Richard Outram's Early Poems (1957–1988)
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RICHARD OUTRAM’S EARLY POEMS (1957–1988) RICHARD OUTRAM’S EARLY POEMS (1957–1988): A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION WITH ANNOTATIONS By AMANDA JERNIGAN, B.A., M.A. Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy McMaster University © Copyright by Amanda Jernigan, 2018 McMaster University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (2018) Hamilton, Ontario (English) TITLE: Richard Outram’s Early Poems (1957–1988): A Critical Introduction with Annotations AUTHOR: Amanda Jernigan, B.A. (Mount Allison University), M.A. (Memorial University) SUPERVISOR: Professor Jeffery Donaldson NUMBER OF PAGES: xiii, 276 ii LAY ABSTRACT: The thesis comprises an introduction and annotations to Collected Poems of Richard Outram, Volume One (1957–1988), a planned critical edition of the poems of Richard Outram (1930-2005), Canadian poet and printer. It tells the story of Outram’s published oeuvre, beginning in 1957, when he published his first work in collaboration with his wife, the artist Barbara Howard (1926–2002), up through 1988, when Outram and Howard published the last of their hand-printed, letterpress collaborations. Both the introduction and the annotations demonstrate the close link between composition and publication, for Outram, and show the deep effect on Outram’s poetics of his longterm collaboration with his wife. The annotations map the interaction, through three decades, of Outram’s commercial- and private-publishing practices, and cast new light on his lifelong practice of reiteration: his habit of reading his own, older poems into the record of his unfolding work again, in new contexts, linking old work to new, and enriching the meanings of both. iii ABSTRACT: The thesis comprises an introduction and annotations to Collected Poems of Richard Outram, Volume One (1957–1988), a planned critical edition of the poems of Richard Outram (1930-2005), Canadian poet and printer. It tells the story of Outram’s published oeuvre, beginning in 1957, when he published his first work in collaboration with his wife, the artist Barbara Howard (1926–2002), up through 1988, when Outram and Howard published the last of their hand-printed, letterpress collaborations. Jernigan asserts that Outram’s oeuvre is characterized by a reiterative poetics, in which the poet “reads” individual poems into the public record of his work on multiple occasions, allowing the poems’ meanings to be shaped by the changing context of an unfolding oeuvre, as well as by changes in material context and addressed readership — an assertion reflected in the structure of her edition. At the same time, she speaks to the collaborative context of Outram’s published work, all of which was made in explicit or implicit conversation with his wife, the artist Barbara Howard (1926 – 2002), while also being shaped by the sorts of communal forces famously noted by D.M. Mackenzie. Both the introduction and the annotations demonstrate the close link between composition and publication for Outram, poet-printer. In her introduction, Jernigan considers how this link complicates the traditional dichotomy between genetic and bibliographic approaches to textual criticism. Throughout, Jernigan establishes an updated bibliographical and biographical context for Outram’s work, enlarging upon the seminal scholarship of Peter Sanger, and contributes to the existing scholarship on Outram’s personal and publishing life with new archival research in the Gauntlet Press fonds at Library and Archives Canada, the Richard Outram papers at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, the Allan and Nancy iv Fleming fonds at York University, and the Macmillan and Key Porter fonds at McMaster University. v Acknowledgements My first thanks are to Susan Warner Keene and Peter M. Newman, executors of the Literary and Artistic Estates of Richard Outram and Barbara Howard, who have assisted me with this project in every way, going back more than a decade: I am grateful to them for that, and for the gift of their friendship. My deepest gratitude as well to my doctoral supervisor, Professor Jeffery Donaldson, for his sympathetic and clear-eyed support; to my committee members, Professors Joseph Adamson and Mary Silcox; and to Peter Sanger, adjunct committee member, poet, and preeminent Outram scholar, to whose work and example my own is in every way indebted. Here at McMaster, I acknowledge the support of the faculty and staff of the Department of English and Cultural Studies, particularly graduate secretary Ilona Forgo-Smith, office administrator Antoinette Somo, and Professors Peter Walmsley, Mary O’Connor, and Lorraine York. In the larger university, I acknowledge the kind support of Professor Zdravko Planinc in the Department of Religious