Jay Macpherson
Encyclopedia
Jean Jay Macpherson is a Canadian
lyric
poet
and scholar. The Encyclopædia Britannica calls her "a member of 'the mythopoeic
school of poetry,' who expressed serious religious and philosophical themes in symbolic verse that was often lyrical or comic."
, in 1931. She was brought to Newfoundland
in 1940 as a 'war guest
'. She took high school at Bishop Spencer College, St. John's
, and Glebe Collegiate
, Ottawa
.
In 1951 Macpherson received a BA from Carleton College (now Carleton University) in 1951, followed by a year at University College
in London. She received a BLS from McGill University
, and then completed her MA and Phd
at Victoria College
, University of Toronto
, both supervised by professor and critic Northrop Frye
.
Macpherson published poetry in Contemporary Verse in 1949. Her first book was published in 1952.
In 1954 Macpherson began her own small press
, Emblem Books, which published her second volume, O Earth Return. Between 1954 and 1963, Emblem Books published eight chapbook
s featuring the work of Canadian poets, including Dorothy Livesay
, Alden Nowlan
, and Al Purdy
.
Macpherson's two earlier volumes were incorporated into The Boatman (1957), a book which "gained her a considerable reputation. Dedicated to Northrop Frye and his wife, the collection reflects Frye's emphasis on the mythic and archetypal properties of poetry." The Boatman won the Governor General's Award in 1958
.
Macpherson taught English
at Victoria College from 1957 until 1996. She became a Professor of English in 1974.
Macpherson is "deeply Christian
, a Protestant humanist
."
Her 1982 book The Spirit of Solitude is "a highly regarded study of the elegiac and pastoral traditions from the 17th century onward."
, and the intensely conservative social vision of T.S. Eliot." Within her work, "recurring themes involve the creation, fall, flood, redemption
and the apocalypse
." Her interest is in "authentic myth", "the ones that have some imaginative force behind them."
In technique, Macpherson has been placed "beside Margaret Avison
, P.K. Page, Phyllis Webb
, but especially Anne Hébert
– particularly in the use of the Gothic and macabre
themes and devices."
Northrop Frye (to whom The Boatman was dedicated) called it the "one good book" of Canadian poetry for that year. He added: "There is little use looking for bad lines or lapses in taste: The Boatman is completely successful within the conventions it adopts, and anyone dissatisfied with the book must quarrel with the conventions. Among these are the use of a great variety of echoes, some of them direct quotations from other poems, and an interest in myth, both Biblical and Classical."
The Boatman of the title "is Noah
, but both Noah and the ark
itself form an allegory for the artist and the artistic experience, the ark representing Jung's collective unconscious
." "The creation is inside its creator, and the ark similarly attempts to explain to Noah ... that it is really inside him, as Eve was once inside Adam:
When the four quarters shall
Turn in and make one whole,
Then I who wall your body,
Which is to me a soul,
Shall swim circled by you
And cradled on your tide,
Who was not even, not ever,
Taken from your side.
"As the ark expands into the flooded world, the body of the Biblical leviathan
, and the order of nature, the design of the whole book begins to take shape. The Boatman begins with a poem called 'Ordinary People in the Last Days,' a wistful poem about an apocalypse that happens to everyone except the poet, and ends with a vision of a 'Fisherman' who ... catches 'myriad forms,' eats them, drinks the lake they are in, and is caught in his turn by God."
