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LiBRARY

Michigan State
University

 

 

 

This is to certify that the

dissertation entitled

A PLACE OF RUPTURE: THE LIFE AND POETRY
OF BRONWEN WALLACE

presented by

Gloria Demasi Nixon-John

has been accepted towards fulfillment
of the requirements for

Ph . D . degree in English

Major professor

Date May 11, 2001

MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DATE DUE

DATE DUE

DATE DUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6/01 cJCIHC/DateDuepGS—pJ 5

 

A PLACE OF RUPTURE: THE LIFE AND POETRY
OF BRONWEN WALLACE

By

Gloria Demasi Nixon-John

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHlLOSOPHY
Department of English

2001

ABSTRACT

A PLACE OF RUPTURE : THE LIFE AND POETRY
OF BRONW EN WALLACE

By

Gloria Demasi Nixon-John

This work is a result of research into the life and poetry of Bronwen Wallace.
Once I examined her work it became clear to me that Wallace’s political and literary
work is a place of resistance and rupture. Wallace resisted limiting herself to the
comfortable middle class venue of her home in Kingston, Ontario Canada. She resisted
the ivory tower of the academy and she resisted the more formal tenets and trends of the
larger literary community. More specifically, her work manifests itself in working class
cultural expression that is rooted in the oral tradition, a tradition that continues to be
especially honored by women of the working class. While her poetry is clearly
connected to the Canadian tradition, her use of non-literary forms such as story, gossip,
and song, sets her apart. By doing this Wallace breaks down the definition of, and the
cultural assumptions about, the working class and especially working class women who
were, and still are, held within the larger culture of dominations. Her poetry is a place of
rupture because it illuminates the ordinary language and the artifacts and tools of the

working class, particularly women. This work also illuminates the negative consequences

of capitalistic system and the inherent patriarchal underpinnings of that system. Her work
clearly functions as a sociopolitical act.

It is also evident that Wallace believed that women’s oppression predates the
Marxist critique of what we might call “the nuclear family”-the household unit containing
a woman, man and children, with the woman carrying the burden of child rearing. While
it is clear that Wallace saw the capitalistic structures as a way of exacerbating and
validating the patriarchal structure, she believed that the patriarchal structure itself
certainly predates Marxist analysis and further clearly continues under socialism.

It should be made clear that Wallace also worked directly to improve the
conditions of working women’s lives. She organized groups and activities to address the
needs of working class women. I speak to these efforts in their work as well.

Much of the biographical information gathered for this work was obtained through
interviews of friends and family of Bronwen Wallace. I have also compared Wallace’s
poetry to the poetry of some of her key predecessors and several of her contemporaries.
Then too I have looked at home, the land, her family, politics, and key female friends who
helped to shape her life and her work.

Letters that Wallace wrote, along with letters that were sent to me by her friends,

are included along with photographs of the poet and her immediate family.

Dedicated to the memory of
Bronwen Wallace and to other strong
women, but especially to
my loving daughters,
April Dawn Nixon-Wiater,
and
Renee Helen Nixon.
Also to my granddaughter,
Angelina Helen Wiater,
also
R. Michael John for his
love and encouragement

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to Anita Skeen who pushed me in the direction of Bronwen Wallace,
Ferd and Peggy Wallace, Cameron Wallace, Ron and Jeremy Baxter,
Darlene George, Debra Green,
Joanne McAlpine, Joanne Page,
and

Carloyn Smart.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................... 1
LABOR,CLASS, AND LITERATURE ......................................................... 20
Clearly Canadian ............................................................................................ 40
Her Work Gives Power To Our Voices ......................................................... 86
The Country of Wallace and Emmylou Harris ............................................... 98
A Different Voice: ......................................................................................... 109
The Others (Contemporary Canadian ‘Feminist’ Writers) ............................ 113
Maps, Roads, and The Light that Leads us Back ........................................... 126
INFLUENCES

The Land ........................................................................................................ 129
Meeting The Family ....................................................................................... 143
Politics ........................................................................................................... 167
Pat Logan ....................................................................................................... 184
CONCLUSION .............................................................................................. 192
APPENDICES

Letters ............................................................................................................. 203
Pictures ........................................................................................................... 222
Poem .............................................................................................................. 230
BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................... 232

vi

PREFACE

I was born in Detroit in the pre-feminist forties and grew up in the fifties and
sixties in a blue collar family headed by a dominant European father. While endearing
images of my father are called up when I read poems like “Those Winter Sundays” it is
more frequent that images of my mother surface in my own poetry, and it is her “backyard
view” of the world that most often surfaces in my own writing even today. Measure this
view against the torment that I found when I read the works of Plath, Sexton and Rich, or
measure it against the transcendent images I found in the work of Carolyn Kizer,

Mary Oliver, and Sharon Olds (to name a few), and you will understand why I felt I had
no “poetic territory” in which to place my life or my mother’s life. Then one Saturday
afternoon I crossed over to my sister city of Windsor (as I did with my parents so often as
a child), and strolled into a tiny bookstore called South Shore Books. There in the modest
poetry section of the store I came across a few collections of poetry by Canadian women.
The first was Gwendolyn MacEwen’s The Early Years, which I opened and read the first
few lines of “The Magician”:

finally then the hands must play mad parable

finally then, the fingers’ genius

wave out what my poems have said

finally then must the silk occur

plus rabbits...
Brilliant, I remembered thinking. Still, I put the book down. Roo Borson’s
collection Night Walk was my next find. I opened “ The Photograph”:
The last car lights are making their way along the edge of

California hills,
one pair heading one way, another the other,

vii

 

and the first big planet is beaming
beautiful coded lights at us, variations on a theme...

I finished reading this piece and was momentarily spellbound. I knew I
would read this poet’s works again, yet I felt that I did need to remember the images in
this poem. I thought I was going to be able to leave South Shore Books without
purchasing one new collection of poetry when I came across Signs Of The Former

Tenant a 1983 collection by Bronwen Wallace. I opened to “Women Sitting” and read:

 

Somewhere right now a woman

sits in the silence of her kitchen

and silence her family leaves

when they brush past her into the day
intent on their own plans

and as she sits there

her hands shaking around

the coffee cup, the cigarette

a dream comes back to her...

I had no words for the experience of this poem. I did not label it brilliant (though I would
later), perhaps because it flowed so easily. Instead, I moved into it. I saw my mother in
that silent kitchen at her formica table. I saw myself sitting at my refinished oak...saw my
individual tableau, saw that we were all strikingly similar in our sitting. As I continued to
read, the poem seemed to swell into the ethereal.

...in the comfortable

dark of her own living room

she finds she can move things with her eyes...

...as she feels herself about

to plunge she touches the rim of waking...

( Wallace Signs of The Former Tenant, 52)
Then the poet easily returns to the familiar shrill voices of her children demanding

breakfast, clean underwear, her husband’s words, and a dirty windowpane. More than an

hour later, actually sprawled on the floor of the bookstore, the proprietor suggested that I

viii

might consider buying the books I had found. And so I left South Shore Books with the
three collections of Wallace’s poetry they had on hand, fins Of The Former Tenant

(1983), Common Magic (1985), and The Stubborn Particulars of Grace (1987). I also

 

ordered her two other collections, Marrying Into The Family (1980), and Keep That
Candle Burning Bright (1991), published posthumously.

Months later, once I had read all of her poems, I had the sense that through her work,
Wallace had negotiated herself into the ordinariness of my life and the lives of all
ordinary women so that we might rise up to tell each other stories, not as speech makers
for one another (not the “I’m nobody, who are you” set), but rather conversant across a
table. There was also something very personal that moved me toward Wallace: dishes
piled in my sink, the radio in my daughter’s room playing Generation X version of
“Highway to Hell,” student papers calling for attention, and my own poems brewing
somewhere like a deep trickle under the frozen February earth. I could not help feeling
that Wallace was giving me permission to use the dilemma of modern womanhood and
the painful history that has gotten us only this far to make the poetry I must make even if
some may claim my experience and my work as ordinary.

I knew I would look at the works of Bronwen Wallace time and time again, but knew
that doing only this would not be enough. I wanted to know the people Bronwen Wallace
knew and loved. I wanted to know about the difficult decisions she had to make and how
those decisions played out in her life and her work, and so I set out to do so. After many
phone calls, letters, and excursions across Canada to conduct interviews of her family,
friends, co-workers, and students, I began to gain a better understanding of what drove

the work of Bronwen Wallace. But it wasn’t until I was well into my journey that I

 

realized that there were some unmistakable parallels in our lives. I wish I could say that I
let my conscience move my life and work to the degree that Bronwen Wallace did. And I
wish I could say that when I had to pick a course of action, that I picked the course less
personally gratifying and more mindful of the needs of others the way Bronwen Wallace
did. But I can’t say that. What I can say is that we share a life history that is similar. I
can say that we were both active politically and that although we were working on
different sides of the Detroit River, we had a common vision of validation,
empowerment, and security for women of the working class. We both cherished our
roots in the working class and did not see the academy as a place where we might be able
to forget or disown those roots.

As I set about this work that is part literary biography, I heed what feminist social
scientist Barbara DuBois has suggested. That is, I have placed paramount value on the
method of inquiry that opens up our seeing and thinking to perceptions that are actually
derived from women’s experience (DuBois 21). In so doing, I have decided to try not to
look either up or down at the subject of my inquiry, but rather to look straight on. As a
result, and as is the case with any biographer, I know I open myself up to ridicule and
labels. First, because I fail to look down I may be labeled idolater. Yet I know that it is
impossible to look completely straight on, to be completely objective. Canadian
biographer, Elspeth Cameron, who has taken enough grief for her biographies, put it this
way:

The definitive biography is an impossibility, as is the
“scientific truth” it supposedly seeks to incorporate.

As feminist scholars in any number of fields have been
maintaining adamantly, truth is multiple, subjective,

 

relative, complex in a word, personalized. (Cameron in Sheier, Sheard,
Wachtel, 80)

I also know that no matter what I reveal in this work, I will most likely make others,
especially those who knew Bronwen Wallace, only a little bit happy with me and more
than a little bit angry, as well. I do take seriously what the people close to Wallace have
told me, and I have listened and continue to listen to what they have to say. In fact, one
of the primary sources of data collection has been the interviews I conducted with friends,
family, and colleagues of Wallace. But I also know that what they say is only part of
what I must consider. Along with their words I know that I have the baggage of my own
assumptions, and I am both aware of and wary of this baggage. I also have information
from many diverse printed sources including the author’s own literary and non-literary
works. What motivates me is that the information I have collected from all of these
sources illuminates a very special life and a breathtaking and unique collection of work.
And foremost, I hope to call attention to this life and this work. It is as if I am holding a
searchlight that has lit upon a remarkable feminist writer and activist, and I imagine that
the light I shine on Bronwen Wallace allows her, in turn, to pick up her more powerful
and more multi-directional searchlight and to shine it on the lives of many others,
particularly women who might have otherwise remained in the shadows. It is my hope
that this joint illumination will show some common social plight of women, particularly
women of the working class, so that we might then begin to emerge as the important
collective Wallace envisioned us to be.

Before I move on, I would also like to say a few words about the order of the chapters

in this work. The section entitled Labor, Class and Literature serves to contextualize

xi

Wallace’s life and work, so it seemed appropriate to start with this overview. Of course it
was important to place Wallace in the Canadian tradition so that I could then compare her
and set her apart. It is clear as well, that she was political before she began to write. I
believe that in the more traditional academic work one might have focused more on
literacy criticism and might not have moved on into the biographical form I have used. I
refer to my discussion of the specific landscape in which the poet lived, her immediate
family and friends, as well as regional and local politics. These things are in a sense
responsible for her work. Doing anything less would have been contradictory to the
weight and importance Wallace gave these factors. The rather unconventional conclusion
is my way of letting women speak for themselves. If possible I would also have placed
the video tape of the dinner party I gave for Bronwen’s friends with this conclusion,
because the words and the actions of the women on that tape are symbolic of the way
Wallace’s life and work goes on through the life and work of other women.

Also, one idea seems to lead quite naturally to another idea in my mind but the reason
for my choices may not seem as obvious to the reader. The shifts I make are quite natural
to the way I work and the connections I make. I believe that I have placed importance on

the things that Wallace would have and have ordered them the way she might have.

xii

INTRODUCTION

 

In the winter of 1991, The Open Letter (A Canadian Journal of Writing and

 

Theory) dedicated a whole issue to the memory of Bronwen Wallace. In the introduction
written by Susan Rudy Dorscht and Eric Savoy, we are informed that the Who’s Who of
the contemporary scene in Canadian poetry spoke highly of Wallace, but we are told that
Gary Geddes “had to argue with little support from other academics or writers, for the
inclusion of Bronwen Wallace in 15 Canadian Poets, 1988” (Geddes in Open Letter, 5).
Many of the articles in this particular issue of The Open Letter discuss why Wallace
cannot be pegged into any particular trend in contemporary poetry. Geddes tells us also
that Wallace was “skeptical about recent developments in critical inquiry...” (but
nonetheless) the academics were intrigued by “the affinities between her innovative

poetics and the tenets of feminist and post structural theories” (Geddes in Open Letter, 6).

I therefore began this work with the following research questions in mind:

What were the reasons that Bronwen Wallace’s poetry did not get the attention it
deserved early on?

Why was Wallace so skeptical about the developments in critical inquiry?

What are the affinities between her innovative poetics and the tenets of feminist and
post structural theory?

Where might we place Wallace’s life and work in regard to Marxist Theory?

How does Wallace’s poetry reflect, as well as break from, the Canadian tradition?

What were the literary choices that Wallace made that set her apart? How do these
choices reflect the life of working class women? What impact do these literary choices
have on contemporary poetry and our view of, as well as our opinions about, the lives of
working class women?

How did Wallace’s family history as well as the larger social-historical context in
which she wrote effect her poetry? How did her community of Kingston, Ontario help
her shape her work?

How did her relationships with other women effect her life and work?

In my search to discover the reasons why Wallace did not get the support she deserved,
why she was skeptical about developments in critical inquiry, as well as why the
academics were intrigued with her innovative poetics, I began to look specifically at
discourse theory and other theoretical discussions of the time. I looked also at whom she
represented in her poetry and how she crafted this representation. I was also interested in
why she made the literary choices she did. It wasn’t enough for me to read what the
critics have said about her work, especially since many of them balked at the significance
of that work. And it would not be enough to limit my inquiry to the realm of literary
criticism. Without the social-historical context, I would be looking at this work in a
vacuum and that is so contrary to what Wallace would want me to do.

The essays and newspaper articles that Wallace wrote, especially the articles she wrote
for the Whig-Standard Newspaper, suggest many things to me. Most importantly, they
reveal her concerns for the plight of the working class in general, and more specifically,
working class women. These articles made clear that although Wallace could have

removed herself from the working class, she chose to continue to identify with the

struggles of the class, and to speak for and with this class. Wallace also knew that for the
most part, no matter what work women did outside the home, they were still saddled with
the work of home and she believed housework was work. I knew that the theoretical
underpinnings of class struggle as they relate to work and power were important as well.
I needed to look at Canadian labor history, at least the history that shaped the lives of her
parents’ generation, as well as her (and my) own. I also needed to look at how Wallace
saw herself in this history, what social and political groups she felt she belonged to, and
to what degree she saw herself as a passive or active participant in these groups.

I wondered too about other influences on her life and her work, and I sensed, simply as
a result of reading that work, that the geography of the Kingston area was significant. I
knew I had to travel there and see it for myself. I have made five trips there so far.

It is seldom that an unknown researcher/writer is privy to the kind of personal history I
hoped to secure. But I needed to learn about the influences on Wallace’s personal life
and I was determined to try to arrange interviews with her surviving immediate family
and friends in order to do so. Therefore, I boldly sent out letters and made calls. Then I
waited and prayed.

Bronwen Wallace’s brother, Cameron Wallace, was my first contact and without him
this work would have been impossible. He supplied me with names and addresses of his
sister’s male life partners, as well as her closest female friends. He also got me in touch
with her son, Jeremy Baxter, and Jeremy’s father, Ron Baxter. To my amazement, many
of the people I contacted granted me interviews and further gave me permission to share

what they told me (I regret, however, that Bronwen’s surviving spouse, Chris Whynot,

would not grant me an interview). I hope to weave the comments of those who did grant
interviews into the tapestry of this work.

Along with the interviews they granted me, Cameron Wallace (Bronwen’s brother)
and Peggy and Ferdinand Wallace (parents to Bronwen) gave me copies of family
documents, letters, as well as a few family photographs. Images in this dissertation are
presented in color.

Bronwen’s closest female friend, Carloyn Smart, led me to other female friends
who were, very willing to talk with me. Of particular help were Joanne Page, Joanne
McAlpine, Debra Greer, and Darlene George.

On a return visit to Kingston in 1996, I invited many of the women Wallace
worked with at Interval House, a shelter for abused women and their children, to a dinner
that I prepared for them. A local Kingston photographer, Uve Schroeder, filmed this
dinner party. I encouraged those who gathered to talk about Bronwen Wallace while I
served them a dinner that I prepared. I have the film of this dinner and refer to the
comments made at this dinner herein.

I also have e-mail correspondence/letters from Tom Waymen, Al Purdy, (although
Purdy’s letter was a disclaimer of his influence on Wallace), and Gary Geddes.

At one point, I flew Jeremy Baxter from Vancouver to San Diego to meet me for
an interview. We talked and toured the San Diego area together and have corresponded
by letter and phone since this meeting.

During my 1997 trip to Kingston, Cameron Wallace gave me a map to the Wallace

homes in and around Kingston. He also gave me directions to the lake where Bronwen

spent many a summer day. I visited all of these places and took photographs of many of
them.

What I found as a result of my journey and research was a remarkable life that
emerged from a unique and remarkable family history. I discovered the person Bronwen
Wallace: progressive, energetic, compassionate, talented, sometimes stubborn and
skeptical, yet visionary. And like all of us, she had a few regrets. I also discovered that
Wallace’s life was one of resistance. And although she was very much a proud Canadian,
and although it is easy to see her work as clearly Canadian, she resisted much that went
with this title. She resisted limiting herself to the comfortable middle class venue of
Kingston, Ontario. She resisted the ivory tower of the academy and she resisted the more
formal tenets and trends of the larger literary community. She saw the work that women
do both inside and outside of the home as important work that is rarely adequately
appreciated or compensated. She did not see the past as “classic,” but explored it as a
place where memory is kept, the memories of women, as well as men.

And while her poetry is somewhat connected to earlier Canadian poetry, her poetry is a
place of resistance that manifests itself in working class cultural expressions.
Specifically, she used non-literary forms such as informal story, gossip, and song. The
immediate landscape of her life and women’s work were frames of reference in her
poetry, work that includes, of course, child rearing and housework. She also looked at
woman’s views of their own experiences, past and present, so that their testimony might
speak for the collective. She didn’t mask the working class landscape she saw. She
didn’t disguise her anger or the anger of the working class in a lyrical form that could

diminish that anger. Wallace tells us directly about the specifics of women’s work and

she places value on the ways in which women use language to talk about their lives. She
breaks open the high art form of poetry (of language in general), and facilitates the
specifics of ordinary working class lives in this poetry. By doing all of this, Wallace
broke down the definition of, and the cultural assumptions about, the working class and
especially working class women who were, and still are, held within the larger culture of
domination. This was no easy task and it was a risky effort, particularly in the area of
language and literature, because it pitted Wallace against those who saw a great divide
between “ordinary language” and “literary language.” Still there is even more for us to
consider here. We must consider the larger historical and political context that lead to
this work.

In The Challenging of Feminist Biography, Alpem, Anther, Perry, and Scobie discuss
both the larger questions about approach, as well as the more specific questions about the
impact of this work on the biographer’s life. The more general question they ask is how
does having a female subject change the nature and practice of biographical craft? The
answer, we are told first and foremost, is that because a different type of person (different,
from male) is being studied, a different kind of achievement is being celebrated. Feminist
biographers tend to make “invisible” women visible. The women they showcase don’t fit
into the usual biographical hero-type. Of course many of these women are mentioned in
other works as muse or catalyst, but the feminist biographer tends to see subjects as
individual creative forces. Secondly, when the subject is female, gender moves to the
center of the analysis. Feminists contend that women’s lives differ from men’s lives in
profound ways and that a woman’s gender may exercise greater constraints on the way

her life evolves. Failing to consider this difference distorts, if not falsifies, any account of

a woman’s life; there is an effect (We can. of course, say the same thing about class, race,
religion, ethnicity, sexuality, and place). Another difference is that the feminist
biographer moves beyond the “marriage plot” to consider all stages of a woman’s life
even the mature adult years and old age as that is when many women finally are
“allowed” the time to contribute in ways they were hampered from doing so earlier in
their lives (Alpern, Antler, Perry and Scobie, 6-7). Also when a woman writes about a
woman, and there is much documentation to suggest this, there is a very close
relationship between the subject and author (even when the subject is dead). And
furthermore, “each biography uneasily shelters an autobiography within it, and this
autobiography inevitably alters the biographer’s material”

(Kendall, P., x). When the biographer is female, there seems to be other factors as well.
We (female biographers) tend to develop an attachment to the subject in three stages.
First we tend to delve into the non-biographical questions, then the social science
approach, then the final stage being an enveloping personal connection, (Sklar, in Alpem,
Antler, Perry, and Scobie, 17). Having read Sklar’s work only after I completed the
primary work on my biography of Wallace, I can tell you that my process did,
surprisingly, occur in these stages. The final enveloping personal connection is
something I h0pe to look at more carefully at some point in time. For now, I can say only
that at times I sense the presence of my subject, that I have had some spiritual experiences
that I believe are related to this work, and that I often become extremely joyous, as well
as melancholy when speaking about Wallace or even when listening to others speak about
her. That these feelings embarrass me and anger others (what right do I have to feel this

way about someone I never knew?) are also some things I must investigate further.

However, my inability to take a neutral stance seems not just natural to me, but necessary.
For how could I not be moved by the contradictions I find in Wallace’s life? How could I
not be saddened by the fact that I will never meet her but will carry around bits of her life
with mine forever? How could I not be angered by the ways in which her work and her
subversive energies were suppressed? It is obvious also that this suppression occurred
because of her gender and her class, because of the gendered forms she used, because of
her class identity, and the forms and structures of that language of this class, as well as
her economic plight - the plight of working women.

That her work gained some notoriety even in the institutions that tend to suppress by
gender, namely the publishing houses and the academy, is a remarkable and revolutionary
feat. Literature is a form of production and we need only read Woolf s essays on material
propositions for the insight that writing is not “spun in mid air” by incorporeal creatures,
but is based on material things that govern the writers “angle of vision” and perception of
society (Woolf, in Newton and Rosenfelt, 71). The constraint that Wallace felt and
expressed on the part of working class women is obvious. Her preoccupation with the
material artifacts suggests that her vision is direct. Her style and choice of genre are all
part of her product, which is imposed by gender and class, as well as despite it.

While Wallace found the practice of placing her work (or anyone else’s work) within
Marxist theory distasteful and unnecessary, l feel-the need to contextualize her work in
this way so that when others take up this discussion, they will place Wallace in it and will
recognize her works’ relationship to it. I do this also because texts are not mediations
upon themselves, but instead gestures toward history and are in themselves actions that

have political effects. As Newton and Rosenfelt suggest, I wish to see this literature (and

this life) as an act of political intervention, to look at the cultural use to which the writing
will be put (Newton and Rosenfelt, xv). And Wallace would approve despite her
aversion to the Marxist chatter.

Wallace, I believe, felt that woman’s oppression predates the Marxist critique of what
we might call “the nuclear family — the household unit containing a woman, man, and
children, with the woman carrying the burden of child rearing.” In this structure the
woman must also absorb the anger and frustration of the man. Her own anger thus
becomes illegitimate (See Sanders-Comer in Rich, 54). While I believe Wallace saw the
capitalistic structures as a way of exacerbating or validating the patriarchal structure, the
structure itself certainly predates Marxist analysis and further it clearly continues under
socialism. Even as socialist countries work to break down the division of labor, we do
not see the role of women in the home really changing. The rules of patriarchy seem
untouched. And this undaunted strand of oppression shows itself clearly in Wallace’s
poetry. In fact, when we examine the early poetry she wrote for political publications,
this oppression is very clear.

I think it is also important to look at Wallace through Gramsci’s definition of
hegemony. In fact, her work might serve as a place that helps make this term clear or
helps to illustrate it. Defined in Gramsci’s terms, hegemony is... more than political rule
or domination. It is a complex interlocking of political, social and cultural forces, either
this or the active social and cultural forces, which are its necessary elements. In her work,
Wallace expressed an understanding that persons do not define and shape their whole
lives. In an actual society, specific inequalities develop that work to shape their whole

lives. In a class society there is clearly dominance and subordination. For the working

class (the subordinate class), the ideology of those who own/control the means of
production impose their ideology on the working class. This working class struggles to
sustain its own ideology, values and morals against the “ruling-class ideology” (Gramsci
in Williams, 108-9). Wallace’s work is aplace of struggle against this ruling class
ideology. Her poetry is a point of rupture because it illuminates the ordinary language
and the artifacts and tools of the working class, particularly women. It illuminates the
negative consequences of a capitalistic system and the inherent patriarchal underpinnings
of that system. Wallace’s poetry also survives despite the tenets of formal criticism that
Wallace knew her work contradicts, tenets to which she would have to answer. This
work, therefore, functions as a sociopolitical act. Her art is a product of the class and
subgroup she represents.

I also see a point of departure from Marxist theory for Wallace when we look at
Wallace’s work against the various theses of Marxist aesthetic. While Wallace’s poetry
can be clearly identified as art of the masses, I doubt that she saw the working class,
particularly women, as an ascending class; I will illustrate this point later. Also, while
she saw her aesthetic as political, she was not as concerned with expressing the needs and
interests of the working class as she was in holding up a mirror to the lived reality of this
class, and expressing this reality in the naturally occurring linguistic constructs. Then
too, along with her realistic portrayals, Wallace often veered off into the surreal - which
she expressed as the only escape of the underclass (even of the proletariat) — especially
women. In moving into the more surreal realm the subconscious becomes an important

reality and detaches itself from the “true reality” of the Marxist definition.

10

Herbert Marcuse argues for me, and perhaps for Wallace. when he submits the
following thesis toward a critique of Marxist aesthetic:

...the radical qualities of art, that is to say, its indictment of the

established reality and its invocation of the beautiful image (schoner

schein) of liberation are grounded precisely in the dimension where

Art transcends its social determination and emancipates itself from

the given universe of discourse and behavior while preserving its

overwhelming presence. Thereby, art creates the realm in which the

subversion of experience proper to art becomes possible; the world

formed by art is recognized as reality which is suppressed and distorted

in the given reality in the name of truth normally denied or even unheard...

(Marcuse, 6-7).

Also, when Marcuse speaks about the beautiful as belonging to the imagery of liberation,
I think of many Wallace poems in which there seems to be a constant regrouping and
dissolving of beautiful or profound moments, each irretrievably lost when it passes, but
then quickly becoming another such moment.

The more traditional Marxist approach sees its role as that of shedding light on the
“bourgeois writers of decline” such as Green, Proust, and Joyce, and sees its role as
breaking away from the archaic methods of nothingness in praise of realism. From a
Marxist point of view, the classical formulas, when viewed as the only genuine form, are
narrow-minded and dilettantish (for further reference see the works of Gottfried, Keller,
Lenin, Lessing, and Williams in order to argue this strict Marxist view). To a great extent

Wallace would agree. However, while Wallace’s work leans toward the realistic, it is

11

clearly more philosophical than historiographical because it does deal with the not just
with what happens, but what might happen. Wallace was also clearly influenced by a few
of the more traditional male poets in Canada such as Earl Bimey, Oliver Goldsmith,
Alexander McLachlan and later Al Purdy. She does not detach herself from them
completely. Her work, however, is the waking dream of the essential that does not die
because of “truth” in the Marxist sense (though it does contain much truth), because truth
is more than facts; it is a process that points to both latency and tendency (Bloch, 160-61).
Wallace deals with that which lies dormant in the minds of many others, as well
as the propensity toward one type of action over another. Keep in mind that when
Wallace first began writing poetry, relatively little attention was being given to the way
women know and think. In institutions of “higher” learning, writing that was emotional,
intuitive, and personalized was not valued (while this is changing a bit on the surface
today, I have personal stories to share, as do my female friends, that indicate clearly we
have made only marginal gains). While other women and men, especially feminists, were
trying to show the importance of the female voice, particularly in the modes mentioned
above,1 Wallace was including these ways of knowing and speaking in her poetry. She
was parting the patriarchal waves, so to speak. Also, in the late 19605, a renewed interest
in Marxist theory allowed many to begin to discuss both “the ordinary” and “the literary”
in a single area of discourse. I am sure Wallace was aware of this because of comments
she made and because of things her friends said to me in interviews I conducted. Marxist

theory suggests that labor is the single effective origin of language. Washbum and

 

 

'See the work of Bernard, 1973: Gilligan, 1982; Maccoby and Jacklin. 1974; Rosenberg. 1982; Sampson. 1978;
Sherman and Beck, 1979.

12

Lancaster’s work in the area of anthropology suggests (in their materialistic theory), that
“laborer and language, as practices, can be seen as evolutionary and historically
constitute” (Washbum and Lancaster in Current Anthrmpology, Vol. 12, No. 3, 1971). As
I mentioned earlier, Wallace was more in the camp that looked at the historical
underpinning exasperated by industry. She was very wary of academic talk around poetry
as a form of rhetoric and was suspicious that it led to dialectical discussiveness first, then
moralization later.

Despite the renewed Marxist focus, the great divide persisted and many perpetuated the
notion that literature in particular was a special province of those of certain classes and
sensibilities.

Wallace saw things differently as evidence in a passage about her thoughts on
literary analysis (which follows in another chapter here). Her letters to Erin Mouré (in
Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974), make this point even clearer. What was also evident to
Wallace (and evident to those who read her prose and her poetry), was that the “rules”
of the patriarchy that organized the role of women as that of biological reproduction, and
devalued the work of women in the home, then also limited the voice and compensation
they were given in the workplace whether they had factory jobs, clerical jobs, or service
jobs (teaching, nursing, clerical and the like). And Wallace considered all of these
women in her definition of working class. She saw her mother, a teacher, as part of the
working class. Wallace did clerical work and worked for women in shelters and she
organized activist councils and committees as well.

There is, of course, a body of literature that agrees with Wallace. If we look at

Maureen Maclntosh’s review of Claude Meillassoux’s book, Femmes, Greniers et

13

Capitaux, Maclntosh argues that it isn’t enough to take the Marxist view that tends to
conflate women’s role in the biological reproduction of the species with the historically
specific question of their role in ensuring the reproduction of male laborer power and in
maintaining the relations of dominance and subordination of capitalist production. She
argues that the Marxist view in Meillassoux’s book might well include a discussion of
gender relations, even of “patriarchy,” into the analysis of social reproduction, that is, a
discussion of the use of domestic production of a pre-capitalist type (Barrett, Women’s
Oppression Today, 27). In the words of Mackintosh: “...the characteristic relation of
human reproduction is patriarchy, that is, the control of women, especially of their
sexuality and fertility, by men” (Maclntosh in Barrett, 2).

The prose, but more importantly the poetry, of Bronwen Wallace makes the link
Mackintosh suggests. In doing so Wallace creates a rift in two ways: She actually used
discourse models of the “ordinary” (making them extraordinary), and once her poetry
began to gain attention in the academy, she did not give in to pressures that would have
her change. She also made the jump from suggesting that it is more than women’s role in
biological reproduction, and the reproduction of male labor power, necessary for
capitalist production that holds women down, but is instead pre and post capitalist
patriarchy that does so. Wallace points to this in the literature she made by using topic,
style and structures that are unusual in the “high art” form of poetry. That is, she was
expressing the needs and interests of the working class by expressing this reality in the
naturally occurring linguistic constructs. She also clearly showed the oppression of

women within the content of this poetry.

14

It is clear where Wallace stood in all of this. When Wallace left her formal program of
study (Ph.D. at Queen’s), she was resisting the formalist view of literature that sees
literature and literary criticism as denied from history. I found a very interesting political
pamphlet written by Wallace when she was 24 years old published by Hogtown Press in
1969 (this pamphlet was distributed as an “underground” publication) entitled flip
Exploitation of Experience; Some Thoughts on the Study of Literature. In this pamphlet
Wallace discusses what she felt was wrong with academic approaches to literary analysis:

This is not to say that literary analysis is not an important
and worthwhile function. For one thing we are not all
literary geniuses and a certain amount of analysis and
dissection may be necessary to understand the workings
of something which we could never create. The process

is somewhat similar perhaps to dismantling a fine machine
and its purpose is not to classify the separate parts, but to
understand more fully how the whole works. This is even
truer of literature where we are dealing with human
expression and all analysis must be directed towards a
fuller understanding of what is expressed. The purpose
of the exercise is not to ‘do’ a poem, or play, or novel,
but to gain an insight into the experience it articulates

and to relate it more fully to our own.2

The study of literature now, however, does not accomplish

this end, but rather results in a situation that is diametrically
opposed, a situation which has dangerous and far-reaching
implications. For at present the study of literature is an esoteric
cult; it has its hierarchies and its mysterious rituals; “understanding
literature” has become an exclusive, complicated art which

only few can master. To discuss a poem, or a novel, one must
know the ‘proper’ terms, the requisite approaches; any deviation
from the rules set down is regarded as ‘unscholarly’. The result
is that not only the method of studying it, but also literature itself
is regarded as mysterious and complex. Any student who naively
believes that there is some common element in all human
expression will soon discover, after a few years, that he shares

 

2 See archetypal feminist criticism. Such work as Carol Christ. Diving Deep and Katherine Pope. The Female Hero in
America and British Literature.

 

15

It is clear where Wallace stood in all of this. When Wallace left her formal program of
study (Ph.D. at Queen’s), she was resisting the formalist view of literature that sees
literature and literary criticism as denied from history. I found a very interesting political
pamphlet written by Wallace when she was 24 years old published by Hogtown Press in
1969 (this pamphlet was distributed as an “underground” publication) entitled Lh_e_
Exploitation of Experience; Some Thoughts on the Study of Literature. In this pamphlet
Wallace discusses what she felt was wrong with academic approaches to literary analysis:

This is not to say that literary analysis is not an important
and worthwhile function. For one thing we are not all
literary geniuses and a certain amount of analysis and
dissection may be necessary to understand the workings
of something which we could never create. The process

is somewhat similar perhaps to dismantling a fine machine
and its purpose is not to classify the separate parts, but to
understand more fully how the whole works. This is even
truer of literature where we are dealing with human
expression and all analysis must be directed towards a
fuller understanding of what is expressed. The purpose
of the exercise is not to ‘do’ a poem, or play, or novel,
but to gain an insight into the experience it articulates

and to relate it more fully to our own.2

The study of literature now, however, does not accomplish

this end, but rather results in a situation that is diametrically
opposed, a situation which has dangerous and far-reaching
implications. For at present the study of literature is an esoteric
cult; it has its hierarchies and its mysterious rituals; “understanding
literature” has become an exclusive, complicated art which

only few can master. To discuss a poem, or a novel, one must
know the ‘proper’ terms, the requisite approaches; any deviation
from the rules set down is regarded as ‘unscholarly’. The result
is that not only the method of studying it, but also literature itself
is regarded as mysterious and complex. Any student who naively
believes that there is some common element in all human
expression will soon discover, after a few years, that he shares

—_

2 See archetypal feminist criticism. Such work as Carol Christ. Diving Deep and Katherine Pope. The F emgle Hero in
America and British Literature.

15

nothing at all with these semi-divine beings who write literature.
“The poet”, wrote Emerson, “tells us how it was with him,” but
we, it would seem, require complex skills or at best, a middle-man
in the person of a critic, to comprehend what he was telling us.
The effects of this attitude are extremely dangerous for both
students and non-students. Because the study of literature is
removed from any experiential context, the student gains the
impression that all literature is written in a vacuum. In my
many years of study, I remember only two professors who
sincerely tried to explain the political and social back-
ground of what we were reading. Those who take this
approach are known among academics as “history of ideas
men” and are regarded as a lesser breed by many. I
particularly remember one professor, who, during a discussion
of this approach, swept its merits aside with the angry comment,
“After all, we are teaching literature and not sociology.”

(Wallace, B., The Exploitation of Experience, 3.)

That ideas, culture, and literature are socially constructed is clear. That much of our
mental oppressions is rooted in the material conditions of our lives, that much of our
literary theory implies a version of the world in which women are oppressed for the most
part, by literary constructs, or in which female counter-myths are more powerful than (or
as powerful as) economics3 (Newton and Rosenfeld xvi] is also clear.

While Wallace had the privilege to go from her working class roots into the academy,
and while it seems the trend even today not to discuss one’s roots once social and
economic changes occur for the upwardly mobile, Wallace remained by choice, a part of
the working class that she believed molded her as much as ethnicity and culture. She
looked at the dark side of these class struggles and the economic hold that the capitalistic
patriarchy had on women in this class but she didn’t dismiss the pre-capitalist history of

patriarchal oppression that made its way into the lives of her grandmother, her mother,

16

then into her own life. She remained in tune with the values and struggles of this class in
order to affect change. Clearly her doing so was a sociopolitical act. Perhaps a brief look
at literary history is valuable here.