Studies; the staff of University Technology Services; and the staff of the Mill Library, particularly Bev Bayzat, Library Assistant; Rick Stapleton, Archives and Research Collections Librarian; and Anne Pottier, Associate University Librarian. My archival research has taken me to other institutions as well. I am deeply grateful to the following archivists, librarians, and experts, who have helped me in my work: at Algoma University, Systems Librarian Robin Isard; at Memorial University, Special Collections Librarian Patrick Warner, Digital Archivist Don Walsh, and Associate University Librarian Slavko Monojlovich; at Library and Archives Canada, Literary Archivist Catherine Hobbs; at the Arts & Letters Club of Toronto, Archivist Scott James; at McGill University, Rare Books vi Librarian Ann Marie Holland and Coordinator Isabelle Morissette; at York University, Assistant Head Suzanne Dubeau and Archives Technician Julia Holland; at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Chief Librarian Jane Devine Mejia; at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library in Toronto, all staff members, and particularly Modern Manuscripts Librarian Jennifer Toews, student librarian Philippe Mongeau, and Reading Room Coordinator Soheila Nikzadeh. A special thanks, as well, to my colleagues Don McLeod at the University of Toronto, Professor Janine Rogers at Mount Allison University, and Dr Michael diSanto at Algoma University, all of whom have provided me with generous counsel. Of the many friends of Richard Outram’s and Barbara Howard’s who have helped me in this work, I would like to thank particularly Hugh Anson- Cartwright, Anne Corkett, Professor Robert Denham, Rosemary Kilbourn, Alberto Manguel, Margaret McBurney, George Murray, and Mary McLachlan Sanger. Their support and encouragement has been invaluable, as has that of my own friends and literary/artistic colleagues, particularly Simon Benedict, Darren Bifford, Erin Brubacher, Melissa Dalgleish, Brooke Dufton, Anita Lahey, Zoë Lepiano, Don McKay, and Dan Wells. For permission to copy and transcribe Outram’s poems for my research and reference purposes, and to distribute my transcriptions among my committee members, I am grateful to Hugh Anson- Cartwright of Anson-Cartwright Editions, Michael Callaghan of Exile Editions, David Kent of the St Thomas Poetry Series, and Tim and Elke Inkster of the Porcupine’s Quill. Thanks, too, to Patrick Warner and his colleagues at the Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University, for facilitating my use of images from their Digital Archives Initiative, under a Creative Commons License. vii For help with the painstaking work of copying, filing, transcribing and proofreading, I would like to thank Sheilagh Crandall, Beatrice Freedman, Sarah Crandall Haney, and Shelagh Haney. Any remaining errors are my own. I am grateful for the financial support of McMaster University; of the Government of Canada through the Canada Graduate Scholarship and Queen’s Fellowship programs of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; and of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Graduate Scholarship Program. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a small city to raise two children and finish a Ph.D. thesis. For invaluable support on the home front, I would like to thank: Jen Anisef and Mike Kennedy, Melissa Bennett and Marco D’Andrea, Sheilagh Crandall, Debbe Crandall, Sarah Dolamore, Sarah Crandall Haney, Shelagh Haney, Carey Jernigan and Devin Woods, Ethan Jernigan and Geneva List, Ed and Kim Jernigan, Sylvia Nickerson and John Neary, and Marce Showell. My husband John Haney has supported my work on this thesis in every way. His devotion to Outram, Howard, and their work, is equal to my own — no, greater, as what he has done in support of this work has been done quietly, in the background, without thought of recognition. For his help and example, my abiding thanks. viii Table of Contents Preliminaries List of Abbreviations xi Declaration of Academic Achievement xiii Preface 2 Introduction 10 Barbara Howard and Richard Outram: A Chronology 89 Annotations I. Early, Privately Printed Poems (1957–59), and Early Years of the Gauntlet Press (1960–64) 93 II. Eight Poems (1959) 105 III. Exsultate, Jubilate (1966) 108 IV. Middle Years of the Gauntlet Press, Part One (1966–74) 119 V. The Aliquando Press Publications, 1972–74 149 VI. Turns (1975/6) 158 VII. Middle Years of the Gauntlet Press, Part Two (1975–79) 171 VIII. The Promise of Light (1979) 180 IX. Middle Years of the Gauntlet Press, Part Three (1980–84) 204 X. Selected Poems (1984) 209 XI. Man in Love (1985) 215 XII. Last Letterpress Publications of the Gauntlet Press (1985–88) 226 Appendices I. Poems from Periodicals and Exhibition Catalogues, 1957–1988 231 II. Published translations, 1957–1988 234 ix III. Selected Published