George Woodcock
saw Welcoming Disaster and The Boatman as similar, even complementary: "They are narratives of journeys into spiritual day and night, disguised, no doubt, by all the devices of privacy, but nonetheless derived from true inner experiences." Margaret Atwood
emphasized their differences: "If The Boatman is 'classical,' . . . then Welcoming Disaster is, by the same lights, 'romantic': more personal, more convoluted, darker and more grotesque, its rhythms more complex"
"Welcoming Disaster, has the critics baffled. They cannot agree on its proper interpretation - is it a darker, more tragic vision or is the possibility of redemption there?" Suniti Namjoshi saw it as a book about redemption: about the necessity "to hit bottom and then to make the journey up"; "after a descent into the underworld ... it is possible to return to the ordinary world of everyday life". David Bromwich, reviewing th book in Poetry
, saw it as even more positive: for him, it "moves from consolation to guilt to terror and finally to a deepened consolation." On the other hand, Lorraine Weir interpreted the book to be saying that the "underworld journey of redemption ... fails". "Fertility is not restored, the underworld is not left behind." Weir calls Macpherson's vision "inescapably a tragic one."
magazine's Levinson Prize, and the University of Western Ontario
President's Medal, in 1957.
She won the Governor General’s Award for The Boatman in 1958
.
Macpherson's poem "Ark Apprehensive" was set to music by Gene Kondusky for his 2010 Kites Overhead album, You are a secret, and you must never tell it.
Except where otherwise noted, bibliographic information courtesy Brock University.
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
lyric
Lyric poetry
Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...
poet
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and scholar. The Encyclopædia Britannica calls her "a member of 'the mythopoeic
Mythopoeic literature
Mythopoeia is a narrative genre in modern literature and film where a fictional mythology is created by the writer of prose or other fiction. This meaning of the word mythopoeia follows its use by J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1930s...
school of poetry,' who expressed serious religious and philosophical themes in symbolic verse that was often lyrical or comic."
Life
Jay Macpherson was born in London, EnglandLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, in 1931. She was brought to Newfoundland
Newfoundland and Labrador
Newfoundland and Labrador is the easternmost province of Canada. Situated in the country's Atlantic region, it incorporates the island of Newfoundland and mainland Labrador with a combined area of . As of April 2011, the province's estimated population is 508,400...
in 1940 as a 'war guest
Evacuations of civilians in Britain during World War II
Evacuation of civilians in Britain during the Second World War was designed to save the population of urban or military areas in the United Kingdom from aerial bombing of cities and military targets such as docks. Civilians, particularly children, were moved to areas thought to be less at risk....
'. She took high school at Bishop Spencer College, St. John's
St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador
St. John's is the capital and largest city in Newfoundland and Labrador, and is the oldest English-founded city in North America. It is located on the eastern tip of the Avalon Peninsula on the island of Newfoundland. With a population of 192,326 as of July 1, 2010, the St...
, and Glebe Collegiate
Glebe Collegiate Institute
Glebe Collegiate Institute is a high school in the Glebe neighbourhood of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Administered by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, Glebe Collegiate Institute has approximately 1,500 students; students and sports teams are referred to as "Gryphons".The school offers many...
, Ottawa
Ottawa
Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...
.
In 1951 Macpherson received a BA from Carleton College (now Carleton University) in 1951, followed by a year at University College
University College London
University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...
in London. She received a BLS from McGill University
McGill University
Mohammed Fathy is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university bears the name of James McGill, a prominent Montreal merchant from Glasgow, Scotland, whose bequest formed the beginning of the university...
, and then completed her MA and Phd
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
at Victoria College
Victoria University, Toronto
Victoria University is a constituent college of the University of Toronto, founded in 1836 and named for Queen Victoria. It is commonly called Victoria College, informally Vic, after the original academic component that now forms its undergraduate division...
, University of Toronto
University of Toronto
The University of Toronto is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution of higher learning in Upper Canada...
, both supervised by professor and critic Northrop Frye
Northrop Frye
Herman Northrop Frye, was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century....
.
Macpherson published poetry in Contemporary Verse in 1949. Her first book was published in 1952.
In 1954 Macpherson began her own small press
Small press
Small press is a term often used to describe publishers with annual sales below a certain level. Commonly, in the United States, this is set at $50 million, after returns and discounts...