In the 19205, processes were set in motion that continued to impose themselves even
well into the 705 and 805, that virtually eliminated black and white females and all
working-class writers from the cannon. Institutional, as well as theoretical and
historiography factors were involved in the exclusion (Newton and Rosenfelt, 19). The
result was an invisibility of these groups in the literature studied in secondary schools and
in college courses. I was affected by this in the United States, as was Wallace in Canada.
It seems to me that Wallace was addressing this invisibility in her life and her poetry. She
was addressing invisibility of the place where many women dwell: the experience, the
culture, the systems of oppression under which women “operate.” Of course, bits of that
oppression surfaced in North American Literature during the life of Wallace, but even
these bits seem to ignore the notion of women as victims physically than emotionally.
Many of Wallace’s essays and articles confronted these questions head on (as did many
prose works of the second wave of the Feminist movement). In Wallace’s regular column
in the Whig-Standard newspaper, she wrote about how family violence is perpetuated,
and she wrote about the children who are the ignored victims of this violence. She wrote
about volunteers working in the slums of Guatemala. She also wrote about the feminist

Alice Chown, calling her “a women very much like myself, a strong feminist, an

\

3 - . . .
It IS here that we see first begin to articulate how we must deconstruct, later she refuses to talk about deconstruction
with theorists. She claims that the act and nature of her poetry was in fact the act of deconstruction.

l7

outspoken anti-war activist, a laborer organizer, a sometime writer” (Wallace, Whig;
Standard. June, 1987, 16).

I think, in turning to poetry, Wallace recognized the need for a non-hostile form that
could also be explicit, ergo poetry, with its images and narrative, its time and place. Also
her poetry was accessible, not only by the academics- not exclusive. In this way and
others, Wallace dismissed the traditional canon and worked towards forging a new canon
that reveals inequity rooted in patriarchy, a cannon that questions social power. One
would think that institutions of higher learning in North America would have been doing
so as well. However, a 1950 National Council of Teachers of English survey shows that
one could study American literature and read no work by a black writer, none by women
except works by Dickinson, Marianne Moore, or Katherine Anne Porter, and no work
about the lives or experiences of working-class people (NCTE, Report of Committee on
College Study of American Literature and Culture, 27). Lillian Robinson once said that
the most important question we can ask ourselves as feminist critics is, “So what?”
Implied in that question is a view most of us share, that the point of our work is to change
the world. But to begin my work here with this question is to take on the task of asking
other questions as well, questions about the relation of literature to the social and
economic conditions of our lives. Bronwen Wallace saw her writing/literary text not just
as meditation upon itself but also as a question toward history, a question with political
effect.

One of Wallace’s poems, “A Simple Poem For Virginia Woolf,” featured later in this
text, (in tribute to the author of the first major work of feminist literary criticism- Virginia

Woolf) is a spoof on Wallace’s own attempts to make literature while wearing the yoke of

18

motherly and wifely responsibility. What rings constant in Wallace’s poetry is that
gender is socially and politically constructed and that its construction has created and
perpetuates unequal relations of power. That “the product” a woman offers (be it literary
or other), is often not valued, was a source of anger for Wallace. She therefore created a
product that focused on the particulars of a woman’s life that used the words and

structures common to women in general, and working class women specifically.

l9

LABOR, CLASS, AND LITERATURE

I believe a brief departure into Labor history is important here. According to David
Bercuson and David Bright in Canadian Labour History, Canadian labour history was
revolutionized in the late 19605 and 19705, (just as Wallace was beginning to write
poetry), by a group of young historians, loosely associated with one another, who argued
that workers should be studied in their totality, not just in their institutions, but instead in
the context of working people’s lives. And while unions and politics remained the
mainstay of this new labour history (more often called working-class history), this history
was set within a wider cultural context, a context that brought together workers’
experiences at work, at home, and at play (Bercuson and Bright, 21). Because of this
and compared to earlier studies, our picture of the lives of working class people
throughout Canada has been modified and enriched by detailed and meticulous studies of
men and women at work. Add this to the backdrop of the 19805 in Canada, a scene much
like that of the 19305, with rising unemployment, a surge in welfare recipients,
government inaction, right-wing populism, and a political listlessness on the part of the
working class, and one can see why new efforts on the part of the working people were
necessary for their survival against the hostile interests of business and the indifference of
government. The gap between the poor and upper class was widening. There seemed to
be no middle class.

Wallace, having been raised by working class people, could not wear the blinders that
Others around her wore in the late ‘705 and early ‘80s (especially those at the University).

The stories her father told her about the 19305 must have seemed all too familiar. While

20

government institutions would have her/us believe that the working class was making
gains — ascending — Wallace knew that such was not the case. This was also a time (the
‘705) when women began to recognize the important economic role they possess, based in
part on their ever-increasing numbers in the wage work force.‘ It was most certainly not
based on the value placed on their work in the home. (Ironically, however, occupational
oppression and segregation continued to increase and for much of this recent history both
labor unions and even feminist groups have ignored the role that women play in the work
force beyond the home.) Linking this to Marxist thought, if there is an ascending class,
then it certainly isn’t working class women. Largely, it is easy to find research and
writing about the massive working class in North America and Canada, but difficult to
find research and writing (including literature) about the oppressed sub-group called
working-class women.5 No matter what the ideology when men and women in both
majority populations are linked (not separated out), there is first the danger of idealizing
the existing culture within working class life and secondly, a danger in seeing the wealth
produced by the labor force, but not seeing the divisions between those who own the
means of production (be it the government or industry), and those who are workers.
There is a danger for sub-groups (women, minorities) if we see the advances made by the
unions and do not see that women and minorities made only marginal gains via those

unions when compared particularly to white men. And lastly, there is also the danger of

¥

4 “ In fact women today are the fastest growing segment of the wage-work force, and the growth of industrialization has
spurred this trend. It is not an overstatement to claim then that there has been revolution in work in the last three
decades and that the increase in female wageworkers in the labor forces “is the single most important change in the
labor force in this century.” (Abzug, Bella in Balser Sisterhood grid Solidgrity. 61)

s . . .
Although there has been some work done on song-poetry related to folklore, there 15 scant interest in the song and
lore of American/Canadian workers. And today folklorists recognize urban-industrial settings as appropriate study
Sites. However, the working class has yet to generate significant attention.

21

not seeing that the unions themselves have a history of racism and sexism. And so it
follows that there is value in class analysis within groups, such as working class and

‘6

within the unions, the value being that such analysis ...allows us to comprehend our
oppression not as timeless, not as biologically or psychologically fixed and determined,
requiring endless individual adjustments, but instead as a historically specific and
changing result of economic and social structures no matter who or what puts those
structures in place. These (economical and social structures) are, in shorthand form, the
patriarchal family system and its various forms through class society and unequal
economic class relations. [It is] determined by divisions between those who own the
means to produce wealth and those who are the producers” (Diamond in m
Feminine, 32).

When we look closely at working women’s lives we begin to see the lives of working
women as oppressive, difficult, and tedious for many. In the introduction to Working
Women: An Anthology of Stories and Poems, Nancy Hoffman and Florence Howe
remind us that “woman’s identity has often been based on her relationship to others-
daughter, wife, and mother. But such starkly stereotypical definitions are inadequate for
both women and men, because work and relationships are essential aspects of human
identity” (Hoffman and Howe, xvi). There are, of course, many ways that we can set the
work that women do apart from the work that men do. One of the obvious ways is to
look at the work women do that is unpaid work. In this category, we can include domestic
work, community work, social activism, and the like. In the domestic realm, women have
responsibilities that impact the welfare of others (and whole communities), yet they do

not have the power to really negotiate their working conditions, or to leave those

22

responsibilities without dire consequences to others, as well as themselves and, very little
had/has changed in this regard in Wallace’s lifetime or my own. If we look at the work
that women are paid to do outside the home, we must still look mostly at jobs in factories,
restaurants, offices (as clerical),6 hospitals, and schools. And in most of these places men
are still in charge and still make more money than their female co-workers. And still (and
this is true around the world) “most of our mothers and grandmothers, and most women
today- which now make up nearly half of the paid labor [still] work at low paid menial
jobs” (Hoffman and Howe, xviii). And even as women become more educated and more
invested in work outside the home, they are still the slaves in the workplace of home.
They still, for the most part, do the menial work there.

The above inequalities are glaring if we move from analysis of the work place to
analysis of women’s writing. In doing so, we see the absence of working class women as
writers. Bronwen Wallace has raised a red (maple leaf) flag in order to first examine
working class life of and for women, to examine the reality of this life within the culture
of domination, then to write about the reality, and furthermore to write in a way that
reflects the form and structure of communication that working class women use. She was
aware of how this domination was at first conceived in the power structure of home and
family, then made its way into the workplace as women moved into the labor force.

Wallace’s writing might then serve as a form of critique on which to base women’s real

experiences of family and workplace set against the larger, more idealized version of

6 While it seems that clerical employees have an ambiguous social-economic status. I have included them in the
definitions of working class because of their wage position growth in unionization and factory like conditions in
many offices. Harry Bavesman speaks to this in onr and Monopoly Capital. (New York, 1974), 293-358. Also
see “Class, Job and Gender in the Canadian Office.” by Graham S. Lowe in Canadian Working Class History.

 

23

these experiences. The reality is that most women still wear the yoke of patriarchy
imposed by industry. I would like to go beyond the flag-waving analogy that I made
earlier and imagine Wallace’s work in a boiling pot. This pot is filled with the
experiences of working class women, filled with their dissatisfaction, their struggle and
anger, expressed with their words, their style of speech and conversation, all in their own
voices. (The boiling up in this pot is a culture of resistance. When the lid, having been
placed on top by the more dominant culture of patriarchy and capitalism pops open, the
contents spill over into the patriarchal-capitalistic “reality,” a forming place of rupture by
a culture of resistance.) In the more specific case of Bronwen Wallace, it is not just her
social-political activism that boiled over, but her writing and literature as well. It is not
that she was watching the pot, she was in it and as it boiled over she was mindful of the
lived material reality of the patriarchal history and the culture industry into which it
flowed. In so doing, Wallace is contained within and validates this resistance. In her
work there is a collectivist sensibility different from the individual’s sensibility of
bourgeois art. She was a witness for the silenced, mainly because she had a public
audience, an audience both in the academy and outside of it. Sara Diamond, in her
speech at the Women and Words Conference in Vancouver, BC. on July 3, 1983, was

speaking to and urging on the likes of Bronwen Wallace when she said:

Cultural production is essential in order to validate resistance, to
develop an understanding of our experience, and to raise questions.
There are many forms that our writing can take. While some of this
production was not by working class women, it was linked to working
class movements and based on the documentation of working women’s
experience. (Diamond, Women and Words Conference, 1983)

24

The fact that much of Wallace’s writing is in the form of poetry is significant too, as
this form is most often attributed to the academy and far removed from the working class
experiences at home and workplace. We know that poets have by and large ignored the
working life for one reason or another. Historically, the Romantic poets saw only the
barbarism of industrial society.

For the modems, poetry was what Eliot’s hollow men needed but
could not hear. In John Ashbery’s “The Instructional Manual,” the
poem is an occasion for an imaginative vacation from work: the
technical writer/poet gazes out of the window of the office in which
he (operative is “he” here) sits trying to write “the instructional
manual on the uses of new metals” and conjures in its place a
“dream of Guadalajara,” ...It may be, however, that the traditional
resistance about work is not so much the poets themselves as of
those who collect and edit their work, since to write about work is

to write about issues of politics and class, which remains unpopular
topics for literature textbooks” (Coles and Oresick, xv).7

As I informally survey American and Canadian contemporary poets who were writing
and publishing when Wallace was writing about the working class in general, and women
of this class specifically, even those who write/wrote about post-industrial service jobs,
the list is short and predominantly the shape, tone, and voice of these poems is decidedly
male. And the few females who were writing about similar issues when Wallace was
writing, wrote in forms and in style more likely to be anointed by the academy. Marilyn
Krysl’s poems about nursing, Leona Gom’s “The Women’s Committee, and Judy
Grahn’s “The Common Women Poems” are all good examples. (All of theses poems can

be found in Coles and Oresick For a Living.)

¥

7 Also while forms of work in the post-industrial era has changed less has changed the way people view/feel about their
work. Also many of the jobs (service jobs and ‘pink collar’ jobs) of this postindustrial era as repetitive and boring as
work on the assembly line.

25

According to Janet Zandy in Calling Home: Working Class Women’s Writing,

“ What is true is that economic circumstances of working-class life offer few
opportunities for expression. Also, the life experiences of working class women are not
affirmed or valued in the dominant culture or considered fitting for literature” (Zandy, l).
Zandy also suggests that class identity is easier to obscure and deny than gender and race
identity so that if you are born into the working class and are willing to change your
speech, your questions, your appearance- in essence, to deny the culture of your home and
working class self of your childhood- then you might “pass” as a member of the dominant
culture. But, (she warns) you will never belong there (Zandy, 2).

Wallace seemed to know that class knowledge comes from experience and story,
history and memory, and that knowing is grounded not in the academy but instead in
social history, and inclusive of her story (and that choosing class as a perspective is also a
way of avoiding ghettoizing women by race).

It was not really new for women to write about work (see the works of Naomi
Replansky, Mary Wilkins Freeman, Willa Cather, Margaret Walker, and Zora Neale
Hurston, to name only a few). True, however, is the fact that much of this earlier writing
about work is in the form of prose. What is new, in terms of approach regardless of the
genre, is the way in which contemporary women writers seem to be able to analyze the
situation in which they find themselves. That is, they are aware of the restricting and
oppressive natures of their working lives. If we look at the body of work by
contemporary women writers, it is clear that most of the poetry written is more about the
personal relationships that women have and their individual feelings rather than about the

work they do and the specifics of the lives they lead. For examples of Canadian poets we

26

need only to look at Lorna Crozier’s work, the work of Mary di Michelle, and Susan
Glickman. Also, there has not been much work done that uses the raw material of
working class women (interviews of them, discussions with them, diaries and the like), to
shape poetry or any imaginative form of writing for that matter. The exceptions are
writers like poet Ranice Henderson Crosby (see “Waitresses”) or Rikki Lights (see
“Medicine Man”). Crosby writes about being a waitress while in college, and Lights, one
of seven children from a poor black family, writes a diary-like account of her struggle to
become a doctor with the double handicap of being black and female (Hoffman and
Howe, xxi).

It seems strange too, that there are very few stories or poems about the relationships
that women have with each other in the workplace. I know from my own experiences,
as well as the accounts of my friends, that the alliances women have in the workplace are
a source of great comfort, dissipation of anger, and subversion in the patriarchal world of
works.

When I compiled a list of poets who actually did the “footwork” of those marginalized
both by the fueling powers of capitalism and by factions within the working class itself,
poets who were accepted into the circle we call the academy but then dismissed that
acceptance as secondary to the larger goal of using the authentic forms and concerns of
working women, the list is very short and not a list at all. That list is Bronwen Wallace.

Later in this work, I will discuss the ways in which Wallace’s writing is “Clearly

Canadian.” But I will also show how she ruptured the dominant discourse in Canadian

‘—

81 have had jobs as a waitress. shop clerk. and secretary prior to college and during college. Men supervised even the
professional jobs I held directly or indirectly.

27

 

Literature by way of topic selection, narrative style, and use of the particulars. I will also
show how she distanced herself from the Marxist aesthetic by delving into the surreal as a
temporary escape from the particulars of a women’s life.

Wallace’s political life and her work in the academy was also a place of rupture. She
was not anchored to or in the working class, but instead chose it. She didn’t dismiss the
working class landscape for “higher pastures.” She returned to the landscape of her roots,
albeit a patriarchal landscape, and included that landscape and those roots in her poetry.
She did the footwork for, and was also a spokesperson, for the working class. She moved
the speech of this class into “high art” instead of giving into the pressures of literary
analysis of the day to do something different. She saw the plight of the working class,
women specifically, as tied to the ownership of the means of production that is both part
and parcel of patriarchy.

The other women poets who wrote about working class struggles when Wallace did are
few and are not well known, or they have their feet firmly planted in the academy and
write in styles anointed by the academy. I am thinking of Marge Peircy, Tillie Olsen,
Helen Potrenbenko, Sue Doro, Judy Grahn, Susan Eisenberg, Chris Liewellyn, Julia
Stein, Hazel Hall, and Carol Taren (Taren approaches the narrative style of Wallace but
the comparison stops with topic and narrative style. For an example see “White Trash”).
Even less well known grass roots Canadian poets like J.B. Joe, Maxine Gadd, and Kate
Braid do not meet these criteria. It is not just the conditions under which she wrote, but
the uniquely political voice and apolitical style that sets Wallace apart.

The question of class rears its ugly head in this work probably because class identity is

easier to obscure or deny than is gender. Most Americans and Canadians think of

28

themselves as middle class because we have a picture of the working class as a man in
work boots or coveralls (or we think of Rosy the Riveter when we think of women.) This
view tends to keep us calm, makes us forget that real control and wealth are still in the
hands of the few (even with the new opportunities for investment and gain in the New
York Stock Exchange). The same is true when we look at socialist structures. There is
always someone hiding behind a ruse of bottom-up leadership, controlling those who
have less money and education - namely women. Certainly in Bronwen Wallace’s time
(19605-19805), the division was even more obvious. We are “conditioned to consume,
compete, and compare... In this economy a liberal arts education is a luxury. But even
this more privileged group is not immune to the deskilling of labor familiar to industrial
workers of yesterday and to worker-adj uncts to the machines that process the food, words,
and services of today.” (Garson, Barbara The Electronic Sweatshg ii). In a way,
Wallace saw the working class woman as one who does not have the privilege to relieve
depression by going on a vacation or buying gadgets and hiring household help (and this
help is usually other women). Instead this group must trudge along dealing with
mounting bills and male-dominated institutions. “For these working-class women,
writing or telling one’s story, breaking the silence, the privacy of home and kin, is an
individual act of courage and a means of collectively resisting class oppression” (Zandy,
6), not just class Oppression, but male dominance despite class and political affiliation.

In a letter dated February 27, 1987 to Erin Mouré, Wallace articulates her fear when
theorists like Xavieré Gauthier use “they” rather than “we” when talking about women.
In doing so, Wallace contends, Gauthier creates a distance. Instead Wallace would have

us listen to a story her Great Aunt Nettie told her:

29

 

My Great Aunt Nettie, age 94, is telling me a story.

In it her father dies when she is three, leaving her mother
alone on a farm with children. That winter, she discovers
she has breast cancer, but since she cannot leave the farm
work, she persuades her doctor to come out, chloroform
her on the dining room table and remove her breast while
her oldest daughter holds the oil lamp. A few days later,
she is back in the barn. She goes on living for another ten
years. This story, out of all her stories, was the one my
great aunt chose to give me at the end of her life. I put it
in a poem once. I tell you now. So it becomes History.

But - and this is a Great Big But- regardless of what is
recorded, the farm exists, the taxes were paid, the kids
raised, the crops planted and harvested. My great grand-
mother can never be outside of these. She exists, she
persists, she moves events as surely as her cells shape my

hands, whether they write about her or no. What are we
saying about ourselves, about millions of women like her,
when we deny her that?

(Wallace, Two Women Talking, 77-8)

When we analyze only by class, it is clear that we erase the contributions of women; we

deny their contributions, their sacrifices, and their place in history too.

It is clear that Wallace saw an historical approach as somewhat valid. She was well

aware of this approach with regard to issues of gender and class. Of course, she knew the

effects that the transition into capitalism caused, that this led to the separation of home

and workplace and the location of women as responsible for work in the home. But what

she also knew was that this division existed prior to capitalism to some degree. Clearly

many of her poems in Marrying into the Family speak to this.

MARRYING INTO THE FAMILY

In the early snapshots

30

Flanked by his beautiful sisters

she smiles apologetically

for small breasts

thin hair

Even the wedding portrait

is different

although her gown is quite becoming
(his mother wore a mink)

When the children came

she denied any resemblance

For years they believed they had
only one grandfather

and were not present

at her father’s funeral

Christmases they spent
with his people
the children of course included
in the family photograph
She held the camera
(until his brother married then
she stood to the side
encouraged the children
to smile)...
(Wallace, Marrying Into The Family, 35.)

FINDING MY REAL ANCESTORS

I can only trace

the family tree

through two generations
before stepmothers
insinuate themselves

like characters

from the Brothers Grimm
blocking my way

to the real ancestors
whom no-one now remembers
not that it’s uncommon
I’ve seen family plots

in old church cemeteries

31

one big patriarchal stone
surrounded by smaller female ones
the dates of their deaths

a neat progression

across his longer span

even in my grandmother’s stories
her stepmother’s arrival

when she was three was

just another detail

like her first party dress

or her wedding

stories I half heard

or later asked for simply

to humour her

and her diary’s mostly dates
the births of her children
weddings funerals

then on a separate page for
April 1920 (she’d be 35 or so)
her one memory

of her real mother

lies in my hand
like the key to an old trunk
scraping against the lock
lid thrown back
the questions
I never thought to ask
spilling into the room
(Wallace, Marring Into The Family, 22-3).

When Bronwen Wallace died at the age of 44 she left us over 130 poems but more
importantly, in the words of her student and friend Joanne Page, “ She left us other things.
A moral presence to measure ourselves against...In much of her writing she charted the
cluttered landscape of a working women’s life (Page, “In Other Words” n.d.).

While reviewing Arguments With The World, Mary di Michele makes the political

Connection in Wallace’s work when she says, “What is astonishing about Wallace’s work

32

is how much these two arguments (arguments we have with others and arguments we
have with ourselves), inform one another, producing a uniquely political voice in this
country, a voice at once personal and public. Her insight and brilliance was in linking the
personal experience of individual women to the political context in which it happens”

(di Michele, “Author’s Large-Spirited Feminism Will Be Missed,” 18). Clearly this is
how women see the world and it is how women speak. They speak to the personal and
the public in the same breath.

As Zandy summaries in Calling Home, working class literature often comes from a

 

material existence rather than canonized literature. The former creates an on-going
dialogue between owners who control work and the actual workers’ lives. That is, the
work comes from a specific context and not a personal failure, and also, as a body of
work, it is not about despair, but about possibility (Zandy, 23). Wallace would say that it
is also about despair and the heavy yoke of patriarchy that limits possibility and keeps us
from exceeding our usual limits or our imposed station in life.

It is clear Wallace’s poetry can be generally/clearly defined as literature of and for
working class women, but her work extends and exceeds this definition as well.
Wallace’s social political activities and her personal life inform the work as she began to
forge a new tradition.

In Mary di Michele’s essay, “Conversations with the Living and the Dead,” she relates
the role that Wallace played in making the literature about our lives and us.
Poetry has been called an ivory tower. But imagine
a different kind of dwelling for it. Imagine a home with

rooms which do not belong to a gallery; imagine rooms
where the traces from frying eggs are more lasting then

33

the tempura of painting. You enter, Tom Waits is singing
and the room smells of diesel ...in such lived-in rooms I
hear a different music of the centuries; in such rooms,

I, a woman, excluded by gender from Eliot’s Tradition,
can nevertheless write poetry. The cooking smells,

which didn’t penetrate the Tradition, have left their
traces nonetheless, those signs of the former tenant

(echo from Bronwen Wallace). And voices of those

who prepare the food are being recovered by women
writers, writers like Wallace.

(Sheard & Wachtel, 100)

 

A note about my affinity and connection to what Wallace said and did:

When I was an undergraduate student majoring in English I was trained in a certain
method of literary criticism. Literature was to be examined in a rather scientific way and
context was not discussed. There was always something more than shame going on in me
when my male professors suggested my contextual approach was shallow and that my
personal experiences were of little importance to my interpretation or reaction to a work.
I am sure now that it was anger and confusion that I was feeling. If literature moved me,
wasn’t it moving the earth on which I stood inclusive of my gender, ethnicity, and class?
I find great comfort in a letter that Wallace wrote to Joanne Page dated October 6, 1988.
Wallace writes:

One of the people I am reading and loving is Elizabeth Bowen,

her novels now, her short stories later. She’s someone I

read as an undergraduate- a novel called The Death Of

The Heart which got destroyed for me by a professor who

referred to it as “sentimental women’s writing.” As it

turns out (surprise, surprise) my current re-reading of it

reveals to my delight that she is anything but sentimental,

though she’s a woman in all the ways that professor, a

man who loved Lawrence and Durrell could not see. She’s
wonderful, amazing, ironic, funny, moving, intelligent. Wow!”

 

34

I also remember that in high school we read biographies before or only until we got to
the real literature which was, of course, fiction by men. I find it amusing then, that my
work here is literary biography. 1 am also a little disappointed that it has taken me so long
to allow myself this kind of work.

In the words of biographer Elspeth Cameron: “It would be difficult to find a genre
that was more ‘integrative’ or ‘interdisciplinary’... than biography. Nor one that
emphasized more fully the value of ‘the particular’ or ‘lived experience’...Many strands
must be integrated in biography to produce a convincing sense of a particular life in
motion” (Cameron, in Scheier, Sheard and Wachtel, 76).

As Cameron warns, women scholars also cannot have a “view from above” even if
that view is rooted in the early feminist movement (Cameron in Scheier, Sheard and
Wachtel, 76). As Wallace put it in her interview with Janice Williamson in 1989: “I’m
really excited by all the different and valuable ways women are writing. I am also
interested in the development of feminist theory because writing is very, very lonely.
You put out this stuff, but with theory it comes back to you connected to the world in a
different way.” (9)

But Wallace had her limits with academic feminism: “What really burns my ass is when
a few academics try to tell me there’s only one way to write, or one way to think about the
world or that all my writing and thinking has to be post-structuralist. I react to this in the
same way that I reacted to male Stalinists telling me that there was only one way to read
Marx. I say bullshit to that” (Wallace to Williamson, 9). When asked in this same

interview about her personal approach to poetry Wallace, said:

35

“The first two books are intensely autobiographical as well as confessional. But in
Stubborn Particulars, I am creating a persona who is the best or bravest part of me. She
does the talking and has more courage to explore things than I do... When we tell people
intimate things about ourselves, we are in some way asking for, if not absolution, at least
support, inclusion, something, a healing gesture from the other person... This goes far
beyond the confessional as we’ve understood it in autobiography.” (Wallace in

Williamson, 10).

Work and the Women’s Movement

If we look at the way wealth and power were and still are distributed in North America
and Canada we see that only a small percentage own the wealth. The vast majority
(which includes small prOperty owners, technical workers, low-wage service employees,
uneducated and unskilled, even many educated/professionals) seem to be working against
one another and are in real competition with each other. In Howard Zinn’s A People’s
History of the United States, he explains that the dimensions in the capitalistic
economics, as we know them, pits the small property owners against the property-less,
black against white, native-bom against foreign born, intellectuals and professionals
against the uneducated and unskilled (Zinn, 571). Zandy adds that we also pit men
against women and says that we need only look at occupational segregation, sexual
harassment, unequal pay, and inadequate childcare as proof (Zandy, 3).

Of course the women’s movement from the 1960’s on resulted in a social political
awareness, and so it followed that along with the other things women began to challenge,

they began to challenge the literary standards that were established and guarded by men.

36

The Beats of the ‘505 gave way to the Confessional poets of the ‘605. And while Sylvia
Plath and Anne Sexton, (icons for the feminist movement), along with Adrienne Rich,
have made it possible for women to deal directly in their poetry with areas of intimate
experience that were previously said to be taboo, (Levenson, xi), Wallace has emphasized
the social, political, and economical conditions of women as did/do

Roo Borson, Susan Glickman, Erin Erin Mouré, and others. This is not to say that
contemporary male poets were without this consciousness, in fact “...some poets such as
Patrick Land and Don Gutteridge seem almost consciously to be fighting a rearguard
action against what could be perceived as the literacy encroachment of the best younger
women writers such as Roo Borson, Di Brandt, Susan Glickman, Claire Harris, Patricia
Young, and the late Bronwen Wallace and, at least until her later, forbiddingly ideological
work, Erin Mouré ” (Levenson, x).

It is clear that Bronwen Wallace was well aware of, and concerned about, the plight of
working class women. She was born into a working class family and community in
Kingston, Ontario Canada in 1945 with strong female role models, women who worked
hard and worked somewhat against the patriarchal version of the world. Born also to
parents who gave her permission to observe closely and to question everything, she was
bound to lead us in the direction of political action whether in the socio-political arena or
in her own writing. She was moved to do both. Wallace’s friend, Joanne Page, put it this
way, “ What I respected most about Bronwen’s public writing was the profound moral
context from which she wrote. She believed that a writer is not outside the world, that
she must address the thomiest issues, fight for what is right, however, risky that might be.

She spoke clearly and with compassion, understanding the weakness and fear and

37

miserable circumstances that drive us to do things we are ashamed of” (Page, “In Other
Words Legacy and Challenge” n.d.).

In an interview with Wallace on February 22, 1985 in Edmonton, Janice Williamson
suggested to Wallace that her poetry “ranges over...contradictions between a language of
transcendence and a concrete appreciation of the everyday. The everydayness of things
provides a poetic and politic in your (her) work.” In the same interview with
Janice Williamson, Wallace said, “As an academic feminist, I imagine my engagement
with the world as, in part, trying to change the academy itself. I want to work with others
and make it a place where alternate programs like Women’s Studies or alternate
pedagogues within traditional disciplines can stimulate students and others to think
critically about feminist issues, and to act, and to change” (Wallace and Williamson,
February 22, 1985, 11).

In a conversation between Barbara Godard and Mary di Michele on June 12, 1990, at
Barbara Godard’s home in Toronto, Mary di Michele said that Wallace “. . .was politically
active before she actually wrote. Political activity was something she did when she was
very young, and then she started to write...it was a matter of incorporating all she knew
politically into her writing.” (di Michele in Open Letter, 24) This political work seemed
to move her out of the third person and seemed to mandate the narrative voice; it changed
her work from a more general political statement to an on-going, open-ended dialogue
with the reader. That this dialogue with the reader flows like the conversations women
share is important because it reveals the natural occurring language of a class previously

dismissed.

38

What is clear is that Wallace’s sociopolitical work, as well as her writing, which
focuses closely on specific ways that we marginalize women of the working class, and her
poetry reveal the deeper cultural story and injustice of which Zandy and others speak.

Wallace also removed herself from the academy to become an active agent of change
on a very grass roots level, and has left us with a cache of literature that helps us
understand class difference and gives us a rather finite view of the manifestations of these

differences. That she does this in the form of poetry is significant.

39

Clearly Canadian

 

While Wallace’s poetry can be defined as different, it is also very clearly Canadian.

In the introduction to the Oxford Book of Canadian Verse, Margaret Atwood tells us that
Canada is most certainly not a utopia for women, but that it has historically and for
mysterious reasons, favored the production of good women poets to a greater extent than
have England, the United States, or Australia (Atwood, ix). Perhaps the notion that
Canada was settled by the displaced made/makes the acceptance of poetry by and for
women (the most displaced of all) more possible. The early Canadian poets, such as
Oliver Goldsmith, Alexander McLachlan, Standish O’Grady, and Joseph Stansbury
seemed to secure into this tradition a mourning of homes left and things lost (111g
Elggipg), as well as a bitter account of the dismal nature of the geographic and social
surroundings (The Satiric). This is true of Wallace’s work as well. In her poem “Into
The Midst of It,” for example, The Elegiac is expressed through a road trip. The driver
on this trip goes unnoticed, yet things change as quickly as the driver moves past them.
Returning to what Marcuse says about the beautiful as belonging to the imagery of
liberation, many of Wallace’s poems, like this one, show an imagery of liberation, while
expressing that the beautiful moments pass, and that we are not in control, that things
larger than ourselves regroup and dissolve around us. The sense of placing oneself in the
changing landscape is important in Wallace’s work:

..... A man comes up on your right-blue shirt

patched from the sky-solid and

unsurprised. He doesn’t turn his head

at your passing and by the time your eyes move

to the rear-view mirror, the road has changed.
But it’s then you begin to notice

40

other people: women hanging clothes from gray
porches, a clutter of children on the steps...

this country you’re traveling through,

where the farmlands draw their nourishment
from the ancient mountain range,

and houses rise, insistent

as the rock and almost as indifferent,

making all your questions

about why people came here,

what they like about it,

why they stayed,

as meaningless as questions you might ask

of the trees and earth itself... (Wallace, Common Magic, 21-2).

With Wallace, the moment of losing and the losing of oneself in the changing tableau
create a sense of loss that functions as a sort of reluctant momentum in the poem. She
feels the loss as it is happening, but is powerless to change it. She doesn’t ascend to a
“better place.”

Wallace made reference to the effect that Al Purdy’s “The Cariboo Horses” had on
her. In many of her interviews, she said that once she discovered this poem, it changed
her life and gave her permission to write about the landscape she saw in southeastern
Ontario.

The Cariboo Horses
At 100 Mile House the cowboys ride in rolling
stagey cigarettes with one hand reining
half-time bronco rebels on a morning grey as stone
-so much like riding dangerous women

with whiskey coloured eyes-
such women as once fell dead with their lovers
with fire in their heads and slippery froth on thighs
~Beaver and Carrier women maybe or

Blackfoot squaws far past the edge of this valley
on the other side of those two toy mountain ranges

from the sunfierce plains beyond-

But only horses

41

Waiting in stables
hitched at taverns

Standing at dawn
pastured outside the town with
jeeps and fords and chevvys and
busy muttering stake trucks rushing
importantly over roads of man’s devising
over the safe known roads of the ranchers
families and merchants of the town-

On the high prairie
are only horse and rider

wind in dry grass
clopping in silence under the toy mountains
dropping sometimes and

lost in the dry grass

golden oranges of dung-

Only horses

no stopwatch memories or palace ancestors
not Kiangs hauling undressed stone in the Nile Valley
and having stubborn Egyptian tantrums or
Onagers racing thru Hither Asia and
the last Quagga screaming in African highlands

Lost relatives of these

Whose hooves were thunder
the ghosts of horses battering thru the wind
whose names were the wind’s common usage
whose life was the sun’s

arriving here at chilly noon

in the gasoline smell of the

dust and waiting 15 minutes

at the grocer’s-

(Purdy in Geddes 15 Canadian Poets, 25-6.)

What Wallace does in “Into The Midst Of It” and many other poems that is clearly
different from what Al Purdy or Dennis Lee might do is the way she refuses to take the
landscape to some profound point or grand answer. Instead, the only grand answer, if you
will, is the next poem or the immediate circumstance in which we are left. This is not
just a stylistic move by Wallace, but a political move as well because we can’t really

escape the specific people or events in the poem. We can’t escape the uncomfortable

42

 

social condition or the nitty gritty of class. That we do not shape or define our whole
lives is illustrated here. What is sustained in the poem above is the daily struggle and the
indifferent landscape, a landscape that is both natural and made of social-political
constructs.

At the center of W allace’s poetic structure and themes lays the idea of compassion,
especially in the sense of experiencing the feeling of others as if they were our own. In
doing so we reach the vision for which the meditative poets strive, but we do so through
the particulars of experiences (Bennet in The Open Letter, 76). And when there is a brief
surreal escape, we are returned to the stubborn reality (unlike the hallucinations of Leslie
Fielder). This is evident in many of the poems in Signs Of The F orrner Tenflt, poems
like “Inside Out,” and in “Toward Morning,” but especially in “Woman Sitting,” which is
featured elsewhere in this text. This move toward the surreal in several of Wallace’s
poems further removes her from a traditional Marxist approach or the “true reality” in the
Marxist definition of literature for and by the masses. I would like to move to a more
international look for a moment. Having studied the work of several French, German,
and Latino poets who move beyond the immediate scenario of their poem in some way or
move into the surreal in order to escape the toil of house and home, I see similarities and
differences in the way Wallace escapes or uses the surreal. The work of Joyce Mansour
(1928-1986), is a case in point. In “Desire As Light As A Shuttle,” Mansour moves from
the French style tradition and “the beautifirl disorder on my (her) table” to stealing from
shOp women, then to jumping “the ditch with no skirts or blinkers” (Arkin and Shollar,
784). Mansour transcends or exceeds the usual limits only a bit. Stylistically Mansour

ends with memories and tears — not with concrete detail, as does Wallace.

43

DESIRE AS LIGHT AS A SHUTTLE
Le'ger comme une navette, Le Désir

Why weep on the hairless skull of tedium

Odious or otherwise

Esthetic

Argumentative

French-style tedium

I know very well how to sew false eyelashes

onto my eyelids

Agate expels hate in the pallor of a glance

I know how to imitate the shadow that closes
doors

When love

Clicks its lips standing in the hall

Rereading your letters I think of our walks

The promises of summer lingering Place
Dauphine

Yawn under cover

It is already five o’clock

Gone are the kites the docile pawing stones the

careless dust

Jumbled is the flower-bed squared like a
kerchief

Bogged down the lewd glance

Wool piles up on the clothes rack

Night gurgles inert

A beautiful disorder on my table

Why weep over a bucket of blood

Why forage between the old man’s thighs

Venice

I’m ready to cover you

With my woodland hollyhock tongue

Ready to chisel at my pelt

Steal from shopwomen

Jump the ditch with no skirts or blinkers

To sink still moist in your gimcrack arms

Why keep afloat make up have fun

Why answer

Why escape

The memory of your icy sleep

Follows me step by step

When can I see you

44

Without shedding tears

On me
Translated by Mary Beach

(Arkin and Shollar, 783)

The German poet, Marie Luise Kaschnitz (1901—1974), escapes the limits a bit more

than Mansour in “F rauenfunk” (Broadcast for Women). First, we see Kaschnitz giving a

talk on the radio. Then she does what a good wife does, rebels, and escapes — advises us

to put paprika on peaches and then meet the one with the bagpipes inside the mountain.”

