Gwendolyn MacEwen was a Canadian poet who often used spacing in her poetry to create and control the rhythm of her poems. She is by far one of my favourite poets because although she utilized new technology in a way that enriched her writing, her poems were still full of colourful imagery, labyrinths of hidden meanings. She played with her audience, both in writing and reading her poems.
The Magician
finally then the hands must play mad parables
finally then, the fingers' genius
wave out what my poems have said;
finally then must the silks occur
plus rabbits
and the big umbrellas
be spun continually.
as you Lowe, in quiet irony
insire terrible skills of silks
or crash scarves vertically
as though miniature brains were held in fingertips
fantastic as of secrecy--
or my art being more a lie anyway
than the lie of these illusions
secreting realities in the twitching silks
or sacred sleeves
to twist or tamper them
to come out solid, in cubes or cups--
pull down then
silk avalanche of scarves
or play the cosmos on strings of human hair
as a wand cracks
and blinds belief and holds it knotted
like an ugly necklace
or a hopeless rope--
or you, Lowe, driving a spike through the head of a boy
as though magic were (and is)
a nail of steel to split the skull
in either direction
to believe or not believe
is not the question.
finally then do all my poems become as crazy scarves
issuing from the fingers in a coloured mesh
and you, magician, stand as they fly around you
silent as Houdini who could escape from anything
except the prison of his own flesh.
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She also wrote a prose-poem called 'Terror and Erebus', about an early expedition to the Northwest Passage. She wrote it for CBC radio in 1965. Here it is being rehearsed for an outdoor presentation. You can see how they take their cues from the writing, pausing where MacEwen broke her lines.Their rendition seems a bit comical and exagerated but the pauses originally allowed the mind to stay with the horrors experienced by the ship's crew:
Terror and Erebus
She's one of my favorites, too, and a fascinating person. Rosemary Sullivan wrote a great biography of her that I recommend called The Shadowmaker
ReplyDeleteI tried to search the information about Gwendolyn MacEwen and her poems.
ReplyDeleteDark Pines Under Water
This land like a mirror turns you inward
And you become a forest in a furtive lake;
The dark pines of your mind reach downward,
You dream in the green of your time,
Your memory is a row of sinking pines.
Explorer, you tell yourself, this is not what you came for
Although it is good here, and green;
You had meant to move with a kind of largeness,
You had planned a heavy grace, an anguished dream.
But the dark pines of your mind dip deeper
And you are sinking, sinking, sleeper
In an elementary world;
There is something down there and you want it told.
You can see more analysis: http://www.judithfitzgerald.ca/darkpinesunderwater.html