CLASSIFICATION
Swallow ID:
1286
Partner Institution:
Concordia University
Source Collection Label:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds
Series:
The Poetry Series
Sub Series:
SGWU Reading Series-Concordia University Department of English fonds
ITEM DESCRIPTION
Title:
Frank Davey at Sir George Williams University, The Poetry Series, 6 February 1970
Title Source:
Cataloguer
Title Note:
"FRANK DAVEY Recorded February 6, 1970 3.75 ips on 1 mil. tape, 1/2 track" written on sticker on the back of the tape's box. "FRANK DAVEY I006/SR48" written on sticker on the spine of the tape's box. "I006-11-048" written on sticker on the reel
Language:
English
Production Context:
Documentary recording
Genre:
Reading: Poetry
Identifiers:
[]
Rights
CREATORS
Name:
Davey, Frank
Dates:
1940-
Role:
"Author",
"Performer"
Notes:
Poet, critic and editor Frank Davey was born in Vancouver in 1940. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of British Columbia, where he co-founded and edited the influential Tish magazine from 1961-1969. Davey’s first book of poetry was published in 1963, called D-Day and after (Tishbooks), which was followed by Bridge force (Contact Press, 1965) and The scarred hull (Imago, 1966). Davey founded Open Letter, a journal of avant-garde writing and theory(which is still being published) in 1965. He then completed a Ph.D. in 1968 at the University of Southern California, with a thesis on the Black Mountain poetics. His poems from this period were collected and published in 1972 in L’an trentiesme: selected poems 1961-1970 (Community Press, 1970). Davey’s most influential poetry was produced in the early 70’s, with Weeds (Coach House Press, 1970), Four Myths for Sam Perry (Talon Books, 1970), King of swords (Talon Books, 1972), Arcana (Coach House Press, 1973), and The Clallam (Talon Books, 1973). Davey’s criticism of the period was collected in From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960 (Porcepic Press, 1974), his 1976 essay of the same title, published in Surviving the Paraphrase (Turnstone Press, 1983) and Reading Canadian reading (Turnstone, 1988). bp Nichol wrote an important introduction for Davey’s Selected poems: the arches (Talon Books, 1980). Davey has documented and written on Canadian authors such as Margaret Atwood, Earle Birney, Louis Dudek and Raymond Souster among others, focusing on Canadian small-press poets who would have been looked over by bigger presses. His own poetry appeared in Capitalistic affection (Coach House Press, 1982), Edward and Patricia (Coach House Press, 1984), The Louis Riel organ and piano company (Turnstone, 1985), The Abbotsford guide to India (Porcepic, 1986) and Popular narratives (Talon Books, 1991). Davey founded Swift Current, a literary journal database published from 1984 to 1990. Davey has taught in Montreal, Toronto’s York University, and was the Carl F. Klinck professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Western Ontario at the time of his retirement in 2005. His criticism and poetics of the 90‘s include Post-national arguments: the politics of the Anglophone-Canadian novel since 1967 (University of Toronto Press, 1993), Canadian literary power (NeWest, 1994), Reading ‘Kim’ Right (Talon Books, 1993) and Karla’s Web (Viking, 1994). He continues to publish poetry, Poems Suitable to Current Material Conditions (2014) and Motel Homage for Greg Curnoe (2014) being his most recent publications.
CONTRIBUTORS
Name:
Fink, Howard
Dates:
1934-
Role:
"Series organizer",
"Presenter"
MATERIAL DESCRIPTION
Recording Type:
Analogue
AV Type:
Audio
Material Designation:
Reel to Reel
Physical Composition:
Magnetic Tape
Extent:
1/4 inch
Playing Speed:
3 3/4 ips
Track Configuration:
Half-track
Playback Mode:
Mono
Tape Brand:
Scotch
Sound Quality:
Good
DIGITAL FILE DESCRIPTION
File Path:
files.spokenweb.ca>concordia>sgw>audio>all_mp3
Duration:
00:55:37
Size:
133.5 MB
Content:
Howard Fink
00:00:00
Frank's a West Coast poet, as you know if you've been reading the entertainment section of the Montreal Star
, editor of, founding editor of Tish
, and of the Open Letter, prolific poet, and poeticist. His last two books Four Myths for Sam Perry and Weeds are at the publishers', and Myths for Sam Perry will be appearing in a month or so. Without further introduction, Frank Davey
.