This poet moves away from the tools and toils of the kitchen, but unlike Wallace, remains

there.

BROADCAST FOR WOMEN
Frauenfunk

I give a talk on the radio
Toward morning when no one is listening
I offer my recipes

Pour milk into the telephone

Let your cats sleep

In the dishwashers

Smash the clocks in your washing machines
Leave your shoes behind

Season your peaches with paprika

And your soup meat with honey

Teach your children the alphabet of foxes
Turn the leaves in your gardens silver side up
Take the advice of the owl.

When summer arrives put on your furs
Go meet the ones with the bagpipes
Who come from inside the mountains
Leave your shoes behind

Don’t be too sure

Evening will come
Don’t be too sure

45

That God loves you.
Translated by Lise] Mil/er

(Arkin and Shollar, 391)

The Latino feminist writer Rosario Castellanos produces a momentary type of escape
that, like Wallace, returns to the trivial in “Autorretrato” (Self Portrait). Castellanos
dreams of caressing the bark of trees. She knows she should escape into music and she
does escape into her own thoughts from time to time, but ends the poem by saying “I cry

when I misplace the statement for my property tax or when the rice burns”

SELF PORTRAIT
Autorretrato

I am a Mrs: an appellation

hard to come by, in my case, and more useful

in dealing with people than a title

appended to my name by some academy.

So, then, I display my trophy and repeat:

I am a Mrs. Fat or thin

according to the movements of the stars

and the cycles of the glands

and other phenomena I don’t understand.
Blonde, if I wear a blonde wig.

Or brunette, according to my whim.

(In reality, my hair is getting gray. getting gray.)
I am kind of ugly. It seems to depend to a great extent

on how I put on my make-up.

My appearance has changed with time.

-but the change is not as great as Weininger

says there is in the appearance of a genius.

I’m mediocre.

Which, on the one hand, spares me enemies

and, on the other hand, wins me the devotion

of occasional admirers and friends

who are the kind of men who like to talk on
the telephone

and send long letters of congratulations.

Who slowly sip their whiskeys on the rocks

while chatting about politics and literature,

Girlfriends. . .well, sometimes. . .rarely,

46

and in very tiny doses.

In general, I refuse to look in mirrors.

They would only tell me the usual things:
how badly I dress and how ridiculous

I look when I’m trying to flirt with someone.
who one day will become an inflexible judge
and maybe also an executioner.

In the meantime I love him.

I write. This poem. And others. And others.
I contribute to journals in my field,

give lectures and classes,

publish weekly articles for a newspaper.

I live opposite the Park, but almost
never look in that direction. And I never
cross the street to take a walk

and breathe and caress

the corrugated bark of the trees.

I know I should listen to music

but frequently avoid it. I know

It’s good to see pictures

but never go to exhibitions,

nor theatrical openings, nor the film club

I prefer to stay here, reading
or, if I turn out the lights, thinking
absent-mindedly and puttering a while.

I suffer more out of habit, by inheritance,
like others of my kind,
than for concrete reasons.

I would be happy if I knew how.
I mean, if they’d taught me all the gestures,
the speeches, the scenery.

Instead what they taught me was to cry. But
me crying.
mechanism doesn’t function as it should
and I never cry at death beds,
nor on momentous occasions, nor when faced
with a catastrophe.
I cry when I misplace the statements for my

property tax.

47

or when the rice burns.

(Arkin and Skollar, 707)

Moving back to North America I’d like to look at an Ann Sexton poem. In
“Housewife” Sexton begins: “Some women marry houses/ It’s another kind of skin; it has
a heart/ a mouth a liver and bowel movements/ The walls are permanent and pink. . . .”
(Sexton, The Complete Poems Of Ann Sexton, 18). Here Sexton seems to imply that not
only is she in the house, but that the house, like her own pink biological walls, is placed
inside of her. How then can she escape? The ultimate force and escape in the poem
comes at the end when she says, “Men enter by force, drawn back like Jonah/into their
fleshy mothers (as if consumed by some monster)” In her final lines “A woman is her
mother./ That’s the main thing.” The transcendence or temporary escape here, is inward
and outward at once but it serves also as an inescapable place. It is a genealogical escape
that cannot occur because it is rooted in womanhood.

In Consorting With Angels, Sexton is more direct in her non-compliance, her anger,
and her transcendence:

CONSORTING WITH ANGELS
I was tired of being a woman,
tired of the spoons and the pots,
tired of my mouth and my breasts,
tired of the cosmetics and the silks
There were still men who sat at my table,
circled around the bowl I offered up.
The bowl was filled with purple grapes
and the flies hovered in for the scent
and even my father came with his white bone.

But I was tired of the gender of things.

Last night I had a dream

48

And I said to it...

“You are the answer.

You will outlive my husband and my father.”
In that dream there was a city made of chains
where Joan was put to death in man’s clothes
and the nature of the angels went unexplained,
no two made in the same species,

one with a nose, one with an ear in its hand,
one chewing a star and recording its orbit,
each one like a poem obeying itself,
performing God’s functions,

a people apart.

“You are the answer,”

I said, and entered,

lying down on the gates of the city.

Then the cabins were fastened around me

and I lost my common gender and my final aspect.

As Maxine Kumin points out in her introduction to The Complete Poems of Anne
Sexton, Sexton has a remarkable sense of particularities, of detail that is psychologically
telling and leads to some grander landscape of mind (Kumin, xxxiv). And if time were to
permit, we might look at her poem “Flight,” a poem in which Sexton only tries to escape
(wearing the red coat and new white gloves of her station), but remains grounded like
gulls in “a pool of glue” and like insects “who had nowhere else to go.”

In “The Consecrating Mother,” Sexton dedicates herself to a womanly consecrating
role: “I am that clumsy human/ on the shore/ loving you, coming, coming,/ going,/ and
wish to put my thumb on you like the Song of Solomon” (Sexton in The Complete
Poems of Anne Sexton, 554).

In this poem, Sexton’s commitment endorses an experience that seems compatible

with many recent feminist formulations; “it demands no closure, refuses authority and

49

exemplifies continuous human process” (McGrath In McDowell’s poetry After
Modernism. 162).

For women like Sexton who feel caged in a world that imposes dominance and
compliance, perhaps the ultimate defiant gesture is suicide. Perhaps this may seem (as it
might have also seemed to Plath, Rich, and Morgan) the ultimate liberating act.

One might question whether or not finding a state of grace in the particulars of a
woman’s life returns us to where we started (at the kitchen sink again), but in the case of
Canadian poet Bronwen Wallace, it seems that she was able to escape while at this sink,
despite particulars or even because of them. These particulars may even serve as the
vehicle like Alice’s door to Wonderland. In any case, this is the debate Wallace opens up
for us by returning from the escape to the particulars.

There is no manic persona or extravagance in Wallace, no confession, no volcanoes,
and while her large literacy choices link her to other female poets, choices with regard to
the subject and scene within their poems, her specific style and her focus (even after a
brief surreal escape) on the things of working women lives, separates her from them.

I would like to turn to the poem “Burn Out” from The Stubborn Particulars of Grace to
look at both Wallace’s specific style and her focus on things of the working class. I must
include nearly the whole piece here in order to reveal the maternal patterns of narration
and dialogue, as well as the focus on ordinary concerns and objects of working class
women:

Burn Out
is what happens

when you work too hard
in one of the caring professions

50

they’re called these days.

it has definite symptoms

and most workplaces now
offer seminars to discuss it
distribute bum-out pamphlets
in the staff room.

For me, though

it’s my old apartment on West Street,
after the fireman turned to where

I was standing on the sidewalk

and said “OK” we’ll take you in now
for a minute. “How the place was
colder then I’d thought possible

the broken windows, the walks
smeared with soot and the wet

grit under my feet. And the smell
the smell I couldn’t get out

of even the few things

I wanted to try to save.
Beyond that, it’s the door
to the staff office at Interval House,
a shelter for battered women and children.
I’m sitting in there now,
the walls around me plastered
with kid’s drawings, notices, telephone messages,
and photographs, at a desk littered with coffee mugs
and matchbooks, ashtrays, a telephone...
and I am only four hours in
to a twelve hour shift...
Tonight,
I have eight more hours to go
when Linda comes in, shuts
the door, lights a cigarette...
“...it wasn’t
alive, I mean, but it was
something you know, I was maybe
five months along. and afterwards
he got a kitchen knife to cut the,
you know, the cord and put
it in a garbage bag...”
(Wallace, The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 76)

51

Because Wallace was involved politically with women’s issues, she knew that women
had much to say, and she saw the women’s movement focusing on the personal
experiences that women were having, Because of this her poetry moved toward the
personal and, of course, the particulars as well. Perhaps Purdy, Lee, and Bimey helped
her to realize that place was important. Perhaps Tom Wayman encouraged her to speak
in her own voice, but she seemed to turn first toward a form like Virginia Woolf’ 5
internal monologues as a vehicle toward style, then toward her own style, a style that
captured the form of the natural speech around her. These influences, along with her own
view of women’s lives and work, resulted in a poetry that reflected the everyday life of
her class and gender, specific to the objects in those lives, and specific to how those lives
flow inclusive of the inability of women to escape these specifics. Donna Bennett
expresses the differences between Purdy, Lee, and Wallace: “The difference arises partly
because her (Wallace’s) writing is woman-centered, her poems have a female
perspective- in strong contrast to the male-centered viewpoint of a Purdy poem like ‘At
the Quinte Hotel’ or even of a Lee poem like ‘The Death of Harold Ladool” (Bennet in
Joum_al of Canadian Poetry, 59). But, it is easy to see Wallace as clearly Canadian too, as
Bennet explains further: “One of the important qualities they (Purdy and Wallace) share
is the way they locate their poems in the larger tradition of the meditative lyric, the kind
of poem that records the mind’s activity as it seeks meaning from a single, still image or
point of experience.”

In “Mexican Sunsets,” Wallace disrupts the elegiac tradition a bit when she moves
first to Fall, the season of natural change, then to the change in government economic

policy. She ends by pointing out that that which we believe in and hold fast to is part

52

imagination, nostalgia, and fable. She goes from the landscape to the political in a
multiple sort of rupture in the tradition:

...It’s November, but no-one believes it.

Winter’s a crass rumor like the threat

of a layoff or a govemment’s economic policy.

And the people inhabiting the lavender streets

have the stature of fabled creatures

from that land we all believe in, somewhere

between imagination and nostalgia... (Wallace, Common Magic,

 

23)

The Satiric swarms about us in many of her poems. It is often mixed in with the
Elegiac. But it isn’t just the distant landscape that is dismal; it is also the more immediate
landscape of city neighborhood, workplace, and home that is dismal in a way that is
fashioned by class and politics and womanhood. While McLachlan’s work left us lost in
the forest, Wallace has us lost in the industrial landscape. In “Reclaiming The City,” (this
whole poem appears later in this text), she reveals the dismal landscape of Windsor (a
city in which she spent a considerable amount of time):

The sign says, Windsor, City of Roses,

but anyone who’s lived here knows it’s a city of hands
and dark metal, necessary as blood.

And speaking about her friend, Mark,‘0 she continues in the same poem:
He moved here (Windsor) in 67’, just before the riots started in
Detroit, his balcony a ringside seat that summer from which to
watch the low hills of smoke peaked occasionally by sirens or
gunfire... (Wallace, Common Magic, 69)

We are lost in this dismal landscape even when we look across the Detroit River to see

how Detroit had “rebuilt itself” around the Renaissance Center: H

 

'0 One of my interviews with Ron Baxter took place in Mark‘s apartment!

53

What we study tonight is how Detroit has rebuilt itself,

its skyline dominated by Ren Cen, that space-age castle

a city within a city, when tracks of light are elevators...
(but) block after block, as people move out to the suburbs
the grass moves back, bushes crowd factories

and trees grow through the rooms of bumt-out houses.

In a few years, Mark says,

Ren Cen could be stranded in the middle of a forest,
tonight and even the freighters on the river move with more
then their usual weariness... (Wallace, Common Magic, 69)

Kingston is also described in a dismal sort of way in several of Wallace’s poems. In

5

“My Mother’s Favorite Story,” a little girl is lost in the “...unexpressive face of this town’
(Wallace, Signs of the Former Tenant, 13).

In “Invasion” Wallace show Kingston changing, while the dismal landscape of
prejudice doesn’t seem to be changing fast enough:

...Each change is an invasion

though usually it’s more indefinite
careless as dandelions discarded

toys that sprout on our front lawn
pushing aside their older memories

of Mrs. Tate’s meticulous shrubs

the shifts no instrument can measure
how a child’s ball breaking

a rose bush hurts them almost

as much as the news that the family
moving in on the comer are Pakistani...
(Wallace, Signs of the Former Tena_nt, 71)

And in many of her poems it is the home, the place where woman is caretaker that is
dismal, dismal in appearance, in mood and expectation:

a woman

sitting in that kind of silence
with sunlight falling

through the dirty window pane

 

” The Ren Cen is four large towers containing offices, restaurants. and shops. It was built on the river’s edge and
touted as a sign that Detroit was/is in a phase of renewal.

54

to spill itself like smoke

around her

(a place where) “...

her children’s growing

and in the thicker silences

that sometimes clench like fists

beneath her husband’s words...

(Wallace, Signs of the Former Tenant. 53)

 

And in “Renovating” from Marrying into the Family:

 

It takes months before

you understand what is expected

begin to accept

the limitations of other lives

like the layers

of thick dry paint on the woodwork
impossible to remove

stains on the bare floors

scratches worn places become
incidental as wrinkles or thumbprints. ..
(Wallace, Marrying into the Family, 49)

 

That Wallace is clearly Canadian and also different from many Canadian poets is
evident in her use of the narrative and anecdotal. As we know, there has always been a
tug toward the narrative and anecdotal in Canadian poetry, has always been a pull in the
direction of the historical, the use of local incident and vernacular speech. If we look as
far back as Isabella Valancy Crawford, we can see this narrative tradition (but the work of
Crawford is decidedly masculine and conscious while Wallace is decidedly feminine and
often moves into the surreal and back again). Wallace does often focus on nature, as did
the Confederation Poets (Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Cannan, Wilford Campbell, and
Duncan Campbell Scott), but her use of narrative, rather than lyric styles, moves her away

from them and more toward the narrative poets like E. J. Pratt and Earle Bimey.

55

Archibald Lampman’s hallucinations focus on details in poems like “Heat” which only
slightly sets the stage for the surreal approach of Wallace, as noted earlier. Wallace’s
surrealism is transforming only in a temporary way, not at all celebratory in the way that
Lampman’s work is. Both “Woman Sitting” and “The Lost Dreams” support my point
here. In “Woman Sitting,” a woman with coffee cup and cigarette in hand finds she can
move things with her eyes:

in the comfortable dark

of her own living-room

she finds she can move things
with her eyes its fun at first
the way a heavy chair

slides easily from one wall
to the other tables dangle
from the ceiling lamps
swirl drunken arcs

in every comer

then

the darkness splits wide
open walls and ceilings
pulse and she can’t stop

the liquid shift but just

as she feels herself about

to plunge she touches

on the rim of waking

shrill voices of her children
demanding breakfast

clean underwear... (Wallace,
Signs of the Former Tenant, 52)

And in “Lost Dreams” awakened by her son’s cry:

she imagines her lost dreams
distributing themselves

among the neighbors

imagines the banker across the street
dreaming he dances barefoot

in a field of flowers

56

the retired schoolteacher next door
moaning as she turns toward

a gold and honey-eyed lover

but in the morning

they nod over their hedges
complacent as the sunshine

and she knows that at dinnertime

the kitchen counter will begin to crack
before her eyes

the potatoes she peels
will cry out like hurt children... (Wallace,

Signs of the Former Tenant, 54)

We know that many nineteenth century poets who wrote in English wrote in narrative
style. Canadians continued and continue to do 50. Jay MacPherson’s “The Boatman,”
Michael Ondaatje’s “Billy The Kid,” Gwendolyn MacEwen’s The T.E. Lawrence Poems,
and PK. Page’s “The Stenographers,” are a few of the most important. But these poets
were more or less stringing together short lyrics with well-controlled line breaks. Some
of their poems contain narrative, but little, if any dialogue. Their portrayals of women are
different as well. They refuse to make their focus the working class and the particulars of
that class and certainly not the particulars of a woman’s life. When Ondaatje leans
toward the narrative, that narrative seems held together with lyric, with image. He does
push the familiar into the surreal, (See “White Dwarfs”) as does Wallace at times, but he
doesn’t move us back to reality and the particulars the way Wallace does. He doesn’t
show us the dismal and stale nature of our plight as Wallace often does.

Along with MacPherson’s controlled narrative, notice her inclusive statement here of
“both gnat and camel.” Bronwen Wallace would certainly applaud her decision to do so:

...you might suppose it easy
For a maker not to lazy
To convert the gentle reader to an ark.

57

But it takes a willing pupil

To admit both gnat and camel

...Quote an eyeful, all the crew that must embark.
(MacPherson “The Boatman” in Stouck, 423)

In Ondaatje’s The Collected Works of Billy The Kid the poems are either prose-style
narratives or short controlled lines and stanzas, and are nothing like the longer lines of
poetry in the more uncontrolled (but still fashioned as poetry) stanzas that Wallace gives
us.

In Ondaatje’s “On Her House/Angela D’s,” witness this last stanza:

Halfway back to the house, the building we move towards
seemed to be stuffed with something yellow and wet. The night,
the dark air, made it all mad. That fifteen yards away there were
bright birds in cages and here John Chisum and me walked,
strange bodies. Around us total blackness, nothing out there

but a desert for seventy miles or more, and to the left, a few
yards away, a house stuffed with yellow wet light where within
the frame of a window we saw a woman move carrying fire in

a glass funnel and container towards the window, towards the
edge of the dark where we stood.

Keep the above piece in mind for later when we discuss at more length Wallace’s
Keep That Candle Burning Bright & Other Poems. In this collection, Wallace writes
prose poems. While her poems in this collection look like Ondaatje’s on the page, she
accomplishes a more natural rhythm than does Ondaatje. Here are the first two stanzas of

“Bodily Fluids.”

BODILY FLUIDS

I’m working on this theory that the way we think is
directly related to the brain’s being 80% water. It’s
an ocean up there, thoughts drifting, shifting on the
currents of scent and sound, past lives surfacing like
drowned bodies when you least expect, poems

58

nuzzling idle in pools to see what light makes of those
hours in the middle of the aftemoon, the whole mind
coming up, just once, in a splash of sun and air, eyes,
lungs, a single organ in the glare of a Big Idea.

and then there are those schools of slithery thought
where most of us spend most of our time, just
swimming along like the other day, I’m giving blood
at the Legion Hall, for the Red Cross, and I drift

into that woozy part of it -— you know, after they’ve
taken the needle out, but before they let you up for
the doughnuts and coffee, when you’re lying there
holding the gauze to your arm, like at the dentist,
after he’s packed your mouth, whipped off your bib
and said okay see you in two weeks and you’re still
trying to concentrate on standing up. Well, I’m
floating there, surrounded by all these bags of blood
and naturally I start meandering along the routes it
will take from here, mine flowing into some guy who
cuts his finger off in his Cuisinart, say, some banker
who thinks nurses are over-paid and everyone on
welfare is a lazy slob, while the guy beside me here
could be pumping his pint straight into the arms of a
radical feminist who figures if they can put one man
on the moon, why not all of them, it was almost like
drowning, how the possibilities came rushing through
me. Even the nurse said to lie down for a while more
and someone else brought me a Coke. One sip and I
dive into how much of it is drunk by Canadians in a
single day, enough to fill 2 Olympic swimming pools
and how the friend who told me that — who knows
where she gets this stuff — also claims that the semen
ejaculated in one year, in heterosexual intercourse
alone, would fill another one and a half and that’s
just in England and Wales, while the water that
evaporates from the earth’s oceans in one day, fills
five. I could feel it, surging around my heart, the
nurses smile wobbly, like the sun in a puddle, no
telling where it would flash next, as she launches me
toward the doughnuts. (Wallace, Keep That Candle
Burning Bright, 45-7.)

Let’s look at a more traditional stanza in an Ondaatje poem, “The Diverse Causes.”

59

I have selected the ending of this poem so that we might see where Ondaatje takes the
particulars (winter cobwebs. baby bottles, mice prowling):

...We clean buckets of their sand
to fetch water in the morning
reach for winter cobwebs,
sweep up moths who have forgotten to waken.
When the children sleep, angled
behind their bottles, you can hear mice prowl.
I turn a page
careful not to break the rhythms
of your sleeping head on my hip,
watch the moving under your eyelid
that turns like fire,
and we have love and the god outside
until ice starts to limp
in brown hidden waterfalls
or my daughter burns the lake
by reflecting her red shoes in it.
( Ondaatje in Geddes 15 Canadian Poets, 252)

I delight in the sharing of this next stanza from MacEwen’s “Memories of a Mad
Cook.” Notice that the poet stands in her kitchen and “moves out” from there. Again, I
have included the way this poem ends because MacEwen leaves us in a metaphorical
place, a kind of dreamscape about friends dying of hunger, a lean lover/wolf.

...Wistfully I stand in my difficult kitchen
and imagine the fantastic salads and souffle’s
that will never be.

Everyone seems to grow thin with me

and their eyes grow black as hunters’ eyes
and search my face for sustenance.

All my friends are dying of hunger,

there is some basic dish I cannot offer,

and you my love are almost as lean

as the splendid wolf I must keep always

at my door. (MacEwen in Geddes 15 Canadian Poets, 196-7)

60

In P.K. Page’s “Stenographers,” the poet moves us ever inward as the Stenographer
goes from her Sunday bivouac back to work:

In a felt of the morning the calico-minded,

sufficiently starched, inserts paper, hit keys,

efficient and sure as their adding machines;

yet they weep in the vault, they are taut as net

curtains stretched upon the frames. In their eyes

I have seen the pin men of madness in marathon

trim race round the track of the stadium pupil.

(Page in Geddes 20’h Century Poetry and Poetics, 233)

And now Wallace. 1 have selected the poem “Signs Of The Former Tenant” from the

collection of the same name because of the natural flow of the narrative (speech) here.
Signs Of The Former Tenant

Whatever she did all day

it wasn’t housework and

the lady downstairs says

the kids were always filthy

it takes me a day to remove
their fingerprints from the walls
and hours of scrubbing before
the tub gives up its dead-cell scum
and the oven is free of grease
even the smell is stubborn
windows open for days against
dirty diapers and stale food

The place is livable now at least

though some things can’t be fixed

the broken latch on the bedroom door
and the worn pattern of the tile

from the kitchen sink to the front window
where just at eye-level

faint smudges cling

like breath clouds

sobs imprisoned in glass. (Wallace, Signs
of the Former Tenant, 196)

61

 

Notice how Wallace ends with a scene in her kitchen, the worn tile and smudges on
the window. The smudge becomes the source for the metaphor.

During an interview for ARC magazine, when asked about a connection to a tradition,
Wallace said,
“...we do have to create our own tradition in a sense, a tradition that gives us permission
to talk and write about the things we write about ...I think I can write about things I write
because of Margaret Atwood, Dorothy Livesay, P.K. Page, Elizabeth Brewster who have
given me permission to do that (Cantar, M, 53).”

Wallace gives some credit to Atwood so we might pause here to discuss Atwood. Her
(Atwood’s) figures are often pioneers, explorers, or exiles of one sort or another. In

C

“Roominghouse Winter,” she says survival is the first necessity for exiles. ‘. . .At times
she (Atwood) presents her startling, surreal images in a prosaic, matter-of-fact manner
that is dislocating to the reader of traditional verse; at other times she assumes absurd

points of view, shifts back and forth between reality and fantasy, and uses a variety of

other alienating devices including parentheses” (Atwood in Geddes 15 Canadian Poets,

 

266). With Wallace, I venture to say that the “prosaic” does not seem at all dull, but
rather integral in the (often used) first person point of view. The trivial is not viewed as
trivial to the writer and therefore not to the reader. While Atwood’s is “. . .her line-lengths
seem haphazard, questionable, convincing as units of neither sound or sense...” (Q
Canadian Poets, 266), Wallace seems to break the lines quite naturally even when the
lines are alternately long and short.

Let’s look at an Atwood then a Wallace piece in which they both speak to

immigrants/pioneers. First we will look at “The Immigrants” by Atwood.

62

...I see them coming

up from the hold smelling of vomit,
infested, emaciated, their skins grey
with travel; as they step on shore

the old countries recede, become
perfect, thumbnail castles preserved
like gallstones in a glass bottle, the
towns dwindle upon the hillsides

in a light paperweight-clear

They carry their carpetbags and trunks
with clothes, dishes, the family pictures;
they think they will make order...

With Wallace, we see a linking of self to immigrants and pioneers through her own
ancestors, particularly women, even while society at large wants to diminish the
importance of these women. The lines are limited to five words here, but they flow like
narrative just the same:

Finding My Real Ancestors

I can only trace

the family tree

through two generations

before stepmothers

insinuated themselves

like characters

from the Brothers Grimm

blocking my way

to the real ancestors

when no-one remembers

not that it’s uncommon

I’ve seen family plots

in old church cemeteries

one big patriarchal stone

surrounded by smaller female ones...
(Wallace, Marrying Into The Family, 22)

63

 

Obvious in the poem quoted earlier, P.K. Page gave us a look at working women’s

lives in “The Stenographers” and “The Landlady.” Perhaps Wallace also drew from her

the idea that there are limits of human perception. I find it particularly interesting to look

at the first stanza of Page’s “The Landlady,” then at Wallace’s “Freeze Frame:

And Wallace:

The Landlady

 

Through sepia air the borders come and go,
impersonal as trains. Pass silently
the craving silence swallowing her speech;
click doors like shutters on her camera eye.
(Page in Geddes 20th Century Poetry and Poetics, 233)

Freeze Frame

 

Imagine this kitchen
as a scene for a film
the remains of breakfast
scattered on the table
light falling in precise angles...
something that holds them
for a moment- the exact
moment when you enter- suspended
(Wallace, Signs of the Former Tenant, 45)

Perhaps Wallace credits Livesay because Livesay dared to be political early on and

Elizabeth Brewster for her narrative voice and poems about ancestral women

(see “Great-Aunt Rebecca”or “The Night Grandma Died”) and her return to the small

town as focus (see “The Future of Poetry in Canada”). Brewster also seemed to see her

landscape as both beautiful and dismal and most certainly inescapable (see “Road

Between Saskatchewan and Edmonton”).

While Wallace credits the aforementioned poets as influential on her work, what is

clear is what she included in her poetry that they did not, particularly the stylistic decision

64

Wallace made to include dialogue (not parenthetical as does Brewster), but as a
“mainline” in the flow of the poem (see Brewster’s “In Wellington, For Katherine
Mansfield” and compare it to “Joseph MacLeod Daffodils” in Wallace’s 1987 collection
The Stubborn Particulars of Grace).

I wish also to look at the work of Lorna Crozier here as she was writing when Wallace
was writing, and also because I see some of the characteristics of Wallace in Crozier’s
earlier work. I truly admire Crozier’s work, but unfortunately it seems that Crozier’s
more recent work (her 1999 collection) moves away from the characteristics that her
work shared with Wallace and back toward the more lyrical, the more traditional style
that seems rooted in the established academy. In a 1987 anthology entitled A Sudden
Radiance in which Crozier is featured, I notice “The Child Who Walks Backwards.” In
this poem, Crozier relates a story a neighbor tells about a child who has suspicious
injuries but Crozier does not take the political leap Wallace would take into cause and
effect, nor does Crozier extend the gossip or include the gossip in the form of dialogue
(see “ Intervals” in The Stubborn Particulars of Grace).

In Crozier’s 1992 collection Inventing The Hawk, I see a touch of Wallace in the
poem “Repetition For My Mother”:

I want my mother to live forever,

I want her to continue breaking bread,

hang the wash on the line, scrub

the floors for the lawyers in town.

I want her fingers red with cold

or white with water... (Crozier, Inventing The Hawk, 77)

In “The Kingdom of the Fathers” by Wallace, we also see women at work:

My grandmother sat
in the stiff heat of afternoon

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and stitched/... but the family focus,

Wallace tells us sorrowfully, that it was her grandfather who

carried children out/from burning farmhouses
or saved a crop in a hard summer

the same grandfather who put ...”

stains on his kitchen wall/ marks his rage
unsatisfactory pots of tea whole plates of meat
thrown over the heads of wife and family. (Wallace,
Marrying into the Family, 30)

Wallace insists on commenting about the inequality in life and she focuses on the
artifacts and the use of the language that is part of that life.

It is a different kind of grandmother that we see in Crozier’s “The Older Sister;

Grandmother’s Bedroom” from her 1999 collection, When The Living Won’t Let Go:

The last day we saw her

I pincurled her hair. It took no time at all

to twist each strand, cotton fluff without the seed.

Her scalp pink as baby mice beneath my fingers
frightened me, and the smell that rose

from her old women’s lap

like something she’s forgotten

to throw out. (Crozier, Where The Loving Won’t Let Go)

Crozier approaches the narrative style and focus of Wallace, but we see a different
grandmother in Wallace’s “Grandma Wager’s Double Bind,” one that is a victim of the
patriarchy, but one who is strong nonetheless.

my grandmother

use to say

she had nothing to show

for her years of teaching
because she gave all her salary
to her father...”

(and later in the same poem)

There’s a photo of my grandmother at 25...
her famous skill with horses

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her grace as a dancer distills here
in what could be

the cover for a novel

where despite her father’s objectives
and a young man’s poverty

the heroine marries

the one she loves

Not far from the truth

given my grandfather

who began their marriage spending
all the wedding money on an opal ring
which she wore all her life

though year after year

he wanted to pawn it...

scorned her for begging

credit from the grocer and

taking in mending... (Wallace,
Marrying Into The Family, 27)

In the early 1990’s some critics believed that Canadian poetry was in crisis, and that

the crisis began in the ‘705. Judith Fitzgerald, in an article printed in both The Toronto

§_t_a_r and The Canadian Author said that “poetry in the late 20th century has ended up in

 

the cultural morgue” (Bookman in West Coast Line, Winter 1990, 154). Cary Fagan

quickly corrected Fitzgerald and her following, as he believes that poetry in Canada has

just become more specialized, and therefore, has found many small audiences. He said

that there is the poetry of feminism and the poetry of anti-colonialism and the like. He

did note that women are still sifted out. He also suggested that Canada needed a poetry

that was “spacious enough to embrace us (Canadians) all,” and in so doing, he invoked

the notion of transcendent humanity (Fagan in Canadian Poetry, Spring/Summer, 1992,

It is difficult to discuss all of this without discussing the politics of publishing in

Canada. 15 there a good old boy’s network in Canada? You bet. If we look at the major

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anthologies, we might believe that the national canon of Canadian poetry has changed
very little since 1970. Any move in the direction of change is taken very slowly and is
forced mostly by the increasing pressure of feminism in the universities. Geddes and
Bruce seem willing to add women to their collections, but they are usually the older
female poets like Margaret Avison. Margaret Lawrence, and Dorothy Livesay who were
already acknowledged as canonical in the ‘705. I have discussed this issue with

Gary Geddes over the telephone, and he says he argues for younger women poets, but that
he has had to fight at the “business level of the presses.”

The difficult economic situation that Canadian presses often found themselves in is
partly the problem, as are the demographics of Canada. It seems as if the regional presses
kept to themselves early on and that there were regional followings. There was fierce
competition by region. People in Canada talk about the “poetry wars” (the McGill Group
vs. The Maple Leaf, for example). But it seems, as Margaret Atwood put it in her

introduction to The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse in English, ‘regional’ has

 

changed from a bad word to a good word as it relates to Canadian poetry. The early
regional emphasis has helped us to recognize that good poets show a tendency to live in
places other than Toronto (Atwood, xxviii). We must not forget also that there have
been, until just recently, only two underlying ideologies in modern Canadian poetry. One
is the aesthetic/humanist that believes that the writing of poetry reveals and celebrates
human creativity and the spiritual dimensions of a common humanity (Smith, Woodcock,
and Frye in Atwood xxxviii) and the second is nationalist ideology in which it is not
merely a shared humanity that joins Canadian writers, but a common humanity as

Canadians. Also, the nationalists are critical of the aesthetics for being apolitical. But if

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we look at the recent and current Canadian women poets, for the most part, do not wish to
be categorized. They try to ignore or at least circumvent the material models for
metaphor/image. When Dionne Brand writes, for example, she is writing to a much
different audience than was Michele Lalonde. Canadians seem concerned with
differences and not with identity or they seem to see differences within smaller structures.
Perhaps this shift away from nationalism was one of the reasons Wallace and others
moved toward the narrative form, perhaps because the narrative form is a better vehicle
for looking at a specific place or scene and also results from the oral tradition. None,
however, have moved as far in this direction as has Wallace. None have made those
narrative forms decidedly working class and female.

When we look at the trends on the West Coast, there were: George Bowering, Frank
Davey, and Daphane Marlatt (all had teacher Warren Tallman). In Ontario, there were
the experimentalists: B.P. Nichol, Joe Rosenblatt, David McFadden, and Victor
Coleman. Also, though not attached to any particular group, were: Gwen MacEwen, John
Newlove, Patrick Lane, Bill Bissett, and Michael Ondaatje. All of this moved toward the
adoption of personae or a lyric of sensibility. There was also Christopher Dewdney,
condensed surrealism; Pier Giorgio di Cicco, inventiveness; Marilyn Bowering, biting
lyricism; Roo Borson, understated figuring.

When we look at Canadian women’s writing. Canadian poetry seems to be flourishing.
The difficulties mentioned earlier might be solved by finding a way to get circulation
going between regions of Canada, or to stop the segregation that is going on in these

smaller compartments of the reading/writing population in Canada.

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The boom that began showing itself in the ‘705 was a boom in poetry by women. Let

me start with Sharon Thesen who is known for her soft tone that speaks of the moment, a

tone that does not impose any authority and focuses on a moment. She looks at her work

as improvisation and the sudden twists and turns she takes attest to that. I especially like

her “Loose Woman Poem” because it seems to speak directly to me. In this poem, she

writes: “...I’m fed up/ with the wages of sin/ put on some Mingus/ & hepcat around/ How

come/ it’s always a question of loss, being sick of self/ displaced & frantic, chopped out/

of the World of Discourse/ waylaid/ on the Bridge of Sighs...”

Also her poem “Women Like Me” shows the collision of time and of cultures. It is

 

superb, yet accessible. Still it speaks, stops and starts more like modern lyric than

narrative.

WOMEN LIKE ME

Women like me

who are nevertheless married
despite effeminate behaviour, PMS,
threatening to run away

with just an address book

a couple of recent snapshots,

some blue silk pajamas,
Rehearsing the initials

of old boyfriends on the loose
who want them back now,
two decades of house payments
behind them. They quit
smoking, or light up

guilty in fragrant cars

as they turn slow comers

or wait for children

to cross the road.

in the Japanese restaurant
she begins to confess

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that sometimes they go

for more than a week without-

& a faint sexual odour

of kelp is on our hands

as we lean toward a mutual place
filed with deep-fried tentacles,
things floating in soup,

a bit of carrot here & there-

& our big empty shoes

parked like cabs full of secrets
outside the shadowy screen

of our talking. the turning

& returning sustenance.

(Thesen in Geddes, 20th Centug
Poetics & Poetry, 737-8)

Lorna Crozier, whom I discussed earlier, intrigues me as well, and she too, is a
force in Canadian Poetry. I like her for some of the reasons I like Thesen. Crozier also
speaks directly to me, and I think this is what she wants to do most of all. I think she
wants me to recognize myself in her work. I especially see myself in her poem “Fathers,_
Uncles, Old Friends Of The Family.” This poem speaks to the things we try to hide from
even ourselves. This poem exposes all of unwanted touching that happened to most of us
long ago, the touching that still evokes the secrets and the shame that I/we held on tight to
in childhood. This poem is like a whisper across a table between two women finally at
ease with each other.

FATHERS, UNCLES, OLD FRIENDS OF THE FAMILY
Uncle Peter always told me

to wash my hands before breakfast

because I didn’t know where they’d been

in the night what they’d touched

and his hands

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lifted me from the paddling pool,
young seal, all wet and giggly,
his farmer’s hands

soft in the towel,

my mother’s

youngest brother

pulling aside

my swimsuit.

Then there’s the father
of my friend

who did it to her
till she ran away from home.
On his seventieth birthday

she visits with the grandchild
he’s never seen
and before she can pour their tea,
he reaches out,

grabs her breast,

then cries, says he can’t help himself
and she cries too,
what’s there to say to him now?

One is always
the best friend of the family.
He makes her a fishing rod
from a bamboo pole
and with hooks with bait,
rows her to the middle of the lake.
Shh, shh, I won ’t hurt you
Shhhh.
Years later
Your flesh crawling,
you try not to turn away
when someone you love lays a hand on you.
Where did he touch you?
Here and here,
those places no one ever named.

