1849 Poetic ‘meditaysyuns’

its th sailors life / still in treetment: meditaysyuns from gold mountain
By bill bissett

Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2022
$24.95 / 9781772013917

Reviewed by Cathy Ford

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To begin at the beginning, first, I owe this book, its author, and the editorial review accompanying, apologies. I had hoped to review this book last November, then receiving it was delayed; then turn of the year, travelling. Then, spring. In haste to catch the original timelines, I realized I was pushing too hard, and attempting to leap over some of what this book challenged the most – time and reflection. I took more hours, this review grew longer. The author calls this “an epic poetic novel uv langwage n speech,” that it is, to say the least, and has been a lifetime coming. As a reader, I can only mention in my own defence that although I may not have read every book of magic bill bissett has published so far, I haven’t neglected many. To say what is actually true, bill bissett’s work literally saved my sanity, perhaps my life, at a young age, and I have been a dedicated reader since. Adolescent, I felt already as if I was all alone, as if never understood, hearing voices. Having moved twice from one northern B.C. town to another in those most painful teen years, the new school library was literally my sanctuary, and already writing, dreaming to write the poetry I dreamt of, I found two living “contemporary” Canadian poets on the shelves, one American, all male, showing just some of what might be achieved.

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bill bissett, mind-blowing, sensitized to life and joy and colour and wonder and the page itself; Red Lane, life observed close to, politic verging on cynical, strictly colloquial, dark-hearted; e e cummings, lyric, decisive, a shade memorialized. As a group, only one voice of these three — bill bissett’s, was consistently and remarkably inclusive, humane, appealing in its open-eyed discernment of the differences and similarities around and between us, documenting the remarkable in the ordinary, the outstanding in the profound as well as the absurd. I have asked myself through the years whether it was that Red Lane had so recently and tragically died (gone somewhere I was desperately trying not to go); or that e e cummings was so clearly “American” in life experience, although all that dangerous desire expressed was like being charmed; that made their examples less compelling, as writers to look to, for seeking out that isolationist life, that dedication to craft that felt somehow familiar, supportive for a writer just beginning. Of course, to write one’s own path was paramount, but to find some kindred spirit as mentor — out of such quietude — was also important. Through the years, it is in fact the humanist in bissett’s work, the sheer electricity, the ardent political positivizing sensibility, the visual artist’s eye that makes room for the different, the other-discerning, the “mercurial levitating” of thought and engagement, the “letting go uv learned behavyur” that made bill bissett’s poetry, his performance, his visual art the nonbinary envisioning, wisdom, mentoring and challenge I sought.

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Enough about the reviewer might include: as a child, I was among the last groups in the “progressive” B.C. education fashion-system to learn to read phonetically, then struggled combatively against the controlled impulse moral scripture buried within the MacLean method of perfectly totalitarian handwriting, where the death of joy in language was sanctioned, sans kindergarten. Both of these — preschool — well after I had learned to read (I don’t remember actually learning to read) and had learned to write (first a kind of stick language, the little books I had made and hand-stitched the spines of, lived many years in the bench seat of the piano until they too heartbreakingly disappeared). Small wonder, then, that bissett’s work opened itself to my comprehension with ease and continues to do so. Amazing, then, the postcard that arrived at least five years after I first read bill’s work, now sent on mysteriously to my feeling lost address in a large coastal university city, his postcard telling me he had seen my work in 3-Cent Pulp, had read my poem “Another Old Story” (one of the first written witnessing of the Highway of Tears missing and murdered women’s history), and other work elsewhere, and did I have enough poems for a book? I paraphrase, that is, in the spelling I lean on. I understood that bill bissett saw the opening for me as a poet I had also seen — even in such a limited view — female, feminist, politic, lyric, storytelling, addressing the wrongs against women and children and this planet earth already seen, just trying a little to change the world. A weight already on intention. Trusting, I mailed – plain brown envelope — every poem I could let go of with confidence. The manuscript for that first book was just received by bill @ blewointment’s postbox as I left Vancouver on honeymoon. He called from a phone booth on Robson Street, and we made all the necessary — and oh so few decisions together — then and there. When I say bill bissett as my first publisher set me on a path for life that made the integrity of the production certain and set the treatment of my work at so high an exemplary standard that I have since felt supported, spoiled for favour, no matter what, even in the darkest days, the silences, all of this also reflects on what I have thought as well, at the same time, of his own written work through all these passages of time. It is life-enhancing to meet the kind of spirit practicing what is said, so young, demonstrating what is meant, sincerely, without the contradictions of naivete and cynicism, always consistently honest in that artist’s own work, and his relationships with others. Always ahead of most of us, it’s as if the world of literature (and media and texting and language art and graphic illustration) has just caught up with bill bissett’s work, and he is forging new paths ahead once again. How well gifted, such certainty, faith in the writing itself, belief in one’s voice being heard.

