“Life is very short. What we
have to do must be done in the now."
--Audre
Lorde, The Transformation of Silence
into Language and Action
Casemate (n.), Fortification. A fortified chamber, often built within a fortress wall or projecting from it, provided with embrasures for defense; such a chamber used as a magazine, barracks, prison, etc. In later use frequently: a free-standing concrete structure used to house heavy guns.
--from the Oxford English Dictionary
I first met Joe Blades at a reading rob mclennan put together at the Mercury Lounge in Ottawa back in 2006. It was one of those nights that sparkles in memory to the extent that you wonder if you imagined it. Joe was there with his companionate notebook, an encouraging and earnest presence (even as he gave mclennan a good ribbing that night about so much). He seemed interested in the work we were all doing. When I think of this now—in the knowledge of his passing and of that dazzling moment we all had with him that night upstairs in the Mercury Lounge, I feel both robbed and saddened that I didn’t have more time with him. He’s a writer who I thought I’d see again.
Joe Blades’ Casemate Poems (Collected) is a meditation and query into what keeps artistic interest and productivity going. It is a book that has helped me to consider writing poems and making art during the pandemic from different angles and configurations. This book of poems reveals a log of his attentions, his observations of the world and its events, daily ephemera and internal musings. Blades closely observes and collects these in a collaged or pastiche-like group of long poems of an artistic life over the course of a few writer’s residencies in Fredericton, New Brunswick. What might seem like inconsequential daily materials, at a glance, is actually an investigation of how each event—no matter its size or scope— adds a piece of colored glass or bit of mirror to the kaleidoscope of his art. What keeps us interested throughout our days in creating when we aren’t quite sure if anyone is paying attention? Or as Blades asks, “do I expect anyone to be my audience?” (111). But just as much as who may or may not be reading, viewing or somehow using his art, the poet wrestles with the question of productivity and how daily activity, whatever its shape, contributes somehow to the creating:
sometimes
i still hope
for
self knowing that what i don’t
just
blows away what i do
pick
up piece move on (49).
The matter-of-fact lines and intentional spaces that interrupt the lines create multiple understandings. We can read the lines “i still hope for self” or “i still hope for self knowing” juxtaposed to the distinct phrases: “I still hope for self/knowing that what I don’t/just blows away what I do.” The spaces that shape the lines emphasize the missing “do” which we expect to follow “don’t” in the second line. This exclusion amplifies “do” that ends the third line. Both the spaces and the erasure suggest a kind of rejection of the dominant perception of productivity. The lack of the plural of the word, “piece,” in the final line and the space that follows, create a sense of the artistic process one piece at a time, showing us the isolate object and the attention it’s given before “mov[ing] on.” These lines spotlight the way in which making art isn’t about speed nor mass production, the dominant expectations of our time.
In the section, “casemate poems (reprise),” the use of the anaphoric “because” generates the poem’s couplets, but also creates energy from the odd and often, paradoxical juxtapositions:
because i’m
back in the casemate of public art
because there
are always more stories to tell
because the
dragon boats are not at rest today
because it’s
a cool september morning saturday
because i
said i would write new poems here
because caine
left his painting easels
because liz left a $10.20 bag of
carded wool
because my
name is spelt jo on the sign out front (57)
The use of an answer to a missing or unstated question drives the poem forward in its use of the bigger concept—“there are always more stories to tell,” alongside the daily events and observations. Like the arbitrary configurations of colored glass in a kaleidoscope, details like the weather, the left-behind art materials and the misspelling of Blades’ name accumulate and create a generative perspective on the artistic life in its banality—even as the dragon boats (an annual charity event in New Brunswick), assign them with a sheen and grandeur.
The opening line “because I’m back in the casemate of public art” acts like a metaphor for the liminal space that casemates provide, the room within a wall of a military fort, and what seems paradoxical: the hidden and protective nature of the room in contrast with the notion of “public art.” But it also refers to the actual residency Blades was working in at the time. As he wrote in the afterword to the collection:
Fredericton Arts Alliance coordinated the Artists In Residence 2003 Summer Series consisting of one- and two-week residencies by over 20 Fredericton-area artists. These were public, interactive residencies with visitors in the studio. There were two artists-in-residence scheduled at any given time. The residency was located in a former munitions casemate on the ground floor of the former Soldiers' Barracks building within a former British military facility now administered by Tourism Fredericton as the Historic Garrison District.
The residency and the casemate that served as artist studios suggest a doubling of liminal space and exceeds the easy comparison to Blades being the “soldier of art” in the “ongoing battle to create.” The poet defines “casemate” in a section of the “(reprise),” leading us further into obscured or slender physical and mental spaces :
because a casemate is a chamber in a thickness
of wall [that
part is congruent] of a fortress
[not] with
embrasures—bevelled walls at sides
of door or
opening—splaying—opening in parapet
widening
within for gun/cannon arc of fire [not]
because this
was simply the munitions storeroom—
i’ve stated this before (have been
in several
forts
fortresses castles walled towns)—repository
cannon and
musket balls barrels of gunpowder
because this
british army compound was walled
with wood
plank to keep soldiers out of the town
because the
good fathers didn’t want soldiers
meeting or
taking advantage of their good daughters
because it’s
all such an empty crock—honeypot
or rationed
grog—all men and women are animals
because the
soldiers got so bloody cold in winter
they attacked
the fence for its wood—anything
burnable to
try and warm themselves—building
above burnt
and rebuilt and burnt several times (94-95)
He starts by defining the physical structure designed for war and moves us politically through the reasons for soldiers being kept at the edge of town—both to provide a barrier against enemies, but also to keep them from disrupting the social order by commingling with the “good daughters.” But he continues on with his thinking of humans as animals, humans in their struggle to survive “by attack[ing] the fence for its wood—anything/burnable to try and warm themselves—building/above burnt and rebuilt and burnt several times.” This section of the book reveals a larger idea about how art is produced through and within transitional moments and indeterminate states, but also its ordinariness. It poses the question about the ritual of artistic production even as Blades is clearly recording so much of the daily and common events.
Over this past year and since his death last spring, I have thought about time more intensely because of stay-at-home orders and the monotony of place. I have rehearsed my past travels: images of the sea from a small Croatian tourist town or the late afternoon light in Florence as I graded papers in a local cafe or being in motion on a train along the Hudson River, a plane to the Gambia or on foot in Galicia. Most of my friends and colleagues talk about “the future” and “when things are normal again” and all that we will do. The yearnings of the past and future can be generative, but as Audre Lorde tells us: “What we have to do must be done in the now.” Blades’ poems are an antidote to these yearnings. His work is about the present and the work at hand. Even when he goes back in memory to events like 9/11 and his stint living in SoHo, he still manages to stay in and honor the present. The poems themselves are the evidence of the mind at work within the body, a kind of casemate and liminal space themselves. Joe Blades leaves us a legacy of daily encouragement in the consistency of our own art-making.
—Lea Graham, Rosendale, NY
April 2021
Lea Graham is the author of two poetry collections, From the Hotel Vernon (Salmon Press, 2019) and Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You (No Tell Books, 2011); a fine press book, Murmurations (Hot Tomato Press, 2020), and three chapbooks, Spell to Spell (above/ground Press, 2018), This End of the World: Notes to Robert Kroetsch (Apt. 9 Press, 2016) and Calendar Girls (above/ground Press, 2006).
She is the editor of the forthcoming anthology of critical essays: From the Word to the Place: The Work of Michael Anania (MadHat Press, 2021). She is an associate professor of English at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY and a native of Northwest Arkansas.