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In “Mother and 1, Walking,” 1 see the communion of the generations of women
moving toward some awareness and some protection together, so beautifully stated in the
last stanza: “When 1 lower my eyes. I see/ our feet, mine between hers/ the tracks of one
animal/ crossing the open/ strange and nocturnal/ moving towards home”

(Crozier, in Geddes, 20th Century Poetics, 681).

R00 Borson seems so vast that I cannot think of her in any other landscape except
Canada. She captures all that is Canada in her work. People are never separable from the
land in her world. What I see in her poetry is a strong sense of image and not the flowing

narrative that I see in others, particularly Wallace. but clips of narrative instead:

ABUNDANCE

 

The moon: hoof-print in ice.
Someone’s shoes chewing an icy path.
The wasted intricacy of each snowflake.
A field without a man in it.

A rusted plow filling the snow.

In “Talk,” Borson moves into a more flowing narrative.
The shops, the streets are full of old men.
who can’t think of a thing to say anymore.
Sometimes, looking at a girl, it
almost occurs to them, but they can’t make it out,
they go pawing toward it through the fog...
(Borson, in Geddes 20th Century Poetry, 690)
In Borson, as in Wallace, we see a resistance to poetic theory. In an interview with
Peter O’Brien, Borson says, “Writing by theory is too much like painting by numbers.”

She does experiment with styles and rhythms in her work. In that same interview, she

said “our rhythms are based on street comers, in poetry, and also on individual

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temperament. We each have a cadence, or several related cadences” (Borson interview
with Peter O’Brien in The Open Letter, 10).
Atwood calls Borson’s poetry “minor key figuring” which is interesting because
Borson often talks about the music, the rhythm and the arrhythmia in language. In an
interview with Peter O'Brien, Borson talks about first having difficulty listening to jazz
because she could only hear “a big mass of disorganized sound...she (I) began to hear
individual instruments within the welter, and oh, the pleasure when all conflicting strains
are (were) drawn together into melody again” (Borson, “So To Speak,” 14).
What Borson captures is not just landscape, but the mood of place. She captures the
diverse Canadian mood and landscape. The power of “A Sad Device,” (1981) is a good
example here.
A rat, his eyes like glycerin
like galleries of landscape painting
genitals like a small bell, he
siphons of smells...
The grey warehouse of gothic stars,
the gleaming artillery of water
the flowerbeds like Arabic scrolls
all of it.
I think my heart is a sad device
like can-openers...

Her other poems do veer across the Canadian landscape and the seasons as in

“Waterfront” (1981), “Spring,” (1984) “City Lights,” (1989), and “Rubber Boots,”

(1989).

I wish to take a longer look at Phyllis Webb than I have the others. Webb illustrates

the transition of woman poet from some kind of God centered worshiper- toward a self-

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realization as a woman, and as a writer. Because her life was filled with emotional
turmoil that she had to come to terms with or die (she did contemplate suicide), she
learned to praise the totality of femaleness. Webb joined numerous religions and then
shifted her allegiance to feminism, which served as a religion for her. She admits never
having questioned the patriarchal order early on, but learned that men dominated
Canadian Literature, and that to move forward she had to shed her privileged position in
that patriarchal world. She did this with courage in the face of her critics. What she
gives to the feminist movement is the vision of woman as a mystic seer. She views the
landscape of patriarchy as one of an arid wasteland. She transforms the vision of woman.
In her poem “Poet ” she expresses her new vocation as a poet in Canada fighting against
the male tradition:

I have promised

I have taken the veil

I have made my obeisance

I have walked on words of nails

to knock on silences.

I have taken the veil

to my face
mouth covered with symbol... (Webb, Naked Poems, 29)

 

In her first two volumes, Webb speaks to her marginalization as a poet, and doing so
caused her a great deal of scorn from the critics. This seems odd to me, because when
men write about alienation and despair, they are considered existential poets. When
women do it, they are considered melodramatic and bitchy. Webb did it just the same,
and I applaud her for it.

There is something in Webb that remakes the landscape. First, she descends and then

she re-emerges into a new and more acceptable world. I see this particularly in “ Sprouts

7S

the Bitter Grain. " Here, she says: “Sprouts the bitter grain in my heart/ green and fervent
it grows as all/ this lush summer rises in heats about me...”
Webb also dislodges the male version of ecstasy with her own version in her poem
“Marvell’s Garden.” She declines Marvell’s invitation to his place of solitude because it
would mean “leaving brothers, lovers. Christ/outside my walls/where they wept
without/and I wither.” She sees his garden as part of his attitude in that “he did care more
for the form/of things then for the thing itself. (Webb, Naked Poems, 12) She also takes
the ecological plunge that so many Canadians take; she shows the violence against the
earth in this poem. If we look at her volume Naked Poems, we can also see how she
focuses on the construction of a different, female voice. She talks about “long lines, clear
and syllabic” and the “knotted bamboo” like veins linking female utterances. In that
same collection, she expresses her hatred for the vertical metaphor and calls them crosses
or the “raised gods” that symbolized man’s ascendance. The fact that Webb moves into
the haiku form intrigues me, too. Perhaps she was looking for a form in which to best
express her new way of looking at the world and her own progression in that world.
While Wallace clearly shared Webb’s feminist views, Wallace’s poetry expresses itself in
a form closer to actual utterances.
I wish to move on to Mary di Michele. In her introduction to Anything is Possible she

explains:

This collection represents a new generation of women writers

whose language is a kind of truth serum, asking pointed questions

of the speaker, as well as the words themselves spoken, with

deep feeling, but without sentimentality, these poets describe the

world as they see it. Because they are women to whom the world
of feeling has been abandoned by many men and because they are

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incisively intelligent, their work has a special integrity and a facility
to illuminate some vital areas of experience, which have been
ignored by our literature to date. (Di Michele, Anything is Possible, 5)

It is clear that di Michele is talking about more than poetic voice, but also about
values. In her work, her commitment to describing the world as she sees it is very clear.
She explores her family and herself in a form that is tough instead of flat and moody. She
expresses her feelings directly. But even in these personal poems, we see her moving
toward some of the bigger issues. In “Born In August,” she goes from her own birthdate
to Auschwitz and Hiroshima. She sees poetry as something that grows out of the
personal into something beyond and more important. Unlike Wallace, she escapes or
transcends to something beyond. I also feel a personal connection with di Michele
because I am an Italian-American and she is an Italian-Canadian. Like di Michele, I was
the silenced girl in a very patriarchal family. I was also the subject of the gaze that di
Michelle expresses in “Beauty and Dread in 1959.” When she writes “My body was
changing/ in a human way/ but it felt grotesque/ I’d already been told/ by Freud and the

boys/ what I didn’t have.”

(di Michelle, Anything is Possible, 7). Di Michelle was a friend of the late Bronwen

 

Wallace, and Wallace studied her poetry. Wallace said of di Michele that“ ...those two
problematic terms ‘confession’ and ‘integrity’ meet in di Michele’s work through her
sense of ‘connectedness’ with other women.” Wallace suggests that di Michele speaks
not only to integrate herself into a community--one goal of the confessional mode--but
because she already feels that she is integrated into a community (Letter from Wallace to

di Michele dated September 26, 1984).

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The fact that the narrative style has been a constant in Canadian poetry says much
about the will of the Canadian poet. Allen Grossman says it is this way in Summa Lyrica:
“There is no poem in the realm of autonomy as there is no story or narrative. Narrative is
produced by, and repeats, the situation of the impeded wills, the will subject to law other
than its own, subject to anatomic laws. Narrative is omnipresent poetry. Because all
speaking is action which has a history.” (Grossman, 49) What I am trying to make clear
is that narrative is more than the anecdote. It has more to do with the social and
psychological and the way in which words and the particular subject they illuminate come
together as part of history. This is the history that Wallace wanted to make- a history that
is her story of the working class.

The narrative kept on coming out of Canada despite the likes of William Carlos
Williams and others who believed that fragmenting sharpened our sensory perception by
divesting objects of their conventional meaning. The fact that Canadian poetry survived
the modernist attacks is probably one of the most important observations I make about
Canadian poetry in general, and Bronwen Wallace specifically.

In Dennis Lee’s essay, “A Geography of Stories,” in “Open Letter,” No. 9, 1991, he
puts it this way:

This unofficial tradition of storytelling is something most men
notice long enough to walk around, while women know it so
intimately they might never describe it as a tradition. It’s the
common female practice of telling each other stories from their
daily experience, continuously, as they occur. It amounts to
“imagining” their own lives, outside official codes of meaning.
Replaying them orally, scrutinizing them with a friend to find
their inner emotional meaning. Such a personal narrative is

never finished, of course, because there’s always another
installment to be lived and recounted.

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This is a very different model of storytelling from the high-art
kind. When two women take up their shared narration--on

the bus, over coffee, on the phone--they’re already aware of
the major plotlines. For one, it’s the dumb colleague or boss,
the new man in her life, the operation; for the other, the dying
mother, the sick child, the restless husband. So at each session
they just drive into updates, with no sign of a formal beginning.
Nor are there many endings, since the story always breaks off--
at the point the narrator has reached in her life today. Mostly
the plots consist of vivid, unresolved middles.

He further suggests that this is a sort of folk art form and that Wallace was
learning to ‘play it,’ and in so doing, was leading the way.

Wallace was in the camp of many younger women writers, such as Roo

Borson, Di Brandt, Susan Glickman, Claire Han'is, Patricia Young, and

Erin Mouré. These women, of course, emphasized social and political

needs of women and that proved to have a beneficial effect for men, as they

would no longer be imprisoned within the traditional male stereotypes.
(Lee, Dennis. A Geography of Story, 14)

Although Mouré is sometimes a bit more ideological than the other females I
mentioned above, I want to discuss her briefly before I move into more specifics about
Wallace. I believe that Moure’ was moving toward the way women speak, and more
importantly, the way women listen, because you have to “listen” to Mouré carefully to
understand her. She likes to break down logical connections. She expresses this all
beautifully in her poem “Post-Modem Literature,” as well as in “Public Health,”

which I must quote here:

...This man talks of

the enterprise he finds

in sickness, accidental caresses, the roughed-up

wife, a cirrhosis

He proclaims his courage, his love & how

the government wants it, or gives back

too little.

The limbs of the woman mute with anesthetic.

Pay me, he says. (Moure’ in 20th Century Poetry, 709)

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I would like to conclude this section with two poems, one written by Bronwen
Wallace’s best friend, Carolyn Smart, that Carolyn read to me at one of our meetings and
another that Wallace wrote. I wish to share them because I believe both poems say a lot
about what Canadian Poetry was and is. Carolyn Smart’s poem speaks to the
transcendent, meditative spirit, as well as the vastness of landscape that is Canadian, yet
she brings the vastness home (The fact that Carolyn has accepted this male child and is in
wonder about what she has done is also telling). Wallace loved and respected Carolyn
Smart. They were the best of friends and shared this kind of wonder and fear about their
sons. The poem places Smart clearly as creator, but only to the larger creator that is time
and sky, a creator who is not always protective and good, but is creator nonetheless. The
poem also hints at how Smart needs to separate herself from her son early on:

POEMS FOR NICHOLAS, MY SON

The yolk of the earth is what you wake to:
owl crying through the dark of the house
where we are only resting, now:

your father nestled in deep dreams,

his body shadowed and long beside mine.
carrying all the past in his silence.

Waiting for your cries I know the night
about me, ten long months of it: the calling
of a midnight train to Montreal, endless roll
of a freight’s wheels at four, then the dull
winter light in the hour before you wake,
my head full of sleep but unable to leave
the feat of your death behind.

Still heavy with the feel of you

who they plucked from my cage

with a mouthful of mother inside.

Nightly I stagger close to hear your breaths,
watch your chest rise and fall away

as I lean back into safety. back to

your father’s warm side, sleeping, apart.

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On your tongue the drops of my milk

like a second skin. Your eyelids flicker

with the swell of your own darkness: rocking,
holding you close, under the shell ofthe sky.
(Smart, Interview, November 1 I, 1996)

This is a good poem to compare to Wallace’s “My Son 15 Learning To Invent”:

MY SON IS LEARNING TO INVENT

My son is learning to invent

himself. Today he tells me of a time

I took him to a hospital and left him

alone there. He describes how he shook the steel
bars of his crib and cried as I left the room
without looking back.

(He was there. He had pneumonia
and I was alone. For a week,

I slept in a chair by his bed.

I only left once to buy him a book
when he was asleep.

The child in the next bed

had tubes in her throat and no-one
came to visit her at all.)

My son holds up his hands. If he could,
he would show me the desperate

welts the crib bars left and the black
square of my back cutting the light
from his eyes.

But I shake my head.
Stalemate...
My son is learning
(Wallace, Common Magic, 17)
While both poets accomplish a smooth narrative style, we hear both the son and the

mother’s version of an event in the Wallace poem (Early on the male version/story is

different from the woman’s version in Wallace’s poem). Carolyn Smart stops the

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narrative flow for an image. She constantly reminds us that we are reading poetry. Smart
ends with the sky, that is she moves out, she transcends. Wallace sticks to the narrative,
does not interrupt with an image until the end of each section with “square of my back
cutting the light/ from his eyes.” Wallace does not move up to sky but to her reaction,
“But I shake my head/”

“Stalemate/”... My son is leaming/.

In The Journal of Canadian Poetry, Carolyn Smart tells us that “If Birney, Purdy, Lee
and Wallace all write meditative poems, they also do not. They may begin with the
meditative structure, may even preserve it as a way of organizing their statements, but
they also violate it--Purdy by subverting the logical expansion of the initial image; Lee by
subjecting it to recursions of possibility that always leads back to the original image itself,
to doubt that anything larger can be obtained; and Bimey mostly by refusing to surrender

the concrete.” (Smart in Journal of Canadian Poem, 2.) Wallace is a special case in this

 

Canadian tradition or the way in which she breaks from it. While her poems do
dramatize the mind moving outward from a core of silent stillness, the structure she uses
points to the choice she makes, a narrative choice, and also points to the focus, the
particulars despite the desire for something larger, something transcendent that might
diminish where she is and what she must do.

Before I move more into Wallace’s work I wish to mention three more of her
contemporaries specifically because they seemed to be moving toward a more narrative
style.

First is Gwendolyn MacEwen. When we look at The T.E. Lawrence Poems we see a

more natural flow of language (more like speech), and interesting is the fact that

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MacEwen ends many of the poems in this collection with a line about herself, her
placement or condition. This is true in “Void,” the last three lines of the poems reads:
...Where does the great dream end?/ With my right wrist recently broken,/ I write this

sad, left-handed poem.// (MacEwen in Atwood, Oxford Book of Canadian Verse, 390.)

 

In Patrick’s Lane’s “Stigmata” (for Irving Layton), Lane starts with a narrative voice:
What if there wasn’t a metaphor/ and the bodies were only bodies/ bones pushed out in
awkward fingers?/ Then later a more personal narrative: I bend beside a tidal pool and
take a crab from the sea./ His small green like twists helpless in my hand/. Then like the
MacEwen poem above his last line reads: I open my hand. The life leaps out. (Lane in

Atwood, Oxford Book of Canadian Verse, 292-3.)

 

While the typography of Gary Geddes (bl 940) poem “Transubstantiation” seems to
disguise the narrative flow, the poem is narrative in nature however. The first “stanza”
makes that obvious: “The pig stands squarely/ in the boarded stall, looking/ stupid and
out of his element] My rope is tied in a slip-knot/ around his thick neck.// Then the use
of “speech” follows: My father asks/ if I am ready./.” At the end of the poem the author
moves to his view from his window: “I can see it from my window./ It has become
meat.//” (Geddes in Atwood, Oxford Bank of Canadian Verse, 378-9.)

Mary di Michelle’s poem “Hunger” is worth mentioning here as well. This poem,

published in the 1984 collection entitled Anything is Possible flows very much like a

 

Wallace poem but does not end like a Wallace poem. This poem is also significant with
regard to the way in which di Michelle uses ordinary objects to move the poem along.
The end of the poem, however, makes it clearly di Michelle in that it ends on a tragic,

philosophical note. It is important to share the whole poem here.

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HUNGER

For some the afternoon light is a mess
of leftover porridge,

a graying, clotted mass,

to be eaten again for dinner,

or the rye that stains the bottom

of an unwashed glass.

A room with a 1000 walls cramped.
A man can’t take two steps

without running into a corner,
assaulted by tongues of peeling plaster,
dry chips and a fine white dust
shifting through the wool

any room makes of time and traffic.

A man loses his hand in the jungle

of the top drawer of his dresser.

He pulls out glossy pages

stiff with semen,

the legs of sex with

those glistening organs for sale

like fruit in a pint boxes

exposed through plastic net.

Disguised as a child, a 24 year old model
in Penthouse, December issue,

only partially clothed and provocative
poses in Buster Brown shoes and ankle socks.
Above her white pleaded skirt,

the nipples of her bare breasts

are red cinnamon hearts.

A man opens a magazine and enters
the steaming and ruthless

rainforest of his origins,

something dry and slithering

coils and squeezes out every other
thought.

He flips through the pages and grows
a third and murderous arm.

He did not kill the pianist,

like that character in the late night
horror movie on TV,

who murders a magician to borrow
his hands and a talent

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to perform in concerts
for all those who are attentive
in white linens, pearls, and furs.

There’s appetite and then there’s hunger.
Bob Guccione didn’t intend his magazine
for the man employed in a sweat shop

on Spadina. Even a work horse knows this
as he barters with his boss

for the remnants of light

through basement windows,

barred, as if life itself

were a prison sentence.

Daily the only weather

he experiences through footwear.

With shoes he imagines

returning to home filled

with bitching or laughter,

discovering his arms abundant with

the warmth and clean laundry smells

of a wife. Through her soft shirt he can feel
the three tiny hooks holding up her bra.
Bob Guccione designed his magazine for men
who are bored with this.

Sunday in freezing rain,

March with its stranglehold on light,
a sun somehow more intimate,

more chilling. A child, a girl,

a female person, lingering in the park,
rubber boots squeaking,

kicking in the ice

in soft spots with her heels.

lured by her pleaded skirt,
by the flash of light '
on her shiny black boots,

by her soft brown eyes,
turned inward and brooding,
he approaches when Sibelius
is the only witness,

and the disinterested blinds
of rooming house windows.

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He is a man with large hands
and dry, unblinking eyes.

Hypnotized by his stare,

unable to scramble for even an idea
of escape,

lips quivering in the nightmare,

she silently calls to her mother.

In no time at all

his eyelashes must flutter

break the spell

so that she can wake

up and stop

herself from being pulled along,
where?

Breathless in plastic wrap:

she is dressed for outdoors

in the pleated skirt

her mother gave her for Christmas,
and a brown sweater, whose bulky knit
camouflages her sex,

breasts a boy might have,

tender breasts,

pink and sweet as cinnamon hearts:

in a fridge, like a fetus folded
into that white space

where all dreams end
including this one

where she has been made to be
of man unborn.

(di Michele in Anything is Possible, 30-2.)

Her Work Gives Power To Our Voices

Of course, when we look at feminist literary theory, a formidable body of such theory

has argued that female experience is systematically excluded from all forms of public

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discourse.” It is also very clear that the power to speak (or to be heard) is linked to
economic and political power. (Women also still are, for the most part, excluded from
public discourse.)'3 Absent from much poetry by women is familiar speech rhythms
(perhaps because this style might open them up to criticism and vulnerability) or when
familiar speech styles are used they seem stiff. When women writers use substance of
their daily lives to move their style along they in effect “release imprisoned strata into the
daylight of language... Nineteenth century poetry legitimize children, the poor, and the
insane; so the moment has come for what one anthology calls “ordinary women” (Miles,

Sara et al. Ordinary Women, ii.). Wallace does just this and her use of story (often in the

 

form of gossip) is one of the obvious forms she uses to do so. And of course the use of
story and gossip in its material form mandates a narrative style. In keeping with the
remarks in my introduction to this work, Wallace was expressing the needs and interests
of the working class, particularly women, by expressing their reality in the naturally
occurring linguistic modes and constructs. Her work then serves to sustain the ideology
of the class and subclass.

In the Introduction to the Open Letter, written by Dorscht and Savoy, they put it this
way: “Wallace’s work impresses us because of its interrogation of representation, its
critique of patriarchy ideology, its call for social change, and its insistence on the strength
of women’s voices (Dorscht and Savoy, Open Letter, 5).

In an August 26th issue of The Globe and Mail, Dennis Lee describes Wallace’s

 

‘2 Sec Carolyn Burke, “lrigarm' Through The Looking Glass.” Feminist Studies, 7 no. 2 (Summer, 1981): 228-306.
Mary Daly, Beyond God The Father (London: The Women‘s Press. 1986).

'3 The ways in which this is perpetuated are many. See Nancy Chodorouis. The Reproduction of Mothering:
Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender, 1986

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narrative style: “She wrote with human gusto, a large spirited feminism, and a deeply
innovative approach to storytelling. Yet her craft doesn’t point to itself; it’s always there
to reveal the ordinary, luminous lives she portrays ...Often the narrators perform virtuoso
feats of jump cutting, which leaves anyone who overhears completely dizzy. And so the
structured principles of this narrative are digression, interruption, free association, cross
weaving, speculation, re-examination” (Lee, The Globe and Mail, August 26, 89,C8).
I like to think of this “activity” in her work as the bubbling up of before the rupture. Lee
also suggests that this “structural form” rooted in folk art took some nerve and was a
deliberate attempt to do just that, to create a truly female narrative form. And Wallace’s
letter to Mouré confirms Lee’s observation and interpretation (Lee, C8). That this was
intentional is clear. In a letter to Erin Mouré dated March 12, 1986 Wallace writes:

The given, of my life, the starting point of my poetry has

always been the stories of women, the voices of women

discussing the world. From as early as I can remember it

was my grandmother, my mother, my aunts, my girl friends,

my women friends, female teachers and mentors who spoke

the world for me. My grandmother and my mother were

incredibly powerful women, both of whom worked very hard,

the former of whom saw to it that all four daughters got an

education...and saw to it- through her work- that it was

financially possible for me to go to university. They were

both subject and object, powerful and powerless. And

when they talked! They used gossip, confession, anecdote,

jokes - but they used them to tell the experience of the world,

to create a world in which female was the metaphor for the

universal.” (Wallace, Two Women Talking, 31)

And later in the same letter, Wallace says “in fact the essence of my narrative-style has

come from these women’s lives and the stories they told. What I try to do is to recreate

their voices, their views of things, and their way of telling a story. When I do this I am

‘facing the question of language.’ I am looking at language politically” (Wallace, Two

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Women Talking, 32). In an interview with Liam Lacey for The Globe and Mail, Wallace
said that she composed the poems on a tape recorder before committing to print. (Lacey
L. Globe and Mail, n.d.)

The use of informal story and gossip really moves Wallace’s poetry along, and she did
this deliberately so as not to distance herself from the experiences of her community,
class, and gender. We get a sense here of both individual involvement and the collective
responsibility. The personal and the public merge, so to speak. In this way Wallace helps
the working class sustain its own ideology. In the poem “Bones,” for example, Wallace
takes a tem'ble life experience about which she is telling a friend, the friend is then able to
use the life experience (from the story) in order to heal herself. That all of these things
made their way into a poem is very noteworthy. We have not just a narrative, but a
comment about the power of narrative as well. And the narrative functions as a way to
hold a mirror to the lived reality of a class and a gender:

Everywhere I went, my work experience

drew me through confessions I couldn’t
stop,

I couldn’t stop talking about them

so you had to listen

but, being you, in that way that listening

can be active, when the listener
re-enters

the country of her own damage

from a new direction. (Wallace,

The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 81)

Of course there is a large body of literature that examines the oral tradition. This body
of literature would have us look at earlier cultures. For example the work of Pronsias

MacCane reminds us that:

...Oral literature did not cease

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with the coming of writing; on the
contrary. it continued as abundant
as ever, independent of the written
literature although not necessarily
unaffected by it. In the nature of
things, however, we can know it
only in so far as it is reflected in the
written texts.

(MacCana, 145.)

We are blessed that Wallace, like the clerical authors of old, seemed equipped,
somehow, by instinct, training, family and gender to hear the orally transmitted
mythology and her story with both understanding and sophistication. Most importantly
she reflected this oral literature, the stories particularly of women, in her texts.

Later, when I look at Wallace’s gravitation toward country music, especially the work
of Emmylou Harris, we can see another signal that there is a connection to the oral
tradition. “Country blues singers are working within a tradition similar to that described
by Milmar Parry and Albert B. Lord in their account of certain oral tradition.” (Bamie,
39.)

Wallace clearly reflects the oral tradition in the written text of her poems. She does so
often, and uses dialogue that is sometimes rather ordinary. In “Getting The Words For
It,” when the poet relates her mother’s reaction to her daughter’s first menstruation:

“ ‘This is different,’ my mother said/ ‘you need your strength; you never know.’”
(Wallace, Signs of the Former Tenant, 17.) It is curious that Wallace uses italics to relate
dialogue of the past. In some instances they are short narrative. “That Story You Told” is
a clear example. Starting on line 5 in the first stanza Wallace shares the story two of her

friends told her about a curious old woman:

like ayoung girl

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whose been told how pretty she is you said
until that 's all she thinks about. Only with her
it seemed as if she ’d stopped
there somehow stuck in a moment
of being admired till it froze the body
to this awkward posture, these continual
nervous tics. The only gestures that she knew
became grotesque and laughable
(Wallace, Signs of the Former Tencmt, 25.)

Some of the other literary choices that Bronwen Wallace made are not so different
from the writing of other feminist poets. Use of the surreal attempts to transcend in
images of flight or daydreaming are evident (as we see in “The Cancer Poems”). The
dominant motif about the urgency women feel about time or lack thereof is certainly
present as well. What makes Wallace’s work different is how she uses the particulars, the
actual things, specific tasks, and objects of the working women’s experiences in many of
her poems, and particularly in poems that others might not interrupt with talk about the
labor and the artifacts of the working class. Wallace also takes the time to give life to the
objects that serve to give meaning to their lives. As I mentioned earlier in this work, she
doesn’t try to escape these objects, but instead gives meaning to them. In “Women
Sitting” Wallace moves from the ordinary to the surreal and back to the ordinary. But
even in the surreal mode she is moving ordinary things with her eyes:

...the woman in the comfortable dark of
her own living room
finds she can move things

with her eyes... (Wallace, Signs Of The Former Tenant, 52-53)

As the poem progresses, heavy chairs are displaced and lamps swirl. And just as the
walls begin to open and the ceilings pulse, the woman returns to the reality of her children
and all their demands. The dream (the transcendence) slips away from the woman and

she is left with sunlight falling through the dirty windowpane. Interesting here is the fact

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that the dream transcends, but not the woman. There is no ascendance out of this
situation. The working class woman in this poem is, in reality, stuck.

In “Tuesday Morning”:
...something
in the kitchen shifts
as if the light from the window
had been split somewhere and the flat surfaces
it touches peel away
to where the adults in your childhood
even your parents flicker
like figures in an old movie
the kitchen settles again
you sit where you did a moment ago

hearing the hum of the refrigerator...'4

If we look also at her 1980 collection Marrying Into The Family, specifically the poem
“Marriage” is telling as well. In the poem, we learn about a new wife who has moved
into her mother-in-law’s home. This new wife brings her mother’s crystal, grandmother’s
china, and her aunt’s quilt into this home. And clearly the things that these women share
are what bind them together in the patriarchal system:

...but what the women own

they cany with them

and in their husband’s homes
perform this marriage

of things touched and shared
woman to woman

back and forth across the country
they save beyond blood lines

the stubborn pattern

of their own

particular ceremonies. (Wallace, Marrying Into The Family, 10)

 

'4 When I looked at the way in which other feminist poets transcended the work of house and home (and my look was
an international look), I found that many of these poets project themselves into a remote time and place and away
from the objects of the house. and away from women‘s work. The work of Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Rosario
Castellanou, Joyce Mansour, and Anne Sexton are cases in point.

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And like the things they hand down, the stories are also handed down. In
“Connecting,” a china fruit bowl connects us to a good story about a great-grandmother.
And it is through the particular of this bowl that the story follows, and calls up the great-
grandmother who dared to walk into a bar to fetch her husband, then...“the triumphant
flashes of a (her) smile/ beside her husband’s silence/ on the dark walk home.” (Wallace,

Marging Into The Family, 14)

 

To point to a dominant motif in literature by and about women, a motif that deals with
the urgency women feel with regard to time, how torn women feel between what they
wish to do and what they feel they must do, I turn to the poem Wallace most liked to read
for an audience, “A Simple Poem For Virgina Woolf.” This poem starts with the author’s
desire to write a poem for Woolf when images of women’s work and the object and tools
'of that work distract her. The poem ends brilliantly with this last stanza:

This started out as a simple poem
for Virgina Woolf

it wasn’t going to mention history
or choices or women’s lives

the complexities of women’s friendships
or the countless gritty details

of an ordinary woman’s life

that never appear in poems at all
yet even as I write these words
those ordinary details intervene
between the poem I meant to write
of my children faces of friends

of women I have never even seen
glow on the blank pages

and deeper than any silence

press around me

waiting their turn.

“Woman At The Next Table” from Common Magic is a long narrative poem that

starts out with the poet listening in on a woman at the next table in a restaurant. This

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woman is criticizing a man. The poem meanders between what the woman does and feels
then to what the observer/poet has in common with her and to tableaus of the men these
women might rightfully criticize. Right in the middle ofthis poem is a description ofthe
mundane work that seems to connect one event to another and one woman to another:

...tomorrow

when she’ll be right back

where she started, waiting on tables somewhere

or cleaning someone’s house,

getting home late and ironing the kids’ clothes

while she watches TV... (Wallace, Common Magic, 42-43)

In “Intervals,” Wallace attacks the conditions of our lives and the work we are forced

to do when she says:

And maybe it can’t be helped.

Maybe it’s only what any job

on this planet makes of us.

The shoulders rounded over fifty years

at a sewing machine or a desk, the lungs webbed

with black dust, the cells of fetus

altered by an eight hour shift at a computer terminal

day after day. How we’ve made it seem normal...
(Wallace, Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 64)

I would be remiss if I didn’t spend some time discussing the social function and value
of a few of the forms Wallace used, forms that seemed to move her style and craft. There
are the naturally occurring forms and patterns that the talk of woman takes. I will start
with gossip.

In Women’s Talk: A Social History of Gossip in Working Class Neighborhoods,
1960-1980, Melanie Tebbutt reminds us that women’s voices are hard to hear in history.
Their so-called “loose tongues” and sharp talk were often criticized, but remain largely
silent in the written record. Where women’s voices are documented they tend to be

patronized as a second class version of “real” language. Further, Tebbutt tells us that

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“talk about other people- gossip- is a significant feature of human language, and that its
observations about behavior performs an important integrative and socializing function”
(Tebbutt, 1).

It is easy to see why gossip played a significant part in many communities like
Wallace’s hometown of Kingston, Ontario. Wallace’s grandmother, mother, and aunts
depended on the social network of their community (be it block, neighborhood,
church, etc). Because of patriarchal social structures, women of their generation and
class had limited access to recreation and interaction with the world beyond the home and
immediate community. In this sense, many supportive aspects of women’s language
(which have been observed in socio-linguistic studies) were apparent in the gossip of
working class women reflecting in part, the reciprocity of this form, which was such an
important aspect of life (Tebbutt, 3). Roberts’ work also points to the well-understood
role of gossip in a closed society and actually identifies it as a source of matriarchal
power, a way to order and establish a system of values and norms, and a way of ensuring
that accumulated knowledge and wisdom is not lost to succeeding generations.
Furthermore, Roberts shows that talk about people helps to define group identity by
“recycling fragments of the past and relating the present to earlier experience. It provides
the reassurance of continuity”(Roberts in Tebbett, 6). It reminds us of the forms women
used to have some power in their powerless station. It is an attempt at creating a story
and an attempt at ascendance.

In using gossip in her poetry Wallace in a sense elevates the importance of this form of
communication, validates it, and creates a schism in the traditions of the high art of

doctrine called poetry. She also illuminates a class so that we can see the ancestral tie to

95

 

what commands, that their work both outside and inside the work place is significant as
well.

Two of the most direct references to gossip and two of the most obvious indications

9

that Wallace was aware of the function of gossip appear in her poems, “Places of Origin,’
“And All That Uneasy Spring.” In “Places of Origin” Wallace is explaining why she
stayed in Kingston, and in her meanderings, she enters into a discussion about geography,
as well as the difference between how men and women know land and wealth:

For most places, there are two kinds of geography
and it’s no different here.

The men know land and weather,

who owns it and for how long,

what to prepare for when you can.

Being men, they have access to maps

and county records, almanacs.

Their wives know it differently.

Not just who married who

but what it was like and why,

how the kids turned out in the end.

This may be gossip,

but that doesn’t make it unimportant.

You can’t have your daughters marrying men
who beat their wives, raising children

who will tear all over the countryside

making fools of themselves.

“What’s bred in the bone,” my grandmother said,
“Comes out in the flesh.” (Wallace, Common Magic, 12)

And in “All That Uneasy Spring,” the gossip that neighborhood women share is
ritualistic, as neighborhood women would leave their garden chores to gather over coffee:

I leaving their mud-caked shoes
on steps outside
and all that uneasy spring
our gossip came in whispers
But once they returned to their own singular lives and houses with husbands and

children, it wasn’t until late night turning toward sleep that they would:

remember
our morning conversations and sounds

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of our voices coming back to us
suddenly precious even in the smallest details

Wallace also incorporates gossip into her poems as part of the natural flow of life, as a
coping mechanism. In “Joseph MacLeod’s Daffodills,” well into the poem, after talk of
gardening, wars, and photographs of freaks, she tells her friend

...look at us,
practically wizened with worry, hunched
over coffee cups, whispering of cancer and divorce
( The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 32)

In “Intervals, IV Short Story,” her friend tells her about a fight she overhears between
a husband and wife, talks about the bottles in the neighbors garbage and the dirty children
on their porch. The storyteller inserts, “... maybe that’s how those people want to live.”
This neighbor even relates the verbal abuses they hurl at each other (Wallace doesn’t
clean it up for the poem either).

So a four year old stands in the doorway
Yelling at his mother. “Cunt,” he screams
“cunt face! nothin’ but a funkin’ cunt face!”
his words, like the life he’s been given...

(The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 67.)

In a letter I received from Wallace’s friend Joanne Page, she characterizes Wallace’s
work as “nods to other women writers, artists, other women thought to be ordinary; the
over-coffee conversational tone; the solid ideas, philosophical questions, placed casually
without bells and whistles.” Wallace was careful not to overlook (a poem)... they begged
to be read aloud so we could here women’s voices in them” (Page, Letter to Gloria

Nixon-John, October 31, 1996). In begging to be read aloud, these poems became a

platform of sorts — a platform about the lived reality.

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The Country of Bronwen Wallace and Emmylou Harris

In the introduction to Feminine Endings: Music. GenderLand SexualiLy, Susan

 

McClary tells us that: “Like any social discourse, music is meaningful precisely in as far
as at least some people believe that it is an act in accordance with that belief. Meaning is
not inherent in music, but neither is it in language. Both are activities that are kept afloat
only because communities of people invest in them, agree collectively that their signs
serve as valid currency.” Furthermore she tells us that “Most members of a given social
group succeed in internalizing the norms of the chosen music and are quite sophisticated
in their ability to respond appropriately.” (McClary, 21).

When Bronwen Wallace made clear her affection for country music, she was also
making clear her affiliation with a particular social group, gender, and class. Because she
was clearly “of the academy” and moving in literary circles, this was a telling move.
R.W. Hodge says that country music signals the psychological and entertainment needs of
a primarily “blue collar working class audience” (Hodge in Seeger and Reiser, 5 35). And
further, Charles Gritzner adds: “It is this class of Americans which has given birth to the
art form (country music), established its commercial popularity, and continues to derive
the greatest satisfaction from its ‘down to earth’ mode of communication” (Gritzner,
857). As one author notes even further, “(the) mundane themes result from the fact that
the modern world is sadly lacking in proletarian heroes” (Landy, 68). Clearly country
music has often been cited as the folk music of the working class. It is a product of this
class and a form of reality based communication. It is the literature of this class set to

music, a kind of subversive way to get the word out about the lived reality of a class. It

98

does so because it provides a very revealing self portrait of the blue-collar working class,
and the voice of that class is often female. What is even more significant to mention here
is the fact that most country performers have lived the life of which they speak in their
“country narratives.” That is “most performers, it would appear, have ‘paid their dues’.
With but a few exceptions, the majority of traditional artists either write their own
material, or adopt material authored by others within their relatively small, closely knit,
professional community. (And) this appears to be an extremely important link in the folk
chain; the message emanates from within the tradition itself” (Gritzner, 859). But it is
even more than all this. The fact that country music has a female musical tradition is of
great importance to our connection with Wallace and to the social political waves she was
making:

We find women’s voices ringing loudly in our (country)

folk culture. There was a female musical tradition in America

long before the advent of entertainment industries. Women’s

activities as collectors of songs and as singers reflected their

central family role as provider and mother. As music, work

and leisure intermingled, women also had an important

community role as bearers of tradition. And because women

were so central as teachers, and keepers (of country music),

a distinct female point of view was passed through the

generations. (Bufwack and Oermann, x)

When Kitty Wells and Patsy Cline became extremely popular in the 1950’s and
1960’s, they opened a post World War II door. At this time, men were writing sagas and
songs about their travels and women were writing about a “bigger” world too, a world of
cheatin’, alcohol, abuse and divorce (Oermann, Robert K., 315).