Frank Davey
00:00:36
The first poems I'm going to read this evening are ones which came out of my experiences in my first marriage. My own feeling about reading poetry is that the poem is exposed to the audience at a much faster rate than what the poem is when it's on the page, and excuse me, I'm going to give you a fair bit of background material on some of these poems. These are a collection of prose poems.
Frank Davey
00:01:20
Reads unnamed poem.
Frank Davey
00:02:13
Reads “Counting” [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:03:11
Reads "The Bandit" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:04:08
To me some of these poems are remarkable because at the time I didn't know this marriage was breaking up and some of the, some of the poems as you can see are about experiences other than marriage and suddenly I realize of course as these poems were progressing, in particular toward the end, that the message was certainly that there was something rather infertile in my whole life, I mean even in the next poem I'm going to read, I didn't catch on, I thought, 'oh well, I'll write this poem, I can't really show it to my wife, but you know, so what'.
Frank Davey
00:04:44
Reads "Mealtimes" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:05:46
Reads "The Place" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:06:39
These poems actually form a sequence, I'm only giving you certain examples of them and jumping ahead and now the cat is suddenly in the next poem as if it hadn't left.
Frank Davey
00:06:52
Reads "The Calling" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:08:08
Well by this point in the sequence, the message was beginning to become more available to me. I was, I admit beginning to understand what I was writing by this point. I've always felt that it's important to write a poem whether or not you realize its significance or its relevance to your own life that you go ahead and write the poem anyway. And in this particular sequence, my own faith that poetry can reveal things to you, that the process of writing poems is a process of discovery, that in fact poems teach the poet, rather than the poet teaching the poems. The poems are wiser than the poet, if you want to look at it that way. This was--seemed to be borne out.
Frank Davey
00:09:15
Reads "Leaves" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:10:25
Reads "A Letter" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:11:35
Reads "Them Apples" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:12:39
Reads "I Do Not Write Poems" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:13:40
Reads "Red" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:14:41
Many ways experience played into the hands of the poems, very nice that the most disastrous years of that marriage happened to begin in a summertime situation, and to end in winter, so that the seasonal, the cycle of the seasons could play its part in the poem. But on the other hand, perhaps that wasn't accidental. One doesn't want to question these things after they've worked for you. Group of poems that are collected in the book, which Howard Fink spoke about in his introduction, Four Myths for Sam Perry.
Frank Davey
00:15:39
Reads "Sentences of Welcome" from Four Myths for Sam Perry.
Frank Davey
00:17:00
I had the fortune, I was going to say good fortune, I had the fortune of being in Los Angeles
during the Watts Riots in 1965
, and living in the riot area. I was very busy at the time and that particular experience I haven't really even begun to deal with.
Frank Davey
00:17:26
Reads "Watts, 1965" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:18:34.12
At that time, in Vietnam
, the most contested piece of property was Hill 488. And most of us know that mountains have a peculiar history of being sacred to human beings, Olympus
, Fuji
, Sinai
, there's a mountain in China
called Tai Shan
, I believe Confucius
made a pilgrimage up this mountain, which is apparently so sacred that the Chinese had carved thousands of steps all the way up to the summit of the mountain. There are mountains, of course, in the Himalayas
, which house monasteries and which monks so far have successfully prevented anyone from climbing.
Frank Davey
00:19:39
Reads "Hill 488" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:20:27
Drongo is a purple bird that is peculiar to Southeast Asia
, one of the things which is never really thought of in times of conflict are all of the more, well very specific natural features of the landscape which of course are threatened by destruction in such times. We think of the problems of the defoliant in South Vietnam, when what they estimate now that more than 10% of the country has been treated with defoliant. We don't think of the individual examples of the flora and fauna which may be threatened with extinction because of this defoliation. Man of course is only one of the many inhabitants of this planet and although it is certainly a despicable thing that the biological function of human beings have been interfered with by the defoliation, children are being born malnourished, these are not the only sufferers.
Frank Davey
00:21:58
Reads "The Drongo" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Unknown
00:23:27
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Frank Davey
00:23:28
And of course in the middle of this, there are tankers sinking.
Frank Davey
00:23:35
Reads "Torrey Canyon" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:24:29
Well actually for the past three years I've been writing poems, from the tarot pack. I've been somewhat disappointed to learn that all kinds of other poets have been doing this at the same time. They're getting their stuff into print but I haven't bothered because I was going to do all 88 cards and publish them all at once. At any rate, I'm going to say some more about the tarot pack later but this particular poem comes out of the tarot pack from the Emperor card and has a peculiar affinity to the poems I've just been reading.
