acorn's legacy is questioned by the very
existence of this book: most of the essays included were published
or presented in some format by these same entities.
Barker bites
off a lot, writing "The path Acorn began to take during the last
decade of his life needs to be pursued, so that the reasons for
the twentieth century's derailment into ideological madness are
understood, and real human advance can be resumed." In itself
a ridiculous statement, Barker casts Acorn as a hyperbolic disciple
promising ideological redemption. This is tantamount to canonization,
calling into question the author's impartiality, which is admittedly
absent: "...Milton Acorn served as 'poet laureate"' of this group
(the CLM)...It is out of my experience as a participant in, and
observer of, these manifestations of Canadian Left nationalism,
and their passing, that the following meditations grew. I hope
they fulfill, in appropriately modified form, the commission Acorn
gave me of one day leading his 'Irish battalion'."
In his second
essay, "Acorn Absorbed", Barker name-drops compulsively. One suspects
he is naming people from a book of poetry dedicated to Milton
Acorn, but Barker never says this outright, alluding to it only
indirectly after several paragraphs. Most tellingly of all: he
offhandedly categorizes Margaret Atwood's voice as "defiant patriotism."
How reductionist and unsubstantiated in this book, and how foreboding
when his intent is to fully present Acorn's message! Of course,
Barker neglects to quote from this anthology, leaving the reader
unable to verify his opinions unless they seek out the unnamed
book for themselves. Neither does he attempt to describe what
fraternity the mentioned poets have in common with Acorn, other
than that they appear in the anonymous anthology.
Eventually
Barker comes to his point. "...one may wonder...what precisely
the coherent heart of Acorn's vision was, and by extension, what
Canada's heart was, is, and is becoming." I sure am. Barker's
answer? A poem taken from the unnamed anthology:
He too found
out the uselessness
of backing
away at the wind.
He settles
now into the
rough currents of speech:
wave on wave
going out,
as if he hopes
the sound will touch
the inner
ear. Of what? He's not too sure.
Get it: what
does Milton mean? We are never told explicitly, merely given a
poem as substitution, one where Acorn is cast as "not too sure."
Now ask another question: what is the purpose of this book, then?
In the end,
Barker does present Acorn's theological underpinnings in the best
essay of the book, "Milton Acorn: Ruskin Revisited". For the first
time, he supports his comments with examples taken from Acorn's
poetry. This essay made me reevaluate what I once dismissed as
Acorn's latent, ill-considered spiritualism when such topics occurred
in his writings. Barker's helpful spiritual context illuminates
what I once ascribed to the obscure. Unfortunately, Barker cannot
refrain from trying to inject current affairs - in this instance,
the Kosovo conflict- into a muddled description of what he thinks
is wrong with current Western political thought and Canada's place
within this western tradition. Relevance? Unknown, unless you
put stock in the "twentieth century's derailment" quote.
Barker often
alludes to his book's showstopper: how he will reconcile Acorn's
"seemingly paradoxical espousal of Communism, Canadian nationalism,
and Christianity." When Barker gets around to doing so, he fires
out of his cannon a lot of "isms". On a single page (12), the
following -isms and religions appear: Communism, Canadian nationalism
(twice), Christianity (twice), Hermeticism (twice), Gnosticism,
Sectarian Islam, Feminism, Egyptology, Marxism-Leninism, and Millennialism.
He concludes with nihilism (how appropriate). Somewhere in there
is Acorn's message and Barker's articulation of it. One eventually
realizes that Barker is convincing when discussing a few aspects
of Acorn's theological tenets. His discussion of Acorn's politics,
however, is unintelligible.
It is ironic
that this critical study stands in diametric opposition to the
things that Acorn, the "People's Poet", advocated: bringing poetry's
joys and meaning to "the people". I would direct those interested
in Acorn to Richard Lemm's critical biography In Love and Anger
by Carleton University Press. It lacks Barker's rigorous analysis,
but it is readable. A suggestion for future editions of After
Acorn: include a preface which truly is a preface, providing
a brief discussion of the political theory used in After Acorn
(or expand the essays to include the main theoretical tenets employed
within). Without such a primer, these essays are the obscure writings
of one man on another whose politics were, to his contemporaries
and most everyone else, convoluted enough.
Shane
Neilson is co-poetry editor of The Danforth Review. He is a Nova
Scotian poet who has published recently in Queen's Quarterly,
The Canadian Forum, and Pottersfield Portfolio.
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