In the 1970’s, most male country singers were still writing about mother in the home,

rambling men, prison, hard work, disappointed love, and traditional religion. Similar to

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what was happening in poetry in the 1960’s and 1970’s, there was an elitist attitude
toward country music while there was also a push for the university to study country
music.

It is clearly obvious that saga and narrative are both a part of the country music
tradition from “The Wreck of the Old 97” (about a 1903 train wreck) to the 1960’s, “The
Ballad of Francis Gary Powers,” and “The Ballad of Patsy Hearst” (both written by Red
River Dave McEmery).

When Bob Dylan walked onto the stage with an electric guitar he was believed to have
betrayed the folk community. He did not reaffirm what his followers expected. He,
therefore, made a political statement (McClary, 27). He created a rupture of sorts. His
followers responded politically. He was believed to have made a mistake, believed to
have breached the expectations of some social groups, the groups in which the established
community placed him. Wallace did the same with her style and focus in poetry as well,
and while she was writing in a “high art form,” her public affection for country music was
a symbol of that “breach.” She was also pointing to the nature of her decisions with
regard to the style her poetry took.

When Bronwen Wallace wrote the poems in her collection Keep that Candle Burning
Bright & Other Poems and dedicated this collection to Emmylou Harris, her move was
intentionally political. She said that she hoped the poems conveyed the voice of the
ordinary, as did the songs of Harris with their dropping g’s; she also hoped the poems
caught the pedal-steel sounds of that music and the spaces between longing and what is.
Erin Claire Moure' tells us that she believes that the poems in this, Wallace’s last

collection, are “resisting the urge to compress further into ‘the word’. Resisting at the

100

same time the urge to expand the connection between individuals into ‘characters’... a
melody linked here to the most ordinary” (Mouré 40). This resistance, of course, is an
expression of Wallace’s insistence on the reality base of her writing, a need to keep the

political function clear/pure in that poetry. It denies the spin the capitalist or patriarchs

would put on it.

And “just as women have repeatedly refused to split their lives, to separate hand and
heart, private and public, feeling and action in their struggles, so it is with their songs...a
political song doesn’t have to be explicitly militant to be a song of resistance”
(Henderson, Kathy and Frankie Armstrong. 12). Emmylou Harris knows that. Wallace

knew that as well. That Wallace saw the need to affiliate with this musical form is

significant to say the least.
I 11 her “Songbirds And Hurtin’ Songs,” Wallace says:

Of course, when I’m listening to Emmylou Harris
I’m listening to a whole lot of other people at the
same time, like Gram Parsons, Rodney Crowell,
Kitty Wells, Chuck Berry, Merle Haggard,

Dolly Parton, and at least two busloads of

church choirs. All that proves is that nobody
sings alone, though it’s equally true that nobody,
not even Emmylou Harris, will ever sing

“Sweet Dream of You” the way Patsy Cline

did and that Jesse Winchester’s rendition of
“Songbird” can’t hold a candle to Emmylou’s.
This is what I mean when I say that all lives
weave that way, in and out, between all that we
share and all that we don’t, manners and mystery,
History and the moment I get called on, as you do,
to be nobody but me. (Wallace, Keep That Candle Burning Bright, 17)

If we look at music history/theory (classical or otherwise) more closely, there are

obvlous differences between what are considered to be masculine and feminine narratives

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in most musical traditions. Not just in style but in placement as well. Of course the
masculine narratives and characters are portrayed as active and are principle to the work.
The feminine is contained, just as an easy obstacle.15 This is not the case in country
music. While this realm is thought to be geographically limited, the voice, the
protagonist and “the Diva” are clearly female. Its history is female as well. This is
strange when one considers that the country south of the Mason Dixon is, on the surface,
slower to embrace feminism, slower to replace the skirt with trousers (Did they have to
sing longer and harder to be heard? Did they have to be more plaintive?) The rupture
here comes from within, within one woman’s story, one woman’s family, one woman’s
town and it is found where you least expect it. Wallace would say:
1 say there’s nothing like country
for a hurtin’ song, something to do with steel strings,
I think, and the way a country voice isn’t afraid to let
you hear the places where it breaks... '6
(Wallace, Keep That Candle Burning Bright, 17)
Like Wallace’s poetry, country music is direct, honest, and close to home. In a 1996
i nterview that I had with Carolyn Smart, she told me that Wallace was concerned that the
debate about narrative/narrative structure might move those who create literature toward
an established status quo and that for the most part this would erase women’s voices
again and particularly the voices of working women (Smart, August 1996). Perhaps
Wallace turned to country music for an example of where the working class reality was
kept in view. I think Wallace knew that country music would not forsake this narrative

\
\ S
3 cc I eresa DeLauretis, “Desire in Narrative”. or James Webster’s “Sonata Farm.” New Grave 17. 498 for a

d iscussion more in depth and specific to music.

I 61.
Uch like the breaks that occur in the capitalistic patriarchal structure.

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bent. The fact that Wallace specifically picked Harris for the thread in her last collection
of poetry is also significant as there are obvious parallels not just between these two
artists but between their lives as well.

I am listening to Harris as I write this and it occurs to me that her songs move along

(like the two-step, a slow 10pe, a train pulling in or out, a hammer on a nail). Also there
is no disguise in Harris. She is clearly country, not “new country,” not ashamed of the
denasal voice. And she surrounded herself by honky-tonk rifts and slides. It occurs to me
that perhaps I should try to sing a Wallace poem especially those in “Marrying Into the
Family,” and it is at this moment that the little clefts or spaces in the Wallace poems are
like a deep breath that Harris might take or the hesitation in the two step before moving
forward again. I’m looking at Wallace’s poem “Great Aunt”:

Everyone says she’s remarkable

for 93 her mind so clear...

and again

Uncle Bill can remember her

doing up tomatoes more jars

than he could count as a boy...

(Wallace, Marrying Into The Family, 13)

At a dinner party in Kingston that I gave for many of Wallace’s female friends, these
friends discussed Wallace’s love for folk music, but particularly country music. In fact,
Wallace was very supportive of many of the local folk and country artists.

Wallace breaks open the ordinariness of the song, “White Shoes,” by Harris and tells
us that it is, in fact, a religious parable, that the ordinary is spiritual, and that it can take us
S()I‘newhere. That is, the ordinary transforms us in extraordinary ways:

I know I’ll feel better, when I slide down into

the leather sings Emmylou when she sings “White Shoes,”
a song in which she wakes up from a dream and

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sees them in a magazine and goes out to get them

and wears them out on the town that night and

meets The Guy. A song that I now understand to

be a religious parable, just like “Wheels” or any

of those other songs she sings about truckers,

heading home. (Wallace, Keep The Candle Burning Bright, 14)

And these “religious parables” sung by Harris or written by Wallace are about the
working class or the artifacts of this class. about a tow-truck driver, billboards, truck
stops, T-shirts, bourbon, or good corn whiskey. Or they are about the laundromat and
folding underwear, and Jesus can matter-of—factly appear rolling a cigarette “in the old
familiar dirt and sky” (Wallace, Keep The Candle Burning Bright, 34).

There is hopefulness in both Wallace and Harris and a pride about what the working
class can do, as well as a sorrow about what the women in particular have to do to
survive, and how it is that they are still held down by a structure that places man and

machine above them. The folk wisdom of grandmother’s grey sampler that appears in
Wallace’s “The Kingdom of the Father” would be at home an Emmylou Harris song. The
Old photographs, the bad times Grandma and Grandpa Wagar had in 1927, the mending,
the recipes, the brown hay, all possibilities grist for Harris or for Wallace. There is most
clearly, however, more to the connection then meets the car. Just like Wallace was
aSking the question, “What is poetry?” with her work in the early 80’s, music historians
and popular culture theorists were asking, “What is country music?” This “new look” at
Country music history and its roots beyond Nashville, beyond contemporary hit records,

and beyond male superstars (was an) “... attempt to place music in its social context and

‘0 eXplain why songs happen to do what they do. And it’s (it was) an attempt to preserve

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and appreciate the music of the disenfranchised. the overlooked, and the ignored. Most
important, this look is a document of women’s lives... the backbone and lifeblood of
America” (Bufwack and Oermann, ix). When we take the time to look at the story of
women in country music, we have a look at the lives of the majority of American women.
More specifically, we can look to country music of this time as a music that gives us
information and story about the working-class and a rich, often matriarchal tradition. “It
stands as one of the only documents of working-class women’s thoughts created by
working class women for working-class women...”

It describes poverty, hardship, economic exploitation, sexual

subjugation, and limited opportunity. Sometimes it is self-

defeating and reactionary, painful and despairing. But it also

contains outspoken protest and joyful rebellion, shouts of

exaltation and bugle calls of freedom. There is human victory

as well as, sadness here, victory as well as, heartache. The

history of country music reveals a rich vein of positive images,

self-assertive lyrics, and strong female performers (and)

There was a female tradition in America long before the

advent of the entertainment industry. (Bufwack and Oermann, xi)

The connection here is obvious, but exciting enough to mention. The working of
patriarchy evident in this music long before the advent of entertainment as an industry is
well documented. That this form of music is dependent on the stories in the ordinary
style of discourse is important to our connection between Wallace and Harris or Wallace
and country music. What is also clear in the work of Bufwack and Oermann, as well as
country scholar Archie Green, and discographer Will Ray Heathrose, is that country

music was the voice of alienation and loss of community in industrial mass society.

Richard Peterson tells us: “Among the recurrent elements of country songs is the strong

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sense of the narrative. For this reason, country music has often been called a storytellers’
medium” (Peterson, 2).

What is also true is that the chord structures are also kept relatively simple in country
music. George Hay of the Grand Ole Opry used to tell his musicians before they came in:
“Keep it close to the ground tonight boys” (Hay, George D., 12). Also, the penchant for
stories that is in country music is not as prevalent in other forms of contemporary music.
In jazz, the story is de-emphasized. Bluegrass, which evolved out of country, has more
complex musical structures. Rock tends to focus more on a particular moment. Rap is a
commentary that really features the artist rather than the story (Peterson, 2-3).

What is clear, particularly if we look at 1980 for example, is that men were still
writing hell-raising redneck songs and women were exploring human relationships. What
is also clear is that country music was and still is addressed to an adult working-class
audience from both rural and urban backgrounds (Peterson, 8). Clearly Peterson believes
that country music speaks mostly for the working-class but does so in terms which do
little to bolster the appeal of Marxist ideology because it is a part of the continuing
cultural heritage of field hand and factory worker- both linked to the past. This, it is
clear, was the appeal of country music to Harris and to Bronwen Wallace. “In Bellyfull
of Bluebird Wine,” Wallace places Emmylou into a setting:

the table is covered with arborite...‘ smeared with cigarette ashes,
chip crumbs, squashy bits of pickled egg. The band is

playing “The Last Cheater’s Waltz,” someone’s done

you wrong, the bottle’s let you down and there’s

nothing but Sunday between you and the rest of the
week... (Wallace, Keep The Candle Burning Bright & Other Poems, 29)

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Interesting too, is that when we look at postwar music by men, women are in part
blamed for most of their problems. However, women answered this loud and clear. One
of those women. .. is, Emmylou Harris. Harris, of course, was following the likes of
Linda Hargrove and Dolly Parton when she sang “Making Believe” (1977), and women
like Hargrove, Parton, and Harris moved country into the mainstream. Music that was
hillbilly before, suddenly became “folk” and then “country-rock.” Like Wallace’s poems,
these women moved country into a bigger arena.

But why did Wallace focus in on Emmylou Harris in her last collection Keep That
Candle Burning Bright & Other Poems? Why not some other country diva? This was a
nagging question until I found biographical information about Harris.

Harris was not a coal miner’s daughter or a country waif. She was a middle-class
music enthusiast who found purpose and meaning in country music. Born in 1947 to a
middle-class family in Birmingham, Alabama, she moved frequently because her father
was in the Marine Corps. Like Wallace, she left college in her case to pursue her music.
She went from small club to small club in New York City, but the music industry took
little notice of her. In an article published in Nashville Magazine Harris says about her
life:

My life, I suppose, has been a feminist one. I’ve dealt with
problems that the movement dealt with...Like in my early days

I was a working single mother and found that two girls, each
with a child, couldn’t share a house and each get food stamps at
the same address. There needed to be and still needs to be a lot
of consciousness raising (Harris in McLaurin and Peterson, 9).

The review Harris received in 1975 for her rendition of the classic “If I Could Only

Win Your Love” calls this single a splash of mountain spring water on the Pan-Cake-

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makeup face of Music City” (“Back to Country” in Bufwack and Oermann). That the
maternal roots of country music were of concern to Harris is clear. As she said: “I don’t
see why on the Country Music Association awards show we can’t see people like Kitty
Wells performing...l think country music should take pride in its roots.” Her return to her
roots was met with the same skepticism that Wallace faced with her poetry. Harris said
she trusted this form that is rooted in the history of country because “I trust the people; I
really do... I believe there will always be an audience for pure country music. Uh, even if
there isn’t, I’ll still be singing it.” And after she won awards in the early 1980’s, she
brought back some of the oldies of both men and women like Buck Owens, George
Jones, and Patsy Cline. When they expected her to go pop she gave the critics” Blue
Kentucky Girl” and this, too, sold a million! (Harris in Bufwak and Oermann, 426-7).
The following Harris quote is so much like something Wallace would say that I must
share it. When asked why she didn’t go pop she said: “You can probably find all I like in
even the smallest town. To me, there’s just so much... in country music” (Harris in
Bufwak and Oermann, 427).

In Wallace’s 1991 collection (published posthumously), she talks of Gram Parson’s
death (Parson, by the way, fought to get Harris notoriety), she talks of Harris voice
blooming from his death. Most telling in this poem is Wallace’s description of how
hearing Harris sing affected her:

Hearing her sing like that, my chest tightens, thick
with all those voices I cannot name and never
acknowledge. How I take whole lives in an afternoon,
sitting around listening, drinking coffee, watching the
light drift from pine tree to the garden, touching each

thing it rests on freely, as we, sometimes are able to touch.
How it was wanting brought me to these poems. (Wallace,

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Keep That Candle Burning Burning Bright, 42-43)

And furthermore, let me share “Rhythm and Genes” from Keep That Candle Burning

Bright:

We all hear- though we may not be conscious of - the beat
that thrums through every human conversation. Rhythmic
syncluony it’s called, our sync sense, which like the other
five, conducts us through the worlds we make of each
others stops and starts, digression, turns and leaps of
thought, hyperbole, lies, warnings, lover’s cries- we move
to music... you could say that the music we use to heal
ourselves or bury ourselves, send someone off to war or
marriage is actually composed of tears or adrenaline or
those gushy swooshes of the heart that push us into each
other’s arms. (Wallace, Keep The Candle Burning Bright, 41-2)

It was fitting, I think, that Harris’ song “Boulder to Birmingham” from her album
“Pieces of the Sky” concluded the memorial service for Bronwen Wallace. In this most
somber, most traditional and formal of occasions, Wallace’s last intent was for her
mourners to hear the twang of guitars and the long vowels of Harris joined by voices of a
country choir singing a story about love and despair:

I don’t want to hear a love song

I got on this airplane just to fly

And I know there’s nothing for me
but all that you can show me

is a prairie and a sky.

And I don’t want to hear a sad story
full of heartbreak and desire

last time I felt like this

I was in the wilderness and

the canyon was on fire.

And I stood on the mountain

in a meadow watched a bird
watched a bird... (Harris, Pieces of the Sky, cut 4)

A Different Voice

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Discourse studies and numerous studies in the field of social psychology point to the
differences between the languages used by men as compared to the language used by
women. The research of Carol Gilligan suggests that: “The failure to see the different
reality and to hear their (women’s) voices stems in part from the assumption that there is
a single mode of social experience and interpretation that class, race, and gender does not
matter. ” And further that “in the different voice of women lies the truth of an ethic of
care, the tie between relationship and responsibility...” (Gilligan, 173).

Of course, hearing and more particularly listening to women was important to
Bronwen Wallace, and she was mindful of the form that their words took. She knew that
women shared a different voice, and these voices made their way into her poems. At the
dinner party that I hosted for many of Bronwen’s friends, I heard over and over again how
Wallace enjoyed hearing the stories of her friends. In fact, Wallace made it a habit to
invite acquaintances over to lunch or dinner just to share stories. This was clear to the
women whose lives she touched. Perhaps she did this so that women might have an
audience toward whom they might air the details of the specific inadequacies that shape
their lives in a patriarchal society. Perhaps she was perpetuating and encouraging the
speaking of her story.

“Here I was just someone she worked with and I was invited over to lunch, and Bron
sat across the table, leaned toward me, elbows on the table, and asked, ‘How is your life
going, I hear you are moving.’ Then she listened to the whole dull story, commiserated,

then added her own” (McCrimmon, Janet. Kingston, June 1995).

110

It is no surprise then that in the 1991 F all/W inter edition of Canadian Pow, Bronwen

 

Wallace was named among the Canadian women poets who were launching an implicit
attack on mainstream traditional poetry and re-embracing that which has been designated
female forms of talk. She is cited as using the “inability topos,” (a term I do not like), to
do so. Wallace, like Libby Scheier (in her poem “A Poem About Rape” in di Michele
Anything is Possible, 129) and Atwood (in “True Stories”), cuts short or diverts to the
inability topos‘7 (I like to think of this as rupturing the topos). In “Connecting,” just as
Wallace is about to escape from the family heirloom she is describing to move into what
we expect will be myth or mysticism. She, instead, does this:

That’s about it

Not enough for a poem really

...but both of them (family story and bowl) just kind of

sit there refuse to relinquish

the appropriate metaphor. (Wallace, Marrying Into The Family, 14)

Metaphor is clearly not the aim here, the particulars that subvert traditional

assumptions about poetry, language, and gender clearly are (York, 17-24). Also, if we
look at Wallace’s poem “Connecting,” it is important to notice that once the poet (and the
fruit bowl) cannot relinquish the “appropriate metaphor,” the poem goes on immediately
to describe one generation of women taking care of another:

And my mother can’t give me

much else only remembers

sitting with her in the evenings

her parents out somewhere

and the old woman’s hands too shaky

to light a lamp so my mother
would stick kindling in the stove

‘

17 The inability topos is simply woman’s inability to operate within male discourses. That is, there is no topos
Common to both males/females. Therefore, the notion of poetry granting access to universals is lost. In the poems

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wave it in the room
like a torch
her grandmother never saying a word... (Wallace, Marrying Into

The Family, 15)

I hear Gilligan’s theory validated in the direction that the above poem takes because I
clearly hear an ethic of care in the poem and a tie between relationship and responsibility.
The Poem “Particulars,” something happens, as well as other things. “Particulars”

begins at grandmother’s table; the poet’s father is stumbling over the blessing. It is
suggested that he is stumbling over these words because

he was really asking for

...a blessing, on food they’d earned

casting metal, teaching other people’s kids

or planting themselves in the fields...
Here it seems that the “inability topos” is one of class, and the formal blessing viewed as
inappropriate words for those gathered.

In “Two Women Talking: Correspondence 1985-87,” Wallace tells Erin Mouré that,
on the question of language she is, “bespoken by, determined by her society, by the
ideology of a white, bourgeois, western, capitalist, patriarchal world view.” (42) And
also, that her experience has helped her to see that her language (which comes from these
experiences) is not monolithic. She says that it is “impossible, perhaps to decipher all the
small, private languages with which I am learning to speak what my culture denies. And

in that impossibility lies the voice, which is mine alone, from which, on a good day, the

poems come” (Wallace, Two Women Talking, 50-1).

 

 

mentioned above. the inability topos is demonstrated within the text.

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The Others (Contemporary Canadian ’Feminist’ Writers)

Let’s see where Wallace fits into some of the thinking and writings of other feminist
authors (declared or reluctant with regard to the label), and in doing so, we will also see
how Wallace breaks from the Marxist tradition and position on art and how the focus is
on the patriarchal structure instead.

“Writing and isms are two different things. Those who pledge their first loyalty to
isms often hate and fear artists... because art is uncontrollable... From the point of view of
those who want a neatly ordered universe, writers are messy and undependable. They
often see life as complex and mysterious, with messiness and loose ends...” (Atwood in
Scheier, Sheard & Wachtel, 21). That Wallace would agree for the most part is obvious
in her comments particularly to Mouré.

It is clear that their styles are very different, but Wallace admired Di Brandt because

Brandt asks the question “how do you write yourself out of silence” and answered herself
with:

say to yourself each time lips vagina tongue

lips do not exist catch the rising sob in

your throat where it starts deep under your

belly the tips of your breasts your secret

flowing your fierce wanting & knowing say...(Brandt,

“Questions I Asked My Mother”)

In Barbara Godard’s work on feminist reading of texts, she tells us “reality is a fiction

produced (coded) by its cultural representations. (And) Currently, patriarchal relations
set the terms for the forms of subjectivity available in reader-text relations, for women do

not represent, they are is represented.” Furthermore, the value of feminist criticism is that

it “explores the gendered reader’s construction of textual order, an order which has

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hitherto been predominately patriarchal.” Godard also believes that we must look at the
historical situation formed by discourses of gender, class, and race, and that we must see
the overlap of the personal and the political. This certainly aligns Godard with Wallace,
and most certainly makes Wallace’s text one over which we might have a meaningful
discourse (Godard in Scheier, Sheard & Wachel. 1 14-117).

Daphane Marlatt warns us that what we need is “a recognition of real differences of
life experience, privilege and accessibility to the center because without it, ‘i’ simply
co-opt ‘others’ experiences in attempting to make ‘my/we’ cover their ‘i’. (That is) we
cross over many borderlines, we inhabit many borderlands.” Looking at differences to
“collaborate rather than assimilate is essential if we are going to learn not to dominate one
another” (Marlatt in Scheier, Sheard & Wachel, 192-3).

What Erin Mouré says is of particular importance when we think about Wallace’s

work because Mouré’s words call attention to the political (law)- that place where civil
order, binary thinking, and hierarchical thinking all lie. She says that poetry precedes

this- our voices have to “leak out” before it becomes law. However, the poem

transgresses, but contains the law too. For this reason, Moure' insists it is vital to look at

how the language of poetry privileges your voice, especially if the dominant order

excludes you. Because if unwatched, it resolves itself in a binary way (Mouré in Scheier,

Sheard & Wachtel, 202-3). Wallace corresponded with Mouré from 1985 to 1987, and

this correspondence is available in the Living Archives of The Feminist Caucus of the

League of Canadian Poets in a publication called Two Women Tallgg. These letters are

rnOst interesting and worth careful readings again and again. On many points, Wallace

agrees with Moure’, but just as often she disagrees. There is also an on-going tension in

*

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the correspondence. At one point in an on-going dialogue about Barbara Godard’s work,
Wallace says: “What really angers and hurts me (and this may be what I identify as
dogma) is the feeling I’ve had both from your letters and our conversation, that my
questioning of deconstructionism. means lack of openness. Anglo-Saxon mistrust of
theory, lack of solidarity, etc. You say this is an open discussion but the parameters of it
remain within deconstructionist theory.” She warns Mouré that “what gets blurred (in
much feminist theory), is that ‘male’ and ‘patriarchal’ get used as synonyms both
pejorative.” And clearly again and again Wallace says that her writing does not come
from some compartment in deconstruction theory. And that posing it as a theory makes it
just another compartment for many. She says most emphatically that:
I write the way I do because I am lower-middle class
white, heterosexual, because my father worked
in a factory and my mother taught retarded kids,
because my grandmother was without a doubt
the coldest most repressed bitch I ever met-
and one of the strangest most fearless women
I have ever seen...everything I have learned
of value I have learned from or through women
and because I believe that gentleness is in the
hands, regardless of gender. (Wallace, Two Women Talking, 36)
'That Mouré answers Wallace with a history of the language amuses me. That Wallace
answers Moure' diatribe with a personal narrative makes me laugh. I must include

Wallace’s response here. It isn’t the text really that causes my laughter, but the “switch-

a-roo” that Wallace maneuvers. (In all honesty, I can see where they agree as much as

 

Where they disagree. Interesting that it is how to talk about these issues that becomes
problematic for two such open-minded articulate women.) Here is Wallace’s response to

the lecture that Mouré gives her

115

 

 

 

Part 1:

Wake up and Smell The Coffee

My mug of coffee in the morning, along with the toast and jam or

peanut butter, maybe bacon and eggs, is what I consider “a proper breakfast.”

A normal breakfast. Yet, of course, this perception is structured for me by

the society in which I live, by dozens of movies, commercials, advertisement,
jokes, etc. Most of the experiences I associate with coffee-are also “spoken”

for me by my society as surely as the words I use to describe its taste as “mellow”
“rich” “dark” etc. As surely as the articles in the morning paper are structured,
are seen, are spoken, from a definite, though often unacknowledged, ideology
masking as ‘objectivity,’ rationalized as ‘real life.’

To the extent that I accept this cup of coffee without questioning its
appearance on my table any further, I am bespoken by, determined by my
society, by the ideology of a white, bourgeois, western, capitalist, patriarchal
world view...

But.

I am also the daughter of a man who grew up on a farm, obsessed all his
life with where food comes from, a health nut long before there were such
things, man who kept a map at the dinner table and traced for me the routes
the foods we ate traveled to our dinner table. (The few he allowed that didn’t
grow nearby, that is.)

I am, as well, the young student who, over a cup of coffee, was introduced
to the writings of Karl Marx by a long-haired, thick-glassed young woman
who was to be my best friend for many years. It would lead to many events,
not the least of which would be the opportunity, several years later, to read
Capital in Detroit with an ex-McCarthy victim, autoworker, commie. An
experience that opened the world for me, even though, now, I recognize
quite clearly that Marxism, as a methodology, has it limitations.

“...Material relations between persons and social relations between things.”

Which is exactly, of course, what the society I live in does not want me to
see in my mug of coffee.

But I have had experience which allows me to see it and to that extent
the language through which my experience of coffee is spoken is not monolithic.

The extent to which my experience remains my own is the extent to which
I have found a chink in the wall of determinism. And through that chink I can
see her. The woman who picked the coffee beans. Or who cleaned and sorted
them. Prostituted herself in order that her kids could eat because her land had
been taken away in order to grow them. Watched her husband, her sons,

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her daughters ‘disappear’ because they tried to oppose this.

Impossible, perhaps, to decipher all the small, private languages with which
I am learning to speak what my culture denies. And “In that impossibility-
which is an absolute one- lies our freedom from determinism” (Berger).
Lies the voice. which is mine alone, from which, on a good day, the true
poems come.

April 8, 1986
Kingston

Dear Erin,
Enclosed is my response to your last letter.
It is a departure, a lateral leap, from my former approach
to the questions we have been discussing about language
and writing. I have trouble talking about theory, I realized.
I don’t do it very well. What’s more I don’t want to talk about it.
I want to apply how I see the world, my rather hodge-podge
theories of language, to actual readings.
Hence the enclosed.
They include: coffee, a fairytale, an old woodcut, and a poem by
Sharon Olds. I am also sending, at the end, a poem of my own.
I would be interested in watching you read something in return.
I am really looking forward to seeing you at the AGM.
Much talk and good fun I hope.
Much Love,
Bron
It is clear that Wallace doesn’t really object to deconstruction. I venture to say that the
very nature of her writing “deconstructs,” questions the more lyrical forms by intruding
upon them. She is well aware of the systems in language that limit us and that prevent
any real change in our desire to advance, and she did some altering in the form of poetry
because it better fit her needs- system and her story. She just didn’t want to get into the

name-dropping debate. That language is androcentric and has silenced women is clear to

her because everything else has silenced women. She does, in other words, see that

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patriarchy extends to language, and she chose to “deconstruct” in her poetry.

A word about Wallace and her contemporaries are in order. In the spring of 1984
Mary di Michele edited a collection of the works of eleven Canadian women poets
entitled Anythingis Possible. This collection is significant as it contains the poetry of ten
women who Wallace considered her contemporaries. It is also significant because the
women featured in this collection express attitudes about the role and plight of women
that were shared by Wallace. While their styles differ from Wallace for the most part,
that is while they do not accomplish the same stylistic feats that I feel Wallace has, they
are worth mentioning with some detail. Mary di Michele had published an earlier
collection with Wallace in 1980 and it was with Wallace’s help that di Michele decided
which poems to include in Anything is Possible. The way in which di Michele describes
the collection follows. She says:

This collection represents a new generation of women writers whose
language is a kind of truth serum, asking pointed questions

of the speaker as well as the words themselves spoken. With deep
feeling, but without sentimentality, these poems describe the world
as they see it. Because they are women to whom the world of
feeling has been abandoned by many men and because they are
incisively intelligent, their work has a special integrity and a

facility to illuminate some vital areas of experience which
Have been ignored by our literature to date.

(di Michele, Anything is Possible, 5.)
Later in the introduction di Michele also says: “We are too wise, too sophisticated to
look for heroes among us, but the heroic is a vital energy or impulse; a kind of collective
courage and generosity is needed to transform one world (di Michele, Anflhing is

Possible, 6.). The poets (other than di Michele and Wallace) who are included in the

 

118

anthology are: Roo Borson, Marilyn Bowering, Jan Conn, Lorna Crozier, Susan
Glickman, Erin Moure’, Libby Scheier, Carolyn Smart, and Rosemary Sullivan. Some are
mentioned earlier in this text but some are not.

Borson’s poems in this collection put simply, focus on the difference between what a
man and a woman seem to want, the difference between what they seem to feel, but more
importantly what each comes to expect. In Borson’s poems girls learn to imagine the
luxury of invisibility but they also how to give up their own desires and self worth for the
needs of men. The most extreme example occurs in “It’s Never Enough.” In this poem
Borson talks about bikers who will “. . .push a woman into a comer where she can’t/ say
no. Even though she knows/ exactly what they’re doing to her, and knows/ they do it just
because/ they’re careless, deliberate. / She’s learned to need that violence, that
searching,/ even if it’s secondhand. . In this poem and others Borson tells us that women
are forced to comply even to violence but, that they hear a different music but, that they
have learned to be quiet about “the music” in their heads.

In Bowering’s “Lucia Martyr,” an old woman is the symbol for timeless, material
comfort. Here Bowering tells us that woman is time, nature and religion, which existed
before the organized religions of man.

At midnight,

when the constant pilgrims
sleep,

the old woman comes

and lifts the lid

of my coffin.

Her kisses is sunken

and warm,

not like my father’s
which recalls

119

speechless death.

She loosens the shutters,
and I hear water touch,
stone by stone,

along the succeeding shore.
her tears are minutes.

My father cannot know:

he had no midwife.

She has wept with me
since the earliest nights.
when Christ was not
my comforter.
(Bowering in di Michele, Anything is Possible, 42.)
In Jan Conn’s “ Instructions to A Daughter,” Conn tells the daughter to “hold nothing
in the hands/ that cannot be fused to itself:/. .. She also says: “burn the heart like a wick
in oil. / Pluck it out: hold it so/ the four winds can breathe on it;/ cover it with ashes from
a wood fire, / disguise it as a fist, wrap it/ in a palm leaf. //” After doing this, Conn tells
her daughter, she will be ready to love. In other words Conn insists, he daughter must
know herself and the natural world, find understanding and solace before she can love.
There is no mention of men in this breathtaking poem. (Conn in di Michele, Anything is
Possible, 59.)
I have mentioned Crozier elsewhere in this work but would like to mention her poem
“Pavlova” here because it suggests the internal struggle of the famous dancer, who, on her
death bed wonders: “Should I have had children instead? / Sons and daughters/ to show

pictures to. /. .. (Crozier in Anything is Possible, 67.) In other words, Pavlova wonders if

she should have done these traditional things expected by women.

120

Mary di Michele’s poem “Hunger,” mentioned elsewhere, was included in this

collection and clearl /' deals with men’s view about women as their views relate to one
I

specific pornographic magazine for men. In the poem a 24 year old model is disguised as

a child and is therefore more provocative reminds us how early women become prey. (di

Michele in Anything is Possible, 80-1.)

Susan Glickman’s poem “The Sadness of Mothers” speaks to the way in which

mothers live for the joy of others, what women in motherhood give up. I wish to include

the whole poem here:

THE SADNESS OF MOTHERS

The greatest poverty of all is this

to live for the joy

of others; to never know, or always too late

what could possibly gladden oneself. This

is the sadness of mothers

and the continuing crime

of the world. And every child

perpetrates it

and every mother

is a willing victim

and it goes on and on, the pelican

suckling its young on its own blood,

the nightingale’s chest against the thorn

singing the sweet song of martyrdom

to the greedy ear of the world. Oh,

the sadness of mothers haunts me, it fills my days
with lonely eyes, they are everywhere: pushing carriages
down alleys, back and forth in the hot sun,

sitting at bus-stops with too many packages

and not enough hands, never enough hands to wipe
all the tears of their own

never enough hands enough hearts enough blossoms
to lay to rest the sadness of everyone but especially
the sadness of mothers. Mothers weeping for the lost dreams
of children and the indignities of men,

mothers weeping for the girls they were one summer
before the world closed in. The sadness of mothers

121

is everywhere and a great crime and no one
will pay for it and no one can.

(Glickman in di Michele, Anything is Possible, 98.)
Erin Mouré poem “State of Rescue” while stylistically different from Wallace

9

addresses the abuse Wallace addresses in her “Intervals” poem. Like Wallaces “Free
Speech” the secondary victim is a child. Mouré describes the scene: “The woman is
holding the baby into the cold air/ beside two policemen at 4am/. .. As the woman moves
out, she rescues/ herself from fear, rescues the child whose eyes are caught/ in the coat of
terror, of furniture breaking in the night/. .. to the voice of his father/ who is not in
heaven, whose name is not clear/ whose will is his child/. .. (Mouré in di Michele,
Anything is Possible, 108.)

Libby Scheier’s poems speak to sexual abuse. In the rather bizarre poem called
“Dwarfs and War” even a small man commits rape. In “Some Days” the poet discusses
her ambivalence about the male sex organ. Then in “Reversals” the joy the poet once felt
about sex now seems to suffocate her. She compares her feeling about sex to other forms
of power and oppression.

REVERSALS

this love begins to shroud me
your body over mine

is a large mushroom

I am dark and damp and cold
the freedom you once brought me
feels now like

closing walls

the warmth your body gave me
clings and suffocates me now
it is hard to know why

this has happened
why these truths of some years

122

have turned upside down

but the French kings

were guillotined, the Czar
was murdered, and

capitalism is halfway down
the other side of the mountain
a small thing

like our true love

can also ripen and die

(Scheier in di Michele, Anything is Possible, 126.)
Carloyn Smart was one of Bronwen Wallace’s best friends and her poetry reflects the
concerns these two friends shared. The bond that women have for each other is
poignantly shared in “Outside Grand Forks, North Dakota.” What is also interesting is
how Smart uses the road trip mentioned as a vehicle for looking into the past just as

Wallace might have done. Smart also includes some dialogue but in a very limited way.

OUTSIDE GRAND FORKS, NORTH DAKOTA

We smoke cigarettes and the time passes slowly.

As I am driving, you are doing the talking

and in between, we listen to the radio.

Franco is dead the radio says

and outside, it is thirty below zero,

and the beaten wheat is lying in the fields.

There are no trees here. The road is long and straight
and the cigarettes seem to last forever.

We are lonely for each other

a we drive along, we are lonely

or even ourselves.

We reach the building we are aiming for,

A low white building lying in the shade

of the cold afternoon

We sit in the crowded waiting room,

the smell of dust on the magazines, the plastic plants.
From time to time the nurse passes by,

an opaque jar in her hands.

123

Somewhere a girl is screaming,

but no one is the room is listening,

and I cannot talk to you

because it is you who will be screaming
and I’m just here to listen.

You’ve gone in - I cannot bear to remember
the look we give each other.
before you turn the short comer and are gone.

It doesn’t take long,

and suddenly I see what it is

that the nurse is carrying,

and she passes me by with this thing in her hands
and she flushes it down the toilet.

I can hear them saying bring me a bowl,

she’s going to be sick

but you weren’t — you were always too proud.
There’s your pale face coming towards me,

my arms around your fine body.

Oh my sweet friend

we are lonely for even our childhoods
as we drive towards Canada,

the wind chilling right to our bones.

(Smart in di Michele Anythingis Possible, 137.)

 

Smarts’ poem “Grace is significant too.” In this poem a nanny named Grace, seems to
have little value to those who employed her to watch their child, yet she was somehow

considered less worthy of love because she had no children of her own.

GRACE

Grace was the woman paid to love me.

A small soft woman in grey and white
who died with one arm in her sensible coat
in 1963.

She had a close relationship with God

who loved her dearly, as I never did.

124

Stealing her heart with selfishness,

I gulped her life with my budding mouth.
You don ’t know how I suffer she’d say
as I’d laugh at her and pull away,

her skin so delicate

my breath would leave a scar.

She was a kind of refugee for love,
distanced by her sexlessness

From any family of her own,

I was her loved one, her darling,

the small baby placed in her happy arms
a week after my birth

and held there one way or another
unfill963

when a train took me away

to a school on the coast

and a life of my own, a history.