Frank Davey
00:25:20
Reads "The Emperor" [published later as “Manuscript, 4 December, 1970, title ‘The Emperor’” in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:27:03
Reads "When" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry]
Frank Davey
00:27:56
But there is also of course, another side of the coin.
Frank Davey
00:27:59
Reads "For her, a Spring" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:30:39
The next poem is entitled "A Light Poem". For lack of a better descriptive term, I might call myself an anti-humanist, this is of course the--it's almost become a category, I thought it was unique at one point, but it's become of late a category. I think more and more people are realizing that man is not capable of appointing himself as manager, or he's capable of appointing himself, he's not capable of acting out his self-appointment as manager of this planet. That in fact, his capabilities at managing certain areas create problems that are multiples of the ones he has solved. And that the humanist dream of man through his own rationality creating a nearly utopian existence, coming to understand the workings of the universe in such a way that he can bend them to his own use, but this dream has not going to come true. And of course, one of the ways that this feeling in men has been manifested has been his utilization of light and energy, and well, to the poem. "A Light Poem".
Frank Davey
00:32:25
Reads "A Light Poem" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry]..
Unknown
00:37:24
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Frank Davey
00:37:25
Recently I have been writing poems from tarot cards. I have noticed a couple of things about the tarot cards that are very important for the poems. One of these is that the female symbol seems to be the most important symbol in the deck and it seems to suggest that the universe itself is essentially feminine in nature, that the fertility of the universe is feminine. Another aspect of the cards suggests that the nature of the universe is such that all sorts of mysterious things can happen to it without our understanding them. That there are all sorts of forces indicated in these cards that are essentially outside of our control. This poem, entitled "To Win at Cards". Tarot cards are not cards whose primary purpose is to play a game. The decks of cards with which we are all familiar with are cards where you play a game, the object of course of playing cards is to win at cards. And winning of course, is something which we are all brought up to wish, so one of the things about our competitive society that makes it work is that we all want to win. And card games help indoctrinate us in this direction. Cards, can also tell you things, this is the thing that the tarot cards have in common with poetry, is that people don't win in poetry, you don't write a better poem than somebody else in order to win prizes or to--you don't use poems in order to seduce a girl, or you don't use poems in order to accomplish any kind of end outside of the end of writing the poem. If you do, your allegiance is not to the poem and it's to something else and you're prostituting the poem. The only thing which can win at poetry is the poem itself, and this is where the poet ought to apply his effort to, is to helping the poem win.
Frank Davey
00:40:15
Reads "To Win at Cards" published later in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:41:20
This poem, entitled "The Hermit", one of the figures on the cards. The card happened to cause me to recall a childhood memory of an earthquake.
Frank Davey
00:41:35
Reads "The Hermit" [published later in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:42:49
It became very clear to me writing these Tarot poems that indeed there were many things outside of one's control and my wife and I were putting together a jigsaw puzzle of the moon, I think it was a satellite photograph of one side of the moon, and things started to go wrong.
Frank Davey
00:43:16
Reads [“Luna”, published later in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:44:52
Throughout history of course, men have been obsessed with the idea of being displaced by another man. Either in the seat--in the kingdom, or in the favors of the special woman in their lives. We have in mythology of course, many myths of Gods being displaced very often by their children. In Greek drama of course, the classical example is the Oedipus
myth where Laius
and Jocasta
have their married lives disrupted by their son, Oedipus. This is a poem about this particular fear. Fear of being displaced by someone younger, very often, fear of being displaced by one's own son, although that's not necessarily integral to the poem.
Frank Davey
00:45:53
Reads ["Menelaus, To You", published later in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:47:19
If you choose to go to war with the natural environment, strange things happen. “King of Pentacles” is wrapped in a coat of binds.
Frank Davey
00:47:34
Reads "King of Pentacles" [published later in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:48:44
Times when men do the right things, or seem to do the right things. A poem called "The Caughnawaga Bell".
Frank Davey
00:48:55
Reads "The Caughnawaga Bell" [published later in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:50:32
I'd like to conclude with a couple of poems about the whole problem of writing. It's always a problem for a poet to keep the process of writing going. One of the tricks of poets of course is always to write poems about the fact that the process of writing isn't going. I have a number of these. "The Mountain".