, Emblem Books, which published her second volume, O Earth Return. Between 1954 and 1963, Emblem Books published eight chapbook
Chapbook
A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...
s featuring the work of Canadian poets, including Dorothy Livesay
Dorothy Livesay
Dorothy Kathleen May Livesay, was a Canadian poet who twice won the Governor General`s Award in the 1940s, and was "senior woman writer in Canada" during the 1970s and 1980s.-Life:...
, Alden Nowlan
Alden Nowlan
Alden Albert Nowlan was a critically acclaimed Canadian poet, novelist, and playwright-History:Alden Nowlan was born into rural poverty in Stanley, Nova Scotia, adjacent to Mosherville, and close to the small town of Windsor, Nova Scotia, along a stretch of dirt road that he would later refer to...
, and Al Purdy
Al Purdy
Alfred Wellington Purdy, OC, O.Ont was one of the most popular and important Canadian poets of the 20th century. Purdy's writing career spanned more than fifty years. His works include over thirty books of poetry; a novel; two volumes of memoirs and four books of correspondence...
.
Macpherson's two earlier volumes were incorporated into The Boatman (1957), a book which "gained her a considerable reputation. Dedicated to Northrop Frye and his wife, the collection reflects Frye's emphasis on the mythic and archetypal properties of poetry." The Boatman won the Governor General's Award in 1958
1958 Governor General's Awards
In Canada, the 1958 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit were the twenty-second such awards. The awards in this period were an honour for the authors but had no monetary prize.-Winners:*Fiction: Colin McDougall, Execution....
.
Macpherson taught English
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
at Victoria College from 1957 until 1996. She became a Professor of English in 1974.
Macpherson is "deeply Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
, a Protestant humanist
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
."
Her 1982 book The Spirit of Solitude is "a highly regarded study of the elegiac and pastoral traditions from the 17th century onward."
Writing
Macpherson has been described "as a 'mythopoeic' poet – rooted in the teachings of Frye, the archetypes of Carl JungCarl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and the founder of Analytical Psychology. Jung is considered the first modern psychiatrist to view the human psyche as "by nature religious" and make it the focus of exploration. Jung is one of the best known researchers in the field of dream analysis and...
, and the intensely conservative social vision of T.S. Eliot." Within her work, "recurring themes involve the creation, fall, flood, redemption
Redemption (theology)
Redemption is a concept common to several theologies. It is generally associated with the efforts of people within a faith to overcome their shortcomings and achieve the moral positions exemplified in their faith.- In Buddhism :...
and the apocalypse
Apocalypse
An Apocalypse is a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception, i.e. the veil to be lifted. The Apocalypse of John is the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament...
." Her interest is in "authentic myth", "the ones that have some imaginative force behind them."
In technique, Macpherson has been placed "beside Margaret Avison
Margaret Avison
Margaret Avison, OC was a Canadian poet who twice won Canada's Governor General's Award and has also won its Griffin Poetry Prize. "Her work has often been praised for the beauty of its language and images."-Life:...
, P.K. Page, Phyllis Webb
Phyllis Webb
Phyllis Webb, is a Canadian poet and radio broadcaster. The Canadian Encyclopedia describes her as "a writer of stature in Canadian letters", and calls her work "brilliantly crafted, formal in its energies and humane in its concern"....
, but especially Anne Hébert
Anne Hébert
Anne Hébert, CC, OQ , was a Canadian author and poet. She is a descendant of famed French-Canadian historian Francois-Xavier Garneau, "and has carried on the family literary tradition spectacularly."...
– particularly in the use of the Gothic and macabre
Macabre
In works of art, macabre is the quality of having a grim or ghastly atmosphere. Macabre works emphasize the details and symbols of death....
themes and devices."
The Boatman
Macpherson's first major work, The Boatman (1957), "describes a world where redemption is still possible."Northrop Frye (to whom The Boatman was dedicated) called it the "one good book" of Canadian poetry for that year. He added: "There is little use looking for bad lines or lapses in taste: The Boatman is completely successful within the conventions it adopts, and anyone dissatisfied with the book must quarrel with the conventions. Among these are the use of a great variety of echoes, some of them direct quotations from other poems, and an interest in myth, both Biblical and Classical."