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To begin, then, this book of 2022 is a work of genius, creative with clarity of vision, the focus of an artistic view of the world, with empathy, intelligence, constancy, humour and all the sharply- honed tools in the toolbox including intensity of feeling, hope, pathos, grief, self-healing, lifeforce, that makes wisdom, and challenges the intellect. It’s not enough to explain that bill bissett’s work has fully engaged itself with the world, all its glories, its failings, and harms, from the beginning, but that he has taken it in its th sailors life / still in treatment to another level altogether. The secondary or subphrase part of the title, “meditaysyuns from gold mountain” explains intent, yes, but also — the longer haul — the commitment to understanding and change, to holding one’s ground, to moving with the weather, all at once. To set fire to life itself, to keep burning bright, this poet, painter, performer, has been said by many others to be unlike any artist in Canada — perhaps unlike any other in the wider world civilization of art and literature. The sensibility that language is a kind of visible universe, that a novel in poetics may be the only way to say what one means. Poetry and prosework from a one-man revolution awakens revelation and illumines the kind of mind open to received epiphany, lived in grace, and sometimes, so open, so in pain. This is an important, “big book” even in light of bissett’s other accomplishments to date, and to do it justice, a couple of other observations should be mentioned. In over seventy published works, and a long history of collaborative art and literature, bissett has in this volume included the writings of some of the trusted he is in conversation with, creating an interesting slant on the methods and ideas of the text within, a kind of proofing intertextuality that confirms what he’s been thinking and writing about, and challenges every act.

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Within reach of the glorious ridiculousness that has created the great accidental geography Canada, the sheer extraordinary generosity of its reach sea to sea to sea, compounded with the interests of the indigenous first peoples, the immigrant waves, the various asian, black, indentured, enslaved, remitted, all these, it begs to be said. We’re all gratefulness, this country, for having such a mind and heart and artist in our midst. Canada, its undeniable beauty, its complex history so far, including tragedy and triumph, premonition within the buried truths being found, a fundamental longing for peace, restitution for all the wrongs done, its co- existence with all comers if possible, rolls from the northern transparent walls of glacial ice, rivers run, roiling garnering open-sky prairies, scruff of tundra, treeline scrub, orchardry, jungle to the sea, the great lakes, it’s all one somehow, pieced and patterned together, against all odds. And inclusive in this, bill bissett and his work, his lifework, for which the word ‘unique’ is too small. In all our geography, history, the past hundred years of literary blossoming and artistic distinction, bill bissett’s work stands bright and solitary. GPS, in a crowd. Think then, of those few of Canada who are, who will, who become, who achieve genius themselves. Perhaps each of us has a different list in our heads, our hearts and minds. One, bill bissett. Don’t be afraid to say the names out loud. Have courage.

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In any one person or artist, stitching together a shamanic shimmered quilting of intellect, observation, longing, desire, sharp perception, grasp of irony all in one — poet, painter, performer, singer, minister of visionary artistic supply and creative inspiration service — there is a place, a book sometimes, where as readers we want for nothing. Sears the heart. Peels the clouded eye wide open. Receives a new brain, or certainly an uptick, a new pace set. For me as a reader, it is not enough to freely admit that I have loved bill bissett’s work since before my adult life entirely began, but also to hope that I am adequate to the challenge of bringing others into this lifework’s “treatment.” Slow to capture in its entirety, the range of this new book demands intense concentration from its readership, and even more reflection; this book of the geography and chronology of longing, a book of longing as in requited and unrequited love, the free expression of desire, is brilliant in its unremitting love of life, and the close haul of living on the knife sensitivity of being. Like an advanced level of comprehension, this book of love as in intent, procedural, raises old friends and relationships, influences, qualities of the examination of a writer’s development, caring, obsessions, evocations, to a greater height than bissett’s work has powered up for previously, a kind of demonstrating of sheer brain light, luminosity. There is no space between the demand for an advanced skillset in reading, just to let one keep up, nor the intellectual challenges set by the writer for himself. This book is called by its author, a “poetic novel,” neither autobiography nor fiction, not quite creative non-fiction, none of these letting the writer or the reader minimize the requirements of the reach of this book. Out of there, this, the between-covers mind that contains everything at once about its own story, the ripples in time and understanding of experience are sorted through the narrative line, the intimacies as revelation, the trek to the top of “gold mountain” and all it demands of dedicating oneself to laying out and trying to figure out one’s life. The author of this book has asked as much of its own writer as it does in reaching out to its readers, thinking it through, thereafter writing it down. If compared to bill bissett’s paintings, it’s not just the gaze of the beloved, the life in the eyes, returned or not, but the mindset, the ability to understand one another, connect intellectually, at once, at a glance, and at deeper levels, that provokes, confounds.