Frank Davey
00:51:06
Reads "The Mountain" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:51:50
Of course, the thing is, as soon as you begin to pay homage to the fact that you're having trouble writing a poem and express your will to, you are in fact being repaid. As soon as I remembered this myth of Popocatepetl
and you know, the earth literally repaying the boy for his homage representing him with a mountain. If you couldn't grow corn on it, at least you could lure the Yankees down to look at. [Audience laughter].
Frank Davey
00:52:24
Reads "The Bells" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:53:33
This poem, entitled "The Making".
Frank Davey
00:53:41
Reads "The Making" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:55:34
And so, I wish you all good winds!
END
00:55:37
Notes:
Frank Davey reads from Four Myths for Sam Perry (Talonbooks, 1970) and Weeds (Coach House Press, 1970), as well as poems published later in Arcana (Coach House Press, 1973).
00:00- Howard Fink introduces Frank Davey. [INDEX: West Coast poet, Montreal Star, founding editor of Tish, Open Letter, Four Myths for Sam Perry, Weeds in publication]
00:36- Frank Davey introduces poetry reading [INDEX: reading poetry, first marriage, prose poems]
01:20- Reads “How We Are” first line “How alone we are from each other...”
03:11- Reads “The Bandit”
04:08- Introduces next group of poems [INDEX: marriage, process of writing]
04:44- Reads “Meal Times”
05:46- Reads “The Place”
06:39- Explains that poems are in a sequence
06:52- Reads “The Calling”
08:08- Explains process of writing these poems [INDEX: process of writing]
09:15- Reads “Leaves”
10:25- Reads “A Letter”
11:35- Reads “Them Apples”
12:39- Reads “I Do Not Write Poems”
13:40- Reads “Red and Where is Love?”
14:41- Introduces group of poems from Four Myths for Sam Perry
15:39- Reads “Sentences of Welcome”
17:00- Introduces “Watts, 1965” [INDEX: Watts Riot in 1965, Los Angeles,]
17:26- Reads “Watts, 1965”
18:34- Introduces “Hill 488” [INDEX: Vietnam, Hill 488, Olympus, Fuji, Sinai, Tai Shan, Confucius, Himalayas.]
19:39- Reads “Hill 488”
20:27- Introduces “The Drongo” [INDEX: Drongo bird, South East Asia, conflict, South Vietnam, destruction of flora and fauna during war, defoliation]
21:58- Reads “The Drongo”
23:35- Reads “Torrey Canyon”
24:29- Introduces “The Emperor” [INDEX: tarot cards, Emperor card]
25:29- Reads “The Emperor”
27:03- Reads “When”
27:59- Reads “For Her, a Spring”
30:39- Introduces “A Light Poem” [INDEX: anti-humanism, light and energy]
32:25- Reads “A Light Poem”
37:25- Introduces “To Win at Cards” [INDEX: tarot cards]
40:15- Reads “To Win at Cards”
41:20- Introduces “The Hermit”
41:35- Reads “The Hermit”
42:49- Introduces “The Moon” first line “When the moon demanded that...” [INDEX: tarot cards, moon]
43:16- Reads “The Moon”
44:52- Introduces “A Child” [INDEX: mythology of Oedipus]
45:53- Reads “A Child”
47:19- Introduces “King of Pentacles”
47:34- Reads “King of Pentacles”
48:44- Introduces “The Caughnawaga Bell”
48:55- Reads “The Caughnawaga Bell”
50:32- Introduces “The Mountain” [INDEX: process of writing’]
51:06- Reads “The Mountain”
51:50- Explains “The Mountain” [INDEX: myth of Popocatepetl ]
52:24- Reads “The Bells”
53:33- Reads “The Making”
55:37.72- END OF RECORDING
Howard Fink List:
Frank Davey
Recorded Feb 6, 1970
1. “How Alone We Are”
2. “Counting”
3. “The Bandit”
4. “Mealtimes”
5. “The Place”
6. “The Calling”
7. “Leaves”
8. “A Letter”
9. “Them Apples”
10. “I Do Not Write Poems”
11. “Red”
12. “Sentences of Welcome”
13. “Watts- 1965”
14. “Hill 488”
15. “The Drongo”
16. “Tory Canyon”
17. “The Emperor”
18. “When”
19. “For Her A Spring” (serial poem)
20. “A Light Poem” (serial poem)
21. “To Win at Cards”
22. “The Hermit”
23. “The Moon”
24. “The Child”
25. “The Horned God”
26. (something missing) Vines...
