sewn paper
e-mail the Author
Poetry; POE 011000
February 2004
64 pages
ISBN 0-88984-237-X
$12.95
On Abducting
the 'Cello
Wayne Clifford
In 1965, Clifford published Man In A Window, his first collection of poems. This, in
itself,
was not particularly remarkable, but literary history was being made nonetheless.
Clifford was the first acquisitions editor at Coach House Press,
and Man In A Window was Coach House's first trade publication -- released in an edition of
300, illustrated with silkscreened nudes.
This is how such things were done ... in the alley behind Huron Street ...
in the shadow of Rochdale College ... for just the one brief shining moment ... at a time in the
very late sixties.
On Abducting the 'Cello is Clifford's first trade publication since 1979. It is
an important book, and an unlikely publication. Clifford is arguably the Missing Link,
the one Thread in the continuum of Canadian Verse that connects the radical formalism
of bpNichol and Company (I'm thinking here of McCaffery, Dutton, and the Four Horsemen)
with the traditional forms practised by many of PQL's current roster
(I'm thinking here of P.K. Page who, doubtless, would insist on her righteous
place in hipsterdom -- but in the Forties, presumably, rather than the Sixties).
Outrageous images, snippets of gossip and chat, a rare verbal dexterity
and mastery of form all collide in Wayne Clifford's unusual and unexpected
sequence of sonnets. One of the oldest of poetic forms, the sonnet is here
re-invented and proves itself, in Clifford's hands, commodious enough
for all types of speech, from high diction to gutter slang,
all in impeccable rhyme and stanza. Informed throughout with a profound
love of music in all its forms, On Abducting the 'Cello ranges from
Kodaly to Stevie Wonder, Elmer Fudd to Jung, Emmaus to Treblinka. Written
over a period of many years, revised and pondered, and pondered again,
this is a startling and delightful collection of poems that succeeds in
`making it new' while wrestling with such perennial conundrums as `love's
delirious solipsism' in language at once antic and grave, melodious and
irrepressibly zany.
Wayne Clifford was born in Toronto in 1944. He studied English at
University College at the University of Toronto in the mid
sixties during which time he came to be associated with a small
coterie of students that included Stan Bevington, Dennis Reid,
Doris and Judith Cowan, and David Bolduc. Wayne also remembers
Tangiers Al, but not clearly, which says something about the
time. While still an undergraduate Clifford won numerous Norma
Epstein prizes for his poetry and also one
E J Pratt Award (1967)
that he shared with Michael Ondaatje. Stan Bevington had started
his fledgling Coach House Press in 1964 and asked Clifford to
acquire a few poetry manuscripts suitable for book production of
an experimental sort. Wayne secured early work from George
Bowering, Victor Coleman, bpNichol and Michael Ondaatje. At the
founding meeting of the League of Canadian Poets (1966) Wayne
proposed a Writers' Anonymous akin to other, similar, twelve-step
programmes. Clifford's idea was not seriously
considered. Shortly thereafter, Clifford left Toronto to pursue
graduate studies in creative writing at the University of Iowa.
Clifford began working at St. Lawrence College in 1969, when the
College was just new, and was involved in the Creative Writing
program and the Fine Arts Program, until both were
discontinued in the 1980s. After these programs were
discontinued, Clifford joined the General Arts & Science Program
(GAS -- and yes, he does enjoy this irony of this acronym) and
began teaching remediation in language. He plans on taking early
retirement from this job in June of 2004. He was working on a poetry
collaboration (unpublished) with bpNichol at the time of bp's
death in 1988.
`Clifford's 53 poems -- sonnets all -- offer playful, reflective,
and mocking meditations on (among other themes) the value of artistic practice.
The vehicle for all of this is the tale of a sustained love affair with a
cello, one of the orchestra's more imposing and easily anthropomorphized
instruments. ... Clifford handles the form with humorous familiarity,
nimbly picking his way through the gamut of sonnet stanza forms, in rhythms
both jazzy and iambic.' `Balance between taut rhyme and meter and occasional variance,
between language of musical theory and popular crudity, marks
Clifford's collection. He uses traditional form and
narrative framework to raise questions about ideas of Wagner's
impact on German nationalism, the doubling and splitting of
an ego, and Elmer Fudd's sentimental mirroring of everyday
romance.The delight and the challenge in On Abducting
the 'Cello crystallize in the peripheral scope of the
well-crafted, tightly tuned lines.'
-- Harry Vandervlist, Quill & Quire
-- Brook Houglum, Canadian Literature
He lives in Halifax where in the benign seclusion of obscurity he continues to work on a massive collection now comprising some 350 sonnets.