It's been a long time since I've posted anything on this blog: shortly after my last posting in 2007, my mother (who was living alone in her own house in Pennsylvania, aged 89) became ill suddenly, went into hospital and then assisted living for 2 years, and passed away peacefully on August 31, 2009. I was with her for the last three weeks, and it was an honour to be there to help her with this transition (though as hard as anything I've ever done!). More thoughts on my mother in a future message. I'll just say that my energy went to taking care of her, as well as to my own struggles and joys in living, writing, and teaching in schools across the province, from Toronto and Hamilton to Moose Factory near James Bay! It feels good to be writing on the blog again, and I hope to do a regular post each week.
In my last blog, I talked about writing and community, and today I want to talk about the launch of a new book, Implicate Me: short essays on reading contemporary poems, by Elana Wolff (Guernica Editions, 2010), launched on July 13 at Bar Italia in Toronto. I wrote the introduction for this book, which is a compilation of Elana's articles on poetry for Surface & Symbol, the newspaper of the Scarborough Arts Council, edited by Andrea Raymond from 1999-2005. Andrea accepted Elana's proposal for a monthly poetry column, called "How to Approach a Poem." One of my poems was included, and I was very moved by Elana's commentary, and actually learned new things about my poem from her insightful and perceptive reading -- she brought to the surface of consciousness ideas about both form and meaning that made the poem more accessible to the reader. As I read her column, I gained insight into many poems by contemporary Toronto-area poets -- poems I enjoyed at first reading, and poems that I needed a bit more help to appreciate fully. I was one of the people who suggested that Elana turn her columns into a book -- and offered to help with the introduction. When her own journey into these poems had progressed far enough, she was ready to do this and took me up on my offer. She reviewed and, in some cases, "re-visioned," the columns, and I helped her with the editing as well as writing the introductory remarks. During this process, I became more familiar with each poem and with Elana's sensitive approaches to the writing. The title, Implicate Me, comes from her reaction to the first poem she discussed -- the one that prompted her to begin the series: "Pearl," by Ruth Panofsky, from Lifeline (Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2001). Elana wrote that the poet "could have been speaking directly to me; I felt so implicated in the intensity of her terseness." We agreed that this is what good poems do -- implicate the reader in the poet's mind, heart, and world; make us, as well as the poet, witnesses to the events she has seen, whether it is the fall of a leaf or the death of a child. "Implicate" comes from the word "ply," to fold, and as readers we are folded into, or enfolded, in the architecture of the poet's words and world. In doing so, the layers of the poem unfold and open up. I like the way Elana reads the text closely, and discusses form -- assonance and consonance, rhythm, metaphor, rhyme, pattern, punctuation, line-length, etc. -- to illuminate the meaning of the poem. She does not "tell" us "the" (one) meaning, but muses on various meanings and nuances, and lets each reader follow the trail of meaning for himself or herself. As I wrote in the introduction, she becomes "a kind of metaphysical tour-guide for these travels of the imagination." She does not lose the soul of the poem in her approach to it. Years ago, I read Jerome Rothenberg's anthology Technicians of the Sacred, an anthology of poetry from various"indigenous" cultures around the world, past and present. I think in this book, Elana Wolff herself becomes a sacred technician, able to show us the "workings" of the poem without losing its mystery and wonder. Her essays -- like the poems themselves -- have the elegance of mathematics, incorporating truth and beauty.
As the 33 poems and commentaries resonate with each other in this unique book, they do, I think, form a community -- a community of poems, and of poets. This was clearly evident at the launch, when Elana introduced the book and 11 of the poets included in the book read together on stage. It was wonderful to see the poems come to life, adding voices and faces, and occasional anecdotes, to the words on paper. I think we all felt part of this community. More readings from the book would be good -- but the great thing about books is that we don't need a stage, a group of readers, and an audience. You yourself can pick up this book, read the poems -- silently or aloud -- then read Elana's commentaries and go back and read the poems again. Thanks to Guernica Editions and its editor and past-publisher Antonio D'Alfonso for supporting and publishing this work. Finally, booksellers are an important -- a vital -- aspect of community, for writers and readers and all citizens -- and it was great that Charlie from This Ain't the Rosedale Library was on hand to sell Implicate Me and the other Guernica books being launched, Floating Bodies by Julie Roorda and Light and Time by Michael Mirolla. Independent bookstores are not only places to sell and buy books, but important centres of community and it is important to support them -- especially now as they are becoming more and more financially threatened. Bookstores draw people interested in many things -- the arts, politics, science, the environment, food and wine, books for and about children, you name it! They are part of the community -- and just as we need to "eat local" food, we need local "food for thought."
I would recommend Implicate Me for poets, for interested readers, for teachers (who can use it as a guide in approaching other poems), for students -- for anyone who has looked up at the TCC's "Poetry on the Way" and wondered, "How does a poet do that?" I know from my own work in schools that teachers (and students) are sometimes scared of poetry because it seems so far beyond ordinary life. As this book shows, poetry comes out of the language we use everyday, and often from everyday sights, sounds, smells, memories -- all taken to a new, still-approachable, level of feeling and meaning.
Elana Wolff is a poet herself: her three books, published with Guernica, are Birdheart (2001), Mask (2003), and You Speak to Me in Trees (2006). With the late poet Malca Litovitz, she co-authored Slow Dancing: Creativity and Illness (Guernica: 2008).
Check out the photo gallery on the guernica website (www.guernicaeditions.com).