27. “King of Pentacles”
28.“The Caughnawaga Bell”
29. “The Mountain”
30. “The Bell”
31. “The Making”
pg. 69
Content Type:
Sound Recording
Featured:
Yes
Title:
Frank Davey Tape Box - Back
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Frank Davey Tape Box - Front
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Frank Davey Tape Box - Spine
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Title:
Frank Davey Tape Box - Reel
Credit:
Drew Bernet
Content Type:
Photograph
Dates
Date:
1970 2 6
Type:
Performance Date
Source:
Accompanying Material
Notes:
Date written on sticker on the back of the tape's box
LOCATION
Address:
1455, Boul de Maisonneuve Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Venue:
Hall Building Room H-651
Latitude:
45.4972758
Longitude:
-73.57893043
CONTENT
Contents:
frank_davey_i006-11-048.mp3
Howard Fink
00:00:00
Frank's a West Coast poet, as you know if you've been reading the entertainment section of the Montreal Star
, editor of, founding editor of Tish
, and of the Open Letter, prolific poet, and poeticist. His last two books Four Myths for Sam Perry and Weeds are at the publishers', and Myths for Sam Perry will be appearing in a month or so. Without further introduction, Frank Davey
.
Frank Davey
00:00:36
The first poems I'm going to read this evening are ones which came out of my experiences in my first marriage. My own feeling about reading poetry is that the poem is exposed to the audience at a much faster rate than what the poem is when it's on the page, and excuse me, I'm going to give you a fair bit of background material on some of these poems. These are a collection of prose poems.
Frank Davey
00:01:20
Reads unnamed poem.
Frank Davey
00:02:13
Reads “Counting” [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:03:11
Reads "The Bandit" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:04:08
To me some of these poems are remarkable because at the time I didn't know this marriage was breaking up and some of the, some of the poems as you can see are about experiences other than marriage and suddenly I realize of course as these poems were progressing, in particular toward the end, that the message was certainly that there was something rather infertile in my whole life, I mean even in the next poem I'm going to read, I didn't catch on, I thought, 'oh well, I'll write this poem, I can't really show it to my wife, but you know, so what'.
Frank Davey
00:04:44
Reads "Mealtimes" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:05:46
Reads "The Place" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:06:39
These poems actually form a sequence, I'm only giving you certain examples of them and jumping ahead and now the cat is suddenly in the next poem as if it hadn't left.
Frank Davey
00:06:52
Reads "The Calling" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:08:08
Well by this point in the sequence, the message was beginning to become more available to me. I was, I admit beginning to understand what I was writing by this point. I've always felt that it's important to write a poem whether or not you realize its significance or its relevance to your own life that you go ahead and write the poem anyway. And in this particular sequence, my own faith that poetry can reveal things to you, that the process of writing poems is a process of discovery, that in fact poems teach the poet, rather than the poet teaching the poems. The poems are wiser than the poet, if you want to look at it that way. This was--seemed to be borne out.
Frank Davey
00:09:15
Reads "Leaves" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:10:25
Reads "A Letter" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:11:35
Reads "Them Apples" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:12:39
Reads "I Do Not Write Poems" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:13:40
Reads "Red" [from Weeds].
Frank Davey
00:14:41
Many ways experience played into the hands of the poems, very nice that the most disastrous years of that marriage happened to begin in a summertime situation, and to end in winter, so that the seasonal, the cycle of the seasons could play its part in the poem. But on the other hand, perhaps that wasn't accidental. One doesn't want to question these things after they've worked for you. Group of poems that are collected in the book, which Howard Fink spoke about in his introduction, Four Myths for Sam Perry.
Frank Davey
00:15:39
Reads "Sentences of Welcome" from Four Myths for Sam Perry.
Frank Davey
00:17:00
I had the fortune, I was going to say good fortune, I had the fortune of being in Los Angeles
during the Watts Riots in 1965
, and living in the riot area. I was very busy at the time and that particular experience I haven't really even begun to deal with.
Frank Davey
00:17:26
Reads "Watts, 1965" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:18:34.12
At that time, in Vietnam
, the most contested piece of property was Hill 488. And most of us know that mountains have a peculiar history of being sacred to human beings, Olympus
, Fuji
, Sinai
, there's a mountain in China
called Tai Shan
, I believe Confucius
made a pilgrimage up this mountain, which is apparently so sacred that the Chinese had carved thousands of steps all the way up to the summit of the mountain. There are mountains, of course, in the Himalayas
, which house monasteries and which monks so far have successfully prevented anyone from climbing.