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This volume is a kind of book of hours, a book of life, vibrant in its colourations and pure poetry embroideries, as in its captured, glimpsed biography, its unalloyed bits of pure gold, but it is also a novel, hammered into bold view, shone bright with precise personal and political observations, the big issues made up of all the little things, the indicators small but showing hopeful direction. The small things that add up, and count, count, count, the grace points on the beaded bracelet of life — what matters — is where bill bissett works and writes and draws in this book. Works to understand, to clarify experience, to illustrate. What truly matters. In these “meditaysyuns,” bissett sharpens the knife needed to edge into the future, has taken a carving of new understanding of dreams and consequences to a riverbed and read what might come in next, like ripplewaves onto shore. This book is different than some others of bissett’s, with the burning intensity of palm over heart, as the heart has met others through the years, each one different but the same unequivocal sincerity that takes courage to live and express, strength to feel and survive. This book not only records the immediacies, but contemplates the life-altering, the patterning of what occurs and recurs, in one’s life—obsessions, attractions, tragedies.

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There have been many books so far, written by this author, and so supportively published by Talonbooks, thanks for the availability, to reach and read the writer’s art, mind and intellectual work one way or another. Sometimes not first in order, but never last, the ideas and images from each previous day shared and conjured by this author never fail to challenge, to provoke. What bill bissett has had to say in his poetry reverberates long after the first reading or performance lands. While as a reader one is never left out of the reading equation, this writer’s work evolves faster and further than most read, even within the text on the page. There’s that feeling the writer is moving at breathtaking speed, down the line. This is a most important distinction between its th sailors life / still in treatment and bissett’s previously published work. The intent, the reveal, gloves off: this is full-on what needs to be said, at this writer’s high water level of brilliance, what’s still left to be said also indicated. No detail left out, or difficulty denied. More to come. “Remarks are not literature” (thank you Gertrude Stein, ha, Hemingway), and remarks this book is not. To make a mark, to tell what’s true, to re-create one’s life experiences this story / poetic / novel, is clearly determined. There’s plenty of Joycean language art in this book, great reimagined, reheard spelling, punctuation, flights of close-bound collective thought consecutive to flights of fancy touched on, felt, flit, flutter, fly, enjambed grammar, pace, lyric, singsong, lullaby, jazz. Did anyone think for a moment bill bissett did not know what he was doing, in spades? All the world, all the words, all the wisdom in and despite its craziness, rendered here. The memories cascade, neither in fear, or for favour, sometimes in time, sometimes in depth of feeling. The humanity, humility, and the amazed all come through the narrative voice, as if, this being a poetic novel, nevertheless, bill bissett’s unmasked story, the true character of the human being.

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The best of this book is the life-affirming content, the awareness that one’s art is a vocation, calling, passion, uniquely personalized in bill bissett’s case, his writing and performance and painting arts a renaissance of accomplishments. To identify and express such deliberate purpose in one’s published work is here somehow new, physiologically true. A narrative consciousness seeking peace, harmony, compassion, all of which that very consciousness is helpless before, is remarkably open, grounded. The artist, dreamer, visionary, brought to earth time and again through life observation, suffering , knowledge, all revealed. There is no holding back in this book, only refusing the impossible, the harmful. The refusal to suffer undeserved pain. There’s an acceptance of that grammatical trick, past tense, to create a life on earth point of view from the inside, a perception of what experience outside one’s choices might mean. To say it out loud, there is startling beauty in this book, seldom dwelled upon, but clarified, as if all that is beautiful is not to make too much sense, but to keep the questions clear. The prodigiously demarcated immenseness of nature, love, relations with one another as human beings, breasting the top of the water, healing outside the margins, the frame of other lives, including the life barely imagined, are all shown with singular expression, specific examples of where things were remarkably right, or madly wrong. In this poetic novel, grief is a kind of paying for love, pricing the pursuit of perfection. As its own “bel canto”, thinking in the romantic spirit, like Chopin the poet of the piano, bill bissett’s work in this book is sensitive to the point of painful, sweet to the level of heartbreak, sincere to the end. Time may mean nothing as it passes, but it changes everything at once, causes reconsideration of every commitment or promise, including questions about the strength of artistic vision, and sense of purpose, which somehow cannot, must not, fail.