The Boatman of the title "is Noah
Noah
Noah was, according to the Hebrew Bible, the tenth and last of the antediluvian Patriarchs. The biblical story of Noah is contained in chapters 6–9 of the book of Genesis, where he saves his family and representatives of all animals from the flood by constructing an ark...
, but both Noah and the ark
Noah's Ark
Noah's Ark is a vessel appearing in the Book of Genesis and the Quran . These narratives describe the construction of the ark by Noah at God's command to save himself, his family, and the world's animals from the worldwide deluge of the Great Flood.In the narrative of the ark, God sees the...
itself form an allegory for the artist and the artistic experience, the ark representing Jung's collective unconscious
Collective unconscious
Collective unconscious is a term of analytical psychology, coined by Carl Jung. It is proposed to be a part of the unconscious mind, expressed in humanity and all life forms with nervous systems, and describes how the structure of the psyche autonomously organizes experience...
." "The creation is inside its creator, and the ark similarly attempts to explain to Noah ... that it is really inside him, as Eve was once inside Adam:
When the four quarters shall
Turn in and make one whole,
Then I who wall your body,
Which is to me a soul,
Shall swim circled by you
And cradled on your tide,
Who was not even, not ever,
Taken from your side.
"As the ark expands into the flooded world, the body of the Biblical leviathan
Leviathan
Leviathan , is a sea monster referred to in the Bible. In Demonology, Leviathan is one of the seven princes of Hell and its gatekeeper . The word has become synonymous with any large sea monster or creature...
, and the order of nature, the design of the whole book begins to take shape. The Boatman begins with a poem called 'Ordinary People in the Last Days,' a wistful poem about an apocalypse that happens to everyone except the poet, and ends with a vision of a 'Fisherman' who ... catches 'myriad forms,' eats them, drinks the lake they are in, and is caught in his turn by God."
Welcoming Disaster
Macpherson's next major work, Welcoming Disaster (1974), "employs more complex forms to pursue its quest for meaning; the poems frequently succeed in maintaining imaginative contact with social reality while extending Macpherson's essential concern with psychological and metaphysical conditions."George Woodcock
George Woodcock
George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically...
saw Welcoming Disaster and The Boatman as similar, even complementary: "They are narratives of journeys into spiritual day and night, disguised, no doubt, by all the devices of privacy, but nonetheless derived from true inner experiences." Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...
emphasized their differences: "If The Boatman is 'classical,' . . . then Welcoming Disaster is, by the same lights, 'romantic': more personal, more convoluted, darker and more grotesque, its rhythms more complex"
"Welcoming Disaster, has the critics baffled. They cannot agree on its proper interpretation - is it a darker, more tragic vision or is the possibility of redemption there?" Suniti Namjoshi saw it as a book about redemption: about the necessity "to hit bottom and then to make the journey up"; "after a descent into the underworld ... it is possible to return to the ordinary world of everyday life". David Bromwich, reviewing th book in Poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, saw it as even more positive: for him, it "moves from consolation to guilt to terror and finally to a deepened consolation." On the other hand, Lorraine Weir interpreted the book to be saying that the "underworld journey of redemption ... fails". "Fertility is not restored, the underworld is not left behind." Weir calls Macpherson's vision "inescapably a tragic one."
Recognition
Macpherson won PoetryPoetry (magazine)
Poetry , published in Chicago, Illinois since 1912, is one of the leading monthly poetry journals in the English-speaking world. Published by the Poetry Foundation and currently edited by Christian Wiman, the magazine has a circulation of 30,000 and prints 300 poems per year out of approximately...
magazine's Levinson Prize, and the University of Western Ontario
University of Western Ontario
The University of Western Ontario is a public research university located in London, Ontario, Canada. The university's main campus covers of land, with the Thames River cutting through the eastern portion of the main campus. Western administers its programs through 12 different faculties and...
