I should say a few words about the history of all this. When I was the writer in residence at Sir George Williams University in Montreal while the sixties were becoming the seventies, I met a lot of young (going to be) poets. I have mentioned elsewhere being encouraged about the futures of two of them, Artie Gold and Dwight Gardiner. These two youngsters were the only people at the university (including faculty) who had heard of Frank O'Hara and Jack Spicer. You know, the kind of students who make you think it might be all right to be a professor.
So I kept track of the Vehicule poets, and came to town to read in their series at their Vehicule Gallery. I read their books and magazines. I corresponded with them. When Artie Gold died I bought an air ticket to Montreal to attend his celebration at his beloved book store, The Word. I ate half of the chicken livers. Endre was the person who found Artie's body and then faced the spectacular task of making some order in his literary remains. The lads knew about Romantic Words. They had heard Artie read from the book and sometimes talk about it. It was obvious that something had to be done with the manuscript. But where had it gone? Parts of it were to be found in his books and elsewhere, but as for the whole pile of paper? It was apparently lost, the newest member of that club.
For various reasons, one might think of Artie's life and output as being a mess. But like Jack Kerouac, he kept his papers in order, treating them as he treated his famous collections of glass, stones, poetry books, illustrators, etc. , and sure enough, eventually his typescripts of unpublished work showed up in the McGill University library. (That in itself is a miracle I might tell you about some time.) The question arose: could Endre Farkas turn these pieces of a book into a book? Could Ken Norris? Could GB? By the way, Artie was the first person to address me that way. Let me look at the typescript as held by McGill, I said. No promises. And so those poems sat in my hard dive for a few years.
Well, certain events in which I took place or vice versa suggested that while I was working on other books I might have a look at Artie's sequence I wrapped up three other books and stopped half way through a fourth (my memoir of La Manzanilla), and poked at a computer file called RW. Well, you know, a couple critics of Canadian Lit have noticed that a lot of my books are collaborations. They are right, I noticed, I have cowritten books with living writers, dead writers, older writers, younger writers, single writers, groups, even imaginary writers. I won't mention them all, but they include George Stanley, David Bromige, Michael Matthews, Angela Bowering, Charles Demers, Ryan Knighton, David McFadden, Fred Wah (unpublished), Jean Baird; enough of those. I also do a lot of writing in which I make use of other people's work without their knowledge. So with Romantic Words. In his intro Ken mentions some of the approaches I take to my co-author's poems. I think that perhaps the best point he makes is that there hasn't been a book (in Canada at least) constructed this way. I sort of knew that when I dived in, but I never felt confused about what I was doing.
A word about the structure. Artie was never sure about whether a poem he had written was part of RW. The typescripts show us this. Some of his friends think that all his later poems might be included in the sequence. Before I had been doing the work for long I felt that there were two books here: RW and what are usually called "Unpublished Poems." A look at the back end of The Collected Books will show you what I mean. Well, I listened to Ken and I listened to Endre and I listened elsewhere, and I understood their views. Then with their help, I came upon this idea: Artie's late period was spent on one big life work, and I can produce one big poem with Book 1 and Book 2. Thinking of what I said about my life's work being part of an ongoing task that the poets attend to as a shared activity, I can say that in a smaller world, all of Gold's poems are parts of his life work. I am pretty sure that Artie felt that way, and that most good readers will have picked up on that feeling.
In Artie's typescript there are a few shorter sequences. One of them bears the title The Hotel Victoria Poems, and was published by above/ground press in 2003 as a chapbook. My reply is called Hotels, and is published as a chappie by above/ground eighteen years later. These sequences may be related section by section. What fun.
Here's what Norris writes at the end of the first draft of his intro:
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George’s openness as a reader/writer/editor/friend/fanboy allows many things to transpire.
It’s a curious book, and there is a genuine dialogue happening between the Artie poems on the left hand page and the George writing happening on the right hand page. What the reader sees happening is certainly some version of admiration, affection and love.
I think the big question isn’t: why does this book exist? I think the big question is: why don’t we have more books like this? As it stands, it is unique in our literature, in our realm of writing.
Fencing, tennis—the metaphors are there for the back and forth the book produces. Left page, right page, left page, right page—it’s an atmosphere of engagement and, occasionally, friendly competition. Sometimes George seeks to explain Artie. Other times he simply says, This is the way I’d do it, and here it is—done.
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I have to say thanks, Ken, for collaborating with me on this little essay, or note or preface, whatever it is.