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“Life is not a dress rehearsal” (thank you, Rose Tremain), and the energy work in this new book by bill bissett flows like a river run project, the production of renewable energy to carry on following grieving, face forced new ways of thinking, energy transformed, energizes every page. “meditaysyuns from gold mountain,” in another story, place, and time, shot through the stories of immigrants to Canada who followed the gold rush in western Canada, and often, only got wisdom, as they say, not enriched. To create new pathways in the journey, to mind your mind, is the author’s work here, the joy and difficulty of the stories that serve the journey, teach the writer and the reader to persevere. Tenacity through the production of artistic expression, to build excellence, not just flashes of brilliance, also lights the way. In this book is an artist, a narrative point of view urging the creation of life by design, by attentiveness, by thorough examination and the acceptance of change, to intentionally target the light. To breathe, to hope. To fold suffering and coping with it, into one’s life — as it was, where it was, how it was — is carefully detailed and never denied. That means that sadness, sorrow, rage, incomprehension also is recounted, and has to be walked through, like fire. To sing, not as an answer, but a song, to be worthy of the art of it, to take it seriously enough, this lifeforce, to make it all the way through, seems to be the most profound message of this book. There is sometimes lamentation, in keeping to the heart of the matter, returning to it, the haunts of life experience revisited, the weight of sorrow, the levity of grace, the gravitas of finding joy again – as a devotee of being alive, is there anything better? In its th sailors life / still in treatment life goes on, as does the nature of longing, married to wanting, to be saved by coincidence, a new morning, the scaling of gold mountain, held in respect, and honouring the fates then, learning and teaching and still learning as we go. Dreams are presented as in water, fluid as desire, and cherishing the going on. Portions of this book would tear out one’s heart, yet this is not a book about ignoring the pain, nor about forgiveness.

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Imagine if you could forget nothing, or couldn’t forget anything — the conundrum the author of this poetic novel is tied to. To walk through fire, or deep water, to address all those significant, joyous, and painful memories, and yet never lose sight of the healing power of the riverwater drawn to, the time for silent contemplation, the demanding quiet of gold mountain, or enforced meditation on any given issue. There’s assistance in daily life transitions noted, friends standing by, notwithstanding the commitment to art and the artistic life. Hard knocks are like life and death experiences suspended in time, the suspended disbelief of the illumined emergency life on this earth right now is, reimagined, reconsidered, until if no relief from grief, as least constant learning, coping with moving forward. There is such green in this book, a kind of earth-grounded meaningful order – the natural world like the art of poetry, art, the very necessity of poetry, art — to keep the spirit alive. There’s plenty of sheer rollicking Gertrude Steinism’s too, the music of art, lingua, the irrefutable and the absurdities of logic side by side, only at first blush simplistic, then full of deep coherence, how to say love, engage, without fail. If as a writer, or reader, one considers the body, as in body of work, the shape of narrative or memory remembered, coming to all one’s senses, this book exemplifies it. The narrative voice documenting both innocence and experience in equal measure give in an ongoing delineation of text the gifting of time, fierce intelligence, song, the questions of causality and mortality contemplated in full. To challenge and to change conduct, form, upset the expected, even what has been expected of bill bissett’s work as he has set his own path as a poet, performer and painter is what is clearly laid down here. A soundful living consciousness celebrated, a liberating “form” which includes that of “found,” and “discussed,” concrete work, fluid lines, other minds, all rolled in. Fearlessly, assonance, consonance, alliteration, slant, sound, rhyme, syllable, stress, count, cadence, meter, imagery, repetitions, association, privately remade, publicly new made language is all contained in this book. Threading together the visual, the music, the multi-layered meaning, the imaging, the counterpoint, the focus. To get this work done, a sense of urgency, compelling and contemplating arts flowering immortality, and wanting to get the work done now, right now. “how th moon / n th rivr / turn in our mouths / no mattr th emoshyunal residue / th waves bind us as th nite / moovs thru th shadows.” Read this book. Cover to cover with a highlighter if necessary (mine was fluorescent pink). Genius. Time (for what matters ) may soon be up.

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Cathy Ford is a poet, fictioniste, and memoirist, working predominantly on the long poem, feminist issues, life and death concerns, social justice and peace, our relationship with this beloved earth. She has published more than fifteen books, including the art of breathing underwater (Mother Tongue, 2010), and Flowers We Will Never Know The Names Of (Mother Tongue, 2014) — an abc book of the language of flowers and their transliteration, an interpretation of grief and protest, based on the Montreal Massacre. Her earlier books are published by blewointment press, Caitlin Press, Harbour Publishing, and Véhicule Press. She lives in Sidney. Editor’s note: Cathy Ford has also reviewed books by Jónína Kirton and Linda Rogers for The British Columbia Review.

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The British Columbia Review
Interim Editors, 2023-24: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction) Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies.

“Only connect.” – E.M. Forster