Frank Davey
00:19:39
Reads "Hill 488" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:20:27
Drongo is a purple bird that is peculiar to Southeast Asia
, one of the things which is never really thought of in times of conflict are all of the more, well very specific natural features of the landscape which of course are threatened by destruction in such times. We think of the problems of the defoliant in South Vietnam, when what they estimate now that more than 10% of the country has been treated with defoliant. We don't think of the individual examples of the flora and fauna which may be threatened with extinction because of this defoliation. Man of course is only one of the many inhabitants of this planet and although it is certainly a despicable thing that the biological function of human beings have been interfered with by the defoliation, children are being born malnourished, these are not the only sufferers.
Frank Davey
00:21:58
Reads "The Drongo" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Unknown
00:23:27
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Frank Davey
00:23:28
And of course in the middle of this, there are tankers sinking.
Frank Davey
00:23:35
Reads "Torrey Canyon" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:24:29
Well actually for the past three years I've been writing poems, from the tarot pack. I've been somewhat disappointed to learn that all kinds of other poets have been doing this at the same time. They're getting their stuff into print but I haven't bothered because I was going to do all 88 cards and publish them all at once. At any rate, I'm going to say some more about the tarot pack later but this particular poem comes out of the tarot pack from the Emperor card and has a peculiar affinity to the poems I've just been reading.
Frank Davey
00:25:20
Reads "The Emperor" [published later as “Manuscript, 4 December, 1970, title ‘The Emperor’” in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:27:03
Reads "When" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry]
Frank Davey
00:27:56
But there is also of course, another side of the coin.
Frank Davey
00:27:59
Reads "For her, a Spring" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:30:39
The next poem is entitled "A Light Poem". For lack of a better descriptive term, I might call myself an anti-humanist, this is of course the--it's almost become a category, I thought it was unique at one point, but it's become of late a category. I think more and more people are realizing that man is not capable of appointing himself as manager, or he's capable of appointing himself, he's not capable of acting out his self-appointment as manager of this planet. That in fact, his capabilities at managing certain areas create problems that are multiples of the ones he has solved. And that the humanist dream of man through his own rationality creating a nearly utopian existence, coming to understand the workings of the universe in such a way that he can bend them to his own use, but this dream has not going to come true. And of course, one of the ways that this feeling in men has been manifested has been his utilization of light and energy, and well, to the poem. "A Light Poem".
Frank Davey
00:32:25
Reads "A Light Poem" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry]..
Unknown
00:37:24
[Cut or edit made in tape. Unknown amount of time elapsed].
Frank Davey
00:37:25
Recently I have been writing poems from tarot cards. I have noticed a couple of things about the tarot cards that are very important for the poems. One of these is that the female symbol seems to be the most important symbol in the deck and it seems to suggest that the universe itself is essentially feminine in nature, that the fertility of the universe is feminine. Another aspect of the cards suggests that the nature of the universe is such that all sorts of mysterious things can happen to it without our understanding them. That there are all sorts of forces indicated in these cards that are essentially outside of our control. This poem, entitled "To Win at Cards". Tarot cards are not cards whose primary purpose is to play a game. The decks of cards with which we are all familiar with are cards where you play a game, the object of course of playing cards is to win at cards. And winning of course, is something which we are all brought up to wish, so one of the things about our competitive society that makes it work is that we all want to win. And card games help indoctrinate us in this direction. Cards, can also tell you things, this is the thing that the tarot cards have in common with poetry, is that people don't win in poetry, you don't write a better poem than somebody else in order to win prizes or to--you don't use poems in order to seduce a girl, or you don't use poems in order to accomplish any kind of end outside of the end of writing the poem. If you do, your allegiance is not to the poem and it's to something else and you're prostituting the poem. The only thing which can win at poetry is the poem itself, and this is where the poet ought to apply his effort to, is to helping the poem win.
Frank Davey
00:40:15
Reads "To Win at Cards" published later in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:41:20
This poem, entitled "The Hermit", one of the figures on the cards. The card happened to cause me to recall a childhood memory of an earthquake.
