In “The gate in his head,” Michael Ondaatje sees reality as chaotic and amorphous. Art, however, imposes the artist. The problem is capturing this chaos without imposing order upon it—a contradictory task. Ondaatje looks towards Victor Coleman for an answer. Coleman is able to direct the reader towards this indescribable reality through a sense of movement and convergence. This motion is crucial to “The gate in his head,” as Ondaatje analyzes and mimics Coleman’s technique, ever sliding closer to that ineffable chaos.
Category: Essays
Michael Ondaatje’s “White Dwarfs” explores silence as the negation against the greater context of order, language and society. Because silence is absence, it cannot truly be articulated without undermining its very purpose and nature. Instead, Ondaatje conveys silence through physical and metaphysical spaces. These spaces are impossible, contradictory and often violent—allowing Ondaatje to voice silence, and ultimately giving the reader an understanding of the presence of absence.
Mavis Gallant’s “The Ice-Wagon Going Down the Street” is a story about Peter’s repeated memory as he tries to validate his passive lifestyle. But this is threatened by Agnes, who serves as a reflection of Peter. Repetition is used to define Peter as unchanging and passive, but reflection is used to define activity and hint at change. The image of the ice wagon allows Gallant to reconcile repetition and reflection, to create an emergent space which captures the difference between Peter and Agnes: Agnes ultimately accepts the ice wagon, embracing independence at the risk of alienation; Peter rejects the ice wagon, choosing to remain in his cycle. It is this that gives the story its final poignancy: Peter is changed, but unchanged.
Phyllis Webb’s “Poetics Against the Angel of Death” is a poem about poetry. Webb’s persona reacts against the institutional and patriarchal iambic pentameter, seeing it as oppressive. She equivocates iambs with the ego, which can be aptly expressed through their homophonic relationship: “iambs” and “I am’s.” Fittingly for a poem about syllables, Webb uses syllabic structure to reflect her increasing disdain for egocentric poetry, and her development towards more liberating forms and meters.
In Robert Kroetsch’s “Stone Hammer Poem,” the persona traces the origin of a stone and a stone hammer against the backdrop of family and national history and the Canadian landscape. Greater physical and metaphysical ramifications are at stake: Kroestsch wants to know the purpose of a stone beyond a human tool as a hammer—he is seeking intrinsic meaning unrelated to human-imposed extrinsic meaning. The very title of the poem suggests this dynamic: Stone, Hammer, Poem. Like the Trinity, the three are distinct yet one. Poetry ultimately allows Kroetsch to connect with his forefathers, reconciling the unknowable stone and the imposed hammer and deriving meaning from the struggle of finding meaning.
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Only Horses: Adventures in Time and Space
In “The Cariboo Horses,” Al Purdy explores the district of Cariboo and the tradition of equinity against human civilization. “The Cariboo Horses” is definitely set in a space, specifically 100 Mile House in Cariboo, but this space is endlessly nuanced and layered. Purdy uses micro and macro techniques to capture every vantage point, including metaphysical ones. Its time is likewise complex, bordering anachronistic: the cowboys of the frontier exist with the technology of modernity and the ancient civilizations of millennia past. Space and time are manipulated to create a new space where humanity’s growth can be examined. This allows the reader to better understand the continuity and discontinuity of humanity through a constant: namely, the titular horses.
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Arras: An Unknowable Mystery
P.K. Page’s “Arras” is set in a strange dimension, filled with screaming peacocks and shadowy figures, where the persona seeks answers and meaning. However, Page had designed “Arras” to be an unknowable mystery. It is deliberately beyond human comprehension, without answers. Page uses the persona to show humanity’s desire to impose human meaning in everything. In imposing meaning where none exists, the persona only further alienates herself.
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The Non-Identity of the Permanent Tourists
In The Permanent Tourists, P.K. Page explores the contradictory identity of those without identity. The very title, “The Permanent Tourists”, suggests the irony of their situation. As permanent tourists, they are in constant juxtaposition against the “foreign cities”, continually being relegated to the Other. Hence, their permanence stems from their transient and alien status as “tourists”. Their identity is non-identity. Such a quandary is at the crux of the poem, and Page seeks to explain the motivations and actions of the tourists.
“The Prairie” is the first chapter of Part II of Frederick Philip Grove’s Fruits of the Earth. It is a crucial turning point for Abe, whose philosophy changes as he questions the significance of his material aspirations against the infinite landscape. “The Prairie” is the quintessential chapter of pioneer literature, where the pioneer, Abe, through exploring the alienation of man in the omnipresent frontier, finally understands his place and purpose in the prairie.
Leonard Cohen’s How to Speak Poetry is an instruction manual of sorts on how to speak poetry. Cohen takes a comprehensive approach, exploring the relationship between the poet and his audience, and why poetry and public speaking can be antithetical if done wrongly. Cohen sees poetry as truth. It is authentic, private and universal. The purpose of speaking poetry is to forge a connection between the speaker and the audience sharing this truth. However, speaking poetry can also introduce the speaker’s ego, contaminating the poetry and making it inauthentic, superficial and egoistic. There is an underlying thread of sex throughout the essay, espousing a sustained goal: above all, Cohen prizes truthfulness and authenticity. In approaching poetry and speaking along the lines of sex, Cohen emphasizes the innate and natural connection between speaker and audience that is required when speaking poetry.