She died at Christmas,

on her way to the Carol Service.

She was so loved by God

that he took her with Him, they said,
to eat Christmas dinner in His arms.
But she always love me best, I said.
Grace was the woman paid to love me.

(Smart in di Michele, Anything is Possible, 142.)

In Rosemary Sullivan’s “The Sad Story of Dona Beatriz De La Cueva,” the natives

Beatriz appointed herself the first governess in the Americas’ after her husband, Don

Pedro, died. The male Gods were not happy about this. “Agua coughed and sent his mud

rolling into the city/ In the black coffin palace the unlucky one/ flew to the chapel with

her daughter and eleven maidservants/. .. That Dona Beatriz didn’t rule or survive long

was not a surprise to Sullivan. She ends her poem with “that women should know God

did not mean the city to be ruled by females//. That women could know greatness was the

limit to their potential for power. In other words they could not rule. (Sullivan in di

Michele, Anything is Possible, 153.)

125

The last poem in Anything is Possible is Wallace’s “A Simple Poem For Virginia

 

Woolf” (which is featured earlier in my work). In a sense this poem serves as a way for
the editor of the collection to say look, we have all of these concerns, and we have all of
these things to say yet here we are trying to squeeze our creative and our political work
between the menial tasks that have been relegated to us by the male dominated society.
Wallace also expresses her interest in the lives of women who do manage to get
recognized. She ends the collection by reminding us that our condition and our labor has
become vital to, central to the work.

...as I write these words

those ordinary details intervene
between the poem I meant to write
and this one where the delicate faces
of my children faces of friends

of women I have never even seen
glow on the blank pages

and deeper than any silence

press around me

waiting their turn

(Wallace in di Michele, Anything is Possible, 183.)

Maps, Roads, and The Light that Leads Us Back

A word is in order about the use of maps in Wallace‘s work. Like Atwood, Wallace
uses maps to lead us back into the past. In fact, in “Tuesday Morning,” Wallace relates

maps metaphorically to the past when she says:

Not this kitchen

but the one that maps

behind your eyes

its perspective of table-legs
and bottom drawers

the hem of your mother’s skirt

126

a world of voices
resonant with memory
and arms that carved
infallible questions

in the air above you...

(Wallace, Signs of The Former Tenant, 27.)

Several other references to maps can be found in her work. See “Intervals,” and “Life-

Lines” for two more examples.

Road trips are yet another way Wallace takes us back even while she is moving

forward. This is clear in “Anniversary,” in memoriam for her friend Pat Logan. Here

poet is going forward in her car:

The road turns off

just where it always does and rising
comes out to the second comer
where the graveyard is.

your grave. You. Behind Us...

(Wallace, The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 54.)

In the poem, “In My Mother’s Favourite Story,” Wallace tells a story about a time

when, as a child, Bronwen was lost,

writes:

I remember nothing of the incident

that the tiny child in the blue smocked dress
and soft white shoes

seems as remote from me

as any fairytale

that the treacherous streets of her journey
remain lost somewhere behind

the unexperience face of this I return to

on visits driving my car toward

my parent’s home the red bloom

of sunset caught for a moment in my windshield

127

then disappearing as I turn a corner. ..

(Wallace, Signs of the Former Tenant, l3.)

Wallace’s references to light are numerous. What makes these references unique are
the way in which they lead us to the past or the imagined past (as we might see the past in

the future.)

In “Red Light, Green Light,” we are also moved into this way of seeing time and

experience:

Something about playing outdoors
in the long summer evenings after supper
the particular quality of the light then
how it seemed to round
and soften even the most heat-glazed afternoons
so that the memory of those games
- the grace of our bodies emerging from the awkward
tangle of an ordinary growing up
into the fluid movement of our play-
has the glow of a painting
by Christopher Pratt an adult’s dream
of lost time...
(Wallace, Sign of the Former Tenapl, 7.)

That this way of seeing light often occurs in a kitchen scene is telling as well. In
“Freeze Frame” we find a couple sitting at a kitchen table, light falling in precise angles/
over plates and sugar bowl/” and while “something that holds them/ for a moment- the
exact/ moment when you enter- suspended/. .. (Wallace, Signs of the Former Tenant, 45.)

In “Women Sitting the poems ends with ...a women] sitting in that kind of silence/ to
spill itself like smoke/ around her//. (Wallace, Signs of the Former Tenant, 53.) The
smoke seems to relegate the woman to the past, and she has become a part of the invisible

past of all women as well.

128

INFLUENCES

The Land

Before my interest in Canadian poetry became keen, I thought of Canadian poetry, at
least the poetry that made its way into the American classroom, as verse that dealt
primarily with nature (the prairie, the north) and nationalism (filled with the colloquial
and anecdotal voice). I was admittedly unaware of the Canadian debate going on over
whether or not literature should be regional or cosmopolitan, but I was aware that many
Canadian poets of my generation were asserting themselves against the powerful voices
out of Montreal and Toronto. But for the most part, as an undergraduate student at
Wayne State University in Detroit in the 605, and a graduate student in the 705, I had a
feeling that Canadian literature was literature about a kind of civilized frontier.18

As I have discussed earlier in this work, I have since learned that deeply rooted in the
Canadian poetic tradition is: 1) the mourning of homes left and things lost, and 2) a better
account of the dismal surroundings both social and geographic. Like many poets before
her, and after her, Bronwen Wallace paid particular attention to the natural landscape of
her ancestors, as well as immediate landscape inclusive of her own garden. The social,
political, and aesthetic function of this landscape is clear and will be discussed at the end
of this section.

Bronwen Wallace lived in Kingston, Ontario Canada all but the eight years of her life she

spent in Windsor with her partner Ron Baxter and her son Jeremy Baxter (born in 1975).

 

'8 And still today. a litter better informed perhaps. I see much Canadian Literature as a way of mapping the territory. a
territory of physical as well as. psychological and social boundaries.

129

Bronwen Wallace was born in Kingston in 1945 to Ferdinand Wallace and Margaret (Wager)
Wallace, granddaughter of James Wallace and Edna (Reynolds) Wallace. Bronwen’s father’s
family lived on the same Kingston farm for nearly two hundred years, and the rolling hills,
tranquil inland lakes and small farm towns make their way into her writing as does the
patriarchal work into which women are born, live, and are still bound. Often times, Wallace’s
landscape is most certainly Al Purdy’s country in “The Country of Belleville”:

where old farms drift vaguely among the trees

a pile of moss covered stones

gathered for some ghost purpose

had lost meaning under the meaningless sky...

(Purdy, in Mandel, 8)

Bronwen liked to tell a story about the farmland in the Kingston area. She told this

story at readings and during several radio interviews. The story goes: It seems when the
first settlers (her Scottish ancestors among them) came over to Canada they were under
the impression, because of their experience with the land in Scotland, that if an area was
heavily wooded, it was also fertile. (In Canada however trees actually grow on rock.) So
many of these early settlers picked a mountain basically, a rocky mountain for their farms.
Being Scots and Presbyterians, however, they stayed (Gzowski, Radio interview with
Bronwen Wallace, March 14, 1986). Not surprising, some of this story has made its way
into Wallace’s poem, “In The Midst Of It” from Common Magi_c: “...farmlands draw
their nourishment from an ancient mountain range/ and houses rise, insistent/ as the rock
and almost as indifferent.” One point being, that Bronwen Wallace is a product of

stubborn people who survive on stubborn land. Another point being that there is a

tradition and a structure to contend with what precedes the more artificial structures and

130

traditions of patriarchy and capitalism albeit influenced and manipulated by these
artificial structures.

Wallace grew up around rural and working class people and farmers. And she made
clear that she personally could not separate the landscape from the people and the way
people talk: “I couldn’t separate the landscape of southern Ontario which appears
mundane, straight and ordinary, though I think it’s quite surreal and magical”
(Williamson, Janice. Interview with Bronwen Wallace, February 22, 1989).'9

We can see a glimpse of the Kingston of Wallace’s girlhood and the landscape of rural
life in “The Town Where I Grew Up,” and can see the dimensions of that territory
imposed by last names, religion, land ownership, and land use — all of the structures we
use to segregate and stratify ourselves. We also see the common territory of nature in this
poem:

I used to believe this.
Use to imagine an invisible
border, like the Maginot Line
we learned
about and the bare-boned fields beyond
where shacks grew.
...Planted for good luck
by the early settlers, the lilacs continued
long after the farms fail and houses
weather away.
flags of a different kind.
(Wallace, Common Magic, 6,7)
The settlement of Kingston and its surrounding territory prompted Wallace

particularly to look at its range of implications (about such things as the patriarchal

history). There is a glimpse of Wallace trying to attach and detach herself form Kingston

g

'9 This reference to the surreal and magical distances Wallace from certain canape's of Marxist ideology. We can’t
place her square in the beliefs of Marx or of F ekete or Lukacs.

131

in “Lonely for the Country” because even in the land there are reminders of our
powerlessness.

You wish you could tell yourself

that this is all too sentimental.

You want to agree with the person

who said, “There’s no salvation

in geography.”

But you can’t. (Wallace, Common Magic, 8)

“Into the Midst Of It” which I referred briefly to earlier, is the poem that Wallace liked
to read as a tribute to Purdy and their shared landscape. Therefore I include it in its

entirety here:
Into The Midst of It

You’ll take a map, of course, and keep it
open in front of you on the dashboard,
though it won’t help. Oh, it’ll give mileages,
boundary lines, names, that sort of thing,

but there are places yet

where names are powerless

and what you are entering

is like the silence words get lost in

after they’ve been spoken.

It’s the same with the highways.
The terse, comforting numbers

and the signs that anyone can read.
They won’t be any good to you now.
And it’s not that kind of confidence
you’re after anyway.

What you’re looking for are the narrower,
unpaved roads that have become

the country they travel over, dreamlike

as the spare farms you catch

in the corner of your eye,

only to see them

when you turn your head. The curves
that happen without warning

like a change of heart,

132

as if, after all these journeys,

the road were still feeling
its way through.

A man comes up on your right-blue shirt
patched from the sky-solid and

unsurprised. He doesn’t turn his head

at your passing and by the time your eyes move
to the rear-view mirror, the road has changed.
But it’s then you begin to notice

other people: women hanging clothes from grey
porches, a clutter of children on the steps.

Like the man, they do not move

as you go by and you try to imagine

how you must look to them: metallic glimmer
on the bright rim of their sky,

disturbing the dust

that settles behind you, slowly,

through the day’s heat,

while on your mind’s eye, their faces

form and change with the rippling patterns

sun and cloud make on the fields,

like the figures that swim below your thoughts
in the hour between dream and waking.

It makes you think of people you love,

how their faces look when they don’t know you’re
watching them

so that what you see there

forces you to recognize

how useless your love is, how little

all your h0pes, your good intentions

can ever do for them.

Only now, this doesn’t hurt any more,
becomes a part of your love, in a way,

just as the dry-weather drone of the cicada
belongs to the heat, to the dust that sifts

like ash over the shiny leaves,

this country you’re traveling through,

where the farmlands draw their nourishment
from an ancient mountain range,

and houses arise, insistent

as the rock and almost as indifferent,

133

making all your questions

about why people came here,

what they liked about it,

why they stayed

as meaningless as questions you might ask

of the trees or the earth itself.

You, who have lived your whole life believing
if you make enough plans

you wouldn’t need to be afraid,

driving through a countryside

only the road seems to care about,

to rediscover every time it enters

with that kind of love that’s partly tenderness
and partly a sort of confidence

you can’t put words around.

Like the look

the people at home will give you

when you get there: nonchalant and almost too deep
for you to see, as they turn back

to whatever held them

before you came. (Wallace, Common Magic, 20)

There is, of course, more going on here than a look at landscape and a coming to terms
against the middle-class mystique. We know historically that acquiring an actual, livable
home was and still is a struggle for working class women. That for many who have
homes, making them safe clean places is an additional struggle. This appreciation for the
landscape may be a way of creating a sense of ownership. In “The Town Where I Grew
Up” from Common Magic, Wallace sees a landscape that despite fences and despite the
Protestant ethic, a democracy of the land prevails which is symbolized by the lilacs that
flourish everywhere and survive everyone.

The Town Where I Grew Up

In the town where I grew up,
most of the people had ancestors
who were UKLs and they still

like things, tidy, kept their yards
fenced and their noses clean.

134

After that, the things that mattered
most were last names
and being Protestant.

North of town, the road

disintegrated into potholes and the dust
that weathered the grey shacks

where the grimy laundry flapping

in the trees was the flag

of another country.

Up there
people shooed their chickens
off the table when the pastor came.

Things happened.

Crops withered overnight, ramshackle
barns hid two-headed cattle and young
girls bore their father’s children.

What went on up there
was a story in a foreign language.

Pieces of it drifted into town,
like scraps of paper, catching
on the neat white fences

in the shaded streets.

Them and us.

I used to believe this.

Used to imagine an invisible
border, like the Maginot Line

we learned about in school,
between the teeming farms

that boarded our town

and the bare-boned fields beyond
where the shacks grew.

Now I think it’s merely

a matter of emphasis,

like the Globe & Mail

and the National Equirer
They’re both the same, really;

135

they both line words

like bars across the pages,
making you want to squeeze
between them into the white
where you think the truth is.

Each spring the countryside

fills up with lilacs. Every house

in town, every farm, every shack,

has a clump of white or purple

at the doorstep. And on the road north,
bushes occur in the fields, alone,

not a house in sight for miles.

You might think they’d grown wild,
but you’d be wrong. Planted for good luck
by the early settlers, the lilacs continue
long after the farms fail and houses
weather away.

Flags of a different kind.

They indicate the subterranean counties
plotted underneath the sleekest pastures,
and sanest red-bricked houses.

And rooted in the littered dark,

as dreams are, they bloom

each May as if they were

the only living things on earth.

And in the “Distance From Harrowsmith To Tamworth” Wallace takes us on a tour of

the family landscape that she, like so many others, returns to, when she tells us that

“...there’s still not/ room enough/ to separate love from geography.”

In the last stanza of this poem Wallace makes another leap for me when she names,

once again, the undiscriminating wild flowers and weeds and relates these plants to the

stories that she claims are all she has to call a country because there is no territory of her

experience. There is no real ownership here or elsewhere:

In the ditches purple Loosestrife, Horseweed,
Fleabane, St. John’s Wort, names I learned only this year

136

to make the flowers more familiar. Like these stories,
all I have to call a country.

Rich as blood, placenta for my future

already seeded in the field or that woman’s face
in the last town, the curve of road there

as it turns toward the next, Tamworth people say
for this one, needing something

to make it sound like a choice,

whatever holds them here,

whatever they come to love enough.

(Wallace, Common Magc, 16)

It seems to Wallace that it is only the ordinary language that we use to share our
common experiences face to face that helps us connect to the universal in our geography:

All over the city

you move in you own seasons

through the seasons of others: old women, faces clawed by weather
you can’t feel

...It’s always the chance word, unthinking

gesture that unlocks the face before you.

Reveals the intricate countries

deep within the eyes. The hidden

lives, like sudden miracles

That breathe there.
(Wallace, B.,“Common Magic” in Common Magic, 25)

It is, however, clear to me that before she came to terms with that landscape, Wallace
literally tried to escape it. One of the ways Wallace tried to escape the landscape was by
moving first to Vancouver, then to Windsor. Of course, politics was one reason she felt
she had to move; she felt she needed to get to a more radical/liberal urban hub. But
before that move, entering a Ph.D. program in Kingston at Queens was also an attempt to
escape. Then, whether conscious or not, her subsequent dropping out of the Ph.D.
program was a move back toward the land (and class) and what it represented for her.

In “Arguments With Myself,” Wallace describes a scene in a bookstore (this occurred

after she dropped out of the University):

137

It’s 1970, maybe 1971. I am standing in a bookstore with

a copy of The Cariboo Horses in my hand. I have just read
“The Country North of Belleville” and “Percy Lawson” and
a few others. I am crying like an idiot right there in the store
getting the book all wet so that I have to buy it. Maudlin,

of course. Sentimental as hell. I can hear my old English
profs sniffing as they read this.

But I don’t really give a shit. At that moment, I arrived, in
my own country, with land that I recognized under my feet,
and the people I knew around me, and a language I could get
my tongue around filling my mouth...So that’s what I owe to
Purdy in a literary sense. His work gave me permission to write
about the people I knew, and the landscape saw...

(Wallace, Argument With the World, 165)20

Even more interesting to note is that in several of her poems, when Wallace writes
about the landscape she also writes about the working class. That is, there seems to be an
influence rooted in the tradition but also a breaking away from it or a rupture from within.
The poem “Mexican Sunset” is a good example,

Mexican Sunsets

Somewhere in Mexico, a volcano erupts,
spewing dust that drifts northward

disturbing the atmosphere of Southern Ontario
so that all this autumn, small, grey,
English-speaking towns are startled

by inordinate sunsets: shameless

fuchsias, brazen corals flaunt

their outlandish origins in a country

where anything can happen.

Nothing’s the same any more.

Here in Kingston, even limestone forgets itself
and the staid Protestant church towers
succumb to gothic fantasies, window ablaze

2° In a rather abrupt letter I received from Al Purdy dated August 22, 1997 from Amelisburg. Ontario. Purdy says he
scarcely knew Wallace having met her only three times, but he says. “I know about Wallace being influenced by my
(own) writing- (but) I hardly knew her work” (Wallace would say “Surprise, Surprise”).

138

with dragon’s fire and the pink screams
of captured damsels; while the bare, old
branches of trees are elegant filigrees,
burnt black and delicate

by so much colour.

It’s November, but no-one believes it.
Winter’s a crass rumour like the threat

of a layoff or a govemment’s economic policy.
And the people inhabiting the lavender streets
have the stature of fabled creatures

from that land we all believe in, somewhere
between imagination and nostalgia.

You could call it

a state of grace, although

it’s only for a season, like the love
we risk for each other

on the first fine day in March,

or during the perfect anarchy

of a heavy snowfall

when everyone’s late for work
and doesn’t give a damn.

A kind of conspiracy

we let ourselves get caught in,
half-bewildered, half-encouraged
by the sky’s extravagance, this
fragile crust of earth

pulsing beneath us. (Wallace, Common Magic, 23)

The poem speaks for itself but briefly Wallace is telling us that her “small, grey
English speaking” town is transformed by something happening far away. And even
though it is nearly winter, no one believes it: “...Winter’s a crass rumour like the threat/ of
a layoff or a governments economic policy...” She tells us further that the land we believe
in is really somewhere between what we imagine and what we long for in the past.

In “Charlie’s Yard” from Common Magic we find the things of a workingman’s life

integrated into the landscape:

139

 

 

...bits of machinery, scraps he liked
the shape and colours of. They rust in the green
of his garden, plough discs and wagon wheels.

Wallace says further in the same poem that:

...No one intended

to leave it there...but

Now, it’s rooted there as surely

as the tree behind it... (Wallace, Common Magic, 28)

 

Clearly, the artifacts of the working class life are as rooted as are the natural things
growing there. Her own patch of land, Bronwen’s garden (pictured later), was important
to her. Gardening was how she became and remained close to the land. This was evident
in her poetry, evident also in the view of her garden from her bedroom window.

In a letter I received from Joanne Page dated June 26, 1995, Joanne shares a poem that
she wrote for Wallace during the time she sat with Wallace’s body just minutes after

Wal Iace’s death.

Promise

I draw a comer of her garden in pencil

working in the details of poplar leaves

carefully around a single white chair

riotous orange of nasturtium

blue of cornflower green onion stalks
rendered in mutable grey

I make shadows where plants

rise from the soil

dark places where grth and death
intermingle then reverse one day

for no reason I can understand

the garden that outlived the gardener

by several months

leaves precisely increasing as mathematics
seeds failing without notice or schedule

140

 

 

into earthly comers
where my pencil cannot go.
(Page, In Letter to Gloria Nixon-John, 6/26/95)

I believe that the geography of home and the pull of the land come together in a
woman’s garden. The flower garden is that piece of land that is her own. No wonder
gardening seems like such a luxury for many women of my generation. For my own
mother, gardening during the years she also worked in a factory was just more work. But
as she got older and retired, gardening became her pleasure and finally a hobby. I see my
mother in her own small garden, which seems to me now as a room of her own albeit
without walls. For my mother and for me, as well as for Wallace and many of her
friends, gardens came later after all of the labor that was/is expected of us was/is done. In
“Joseph MacLeod Daffodils,” Wallace describes her friend Isabel Huggan planting bulbs
even as they are having a conversation: “You’re laughing,” but your hands stay/ clenched

in your lap, still forcing/ the tight, dumb bulb into the ground/ as if you could force your

\‘tie:/ to a pattern as serene as theirs, / a calm that flourishes in darkness/ to the pull of the
sun/... (Wallace, The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 31). In “Spaces” we encounter a man
who is cutting down his poplar. Once he has also pulled the stump out his wife plants
petunias. (Albeit in a polyethylene bird bath) over the hole the man has created. That
gardens are symbolic of what working-class women might do if allowed to flourish seems
evident in several poems. In the poem “The Maiden Aunts” however, they (the Maiden
Aunts), the women not in the grip of men flourish and flower. “...(They) are loyal at
family occasions/ ...yet something in their faces/ (in old photographs) makes these faces/

makes these features seem/ incongruous like the photograph/ ...but in the comer of some

141

unused drawer...their unguarded gestures/ seem to open to the dark/ like renegade
flowers.”

Clearly the landscape has more than an aesthetic function in Wallace’s life and,
therefore, her poetry. It serves, I believe, to make clear that something (even as pervasive
as landscape) can have both an aesthetic and social function while at the same time can
remain separate or immune from either function. Certainly Mukarovsky’s Aesthetic
Function, Norm and Value as Social Fact points to this interpretation (see Mukarovsky in
Williams, 152-3). In many ways, Wallace’s work is within art and outside of art. Like
the land, the aesthetic value of her work is clear, the social and practical necessity of the
land suggests we can’t remove ourselves from it; but we can, in fact, “work it” to its
ultimate practical application.

That my flower garden is a work of art is clear to me. That the garden Wallace wrote
about and cultivated was and is an attainable form of art of and for the working class as

well.

142

Meeting The Famfll

Before I talk specifically about the members of the Wallace family when I have met
and the structure that family takes, I want to discuss what I believe Wallace saw in the
structure we call “family.” Earlier I mentioned the nuclear family. Peter Laslett’s work
points to some evidence that this nuclear structure existed and was widespread among
rural working populations long before industrialization.”

I believe Wallace’s work hints at her alignment with Poster’s view of the bourgeois
family as an historical phenomenon that was imposed onto the working class, and is in
fact one of the successes (or failures) of bourgeois democracy. On an ideological level,
the bourgeoisie has certainly secured a hegemonic definition of family life as ‘naturally’
based on close kinship, as properly organized through a male breadwinner and so on
(Barrett, 204). Few (from the mid-nineteenth century onward) working-class households
have this structure, however. The wages of other family workers (in Wallace’s case, her
mother), have been essential. And while many were concerned about appropriate gender
behavior within this false notion of, family Wallace, especially evident in what she says
about the women in her family, and in her relationship to her son, was not. Yet like most
of us very powerful forces confounded Wallace’s efforts — most certainly the ideology of
patriarchy is of primary consideration in this regard.

Cameron Wallace, brother of Bronwen Wallace, was the first contact I made with the

Wallace family. Having found his name in a Kingston Ontario directory I called and

 

2' See Laslett, P. Household and Family in Post Time. Cambridge, 1972.

143

asked him to meet me for an initial introduction. He most generously granted a meeting.
I, therefore, drove up to Kingston (my daughter Renee’ joined me in order to take
photographs). The three of us met at Chez Peggy Restaurant in Kingston on January 27,
1995, and at that time Cameron agreed to take us to visit his parents, Peggy and Ferd
Wallace, the following morning (I regret to say that later Cameron began to distance
himself from me and to avoid my phone calls and letters). I have written to ask what I did
to offend him, but he doesn’t even answer these inquiries. I felt, however, that he was a
bit suspicious of Americans in general. I think, however, I saw a change in his attitude
toward me when I broke into tears in one of my interviews with him. He seemed
offended in fact. Also, in my typical American style I asked to join him and his friends
for dinner (50 that I could continue to get information), and then I paid the bill (little does
he know that my generosity is more Italian than American). When I asked Carolyn Smart
to find out what I did to offend him, she said, it wasjust Cameron’s moodiness that she
also sometimes saw in Bronwen as well.

I first met the parents of Bronwen Wallace on January 28, 1995 in their senior citizen
high rise in Kingston, Ontario. At that time they told me a little about their family
history. Bronwen’s mother Peggy Wagar Wallace is of German and Irish decent. Her
grandmother was Rowena Leonard who married Edward Reynolds. Peggy’s family came
from Gerrnany- stopped off in Ireland, then the USA (Kansas), but returned to Canada
because they were United Kingdom Loyalists. Her father’s family originated from Wales

just below Glasgow (Lowlanders, Ferd calls them). F erdinand’s parents were James

144

Wallace and Jane Sleeth and they were farmers. The Wallace family history in Kingston,
Canada dates back to 1834 to James Wallace and Jane Sleeth.

Because Peggy had suffered a stroke that affected her speech, Ferd Wallace did a great
deal of the talking for Peggy during the first interview I conducted with them. It was
plain to see, however, that Peggy’s illness was responsible for these dynamics because
Peggy felt comfortable interrupting her husband when she could manage clear speech.
Sometimes out of frustration she wrote me notes while her husband was talking (the notes
served to clarify names and places mostly). Peggy Wallace also wanted to ask me
questions about myself. She seemed as interested in me as I was in her.

Ferdinand Wallace said that his biggest education came from the Depression during
which he had twenty-five jobs, a few of which were working with the Department of
Highway, encyclopedia sales door to door (he met Peggy while selling encyclopedias at
Hartington School). He also worked as a plumber’s helper for a brief stint. Ferd Wallace
said he considers himself a kind of “make do” person, and he was quick to say that the
Depression led him to work beyond the farm with many different kinds of laborers,
skilled and unskilled. Peg made clear in this interview that her husband brought home
stories about the plight of the laborers with whom he worked. She also said, with
obvious pride that her husband would not be held down by the Depression and that he
turned even encyclopedia sales into a lucrative occupation. She mentioned too, that
“Ferdinand was always inventing something” and that “metallurgy was a special interest
to him.” It is interesting, I think, that Ferdinand Wallace belonged to the culture of

farmer, as well as the culture of laborer off the farm. Because of this he brought to his

145

children a rather broad working class perspective. And Peggy Wallace, although
surrounded by stay-at-home mothers, worked as a teacher while her children were
growing up. 22 In fact, there were three generations of teachers before her. This was
unusual not just in Kingston at the time, but anywhere, in fact. In fact in “Rites”

(Marryinglnto The Family, p. 37), Wallace explains how different her mother was from

 

the other mothers in the neighborhood:

My mother was a teacher
every morning running

for the bus

the other mothers

slippered and pincurled
watching from their kitchens

I called for Barb on my way to school
Barb’s mother in a pink housecoat
sipped coffee inspected me

for flaws your mother

should take care of you

pulling my hat down
hard over my ears

So I learned to pretend
a mother fat
and pincurled in a huge kitchen
surrounded by coffee cups...
Even though the Margaret (Peggy) Wallace I met had to use a walker in order to greet

me at the door when I first arrived on that January morning in 1995, she was an elegant,

imposing figure, large boned, tall and immaculately groomed, wearing what could have

 

‘2 Interesting to note the parallels here with my own parents. My father also found new ways to keep money
coming in during the Depression and my mom went off to work in an overall factory, while the majority if
others mothers in our neighborhood stayed home.

146

been a teacher’s outfit- a paisley blouse and gray wool skirt, nylons, and dress shoes with
a sensible heel. She greeted me with the gentle eyes of a good mother- good teacher and
yet there was a formality about her as well.23 Ferdinand Wallace, also tall, somewhat
stooped with age and illness, also using a walker, was all “look at me, listen to me.” He
had an urgency in his eyes and talked nearly non-stop the whole time. His speech was
somewhat slurred but that didn’t stop him whatsoever. At one point Peggy Wallace sent
him out of the room to make tea (the task too daunting was then taken over by Cameron).

Certainly Ferdinand Wallace had a profound effect on his two children, Bronwen and
Cameron. I know that he brought his diverse working class stories home to his family.
Bronwen liked to tell her friends that when they sat down to a meal her father often felt
compelled to tell the family where everything on the table, the food in particular, came
from, the beef, the bread, even the metal utensils. 2” Wallace talks directly about this
influence in her poem, “Food.” She says “My dad says the stuff/ that’s really worth
drinking’s/ squirted warm and straight from the teat/ and I believed him.../ (Wallace,
Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 50).

In Bronwen’s case it is clear that what her mother modeled and what her grandmother
and aunts did and said had a greater impact on the activist, and the poet she (became) then

did anything the men did or said.

 

23 See Page 1n Appendis for the poem I wrote about this first meeting.

2" This brings to mind a personal story. My mother was also raised on a farm (but later worked in
factories). One evening when I had a girlfriend over to supper the girlfriend asked where the other two
drumsticks were! It was clear to the rest of us that my mother had cooked only one chicken and also clear
to us that my friend believed chickens had four legs. How quickly we (industrialized America) moved away
from “the farm!”

I47

Even though of a different generation with a different personal set of moral standards,
I believe that Bronwen’s brightest guiding moral light was her mother, Margaret (Peggy)
Wager Wallace. Peggy Wallace was generous enough to give me photocopies
of her own journal/ diary. In the entry dated 1988 (no month or day) Peggy is asking
herself if her life has been a success.

She asks, “What is success? "

Then she answers: “Perhaps if I consider this quote flom Ralph Waldo Emerson I
will have an answer. ‘T o laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children, to hear the appreciation of honest critics and then endure
the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to look for the best in others, to leave
the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social
condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because I have lived ’ This is
success... ”

As I unravel the life and work of Margaret’s daughter Bronwen Wallace, we might
well return to this quote as a sort of general (very general) summation of Bronwen’s
personal aspirations as well.

In several of the articles Bronwen Wallace wrote for the Whig-Standard Newspaper,
as well as in several interviews she gave, she talks about the Sunday visits to her paternal
grandmother’s house for dinner with many other members of the family present. Wallace
recalls that there were stories told at the dinner table, stories about what was happening in
the surrounding community or in the family, stories that seemed to neither idealize nor

condemn. But Wallace tells about the stories the women told in the kitchen before and

148

after meals, stories that were quite different in that these kitchen stories were primarily
about women’s lives, and men, if mentioned at all, were on the perimeters or they were
objects of ridicule. “The stories in the kitchen moved differently too, as they were told
around tasks and questions about tasks. Have I made enough mashed potatoes? Is the

turkey done? Who is watching the baby? The story weaving and bobbing around the

obstacles of women’s work” (Wallace, Whig-Standard, Dec. 1988).

 

Bronwen also recalls the atmosphere in that kitchen as electric with a sense of
subversion (It occurs to me now that Peggy Wallace, in removing Ferd from the room to
fetch tea for me on the first visit, she might have been trying to recreate this “kitchen
talk”).

In this same Whig-Standard article Wallace bones in on her grandmother’s method of
telling a story and observes that her grandmother could not tell a story about someone
without digressing into an explanation of the genealogy of that person, or digressing into
a past history of that person even if that history is just an aside to the incident at hand
(Wallace, Whig-Standard, Dec., 1988).

Of course, Wallace calls up these Sunday dinners in her poems, both in terms of the
style of that talk, and in terms of the gender issues and class issues that wafted through
the kitchen and made their way to the table. Her 1980 collection, Marrying Into the
mm, is full of such poems: “Great Aunt,” “The Family Saints and the Dining Room
Table,” “The Maiden Aunts,” and “Grandma Wagar’s Double Bind.” My favorite is

“Behind the Photograph” because it reveals her grandmother’s determination. I also

149

believe that this poem shows us how Wallace saw the structure called family and also

where Wallace was headed stylistically.
Behind the Photograph

There’s this photo of my grandmother at 25
in an elaborate hat of creamy satin

with a great dark feather that lifts

almost as proud as the profile beneath it
the tilted chin and sweep of rich black hair
all that I know of this woman

her famous skill with horses

her grace as a dancer distills here

in what could be

the cover for a novel

where despite her father’s poverty

the heroine marries

the one she loves

Not far from the truth

given by grandfather

who began their marriage spending
all the wedding money on an opal ring
which she wore all her life

through year after year

he wanted to pawn it

for the scheme that sprang

like weeds from the dust of his farm
and when they lost the land

he said it was her fault

scorned her for begging

credit from the grocer and

taking in mending

something in her he hated even then
a stubbornness perhaps that took directions
he hadn’t expected till way later

he hated the disease

that crippled her

till in the final years he’d

take away her crutch

leave her weighted

to the chair the fat old woman

of the last photographs

150

defeated eyes turned
from the sun beside her

When I was six

my father took me to a beach
where beneath the dunes

he told me a hotel was buried

and all day I spent

digging expectant that any moment
my shovel would strike stone

sun flash on the scarlet tip

of a shingle just as now

lights of green and amber

glow like secrets in the opal

my grandmother left

well-kept promises that keep me
sifting the stores

the photographs for something

I’m supposed to find

the moment just before

the shutter click

lift of a chin that

even beneath the rolls of fat

brings the bones of a young woman
into profile or the defiant

moving of a crutch behind a chair
in every photograph its absence

a statement like the straight set

of the shoulders The almost careless way
the hands are folded

gestures that move

out from behind the photograph

to frame it in another way

like the gestures I leave out

in my memory of wet sand

tears and my father calling me home
the way my hand clenched

around the handle of the shovel
and the arm’s arc again

and again into sand

my back turned

from the waves

151

and the sun’s inviting dance

Like the talk her female relatives had in the kitchen before and after their Sunday
meals, the grandmother in this poem is at the center. Both Bronwen’s grandfather and
father are peripheral. Both make promises to these females, then let them down, leave
them injured, but not defeated. Both try to weaken the resolve of women and in the case
of her grandfather insisted that women remained anchored in the periphery.

Also notice that while the above two poems clearly have the shape of a poem on the
page, they read like rambling narrative with an image here and there. The line breaks are
more controlled in these poem then they are in her later collections. She puts narrative

punctuation back in later as well (See Wallace, The Stubborn Particulars of Grace).

My

Shirley Wallace (Ferdinand’s youngest sister) lived with the Wallaces when Bronwen
was a child. I had the good fortune to interview Shirley during my second visit to
Kingston on June 11, 1995. Shirley was visiting her brother and sister-in-law at that time.
It was clear as a result of my interview with Shirley, as well as documents I have been
given by Ferdinand and Peggy (letter to Shirley from Bronwen and vice versa), that
Shirley Wallace has a unique perception of Bronwen and the relationships in Bronwen’s
immediate family.

My interview with Shirley Wallace took place in the Wallace’s small high-rise
apartment in a senior citizen complex. Shirley asked if we could go into a private area of
the apartment. I was excited by the request for privacy and so we moved into a small den

adjacent to where the others were. Even then Shirley whispered.

152

Shirley lived with the Wallaces when Bronwen was a child and stayed in the Kingston
area until 1952. Once Bronwen got older, especially after her marriage to Peter Dexter,
most of the conversations and interactions Shirley and Bronwen had were what Shirley
describes as “confrontational.” Shirley believes she challenged Bronwen:

As a social worker I would challenge her...l would ask her
how she was helping the people in low-income rentals for
example... as Bronwen believed she worked on their cause.
Bronwen only saw the big piece of the whole situation.
When Bronwen was at Queens University she fought battles
she thought people should she fighting without regard for
their own moral codes that is she was imposing her moral
code on people as he helped them out. She wanted to take
the landlord to court, some long drawn out process. I, as a
social worker saw things differently. If I, as a social worker,
could help people maintain the status quo, help a bit in a
way they could use it, like helping someone improve sanitary
conditions immediately.”

(Of course I wanted to interrupt Shirley and say, “ you were both correct”). Shirley
made several asides during the interview that shed light on Shirley’s feelings about her
Brother, Ferdinand Wallace. At one point she said, “I wanted to move into this room
because in case you haven’t noticed F erdie had quite an ego and likes to control things.”
Another interesting aside was “Ferd never let the children do things their way, it was
Ferd’s way or not at all.” Interesting also in this interview was Shirley’s suggestions that
I look over Wallace’s poem, “Behind the Photograph.” Shirley saw the poem as an
indictment of Bronwen’s father and grandfather. “Sad,” Shirley said, “I actually watched

Bronwen leave that sand castle (described in the poem) because of her father’s need to do

what he wanted when he wanted. I thought it sad. Sadder even that this child saw it that

153

way too.”25 At this point in my work, I began to see clearly that there was a resistance to
domination of women by men in the Wallace family.

That Wallace had to give in to her father’s wishes is clear in her poem “Behind The
Photograph.” There are also many accounts of her father’s insistence that the family visit
his mother, even though the children and other adults did not enjoy these visits.

