The Interconnected Writing Lives of Robert Bringhurst, Dennis Lee, Tim Lilburn, Don Mckay, and Jan Zwicky

Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 5-10-2013 12:00 AM "Radiant Imperfection": The Interconnected Writing Lives of Robert Bringhurst, Dennis Lee, Tim Lilburn, Don McKay, and Jan Zwicky Kostantina Northrup The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Dr. David Bentley The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © Kostantina Northrup 2013 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Literature in English, North America Commons Recommended Citation Northrup, Kostantina, ""Radiant Imperfection": The Interconnected Writing Lives of Robert Bringhurst, Dennis Lee, Tim Lilburn, Don McKay, and Jan Zwicky" (2013). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 1276. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/1276 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “RADIANT IMPERFECTION”: THE INTERCONNECTED WRITING LIVES OF ROBERT BRINGHURST, DENNIS LEE, TIM LILBURN, DON MCKAY, AND JAN ZWICKY by Kostantina Northrup Graduate Program in English A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © Kostantina Northrup 2013 Abstract In 2002, Cormorant Books of Toronto published an essay collection entitled Thinking and Singing: Poetry and the Practice of Philosophy. Edited and introduced by Tim Lilburn, the book gathers a series of meditations by five writers whom this dissertation considers as a group: Lilburn himself, Robert Bringhurst, Dennis Lee, Don McKay, and Jan Zwicky. Over the course of the past two decades, the five poets have come to be known as a coterie of ecological writers and ethicists, and this dissertation examines their interconnected writing lives in light of their significant influence in the establishment of ecocritical cultures in Canada. All five poets have inhabited the Canadian university at various points throughout their careers, and by discussing their ecopoetics as they relate to their commentary on academic epistemologies and contemporary education in the humanities, these readings observe how the poets’ respective approaches to aesthetics, philosophy, and pedagogy are intimately intertwined. Throughout their writing lives, the Thinking and Singing poets have been vocal opponents of postmodernism – a term they use broadly, but generally mean to comprehend the theoretical spectrum associated with the late twentieth-century “linguistic turn” in the humanities. By contextualizing the group’s ecopoetics in light of their academic interventions, I argue that the poets’ public reputations as ecological artists and educators have been established as they have worked to define the borders of their own poetry and poetics within and against the territories of the broader academic and literary traditions they inhabit. In this regard, I explore two of the major epistemological ii traditions that the poets set in contrast to the reading practices of postmodernism – phenomenology, and the via negativa (negative way) – and argue that engaging with the Thinking and Singing poets’ works means continuously renegotiating the age-old question concerning poetry’s capacity to teach as well as delight. Keywords Robert Bringhurst, Dennis Lee, Tim Lilburn, Don McKay, Jan Zwicky, ecology, poetics, ethics, criticism, university, humanities, phenomenology, apophasis, lyric, polyphony iii Acknowledgments My heartfelt thanks go to many who helped me see this through. My supervisor, David Bentley, whose unflagging encouragement and confidence gave me the enthusiasm to keep going. My piecemeal drafts and half-baked ideas seemed not to faze him, and for that I am grateful. My second reader, Manina Jones, for her wisdom, encouragement, and canny advice. Alison Conway, mentor and paragon, for always telling me the truth. Pauline Wakeham, Matthew Rowlinson, Kim Solga, and Steven Bruhm, for the warmth and collegiality they radiate, and Kathleen McConnell, at St. Thomas University, for first introducing me to the poems of Don McKay. Thanks too to the administrative staff who facilitated my life (who facilitate all life) in the English Department – Anne McFarland, Beth McIntosh, Teresa MacDonald, Leanne Trask, and Vivian Foglton. This project could not have been completed without financial assistance from the Department of English, the Province of Ontario Graduate Scholarship program, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I would also like to thank Sean Kane for permission to quote from archival materials, and the editors of Studies in Canadian Literature for permission to