Frank Davey
00:41:35
Reads "The Hermit" [published later in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:42:49
It became very clear to me writing these Tarot poems that indeed there were many things outside of one's control and my wife and I were putting together a jigsaw puzzle of the moon, I think it was a satellite photograph of one side of the moon, and things started to go wrong.
Frank Davey
00:43:16
Reads [“Luna”, published later in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:44:52
Throughout history of course, men have been obsessed with the idea of being displaced by another man. Either in the seat--in the kingdom, or in the favors of the special woman in their lives. We have in mythology of course, many myths of Gods being displaced very often by their children. In Greek drama of course, the classical example is the Oedipus
myth where Laius
and Jocasta
have their married lives disrupted by their son, Oedipus. This is a poem about this particular fear. Fear of being displaced by someone younger, very often, fear of being displaced by one's own son, although that's not necessarily integral to the poem.
Frank Davey
00:45:53
Reads ["Menelaus, To You", published later in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:47:19
If you choose to go to war with the natural environment, strange things happen. “King of Pentacles” is wrapped in a coat of binds.
Frank Davey
00:47:34
Reads "King of Pentacles" [published later in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:48:44
Times when men do the right things, or seem to do the right things. A poem called "The Caughnawaga Bell".
Frank Davey
00:48:55
Reads "The Caughnawaga Bell" [published later in Arcana].
Frank Davey
00:50:32
I'd like to conclude with a couple of poems about the whole problem of writing. It's always a problem for a poet to keep the process of writing going. One of the tricks of poets of course is always to write poems about the fact that the process of writing isn't going. I have a number of these. "The Mountain".
Frank Davey
00:51:06
Reads "The Mountain" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:51:50
Of course, the thing is, as soon as you begin to pay homage to the fact that you're having trouble writing a poem and express your will to, you are in fact being repaid. As soon as I remembered this myth of Popocatepetl
and you know, the earth literally repaying the boy for his homage representing him with a mountain. If you couldn't grow corn on it, at least you could lure the Yankees down to look at. [Audience laughter].
Frank Davey
00:52:24
Reads "The Bells" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:53:33
This poem, entitled "The Making".
Frank Davey
00:53:41
Reads "The Making" [from Four Myths for Sam Perry].
Frank Davey
00:55:34
And so, I wish you all good winds!
END
00:55:37
Notes:
Frank Davey reads from Four Myths for Sam Perry (Talonbooks, 1970) and Weeds (Coach House Press, 1970), as well as poems published later in Arcana (Coach House Press, 1973).
NOTES
Type:
General
Note:
Year-Specific Information:
In 1970, Frank Davey had written both Weeds and Four Myths for Sam Perry, and his poems were collected in L’an Trentiesme: Selected Poems 1961-1970, all published that year. He was the writer-in-residence at Sir George Williams University from 1969-1970.
Type:
General
Note:
Local Connections:
Frank Davey’s influence reaches farther than his numerous publications, as he was devoted to the publication of other new poets and to the little magazine in Canada. A founding member of Tish, along with Fred Wah and George Bowering (a magazine responsible for a re-birth of poetry in Vancouver and the publication of some of the most important figures in Canadian poetry today) and as a managing editor of Toronto’s Coach House Press, Davey has also documented his fellow poets through bibliographies and biographies. Davey and Bowering no doubt had a long history together, starting in Vancouver, and Bowering most likely invited Davey to Sir George Williams University to read in this series.
Type:
Cataloguer
Note:
Original transcript, research, introduction and edits by Celyn Harding-Jones
Additional research and edits by Ali Barillaro
Type:
Preservation
Note:
Reel-to-reel tap>CD>digital file
RELATED WORKS
Citation:
Bowering, George, ed. The Contemporary Canadian Poem Anthology. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1984.
Citation:
Bowering, George. “Davey, Frank”. From There to Here: A Guide to English-Canadian Literature Since 1960, Our Nature-Our Voices II. Frank Davey. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcepic, 1974.
Citation:
Davey, Frank. Arcana. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1973.
Citation:
Davey, Frank. Four Myths for Sam Perry. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1970.
Citation:
Davey, Frank. Weeds. Toronto: Coach House Press, 1970.
Citation:
Scobie, Stephen. "Davey, Frank". The Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature. Eugene Benson and William Toye (eds). Oxford University Press 2001.
Citation:
Whiteman, Bruce. “Davey, Frank (1940-)”. Routledge Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English. Benson, Eugene; Conolly, L.W. (eds). London: Routledge, 1994. 2v.