Virginia Woolf 5 accounts of the pathological attempts of bourgeois fathers to insist on
their daughters’ dependence, financial and emotional comes to mind when I read “Behind
The Photograph” (included elsewhere in this text). To see it this way suggests that
patriarchy refers to the ideological aspects of relationships- in this case- the paradigm of
father-daughter. (McClary, 5-9) Perhaps Wallace saw it this way at times. I think,
however, because of her political work, as well as what I see in her writing, her poetry
specifically, that she saw patriarchy independent of these paradigms, even independent of
the organization of capitalism. She saw capitalism and industrialization as a catalyst to
this trans-historical form of domination. If we look at Wallace’s “The Kingdom Of The
Fathers” ( In Marrying Into The Family). as well as many other poems in this collection,
what is obvious is that women inherit profiles, furniture, other artifacts, and anger. While
they continue to try to gain some power, the structures of family and society, inclusive of

capitalism, keep them down or do not recognize the value of their contributions.

 

2’ I didn’t see Ferd’s behavior on the beach as particularly harsh or any different from how my own father
might have behaved. Her comments and views suggest a tension no one else feels, or is ready to discuss
with me. Shirley saw egotism and bull headedness in this one man (her brother). Bronwen, I think, tended
to see it as a product of a class structure more than a character flaw in her father.

154

Shirley also believes Bronwen married Peter (a marriage that lasted three years),
because she wanted to “get out from under her father’s grip.”

Throughout the interview, Shirley made reference to Bronwen’s generation as a
generation that thought the previous generation was not doing things right. She
mentioned that she believed Bronwen’s generation actually thought that they were going
to “go off to college and gain some kind of power to change things, divorce itself from
the past.”

Shirley believes Bronwen changed in this regard, and came to terms with what those
previous generations offered and I tend to agree with Shirley. At this point in the
interview Shirley Wallace asked if she could read to me from Bronwen’s collection of

essays Arguments with the World. The particular essay from which she read is

 

“Lilacs in May: a Tribute to Al Purdy.” 26 Shirley read:

My university education was taking me further and further away
from my parents, who had worked like hell for me to get it.

Not only was it allowing me opportunities they never had,

it was teaching me contempt for their lives and for my own class
background, my own cultural context...And the landscape! My
family had lived around Kingston for two hundred years...
Everything I saw, I saw through their eyes and their work

and their lives. The only thing was I didn’t know it.

And so when I came to study English, I accepted without
question that I was going to live in another country now.

A country where the grass was greener, the hills softer.

A country where words like “moor” and “glen” seemed to fit.

A country where lilacs bloomed in April not in May- and without any
apparent scent.

 

‘6 Purdy’s influence was discussed again in the section that deals more specifically on style and craft. 1 will
also share a terse letter Al Purdy sent to me in which he refuses to comment on his influences on Wallace’s
work.

155

The next few lines Shirley read, speak to influences both good and had. She
continues, “To put it simply, I gained a great deal from my education, yes. But I lost too.

I lost my family, my history, my language- as well as, smells and shapes and colors of my

”27

life. Without those I could not be the writer I wanted to be (Wallace, Arguments with

 

the World, 164-5)

Earlier I mentioned that Cameron began to distance himself from me after I got
emotional during one of my interviews with him. In this interview, Cameron clearly
states that he saw those visits to his paternal grandmother’s house as less than pleasant.
In this interview he also discusses how she (Bronwen) saw or experienced a different
childhood than he did. Of course, Cameron saw things from his privileged status in the
patriarchy. Actually he reveals a lot here, and I would rather not paraphrase but show
parts of my transcript of the interview:

Excerpts from an Interview with Cameron Wallace
March 31, 1995
(Commenting on my earlier meeting with Peggy and Fred Wallace)
GNJ: Do you know when you hug someone how you feel if they do not like
to be hugged? I just felt like “oh, oh, what did I do-
fauxpax?
Cameron: Yeah, it’s just not part of their...language. How they deal with people. So

Bronwen, I think she was dealing with a lot of stuff, like with the aunts.
They were all really nice people, but they did not make life easy. They

 

27 Bronwen Wallace’s earliest political awakening is discussed in the forward to Arguments With The
World. In this forward Joanne Page discusses Wallace’s writing in a high school newspaper. In that same
text Wallace also discusses her political awakening in a grade thirteen-history class. As Wallace describes
it she had an epiphany on October 24, 1962 when her teacher, Harold Richie, was discussing his fears about
the Cuban Missile Crisis. From that point forward Wallace began to pay attention, read the newspaper,
watches TV, and discusses issues with others.

156

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

certainly didn’t do it with the intent to be unpleasant. They just had
absolute ways too, as to how things were done. I think Bronwen met that
head-on. So she caught a lot of stuff, where I did not. Also, her
personality was different. She had a lot of things- she was struggling
against stuff.

How so, is her personality different?

She was a real achiever. At school, she was a browner. She was there
getting marks and all that kind of stuff. In school, that’s fine, I didn’t
mind. I was lucky I was smart. Then it got difficult, and then I just wasn’t
interested any more because it was really pretty lame. Whereas, Bronwen,
I think she got her competition from her perceived idea that she was not
very good looking, which she wasn’t compared to a lot of her friends. I
think that played on her, this is my opinion, all her life. She needed to be
recognized and that’s what she worked on. She always had friends who
were really attractive. She just wasn’t attractive.28 We were both the
same way that way. It’s the sort of thing where now you look back and
you think how naive that was or whatever, but with Bronwen, it definitely
affected everything.

Affects women more?

Absolutely, because you are in that position of waiting and “gee, is
somebody going to like me.” And even though she always had boyfriends,
she had more boyfriends than I ever had girlfriends, but I think it was the
same sort of thing. Her perceived idea of maybe she wasn’t attractive. I
sort of think that part of her personality was because she was trying to
achieve something in other ways. She was way more competitive that
way, so she was a browner in school. She was a real play by the rules kind
of thing. She was in the Sunday church thing at first.

You are talking about the earlier part of her life.

This would be when she was in high school or whatever.

Before the college rebellious kind of thing?

Yeah, I think she had political sensitivity before that, but it really came out

around that time she really started challenging stuff. It was the 605 she was
always looking for, like okay this group sucks, so therefore this other

 

‘8 This is odd to me because many of Bronwen’s friends describe her as attractive, elegant in long flowing
skirts and earrings. Many used the term charismatic to describe her.

157

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

group must be the right group. That’s what I always disagreed with her
on, was that she would attach herself to a group. Okay, then it’s got to be
the unions, or its got to be the Marxist-Leninists or its got to be this.
Rather than...they kind of all suck, maybe that’s where the 805 is.

I wonder if it, too, might be part of the academic world, because the
more education I get, the more I begin to feel the academics do that,
what you just described, and that there are these academic trend and
it’s pro this and anti that and then it shifts.

I think, in part, back to her childhood...l think she was probably...maybe in
her mind, she had an unhappy childhood. Her perception of Ferd and
Peggy is diametrically opposed to my perception. When she was coming
back from Windsor where she had lived with Jeremy, it was one of the big
drawbacks to coming back to Kingston was this perceived idea that Ferd
and Peggy were going to be somehow all over her and controlling her life.
When she actually came back, the biggest advantage of being back was
Ferd and Peggy being around and being available to take Jeremy for drives
and stuff like that, so that kind of gave me an idea what her perception of
the situation was. Lots of times, we did disagree. I guess everybody does
that. Where something happens you perceive it as happening this way

and I’ll perceive it another way.

I perceive you both as artists...you and your sister. I’m wondering
about what in your childhood, do you think, what was the common
thread that shaped you as an artist and also your sister even though
you perceived the childhood differently. What do you think it was
that led you to appreciate or understand art? Anything about your
family life, school life, community you can think of.

My father would have probably been an artist and preferred to be an artist.
He just never had the chance. He hit the 305 and that did it.

I heard all about the Depression today from your Dad.
Oh yeah, he’s got the stories. It’s always good to get them.

Yet, I look at your mother’s writing and certainly there are a lot of
artistic thoughts and potential there too.

Yeah, in terms of personality, Ferd is more the artist. What I always liked
about dad was what he taught both Bronwen and I to never take everything
at face value. I guess that’s where I now find him when you are talking to
him you’re always finding something different. Always read between the

158

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

then... I

GNJ:

C ameron:

GNJ:

lines. You look at a newspaper and I’d read it. This is probably
happening because of this, which he doesn’t do now-mow that he is older.
The one disadvantage of getting old. He was the one that really first
taught that sort of thing. Even though he comes off lots of times being
reactionary and stoic, in actual fact, and Mom is the one that comes off as
being accepting. In actual fact, when Ferd is the one who will change and
Mum is hard line. But Mum is also...she has a real artistic edge too, but
it’s a different kind. I think she appreciates making things...so she may not
have the same kind of creative edge that dad does. Maybe that’s why they
match so well. Dad has the creative thing, and doesn’t necessarily have
the ability to carry it through. Mum has the ability to carry it through with
the work, but doesn’t have the same kind of edge of creativity. In lots of
ways, for two people who you would think are as far from the arts-~the
traditional arts--as you can get...they enjoy going to the theater...but they
are not what you would say are real critics of the art. Both of them in
actual fact are...I think it’s because they both incredibly smart and gifted. I
think my grandfather was probably an artist and I think mom inherited that
too.

How about trust, trusting? Are they trusting?
They are pretty good. You mean trusting in people?
Uh-huh

They are both pretty good. Yeah, I would say absolutely compared to the
general world.

What about your sister? How was she in that regard? When she met
someone, did she trust them or did she wait?

No, she would wait, and I think once there was sort of a bond created
think she was maybe a little bit holding off..

Did she have a lot of male friends that weren’t lovers?

Probably not a lot. She never had as many male friends as I had female
friends. So, by my standard... She did have male friends, but I think she
probably had a lot more female friends. I think later she had more male

friends.

Okay, Well, I guess this question is shot. I wanted to ask you if there
was anything in your childhood that you really resented.

159

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

big

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

It’s hard not to like your childhood because it pretty much affects like who
you are and how you make decisions. I would have liked not to have as
much access to the family.

You mean like your grandmother...
The grandmother and all... But that’s not a big deal.
You know, Shirley is aware of that.

Oh, I’m sure she is. I’ve told her. One of the advantages of them is that
they have always shot from the hip, straight from the hip kind of stuff. If
you’d interview all of them, you would find the ones that had the most to
do with the family are the most resentful. And the ones that had the least
to do with the family are ones that are now most interested in maintaining
some sort of relationship. I know in specific my cousin Kathy, the two
women that grew up on a farm. I’m saying girls, they really would be
quite happy if they never saw anybody in the family again. They really got
angry in terms of people showing up on what was their house and farm
and couldn’t relate to it as being the extended farm of the whole family.

I hope to see that area, the farm. Tell me how you feel about your
sister’s work, her writing. It is accessible to you.

No, and to be honest, I’ve probably only read small amounts. I’m not a
fan of poetry. A lot of it I specifically don’t read because a lot of it...more
the early works...made me kind of angry. There was some stuff that was
very specific and I just disagreed with it. She never wrote a poem about
me, so it’s nothing personal, but there’s a lot of stuff.

You’re in them though; bits and pieces of you are in them.

I don’t thing so.

I’ll have to show you.

Okay, I would really, really...like to see this.

Nothing... except for the fact, she may have mentioned her brother, but

they are pretty minor references.

Was she aware of how you felt?

160

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

GNJ:

Cameron:

I guess I was strong graphically, she wasn’t. She was strong in terms of
literature, which I wasn’t. We mixed well that way, but we were talking
different languages, too, so that...

And the graphic aptitude comes from your dad, the mathematician?

I think also from my grandfather on Peggy’s side. I never was particularly
interested in poetry. But, I always enjoyed going to poetry readings.

How about this last collection, the one dedicated to all the country
songs, the Emmylou Harris collection? Did you read much of that?

I read actually the last two or three books.

The senses of humor in that collection seems a little like you. I
mean, I see you in some of those works. I see a big change in that
prose form she used later on where she kind of let go and was able to
joke about everything. Didn’t seem angry or worried or reflective as
much as she was very intuitive and free.

It’s hard for me because I know the instance of the poem lots of times. I
have a friend who is a playwright and the same sort of thing where I’m
looking at some of the stuff she’s written, particularly when I knew her,
you be “oh, yeah, I remember this incident” and all that. You’re putting it
together that way. I did the same thing with a lot of the stuff Bronwen
wrote. So I was never able to take a completely cold view.

Out of what you read, you said some of it made you angry. Did any of
it embarrass you?

No.

When you think of your sister in crisis, what would you think the
times were when you saw her most in crisis? What was going on in
her life?

Oh geez...There was always a crisis. She was sort of drawn to crisis.

I think probably the first major crisis was when she divorced Peter

and I think that really... that probably set up a tone for quite a while in
terms of how she saw Ferd and Peggy because, I mean at that time, you

didn’t divorce and...

We always got along really well. It was a real brother/sister kind of thing.

16]

I eremy

Probably we were at our worst for the first few years. I know that having
read her diaries now. This is not what I perceived, but having read her
diaries I think she genuinely... She didn’t dislike me, but I was an
annoyance to her. Actually, it’s interesting, you’d probably gain a lot by
reading these diaries.

Because she sort of...I was just there. That’s all. Probably around the time
I was 12 I was not the annoying little brother any more. I think that’s
probably fairly normal with a lot of women with younger brothers. Then
we started talking. From the time I was probably 16 we sort of got to be
friends. I was old enough to drink and she could buy beer and stuff like
that. At that point then, her big fear was if somebody didn’t respect her so
she thought that was a problem, then forget it, she didn’t have a lot of time
for somebody. So then we always got along. I used to stay with her in
Windsor for 3-4 months at a time. When she moved back here Ron was
working with us, so we spent a lot of time together. When she got more
interested in writing, we would see each other, but normally it was my
initiative at that point. I would take Jeremy. I spent a lot of time with
Jeremy. We would do things. I’d stop over when they lived on Gibson
Avenue.

When I first met Bronwen Wallace’s son Jeremy, he was home visiting his father,

Ron Baxter, in Hamilton, Ontario. I conducted my first interview with Jeremy on

August 21, 1995 at the home of Ron Baxter. At that time Jeremy was a student at the

University of British Columbia studying Theatre. He said he was considering work in

directing or set design, but also that he liked to write and might like to write for the

theatre at some point in time.

During that first interview I focused on four areas. I asked Jeremy to talk about

himself. I also asked how he was like or unlike his mother. I asked what his relationship

with his mother was like and what his relationship was/ is like with other females in his

family or in his personal life. He answered the first three questions in some detail.

162

The first two words out of his mouth, that he used to describe his mother, were
“stubborn” and “practical” (like her poems I thought). Later he said that she was
“obsessed with safety” and “It seemed she was always expecting the worst to happen.”
That she was different from his friends’ parents was also obvious to Jeremy. When I
asked for specifics, he said that his mother “even at an early age involved me in
decisions” and that “she saw my rebelliousness as somewhat good.” She “always let me
explain myself.” He said that as he reflected on his childhood there seemed to be “very
little gender molding.” He said that at an early age he was allowed freedom but
responsibility.

Jeremy Wallace is a remarkable young man. He is his mother’s son. He is bright,
open-minded, gentle and kind. In the interview I had with him in San Diego on
November 20, 1996 (poolside, and we laughed at how middle-class and ironic that
seemed), he told me how open his parents were, how fair and democratic. As a result he
said, “I grew up fast. I was always the one who had to tell friends about things like drugs
and sex.” He also said that he called his parents Bron and Ron because “they wanted me
(him) to feel like an equal.” He also mentioned that his mother helped him learn how to
have female friends, how to make a relationship equal, but that he learned on his own that
“(any) a relationship is never balanced and there is always the problem of making love
last.” This comment turned our conversation to the men in his mother’s life. “When I
look at her wedding pictures (marriage to Peter Dexter), I can’t believe that was my mum.

I didn’t hear her say much about Peter but she was very upset when he died.”

163

When I asked Jeremy what he thought his Mother would be doing today, he said,
without hesitation, “Fighting Mike Harris29 He (Harris) is openly country club. She
would not be still about that.” Jeremy also confirmed that his Mother was obsessed with
Emmylou Harris. “She wanted to come back from the dead as a country western singer
like Emmylou.” He said she was working on the Emmylou collection when she was
dying. “That’s why the poems at the end, starting with ‘Bodily Fluids’ seems just tacked
on, they were. She would have done more with that collection.” He said also that “when
he hears Emmylou it makes me sad, you can imagine, how sad.”

In a letter I received from Jeremy dated September 12, 1996, I saw more than just a
glimmer of his mother. In the letter, Jeremy tells me about a theatre professor he has at
U.B.C., a man Jeremy describes as “a very amazing man.” Jeremy was particularly taken
with a lecture that this professor gave, in which the professor declares that a wall of
interpretation has risen, over time, between the work of the great playwrights and the
public, that all we do is analyze, criticize, and theorize instead of re-appropriate and
rediscover. I am sure Bronwen would have agreed with this position because she
despised intellectual distance. In this same letter, Jeremy answers my question about
authors that he believed might have influenced his mother. “I will throw out Rainer

Marie Rilke as an idea, someone who she read a fair amount.”30

 

29 Mike Harris is Premier of Ontario and has a reputation for supporting big business and ignoring the needs
of the less fortunate.

3° I can see some of Rilke in Wallace. I am thinking specifically of the poem “Death” by Rilke. In this
poem Rilke starts with the ordinary objects (cups, saucer, false teeth) yet Rilke moves out from the ordinary
scene to “Starfall.”

164

Then as a very special gift to me, Jeremy enclosed a poem he wrote for his mother
called “Spaces”
Spaces

A hole killed you.

Slowly I watch it

as it opened on your face,
stinking of death.

ripe, acidic

I watched

as the hunger of the tumor
was swallowing you,

your unfinished life,

your unfinished work.

We could not stop it.

With all our shaking hands

believing in you,

wanting to soothe

your strength.

And the last time we saw you-the physical you
you were dead.

And the hole

stopped killing you,

its darkness hiding inside you.

You were burned.

The darkness of that hole remained,
in me,

in all of us,

spread out in tears,

like your dusty dry ashes

we carried away with us.

Your body recedes

and yet I see you everywhere.
Those times I feel you close

at night and the hole grows wider
to let you in.

Other times it gets so small

I don’t know if you are still there.
And I wonder if it constricts you
forces you away

165

like it squeezed your breath out

when you died on your bed

and I sat shaking through the night

wondering if somewhere in the darkness of the void,
in some breathless vision

you were watching.

There are many poems in which Bronwen refers to her son Jeremy. In “Jeremy at
Ten” the safety issue, the fear of something dreadful (that Jeremy was quite aware of),
runs through the poem. The real dread that she comes to terms with in the poem appears
to be her combined feeling of love and loss, her desire to freeze the moment to keep

6

Jeremy careful and safe in his tenth year. ‘... that each birth is also a 1035/ we never touch
the bottom of. /" It is amazing to read Jeremy’s tribute to his mother and then to read
Bronwen’s tributes to Jeremy. Both seem to be letting go, again and again, aware of the
spaces that separate then even in life. And even in this poem the plight, the endless labor
of a mother surfaces in an honesty that shocks and breaks open the reality of a woman’s
life. “But there were days when I couldn’t stand it. / Your hands on my breasts, / my head
filled with nothing/ but tears and the smell of urine, / (Wallace, Common Magic, 82-3).

In an article in the Whig-Standard Wallace mentions her fear that in being given
mostly the work of men to read, Jeremy would not be getting a well-rounded education.
“What my son will be reading this semester is male human experience, presented as if it

represents the whole. Too bad for him. Worse yet for his female classmates” (Wallace,

“English Literature: It’s still a man’s world,” Whig-Standard, 2/1/88, 32).3 l

 

3 ' Later this same article she talks about Dorothy Livesay and P.K.Page as import writers we might use in
the classroom.

166

In yet another article, Wallace expresses how important talk with other women was
especially when she first became a mother. She also talks about the turmoil she felt when
she first had Jeremy. “I had to keep him quiet while his father slept...things got even
crazier when I went back to work... Weeks rushed together in a blur of the alarm clock,
errands, trips to the park and laundry, laundry, laundry...I was falling apart... Finally I
talked to other women.” She creates some relief by forming a group called “The
Mothers’ Group” and eventually this group led to other political action groups and help
groups for mothers.

That Wallace comes to terms with the need women have for one another’s help is clear in

her poem “Distance From Harrowsmith To Tamworth” (in Common Magc, 14-15), as

 

she weaves Jeremy into her life and her poem (Wallace “The Power of a Group of

Mothers,” Whig-Standard, n.d.).

Politics

Most of the information I have about Wallace’s political life has come to me through
her articles, her essays in Arguments With The World or as a result of interviews I
conducted with her female friends, her brother and, the father of her son, Ron Baxter.

In her essay “The Cuban Missile Crisis and Me,” Wallace actually pinpoints the
moment that her life (then her writing) took on a political bent. Wallace tells us “...I am a
particular kind of poet and one whose themes follow a particular bent because of a
revelation. An epiphany if you will, that I can pinpoint with absolute accuracy. The date

was October 24, 1962. The place was my grade thirteen-history class, taught by

167

Mr. Howard Ritchie at Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute. The event was the
Cuban Missile Crisis.” Wallace goes on to explain that her teacher’s reaction to the
crisis, his anger and fear, made her aware of the threat the situation posed, made her feel
mortal, made her realize that her life was in the hands of adults who might or might not
make the right decisions. Later as an adult reflecting on this she understood more clearly
it is the “...interpretation of events, and the way we use them in our personal lives that
helps us begin to realize how history matters” (Wallace “The Cuban Missile Crisis” in
Arguments with The World, p. 27-29).

This crisis made Wallace take notice of other current events. She began to read the
newspaper, and later to become active as a college student in CUCND (Combined
Universities Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament). She became one who might react
when others stood passive. An indirect reference to historical moments like the Cuban
Missile Crisis show up in Wallace’s third collection of poetry The Stubborn Particulars of
Graig in the poem entitled “Koko.” This poem starts out about Koko the talking gorilla
and moves into a discussion about communications in politics and in our personal lives,
how there is the danger that the communication becomes more important than the gesture,
the message, or the event “like the starch at the back of the brain/ we no longer recognize
as memory. ...On the TV Reagan and Gorbachev in Geneva, / thought their names don’t

really matter much, / just two more faces over shirts and ties/ discussing missile size, the

9”

‘nitty-gritty .

 

And in “Daily News” from Common Magic,” her concerns about the environment

surface again, as does her concern about nuclear war. In the poem she suggests that the

168

planet is “all out of kilter” and that she hears men telling her “that victory is a nuclear
war/ which 60 million people survive.”

Ron Baxter remembers the moment he was taken with Bronwen and her politics. The
connection was her brother Cameron. “1 was Cameron’s friend when I met Bronwen.
We, Cameron and I, were on motorcycles and she was standing on a balcony above us on
Garrett Street (Kingston), and we were discussing, no debating Quebec after the
Revolution. Bron seemed to have answers and was helping to organize ‘The Student
Left’ at Queens” (Baxter, September 28, 1997, Hamilton, ON).

Ron said he thinks of the movie Breaking Away when he thinks back to his
involvement with Bronwen and their decision to go West. He said they all wished to
escape the rather traditional mores. He also said that among Bronwen’s passions was
environmental concerns and that she was particularly focused on the Dupont family, the
epitome of a capitalist/industrial power in this regard. Ron further told me that at a
meeting of the Canadian Parliament in 1969, Wallace spoke as a group of women friends
chained themselves to the visitors’ gallery in order to support abortion rights legislation.

According to Cameron Wallace, Bronwen was married to Peter Dexter and living in a
commune with others when she became involved with Ron Baxter, and it was at this
point that Wallace and her friends became more political.

Cameron let me know in the interview I had with him that he considered this political
activity in Queens “ridiculous.” The way he put it was, “I found it, the political activity
ridiculous! It’s not like Kent State where people are getting shot. This is Queen’s U.

Everybody who graduates here ends up a judge or in the Senate or something like that”

169

(Wallace, Cameron. March 24, 1995). Cameron’s detachment from all things political
seems almost like a reaction to his sister’s preoccupation with politics. This is interesting
particularly since Cameron seemed to be struggling to survive in a depressed economy at
the time I met him. He didn’t seem concerned about where society and therefore the
political machine had placed him, or he didn’t care to deal with that concern. Perhaps the
reason is that Bronwen Wallace was however aware first-hand of gender divisions in the
capitalist formation while Cameron was not. Because of gender, we see why Wallace
first moved toward Marxist ideology then distanced herself from an orthodox Marxism, a
system that relegated woman to the theoretical, the political, therefore the sidelines. She
did however explore familial relations and did look at the analysis of representations of
gender differences in cultural production.

But Wallace was not just seeing a different Kingston than Cameron saw, she was
looking beyond her own turf, and in 1970 she traveled west first to Vancouver then to
Windsor, where she lived in a communal setting with several like-minded friends. Ron
Baxter was among these friends. At that time Chrysler workers were forming a union in
Canada and Wallace helped to rally people together who shared a common political
philosophy. As a result, Wallace established a community resource center (in the
building that was once South Shore Books in Windsor),32 and it was there that a Labor
Center Organization of some 30 people was organized to infiltrate the factory and then
report back to the U.I.C. Wallace worked for the U.I.C. at the time. Her job was to take

reports from the workers that she was assigned by the U.I.C. She saw this role as an

 

’3 South Shore Books just closed this year (2000).

170

opportunity to report their concerns and plights to others in the Labor Center

Organization, to infiltrate and spy.

In an article written in a labor newsletter that came out of the Labor Center, Wallace

poses some of the questions that she felt were becoming important as she put it “in terms

of the collective perspectives with regard to work place organizing” (Notice, if you will,

how class struggles particular to women began to surface).

1.

Given that TLC is the place where our experience in various sectors is
brought together, how can we begin a process whereby these interconnections
are made more coherently and more profoundly than they are now?

. In other words, do we need to take more seriously the task of developing

an integrated view of the class? How do we do it?

. The Auto-group seems to be adopting a fairly ‘in-plant’ orientation and

practice. Is this the result of a particular ideological position or is it a
temporary strategy? What are its strengths? Weaknesses? How does
the collective operate here both theoretically and practically in the
development of a wider orientation for that group?

. How does the student group see itself in relation to the auto group and

vice versa? The women "5 groups? New Technology group?

. How about community struggles? The Women’s Place and its connection

here?

. Do we have a tacit policy of ‘laissez-faire’ for various sectors with some vague

notion that some day it will all come together? Is this dangerous? Mechanistic?
Do we think it important to understand the relation of various sectors to
capital? When and how do we begin to explore this? How do we understand
the conditions that will bring various sectors of class together? Is it a future
goal or a necessary condition for revolutionary organization?

. What is the place of TLC theoretically/practically in all this?

. Do we have to develop more critically our ideas about relations between

inside and ‘outside’ people in various groups?

. Should there be some research done about the history of and potential

l7l

for militancy in various sectors? Should this be a criteria, where
possible, for choosing a work place? Should there be some collective
direction and discussion for members seeking work? Are too many
people seeking plant work? What about small plants? CN? Civil
Service? Retail? Truck driving? Construction? We don’t have a
perspective on all this. Do we need one? (Wallace, Bronwen,

THE NEWSLETTER, No. 51 Summer, 1974)

Clearly, Wallace was seeking a working definition of class that would include these
workers and she was beginning to take a particular focus on women (whether in the home
or workplace) as a unique population with unique needs.

In Common Magic, published in 1986, Wallace gives us her “working-class sensitive”

 

view of Windsor, as well as Detroit in “Reclaiming the City.” She gives us an image of
Windsor that is not the “City of Roses” it claims to be, and a Detroit that is anything but
the “Renaissance City”:

Reclaiming the City

The signs says, Windsor, City of Roses,

But anyone who’s lived here knows it’s a city of hands
and dark metal, necessary as blood,

or the long lines of cars pumped from its factories

for the arteries of a continent.

A city of days produced on an assembly-line.

the sun an ancient star that doesn’t chart things any more,
intruding on the dreams of those who churn with the effort
of learning this tighter chronology.

A city I came to by chance

the way I might meet a man at a party

and talk about anything at all,

never thinking he could change my life forever.

Which is not what I mean to say at all, of course;

a man at a party, putting this stranger in

as a mere figure of comparison

and what I want from this city now

is a sign of proof that I was a difference.

172

Tonight, I have dinner with Mark,

still in his apartment by the river.

More than anything, I envy his case with the place,

love I want to call it, though he doesn’t

shrugging if off with that gesture

I’ve seen old men use for their wives,

as if what kept them in a marriage all their adult lives

were some paralysis they hadn’t found a cure for yet.

He moved her in ‘67, just before the riots started in Detroit,
his balcony a ringside seat that summer from which to watch the
low hills of smoke peaked occasionally by sirens or gunfire.
He kept his TV on the railing, tuning in particulars,

the recognizable curve of an arm throwing a bottle,

faces as young as his own, and the others, shielded by rifles
as the army moved in, but he turned the volume off,

he didn’t want some newsman to explain things to him,

and how his stories stretch through pauses

more important than the words somehow,

like the fact that he’s still sitting here,

taking it all in.

What we study tonight

is how Detroit has rebuilt itself, its skyline
dominated by RenCen, that space-age castle,

a city within a city, where tracks of light are elevators
carrying their passengers high into the night,

though in the older dark below

the planet is reclaiming its own,

block after block, as people move out to the suburbs
the grass moves through the rooms burnt-out houses.
In a few years, Mark says,

RenCen could be stranded in the middle of the forest,
an alien craft, with no-one to remember how it got there,

and tonight even the freighters on the river

move with more than their usual weariness

as if they’ve known all along

that their cargos of oil or metal

are the lives of men and women, scrabbled from the earth
one way or another

In this city where night is always

forcing someone out of bed and into a factory,

dreams come as they will

and I could travel far enough

I’d find our place on Wyandotte,

just as it was, and you

leaving for work at midnight

while the baby and I curled into sleep,

milky with it, still, in the morning

when you returned, your anger cold as the first light.
All those nights punched in, punched out

to a language I couldn’t love you enough to learn.
Any more than you could.

Tuned to your talk of unions and shop-floor politics,
how could you see that l was turning

to another revolution, how our son

tore my days up by their roots

and handed me a life I had to grow to fit

if I wanted to survive.

Statistically, it’s common enough. Marital breakdown
due to stress. Science leaves us no-one

to blame any more; though in that, how is it different
from politics or religion; our own smaller wisdom’s,
whatever brings me back here, hating

what his city made of us and keeps on making

of so many others. City of Roses.

though what thrives here is restlessness;

where someone is always working, anything can happen.

And a night like this drives a hard bargain;
it won’t let me get away with feeling sorry,
that makeshift emotion I rig up sometimes
to disguise my choices. I’m stuck with what
I can’t reclaim; howl loved you

as much as I love my life without you now
or my own body, our marriage in this city

we came to by chance, rooting ourselves
in the child we made, wanting to, not thinking of the future
as he carries us into it.33

 

3’ I find the references to marriage in this poem particularly interesting because Wallace talks about her
marriage and her child from this marriage. In fact she was never actually married to Ron Baxter.

174

Eventually Wallace saw the need to focus on the plight of women and children
affected by industrialization and labor conditions and she formed a book cooperative,
then a day-care cooperative for factory women (This day-care cooperative still exists in
Windsor). In other words, she was not just writing about these conditions.

In a 1995 interview with Cameron Wallace, Cameron gave his view of this political
activity. He made it clear that he saw the political activity of Bronwen and her friends in
Windsor as the “work of outside agitators” because “they never really held jobs in the
factory.” But friends of Bronwen suggested that her work in the Unemployment Claims
Office brought her close to the workers and their individual struggles, and I discovered
later, while talking to Ron Baxter, that Ron did, in fact, do some factory work while in
Windsor and that Bronwen’s work at U.I.C. gave her a close look at the specific
conditions in the factory and the conditions faced by “wives” and children of factory
workers. Also Wallace clearly defined clerical workers as part of the working class, not
above or below those who worked in factories.

Ron Baxter told me that he believes that it was poet Tom Wayman, who was then a
writer in residence at the University of Windsor, who helped Wallace channel her
activism into writing and encouraged her to send her poems off to a Canadian literary
journal. Wayman also insisted that Wallace join a writers’ workshop. She did, and it was
in the workshop that she wrote many of the poems in her first collection. In this same
interview with Cameron, he mentioned that it was at this point that Bronwen met Chris
Whynot (who rented space in their house in Windsor). He later became Bronwen’s

partner but only after Bronwen and Ron had a child together in 1974. At that time

175

Bronwen and Ron agreed to split up, but they remained friends and both remained active
parents to Jeremy.

“They lived in a house on Johnson Street which they let out to boarders...and one of
the boarders was Chris Whynot. So she became involved with Chris and Ron was gone.
It was always sort of a melding kind of situation with Bron” (Wallace, Cameron,
Kingston, ON. March 24, 1995).

Clearly when I talk to Cameron, I get the feeling that he did not always appreciate or
approve of his sister’s lifestyle or her political work. While Cameron seemed to see the
men in his sister’s life as rather incidental to her other needs and even sees them as
victims in her wake, her female friends and even Ron Baxter seem to see it differently.

Ron Baxter credits Bronwen with helping him get “in touch with his feminine side”
primarily because gender roles were an issue in their lives together and in their political
activity. Together, they also faced the difficult decision that Bronwen made to have an
abortion in the first few years of their life together.34 Ron also cites the time after their
son Jeremy was born as a difficult time, a frustrating time for Wallace as she was staying
home with her son Jeremy, and yet still had a keen desire to be out and about, and even
more active in labor politics. She was, as Ron Baxter put it, feeling powerless.

In a little known publication called The Magazine published for workers in Windsor
(that Ron Baxter passed along to me) a collection of poems that Wallace published

therein entitled “Shiftwork” points to the frustrations and sensitivities to which Baxter

 

3’ Although very much pro-choice I believe the decision to have this abortion weighed heavily on
Bronwen’s mind until the day she died, and I believe this weight surfaces in her writing. In particular 1 see
this surfacing in “Burn Out” from The Stubborn Particulars of Grace.

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referred. Nighshift #2 (published approx. 1975) is one such poem. This poem may well
have been the beginning of Wallace’s close scrutiny of the plight of working-class

women in her poetry.
Nightshift #2

In the middle of some warm and favorite dream
he arrived,
tense and resentful,
making me, somehow, responsible
for the job, the crazy hours
the cold walk home;
rearranged blankets
wrenched pillows
throws himself to an uneasy sleep
while I huddle guiltily
on the cold edge of morning,
until the baby wakes.
Daily, the house become a battlefield
and I, a kind of buffer zone
between doorbell
Telephone
the joyful noise of my own son
and the hostile stranger
in the bedroom.

All day long, I hear him
tossing and swearing,
At dinner, he presides in silence
anger, palpable, behind his eyes
The baby whines and plays with his food.
I hurry to remove him
and above the sound of his bath
hear the inevitable drone of the TV
foresee another wasted evening;
And though I know in my head
it’s the company’s fault
find myself plotting, bitterly,
the best way to pick a fight.

(From The Magazine, Vol. 10 #4
Aug.- Sept. 1976)

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In an interview with a writer and dear friend of Bronwen Wallace, Carolyn Smart, on
April 4, 1994 in Kingston, Ontario, Carolyn mentioned that Bronwen justified the
abortion she had and suggested that knee problems and subsequent and frequent x-rays
were the reason she decided on the abortion. Carolyn also mentions that Bronwen
revealed to her that her husband, Peter Dexter, came out as gay less than a year after their
marriage, and that this knowledge was instrumental in her decision to leave Peter and to
act on her attraction to Ron Baxter.

Wallace did not just cast Peter aside (as Cameron seems to suggest). He surfaces
directly and indirectly in several of her poems. In “Benediction, for Peter D.” upon
hearing of his death, Wallace reflects on their life together. (and the rituals in that life, in
this case being pie-making.

A wedding ring and the art
of making pastry are all I have
from our marriage, Peter...
I miss you more now.
So young then, I thought forever
came with words, the hateful things
we never took back,...
each death specific
as the terms that bind me to it,
so that yours, which loses the cells of your body, scatters
the details of our marriage too, the bits that matter to no-one else
I’d meant to gather in some day...
(Wallace, Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 33)
Obviously, the news of Peter’s death came hard. She had regrets.
While Cameron saw Bronwen’s infatuation with Chris Whynot as just another

melding, it is interesting that Ron saw it as important for Bronwen, saw it as what she

needed. As Ron put it “Chris seemed to give her the right amount of freedom and security

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and the permission and space to write” (Baxter, September 28, 1997). When I told
Cameron about Ron’s comment, he said quite emphatically that no one had to give
Bronwen permission to do anything.

By 1980, Wallace had returned to Kingston with son Jeremy and it was then that her
first collection of poetry was published. At this point she also helped to establish the
Women’s Studies Program at Queens’ University and taught Creative Writing there. But
because the academic life (albeit somewhat political by this point) was not enough, was
contrary to what she believed must be done, Wallace began working as a front-line
counselor at Kingston’s Interval House, a shelter for battered women and their children.
In the words of her friend, Joanne Page, “The two year stint (at the shelter) moved her
profoundly, temporarily dried up her writing, and crystallized her feminine politics, which
found voice in 1987 when she began writing “In Other Words, " a column for the

Kingston W hig-Standard (Page, Arguments With The World, 9). The manuscripts that

 

followed her work at Interval House are People You’d Trust Your Life To (short stories)
and Keep That Candle Burning Bright & Other Poems. But most noteworthy in this
context are her poems entitled “Intervals” from The Stubborn Particulars of Grace

published in 1987. Wallace dedicates several of the sections in “Intervals” to women she

served at

Interval House.