reframe portions of my essay “Lyric Scholarship in Controversy: Jan Zwicky and Anne Carson.” Robert Bringhurst, Dennis Lee, Tim Lilburn, Don McKay, and Jan Zwicky granted me access to archival and otherwise unpublished materials, and gave generously of their time in response to my queries and letters. Their correspondence helped me to understand their ideas and poetry more deeply, and for their dialogue, guidance, and interest, I thank them heartily. To Mark Dickinson, my friendly interlocutor, I extend my iv warmest appreciation. More gratitude goes to Lindsey Bannister, Nina Budabin McQuown, Nadine Fladd, Patricia Graham, David Hickey, Rebecca Murie Wenstrom, Tara Murphy, Alicia Robinet, and Michael Sloane, for years of book-lending, conversation, and support. To Rebecca Campbell, Jenna Hunnef, Rajan Kapila, Stephanie Oliver, Phil Glennie, Stephanie Rade, and Amelia Lubowitz — my love and thanks, for all the fish. For keeping me tethered and bringing me light, greatest gramercy to Emily Nicol and Anna Burkhart. And finally, for being my first and best teacher — Maria Northrup. v Table of Contents Page Abstract ii Acknowledgments iv Table of Contents vi Introduction: The Interconnected Writing Lives of the Thinking and Singing Poets 1 Writing Home / Singing in the Dark 14 Considering “Coterie,” and Further Notes on Method 31 Notes 39 1 Thinking and Singing Education, Ecology, and Pedagogy 47 The “Programmatic Polemics” of Dennis Lee and Robert Bringhurst 49 Reading Thinking and Singing Poetics with Pedagogy in Mind 66 Notes 82 2 Phenomenologies of the Thinking and Singing Poets 91 Dennis Lee’s “Consciousness Knowing the World” 106 Don McKay’s Apparatus and the Phenomenology of the Unfamiliar 114 Jan Zwicky and the “Ethics” of Reading Phenomenologically 120 Returning to the “Community of Things”: Phenomenology and Apokatastasis in Tim Lilburn’s Poetics 129 Notes 151 vi 3 Thinking and Singing Aesthetics of the Sublime 161 Dreadful Sublimity in Dennis Lee’s Civil Elegies 168 Don McKay’s Strike/Slip and Paradoxides: The Sublimity of Deep Time 184 Notes 208 4 Musical Form and Ekphrasis: Thinking and Singing the World 217 Bakhtin and Canadian Literary Polyphonies in the Late Twentieth Century 218 Robert Bringhurst’s Poetics of Polyphony 226 Poetry and the Resonant World: Polyphony and Harmony in Jan Zwicky’s “Lyric” 243 Coda 267 Notes 269 Works Cited 275 Vita 295 vii 1 Introduction The Interconnected Writing Lives of the Thinking and Singing Poets Watch it: it thinks but, no, you cannot quite watch it thinking. Listen to it singing: no, you can’t quite hear it singing. Smell it: linseed and lampblack: no, no you can’t quite smell it, touch it, taste it. Take it intravenously and see if it does not have some effect. — Robert Bringhurst, “Notes to the Reader”1 Well, to hell with it, only – as I sd before – the poet is the only pedagogue left, to be trusted. — Charles Olson, “The Gate and the Center”2 In 2002, Cormorant Books of Toronto published an essay collection entitled Thinking and Singing: Poetry and the Practice of Philosophy. Edited and introduced by Tim Lilburn, the book gathers a series of meditations by five writers whom this dissertation considers as a group: Lilburn himself, Robert Bringhurst, Dennis Lee, Don McKay, and Jan Zwicky. Together, the five form a quincunx of variously occupied autodidacts, contemplatives, critics, essayists, professors, poets, students, scholars, translators, one 2 children’s author (Lee), one professional philosopher (Zwicky), and one typographer (Bringhurst). They constitute a collective, having dedicated individual poems and full poetry collections to one another, listed one another’s names in their acknowledgments pages, assisted one another’s book launches and performance pieces, and written essays on the topic of one another’s writing. Working across the thresholds of academic and literary cultures in Canada, in the past twenty years, they have come to be known above all as a coterie of ecopoets. Having been linked by camaraderie and long-term personal and professional relationships, they have enjoyed bonds of intellectual kinship that have inspired them to praise and honour one another, as Bringhurst has honoured Lee by calling him both “senior colleague and elder brother” (“At Home” 57). In their admiration for one another, moreover, the five poets have also revealed their own aesthetic and philosophical investments. The scholar Mark Dickinson, whose forthcoming study “Canadian Primal” will be the first monograph published on their collective

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