President's Medal, in 1957.
She won the Governor General’s Award for The Boatman in 1958
1958 Governor General's Awards
In Canada, the 1958 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit were the twenty-second such awards. The awards in this period were an honour for the authors but had no monetary prize.-Winners:*Fiction: Colin McDougall, Execution....
.
Macpherson's poem "Ark Apprehensive" was set to music by Gene Kondusky for his 2010 Kites Overhead album, You are a secret, and you must never tell it.
Poetry
- A Country Without a Mythology. n.p.: 195?.
- Nineteen Poems. Mallorca, Spain: Seizin Press, 19521952 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* November — The Group British poetry movement of the 1950s and 1960s began at Downing College, Cambridge University, Philip Hobsbaum along with two friends — Tony Davis and Neil Morris...
. - O Earth Return. Toronto: Emblem Books, 19541954 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Robert Creeley founds and edits the Black Mountain Review...
. - The Fisherman: A Book of Riddles. 19571957 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Howl obscenity trial in San Francisco brings significant attention to beat poetry, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg...
. - The Boatman. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 19571957 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Howl obscenity trial in San Francisco brings significant attention to beat poetry, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg...
. - A Dry Light & The Dark Air. Toronto: Hawkshead Press, 19591959 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* In the United States, "Those serious new Bohemians, the beatniks, occupied with reading their deliberately undisciplined, protesting verse in night clubs and hotel ballrooms, created more publicity...
. - The Boatman and Other Poems. Toronto: Oxford UP, 19681968 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* The Belfast Group, a grouping of poets in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which was started in 1963 in poetry, lapsed in 1966 when founder Philip Hobsbaum left for Glasgow, is reconstituted this year by...
. - Welcoming Disaster: Poems, 1970-74. Toronto: Saannes Publications, 19741974 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is founded by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman....
. - Poems Twice Told: The Boatman & Welcoming Disaster. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 19811981 in poetryNationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Jane Greer launched Plains Poetry Journal, an advance guard of the New Formalism movement....
.
Non-fiction
- Pratt’s Romantic Mythology: The Witches’ Brew. St. John’s Nfld.: Memorial University, 1972.
- “Beauty and the Beast” and Some Relatives. Toronto: Toronto Public Library, 1974.
- The Spirit of Solitude: Conventions and Continuities in Late Romance. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.
Except where otherwise noted, bibliographic information courtesy Brock University.
Articles
- Berner, Audrey. “The ‘Unicorn’ Poems of Jay Macpherson.” Journal of Canadian Poetry 3 (1980): 9-16.
- “Comments (On the Practice of Alluding).” University of Toronto Quarterly 61.3 (1992): 381-390.
- Keith, W.J. “Jay Macpherson’s Welcoming Disaster: a Reconsideration.” Canadian Poetry 36 (1995): 32-43.
- Weir, Lorraine. "Toward a Feminist Hermeneutics: Jay Macpherson's Welcoming Disaster," in Gynocritics/La Gynocritique - Feminist Approaches to Writing by Canadian and Quebecoise Women, ed. Barbara Godard (Toronto: ECW P, 1987) 59-70.
- Namjoshi, Suniti. “In the Whale’s Belly: Jay Macpherson’s Poetry.” Canadian Literature 79 (1978): 54-59.
- Reaney, James. “The Third-Eye: Macpherson’s The Boatman.” Canadian Literature 3 (1960): 23-34.
External links
- Selected Poetry of Jay Macpherson - Biography and 9 poems (Abominable Snowman, The Day-Labourer, Eurynome, The Island, Old Age of the Teddy-bear, Poets & Muses, Some Ghosts & Some Ghouls, Substitutions, Very Sad Song)
- Jay Macpherson's entry in The Canadian Encyclopedia
- "Ark Apprehensive" by Kites Overhead