This is for Ruth,

brought in by the police

from Hotel Diu emergency

eyes swollen shut, broken jaw wired

and eighteen stitches closing on eye. This
is what a man might do...

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“I can’t sleep.” she apologizes,
every time I close my eyes,
I see fist coming at me
through the walls...
(Wallace, The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 61)
...This city, an edge like any other;
its dark, the border territory between house
where violence holds up in men’s hands, the shadow
that fall between a woman’s breasts, the kids born

already knowing...Like time bombs, all those Childhood’s
huddled in comers...

(Wallace, The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 60)
In “The Town Where I Grew Up” in Common Magi_g Wallace asks that we look
beyond the Kingston area. In this poem it is not just a different life we see but Wallace
tells us that it is all a matter of seeing what we care to see, or believing what the

establishment wants us to believe.

Interval Years

It is clear that Wallace’s work in Windsor was moving her more in the direction of
concern for women and their children, and that her efforts at this point became as
practical as they were political. In an interview with her friend and co-worker, JoAnne
MacAlpine, I learned about Wallace’s particular concern for the children who followed
their mothers into Interval House for shelter. “What struck me was her keen interest in
the children. I think we (the other volunteers) hoped that because the shelter was for
abused women, that the children could just follow them in and things would improve for
them too...Bron recognized the kids as child residents of the shelter. And not just

appendages to their mums” (MacAlpine, Kingston, March 25, 1995).

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We get a glimpse of this concern in “Intervals, Part 11 Free Speech” when Wallace
relates the desperation of a client at Interval House through the description of this client’s
child.

...Only her children can understand.

The oldest, fourteen, is smaller

than an eight year old, his wrists

thin as the pencil he’s using

to mark off the days

their father left them alone, locked

in their cabin forty miles North of here...
this is for him too, for Steven,
round-shouldered old man of a kid,

one hand on the paper, the other

in the air, signing to his mother

the little he has to comfort her

in her language. (Wallace, The Stubborn Particulars of Grace. 61)

Wallace was moved to take action and so together with Cathy Jamieson, set up a one-
on one program for the kids. Individual volunteers would pal up with a child and design
modest activities and outings. Games and books were brought in, and a garage was
converted into a play space for the children.

One of the things I heard over and over from the women who worked in the shelter
with Bronwen was that she seemed to have an intuitive sense of what was needed next,
what the next move was or should be. I asked her friend and co-worker Debra Greer what
Bronwen wanted to do next that never got done. To which she replied:

She used to try to work on it and never happened,
And still isn’t happening, something called ‘Second
Stage’, some kind of affordable, secure building where

women could go after they leave the shelter” (Greer,
Debbie, Kingston, June 10, 1995).

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According to many of Wallace’s friends, her work in the shelter was frustrating and
consuming. Wallace was particularly frustrated because the shelter was a stopgap
measure and it was difficult to see a long-range result or solution. Yet Wallace looked
ahead and dreamed of other solutions. She also seemed to lend some civility to the way
things were done at the shelter. For example, it was Bronwen who decided that prior to
each meeting, the shelter workers gather to discuss what troubled them about the
operations of the shelter in general or specifically. Wallace also had a way of dealing
with problems that never seemed like criticism. She was mindful of people’s differences
and all of their feelings. Darlene George told me a story about some of the awful things
people would donate to the shelter and how angry it made many of the workers. When
Darlene expressed her anger to Bronwen over one particular shabby stuffed animal that
came in, Wallace dealt with it by suggesting that Darlene throw if off the side of the
house in order to dissipate her anger. Darlene also said that Bronwen made those human
off-the-wall suggestions now and again (George, Darlene, Interview, June 10, 1995), and
that this was helpful. Both Debra and Darlene made clear to me that even if Bronwen
was not “up,” she was always kind, always warm, and always inclusive.

But one friend, J oAnne MacAlpine, remembered a tough Bronwen, a Bronwen who
could stand up to the police officers who came searching for women. She remembers
how angry Bronwen became when the police downplayed the good work the shelter did.
Wallace told MacAlpine that it was Ferd Wallace who prepared her to deal with this
reaction on part of the police because he (her father) seemed to trivialize what Bronwen

did, as did her brother Cameron.

182

In the Spring issue of ARC Wallace is being interviewed by Brenda Carter when
Carter asks/comments:

The poems that have arisen out of your work with
battered women at Interval House in Kingston in your
new collection, the anger that was a part of an earlier
poem “Dream of Rescue,” seems more controlled in
the new ones and I think these poems are far more
ominous...”

To which Wallace replies:

That’s really interesting. I think when I first began to
work at Interval House, when I first began to deal with
the whole question of violence against women, I really
did have that kind of nice, liberal idea that I was rescuing
people or that I was helping these poor women. And I
think that one of the things that I learned from working
at the Interval House is that there isn’t an “us” and “them”
situation, that as women we are all in danger and that
recognition of that changes not only how I look at the
issues but how I look at myself and how I look at where

I am in society. And it clearly changes what I can do
about it” (Wallace in ARC, 46).

I wasn’t quite sure, when I started this work, why it is that I have decided to focus on
Wallace’s poetry, but in that same interview in ARC Wallace kind of speaks for me when

she tells Cantor:

...The private title for the collection that I had in my
mind for “the Stubborn Particulars of Grace” is now
the title of the last section “Nearer to Prayers Than
Stories” which is a phrase that comes from an essay by
John Berger. He’s a Marxist critic who wrote “Ways
of Seeing”. He has an interesting essay on poetry in
which he says that poems, even narrative ones, do not
resemble stories. That all stories in one way or another
are about battles, about victory and defeat. But, he
says, a poem is a way of crying out, a way of saying,
this has to be paid attention to now. It isn’t an appeal

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to the future. it is an appeal to the language to pay
attention and in that sense they’re nearer to prayer than
to stories. Poetry speaks to the immediate and I really
believe that and I think in that sense poetry can change
things” (Wallace in ARC, 47).
That the line between poetry and story blurs into meditation and yet serves as
“political discourse” fascinates me. It also sets Wallace apart from certain ideological

camps in which others would place her.

At a recent literary conference a kindly gentleman, upon hearing a paper I delivered
about Wallace, pointed me in the direction of a few working-class women poets who are
living and writing in the general area of British Columbia. He suggested that I read the
work of Kate Braid, Maxine Gadd, and J .8. Joe. I am grateful to him because suggestion
was a reminder to place Wallace in her rightful historical-literary context particularly the
context in which she first began to write poetry that combined the world of work and
womanhood. While these poets take on the prospective that Wallace did, their styles
however, are not in the “disobedient” forms, the blurred forms, the inclusive forms of

Wallace.

Pat Logan

According to Jeremy Baxter, very few things affected Wallace as much as the illness,
then death, of her friend Pat Logan. Along with several poems in her friend’s honor
Wallace (together with her husband Chris Whynot), made a film about Pat’s struggle with
cancer. The title of that 1982 film is All You Have To Do. In a review of the film by
Bill Hutchinson, Whig-Standard Staff Writer, Hutchinson says, “The film successfully
attacks the common practice of pretending death does not exist. (14)” What 1 found most

interesting in Hutchinson’s review, however, was his comment that the film “...is not a

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documentary, nor is it a series of land-edge interviews challenging and probing the
subjects. This is a portrait, not a slice of life work.” And unlike what has been said about
Wallace’s poetry, “The film’s major limitations lies in the politeness, poise, even
consideration it shares with its subjects. We see the finished product, not the process, the
pain and turmoil that had to be lived through” (Hutchinson, Whig-Standard, n.d.) 35 In the
poem “Anniversary,” in memorial for Pat Logan, Wallace begins as she drives away from
the graveyard where Pat are buried. Wallace longs to tell her friend ordinary things like
what she ate for breakfast, or about a new antique place she has found. She remembers a
day they spent together. Then the poet meanders ahead to where she might stop for a
sandwich on her ride home and the common courtesies she might share with the vendor.
Wallace makes us aware at the poem’s end that the simple exchanges she had with her
friend Pat, is what she treasures (Wallace, “Anniversary” The Stubborn Particulars of
Greg, 54-5).

1 had a notion the other day to take the film All You Have To Do and to insert the
series of poems Wallace wrote for Pat Logan, at crucial intervals. The poems appear in
Signs Of The Former Tenant in the section entitled “The Cancer Poems.” The poems in
the series begin with Pat’s diagnosis and move through her surgery, treatment, remission,
and death. But amidst these poems are the “Dream Poems,” rather surreal poems for

Wallace. In these dream poems, it is difficult to tell if the dreams are dreams that

 

3’ Interesting that once Wallace turned to short story/fiction writing that she was able to do what she did not
do well on film. Perhaps the film was a desire to do what she did not do in poetry- actually capture a more
complete narrative. Perhaps she saw fiction as somewhere between essay and poetry. Wallace hints as
what fiction can do in her essay. “Finding Some Unsuspected Truths In Fiction” Arguments With The

World.

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Pat Logan is having or if they are the dreams that Wallace is having. The poems also
reflect the subconscious dealing with each stage of Pat’s illness. Hidden as well in the
dream poems are the lessons Wallace learned from Pat, as well as what they both learned
from the process of death. They learned that the ordinary along with the extraordinary is
important, and that it is important to consider both as an important part of a woman’s life.

In (the) “First Dream” the woman enters an empty shop where she hopes to purchase a
book that an old man refuses to sell. A sinister male figure has followed her into the shop
and offers her the book. The woman in the poems tells the sinister figure, “but it (the
book) was mine all along” - the book (just as the life or death) clearly belongs to the
woman but is taken by the male figure. In (the) “Second Dream,” in a house with arched
windows and spiral staircase, a man with a softer face and hands offers her biscuits and
wine. At this point the reader thinks that the man provided these comforts the reader
thinks? By the third dream the woman sits in a fishing boat at the center of a grey lake - a
monkey in cap and jacket is turning cartwheels on the bow. She is trapped with this
“clown.” In (the) “Fourth Dream” she is in “an old house again or a prison” and there is
“an old man under a bare tree” but somehow the tree is made of crystal with crystal fruit.
And perhaps she is the fruit ready to fall and break. Then when the dreams, (like Pat
Logan’s life) are over, Wallace returns us to the particulars of Pat’s living then dying and
looks beyond the interaction with (and captivity with) the surreal male figures in the
dreams.

Wallace could be telling us many things here, but what seems clear to me and

important to my focus is what she says about a woman’s life and work, as well as, the

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importance of the interaction a woman has with other women, how they touch each
other’s lives. The last poem in “The Cancer Poems” series is “A Stubborn Grace.” In
this poem the poet speaking about Pat Logan says:

...your words taking root

in this room in your eyes

that draws me

to your bedside and your warm hands

growing into mine

hands I have watched so often stubborn

grace of them lifting a child or reaching

for food at your crowded table

shaping the pots you made...

And further the poet says:

...we can only give you

what’s at hand for now whatever we were doing

just before we came you do the same

for us and your dying weaves

through the muddle of our days

a single thread

in the cloth of another colour...

The influence of other female friends surfaces in other Wallace poems as well, and in
nearly each of these poems the work that women do is central, never peripheral. In
“Between Words” (for Carole) in Signs of the Former Tenant the narrator/poet sits in a
bar with a friend, a nurse who laments the number of and condition of the very young,
very poor farm girls who came to the hospital to give birth every February.

In “ The Story You Told” (for Liz Whynot and Linda Zingaro), three women discuss
their mothers’ lives as young women then move into how old women react to young

women and vice versa. Right in the middle of the poem the narrator is “Late for work

and rushing for the bus/ while the old woman (is) sweeping her walk on the comer.”

187

 

 

 

 

 

And in “Bones” (for Barb) from The Stubborn Particulars of Grace Wallace relates a

 

story a friend told her. This poem is so intertwined with the life of her friend and the
work that women do that it is best to show it here:
Bones

A story of yours got his one going,

so I’m sending it back now, changed of course,
just as each person I love

is a relocation, where I take up

a different place in the world.

The way you told it, it was after midnight,

you coming off the late shift, heading home

in a taxi, a woman driving

and you ask her if she’s ever scared

working these hours and she says, “No, I’ve got this
to protect me!” reaching under her seat

to pull up (you expected a crowbar,

a tire iron) this eight-inch, stainless steel
shank. “The pin from my mother’s thigh,”

she tells you, “I got it when they put

one of those new plastic ones in.”

Sometimes when I tell myself this story

I get caught up in logistics,

how the doctor must have delivered the thing
from layers of fat and muscle

into one of those shiny dishes

the nurse is always holding

and then she would have,

what? Washed it off? Wrapped it in towels?
Carried it down to the waiting room, the daughter
sitting there, reading magazines, smoking cigarettes
It’s so improbable, like the fetus

pickled in a jar in the science lab in high school,
though other times it’s just

there, natural as the light

that bounces off it,

somebody’s mother’s thighbone,

for protection, like her face

in the hall light, rescuing you

from a nightmare.

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You told me this

during my visit last year

when I’d just quit working

at the crisis centre, that job

that wrenched me round

until each morning stretched, a pale, dry skin,
over the real colour of the day,

ready to spring at me, like the child

whose hand had been held down

on a red-hot burner

reappearing in the face of a woman

met casually at a cocktail party.

Everywhere I went, my work experience
drew me through confessions I couldn’t stop,
and I couldn’t stop talking about them

so you had to listen

but, being you, in that way that listening

can be active, when the listener re-enters

the country of her own damage

from a new direction.

This can be like watching someone we love

return from the limits a body can be taken to

- a botched suicide, say, or an accident.

Years, it might be, before the eyes or the hands retrieve enough

to offer as a sign,

what doctors think they can detect

on a CAT scan, some pattern in the cells

to show them, once and for all,

how the mind, like the body, makes shape

of what’s left, the terrible knowledge

it labours through, slowly regaining itself.

Though on an x-ray, even the bones show up

as light, a translucence that belies their strength

or renders it immeasurable,

like the distances we count on them to carry us,

right to the end of our lives and back again,

and again. (Wallace, The Stubborn Particulars
of Grace, 80)

In “Joseph MacLeod Daffodils” (for Isabel Huggan) in The Stubborn Particulars Of

Grace, Wallace converses with her friend about most everything:

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(Another thing we share, our delight

in quotations like that, exactly what you’d expect

from girls who grew up wearing glasses

into women who read everything;

your bathroom so much like mine,

a huge bin of books by the toilet

and on the shelves, all the bottles

turned label side out.

“The contents of somebody’s bathroom,”

Diane Arbus said, “is like reading their biography”)
(Wallace, The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 31)

Many people commented on the fact that Bronwen Wallace had many close female
friends. Testimony to this was the group of women whom she called her healing circle.
This was a group of female friends from the Kingston area who arranged a schedule to
care for and visit with Bronwen around the clock while she was ill and dying. The
members of this group read their works to her and the works of others, they shared
memories, but sometimes they just kept silent vigil. Most of these women have met with
me and told me about the time they spent in the healing circle with Wallace. Of
particular interest (and lending insight into her character), was the story about the
construction noise near Wallace’s house during that time she was dying. It seems friends
wanted to call the proper authorities to tell them that the poet was dying, but Wallace
insisted that they not call, telling her caretakers that the noise would not be halted for
others and need not be halted for her.

The dinner party that I gave in order to get Bronwen’s friends together has become
somewhat symbolic of her life because women of all ages, working women, many of

whom worked in the shelter, came together at this dinner to talk. Of course, there was

much laughter; there was the sharing of memory and many tears. Many of these women

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do not have the occasion to see each other on a regular basis, still there was nothing
uncomfortable about their coming together and I was welcomed into the fold like the rest.
It was as if they needed this time and space to grieve informally. In their stories, in the

casual power of their voices, I could hear Wallace’s work continue.

191

CONCLUSION

 

Of course the majority of Wallace’s work, both literary and political, occurred during a
very self-conscious period in North American women’s lives. The weakened feminist
movement was being revived and women were beginning to re-examine questions about
how their private and public lives were structured and how gender relations affected those
lives. While Wallace sometimes leaned toward a Marxist analysis of capitalist structures,
it is clear that she also saw the rules of patriarchy and her “gendered life situation as
important.” Therefore the modern feminist movement and the ideologies of that
movement became a more valuable base or platform for her work. It was troublesome for
Wallace, however, that in the institutions of “higher learning” the intellectual take on
feminism seemed to ignore class and economic strata — seemed to want to discuss
feminism, especially when it had to do with literature, within the vacuum of the
university. Furthermore, Wallace felt some frustration because many could not see that
literature by women, in a particular class, was/is a form of production, which quite
naturally will and should contain the material, the artifacts, the linguistic structures and
literacy constructs of this class and its subclass-women.

I’d like to indulge myself in a couple of other points here that have more to do with
my work than with Wallace. In doing this work, all along I have faced either the idea that
biography was/is not academic enough, or that it is hardly a genre at all. I see this work,
however, as a place where we rescue certain women from historical oblivion to show
them as agents of change, as critics, and as leaders of their class and culture. I believe

that we cannot ignore these ideological issues — especially not the feminist issues, but that

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we can’t give short shrift to the seemingly mundane details of ordinary life events,
artifacts, and work. In doing so, the particular becomes the universal and vice versa. The
biography seems to be the perfect place for all of this.

The somewhat hidden struggles of the biographer also should not be ignored. It is
natural and draining to develop this close encounter with our subject’s life. We go
through stages of rejection and, of course, identification that can be painful. We learn
things we are not sure we should reveal and must deal with issues of privacy. It is
ultimately impossible to maintain, or rather sustain a critical, scholarly stance.

Perhaps because of all of this, and because of the constant feeling that what I say here
is as much interpretation as fact, I first must let you in on the context in which I write,
then I wish to allow you to see/hear what others have said about Bronwen Wallace in
their letters to me.

Just as I sat down to begin this conclusion, there was a knock at my door. The
academic in me said, “Ignore it or you won’t get your work done.” I heard
Bronwen Wallace says, “Open the door.” As I suspected it was a neighbor, she had her
barn jacket on, her hair in disarray, as was mine, and she was holding a bag of dog treats -
the peaceful entry ticket into my house. She looked upset.

“Come in” I said “Have time for a cup?”

“Sure” she said, “but I have to be quick, Al (her horse), is out to pasture and I don’t
want him out there too long this early in the season.”

My five dogs sat audience to our talk in my kitchen. The talk went from tractors, to
flowers, to neighbors, then to husbands, and grown children. Her husband is away sixty

percent of the time she said. Her boys off to college...

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The talk goes on for an hour before she leaves with her signature “Come on down, I’m
alone, you know.”

It occurs to me once my friend leaves that Bronwen Wallace, had she lived, might well
be facing some of the personal concerns that the two of us articulated at the table. Even if
Wallace was not faced with them herself, she would be writing about them, of that I am
sure.

Wallace would be fifty-four years old now. Her son Jeremy is in college in a distant
city. Her parents are becoming feebler by the day and are living out their years in a senior
citizen high-rise. Many of her students are still writing and some are publishing
meaningful poetry. Kingston still has its best Victorian face forward, and many of the
older homes in Kingston have been maintained or restored. There are still many beautiful
personal gardens planted in even the smallest of yards. There is, also, still a need for
places like Interval House; and the many prisons on the near peripheral of Kingston areas
still teem with inmates. Wallace would be writing about how things have changed, and
how they have not. Household chores and concerns about her son (and soon perhaps,
grandchildren) would still hold the ethereal in her poems together. Her darker poems
would most likely deal with issues of primary importance to women and children today.
She would, I am sure, also be vocal about gay rights, gay marriage, and perhaps, the need
for more research in the area of women’s health concerns. She would be helping us to
stretch our definition of family. She might have begun to take on more of the academic
hierarchy.

Perhaps she would have organized a writing retreat like the Baniff Center for the Arts

in order to continue to help get the voices of women, even older women like me, out

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there. Perhaps her last collection Keep That Candle Burning Bright tells us what she
intended to do, in terms of the typography in her narrative style. But my guess is that
she stretched the lines in that last collection because she wanted to stretch them like the
loneliest county roads. I hear these poems lope along when I ride out back in my South
pasture. I think it was these rhythms she heard when she wrote Keep That Candle

Burning Bright that caused her to elongate those lines whereas in her other poems, the

 

near obvious shape they take (line breaks that denotes poetry) while accommodating a
conversational narrative, was clearly the point.

Of course, I have read Wallace’s prose. Many feel she would have moved deeper into
fiction. Perhaps she would have. I think, however, her film about Pat Logan was more
telling I can see Bronwen writing for documentaries and screenplays and getting low-
budget films out there- perhaps bucking and breaking the traditions in yet another
academy.

The thinking about where Wallace was headed makes me sad, but it also gives me
some direction. Wallace would most likely still be writing about things like Beatrix
Potter, (maybe Harry Potter), artificial insemination, and the government of Canada all in
the same meandering. And she would still be meandering around issues in the way our
thinking and speaking often does. She would be screaming about gun violence and child
victims. She would still be looking at the problems of the power some have over the
other - not in order to discuss these paradigms of power in Marxist or Pre-Marxist terms,
but rather in order to evoke stories and then social action that might address these

paradigms.

195

In her “Blueprints For A Larger Life” Wallace suggest that women once had more
power- evident in the oldest tradition- in the celebratory words of Wicca. She states
further that this power was a power from within and the power to. The shift, she says, a
shift to power over, of men over women, adults over children, whites over blacks, rich
over poor, and this shift happened long ago. Wallace calls up a poem by Libby Scherer in
this article. It is a poem about rape that is also about the impossibility of writing a poem
about rape. She tells us how Scherer uses her damage as protest “shoves her life into the

9”

face of the patriarchy and says, ‘you better listen to this. This is important to the protest
as Wallace equates this poem with the sort of protests that we make, the protests directed

at those who have tried to silence us. “The poem is like a speak-out a ‘take back the

night’ march” (Wallace, Whig-Standard “Blueprints In A Large Life”, 1987). That she

 

has placed this poem dead center in a newspaper article is telling as well. It breaks the
norm and moves “high art” into the mainstream, and mainstream style into high art.
Wallace would still be doing this.

That she had a vision for equality goes without saying. Mary di Michele speaks to this
vision Wallace had when she (quotes Baker to) questions if women will ever evolve away

from a tradition that marginalizes us.

Could we evolve away from a tradition
which had been a sort of fluctuating stock
market of literary values, could we
substitute the long line of ghosts of kings
jostling in the hierarchy, with rooms of
people of all ages, from all ages? Talking
together. Reading Bronwen Wallace’s work,
whose poems are both a deepening and
heightening of the art of conversation,
makes me answer, most emphatically, yes!
(Sheard & Wachtel, p. 100)

 

I96

That Wallace saw diversion by class as a way of blinding us is evident as well. That
she knew that the institutions of higher learning only help/helped to create larger gaps
between the class- to separate us from our roots- but to especially separate us from the
struggles and voices of the generations of women before us, was articulated again and
again by Wallace. That she ignored the dictates of the larger literary community and
pushed narrative poetry toward plain talk- the kind of plain talk that we might hear in our
neighborhood or in our country music is unprecedented. Most notably because she does
this while discussing the concerns that ordinary women had/have. That she guarded
against showing women (in her poems) escaping into a fantasy- away forever from pots,
pans and diapers to some transcendent place, was innovative and bold as well.

Because I want this work to be a tribute to Bronwen Wallace, I have decided to close
with a few letters. First a few letters to me, then a couple of letters that served as her last
words to those left in her wake. And finally, I must tell you that my work only begins
here. The books and transcripts, articles and interviews as well as the poems I have been
blessed with, will continue to take me into this remarkable woman’s life and her work.
After the texts of letter from friends and her son Jeremy, I will also include my own letter
to Wallace as well. Later and most appropriately, I will continue to chronicle her work in

a collection of biographical and ethnographical poems- an idea Wallace would love.

March 31, 2000

Dear Bronwen:

197

I had a nightmare last night. In the nightmare my mother had overslept (something she
never did), my granddaughter was without clothes and my husband was watching a
basketball game (actually a rare treat for him as he is the proverbial workaholic). He
lifted his head in my direction and said “Oh by the way, we are having twelve people over
for dinner,” after which I had a violent, nervous breakdown. I woke thrashing, heart
racing. This is the way you came to me today, out of a nightmare about the situations in
which many women and children still find themselves. This wouldn’t surprise you, I
know. But you wouldn’t keep silent about it, either.

In the last five years, I have been looking at your life and your work, and I am just
beginning to know you. I know that I can’t look at the world only through my eyes
anymore. Actually, I can’t pass a large vacant house in this area without thinking that you
might encourage the local officials and a group of friends to convert it into a shelter for
women and children, even abused men. Some feminists think this is what we did in the
605 and 70s, but I know it is still our real work. Lack of money would not stop you as it
does me.

Also, I can’t sit and write a poem without asking myself if I have hidden what I want
to say in some elitist language, some language that is not really me. Actually, at times I
felt this way while writing my dissertation. Perhaps that is why it has been so difficult for
me. It came together more like patchwork than an academic work, and I am afraid it
reads that way, too. But you would understand that most things in a women’s life are part
of a patchwork of their experiences, life work, professional work, and custodial work,
which results in some unique, colorful design. When I write now, I constantly ask myself

if the piece I am writing is accessible to those who inspired it. I ask if it is true to its

198

history. I ask if it is hidden in the language one class uses to distinguish itself from
others. I ask what I am faking, forcing, or hiding in order to take a middle ground, in
order to publish. These are tough questions for me especially since it is you who has
taught me that my voice is valid.

In the last year I have traveled to Italy and found my way to the tiny southern Italian
town of Prigano, and to my maternal great-grandmother’s house, a tiny stone house with a
shed for a donkey attached. This is where I came from. That this realization will make
its way into my poetry goes without saying. That it will be as important as what I say
about growing up in Detroit, Michigan in the 505 and 605 would make you proud. The
industrial landscape of Detroit did not make me. Perhaps the walks on Belle Isle with my
mother in the shadow of the “Seven Sisters” did. The RenCen doesn’t excite me. It is
much too clearly phallic and tom like.

I regret that I came to your work so late in my life. I find it interesting (Tom Waymen
pointed out to me) that you were just across the river in Windsor when I was a student
activist in Detroit at Wayne State University in the 605. Had we ever sat in a room
together, ever talked? Why did we let the River divide us? Why did my political action
stop when yours continued?

If we could sit down to coffee I imagine we would talk about how we have become
invisible to most men in our middle age. We would probably feel a mixture of grief,
anger, and relief over this. I wonder if we would talk about the real possibility that one or
both of us could live with and love another woman the way we have only let ourselves
love men. Not that we can’t love men but, we might talk about, if doing so, might indeed

set us free.

199

You would talk about raising your son. I would talk about raising daughters. I would
tell you how much easier the role of motherhood seems for my daughter than it was for
me, or you...(obvious in your poem for Jeremy). My daughter’s ease with motherhood
makes me proud, but also frightens me. I could tell you this. You would understand,
commiserate.

And, oh, the literature we could share! There are a few new poets out there that seem
to move in the direction you took in your work, but after awhile they seem to back off,
move back toward a more controlled narrative style. I will watch this and report on it. I
wonder if I am called to push the envelope here. To try to take up where you left off. I
wonder if it is in me. You would tell me to try. You would also tell me to drop the
parenthetical wouldn’t you!

I have been wanting to ask more about your illness. I sense that your early indulgence
in marijuana combined with smoking cigarettes and drinking was in part to blame for the
illness that took your life. Or did the dental surgery you had provoke it? Did anyone ever
question this? Perhaps you would be taking a long hard look at the tobacco
manufacturers had you survived.

You would be my connection to Canadian Literature. I need a new connection
because, and you would mourn this knowledge, South Shore Books in Windsor has
closed. It has given in to the new direction of Windsor with its casinos, topless bars, and
all. I would like to talk about the casinos with you. What do they stand for? How would
they make their way into your poems? How does this change the landscape of our

history?

200

You would be glad to know that your friends and family were open to me. But I am
sorry to say that Cameron, who was first very helpful, has since shut me out. He won’t
even tell me why. My notes and e-mail to him now go unanswered, yet I owe him a debt
of gratitude. It was Cameron who first contacted me, Cameron who sent me copies of
your articles and many of your letters. I think that he feels left out of your life in some
way. (Are you aware that even your very last letter makes only passing reference to him).
I wish I could make this better for him and for you. I see it as much like my relationship
with my brother. We love them but can’t get through. Their place in the 505, and 605,
and 705 growing up was so different. Of course, when/if Cameron reads this, he will say
it is just so much bullshit! Anyway, I would like to talk with you about this.

Ron still adores you. He has remained your loyal friend, and a good father to Jeremy.
I see so much of you in Jeremy! Chris, now married again, would not speak with me at
all. I sense he is avoiding pain for himself and others in doing so.

I have so many questions. Try, as I did to find answers, I feel humbled for the trying
I promise you that this work will continue. One more thing. I never listened to country
music before but now I listen to Emmylou Harris whenever I feel stuck in life or love.
Her rhythms buoy me so, allow me to move on.

And instead of reading Marx again or studying deconstruction theory anymore, I am
going to do some deconstructing. I plan to travel to my paternal grandmother’s house in
the southernmost tip of Italy so that the lack of this bit of my history doesn’t blind me. I
feel my own place in history now too. Even when I am cleaning stalls, planting tomatoes,
I see this action as part of my history. When I wipe spittle off my granddaughter’s chin, I

feel that history moving along.

201

Oh, Bron, how many heartaches must we share? It is nearly lilac time. You liked this
time of year. Let this work bloom with the lilacs for you this year. Know that I carry you
out into the world this way and that our journey has just begun.

You put it this way:

...Even those women we dread
sitting next to on buses and trains,
their bodies swelling with messy secrets,
the odour of complaint on their breath,
may be prophets. Whether we listen or not
won’t stop them from telling
our story in their own.
(The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 48)

...how little is ever really possible
for any of us, botched
failed things to whom it may only come once
and never clearly, that moment
when the voice that tries to sing
through all our stories rises, briefly,
first person singular.
cries yes and now and help
help me.
(The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 67)

To come back, again,
to those Sundays at my grandmother’s table,

To begin to see, a little,

what they taught me

of themselves, their place

among the living and the dead.
thanksgiving and the practical
particulars of grace, and to accept it,
slowly, almost grudgingly,

(The Stubborn Particulars of Grace, 1 10)

202

Appendix A

Letters

203

Gloria D. Nixon-John
4183 Locust Valley Lane
Oxford, Michigan 48370

Dear Gloria:

Bron was an accepting person. She was non-judgemental and always
willing to liSten to the other persons point of view. She had
strong principles and stood up for them without making anyone
else who did not agree feel inadequate or wrong. If you disagree
with Bron she still respected your opinion. '

Bron was different from others because she was so open. caring
and fair with others and there was no phoniness within her.

Bron would walk into a room and smile her wonderful smile. She
usually was bouncy and could pick up on the mood of the room

right away. I got a warm feeling when Bron arrived as I knew
that Bron would be helpful.

Bron smiled a lot and her body language was receptive. She would
not interrupt but when she wanted to say something and was

waiting she would not be able. to sit still. She seemed elegant
in her demeanor but never acted snobbish. Her posture projected
to others how she seemed to feel good about herself.

 

Bron had insecurities. She was always worried that Jeremy would
be given food,with peanuts in it as Jeremy is deathly allergic
to peanuts. She also felt that her teeth would not last as she
had a gum disease. Bron went through very painful dental surgery
to get them repaired so she could retain her beautiful smile.
She had a big party when she turned 40 as she felt very strongly
about not waiting until she turned 50. Did she somehow have a
premonition of her death in some way? Bron seemed to feel insecure
about her writing at times and felt she might lose her ability
to write. -

Bron loved to read the tabloids such as the " Enquirer" as they
made her laugh at the ridiculousness of the stories. She loved
Jewelry and wore long roomy skirts most of the time.

 

She totally disliked abusive mens behaviour and very little
tolerance for their behaviour. She worked at Interval House
so she could help women and kids have a better quality of life.

we never discussed religion that It can—remember. Bron felt very
strongly about censorship though. He used to get a lot of Harle-

quin romances donated to Interval House and the staff would‘
send them on to another agency. when Bron started working at

 

Interval House she was appalled at this and explained that censor-
ship was terrible because who determined what was " bad" or

" good " and where would it stop? She convinced the staff without
much trouble and 'we in: longer censored the residents reading.

While Bron was a counsellor at Interval House she also spent
many hours with the kids. They loved to see her as she told-them
wonderful stories while'painting their faces. She would always
listen to them and answer all their questions if possible.

As for the copy of the interview and the dinner music, I do not
have either but Deb Greer. Trish Crowe or Judith Taylor would
know. ’

I am sorry I took so long to respond to your letter. I had more
major surgery and took awhile to recover.

I ran into a woman I had not seen for years and told her about
you as she had taken classes from Bron. She would be interested

in hearing from you if.you are interested in her concepts of
Bron. Here is her name and address:

Anne O'Hara

162 Grenadier Drive
Kingston, Ontario
(613) 544-5127

Hoping to see you again.

Sincerely,

elLLAuvvéi’

IQ
O
U:

a:-

 

 

 

Bron's Memorial Service

Bronwen autographed one of her books for me and wrote "Sister
to Sister". Bonwen felt that way about all‘women.

Bronwen gave us many gifts. When she gave us her wonderful smile
her whole face glowed. Her eyes always seemed to sparkle with
life and spirit. I need to say as well that her eyes flashed
at comments she found offensive. Bronwen exuded warmth and

compassion to everyone. She was always accepting of others and
valued their feelings. Bron's perception of others was usually
right on. Bron taught us to consider all sides of an issue and
to realize all the implications of any decision. As an example:
censorship in relation to pornography. Bron felt that we should
not dispose of any reading material regardless of its content
as censorship is both a political and a personal issue. She

asked good questions: Where would censorship stop? Who would
determine who would do the censoring? '

Vivid in.our memories are the -hours and hours we spent as a
group working on the house philosophy and operating guidelines.
Bron was so passionate about words and helped clarity the nuances
between one word or phrase and another. Bron was always willing
to share any ideas and knowledge she had and was open to any
suggestions others might have for doing things differently.

One staff asked me to s'hare an. experience 'she had'with Bron.
"I had only been a volunteer at Kingston Interval House only
a few weeks and had decided. to go to my first volunteer pot-
luck. I was very nervous. -I was new to Kingston, new to the
shelter movement and new to Kingston pot-lucks. I found myself
sitting next to a woman who declared herself a feminist and
she helped me to become comfortable and part of the group. She
laughed-a lot and I always think Bron had a lot to do with why
I became involved in the shelter and stayed."

Bron shared many experiences about Kingston Interval House
through her poetry.

Bron will always be a par t of Kingston Interval House--she
cared about it so deeply and gave so much of her time and energy-
with a terrific sense of committment. She gave the women and
children a gift- the gift of being listened to. She listened
wonderfully well with heart. and mind open. Bron taught‘ us a
lot about living. loving and caring. we are proud to have worked
alongside her. '

Talk given at Bron's service by Eleanor Suboski

206

 

 

 

 

 

Sept. 12
Hi Gloria,

The old rhythm slowly resumes itself as I work my way

back into school mode. I can’t remember a september when I
.wasn't going back to one school or another. This has always
been the month during which I confront (or re-confront) the
big, bad, intimidating-as-hell world of institutionalized
learning. You must be familiar... In a way it depresses me
to think that I have followed this pattern for so long. ‘But
at the same time this year I find I am excited about school--

there are things to look forward to and my schedule is the
best it has been since I came to UB0. 1 even have a whole
day off--sort of. All in all the transition into school
mode has been pretty smooth. I feel good--ready to work.

I have a theatre history prof. who is a very amazing
man. He has traveled over the world to hundreds of theatres,
opera houses, crazy parties and tells wonderful stories. we
were talking yesterday'in class about the tendency for people
to be intimidated by the work of the "great" p1aywrights--and
this is true with other art forms too. It isn't the work
itself that we find intimidating but rather the wall of
interpretation that has arisen, over time, between the work
and ”us". This is so true in the university environment
where all we do is analyze, criticize, theorize, memorize...
We need to re-appropriate all of these great works (he
referred to everything from Oedipus Rex right through
Shakespeare on down to Beckett but again it holds true in so
many instances). We need to pull them through the wall to
ourselves so we can rediscover them as they are--with no
essays or theses to stand in between.

"Ve need to spend less time tinking (he has a giddy
German accent) and more time exploring and experiencing
without trying to figure de whole ting out.“ The need to
re-eroticize these arts because we are losing touch of our
senses--getting lost in the dusty academic analytic
headspace. After all art is sensory--sensual and if we
forget that and only think about it all in our heads we're
cutting ourselves off.

At the end of his lecture he confessed that he is in
love with Susan Sontag, a woman who argues similar heories.

I could go on but I won’t. I’m not exactly sure why
I’ve written all this but I guess it got me riled up. Maybe
you can use it as advise for some of your students...

I really don't know about any foreign others that
influenced Bron’s work. Authors that wrote in other
languages hmmm... well Karl Marx -- 2 don't think that helps
much. I will throw out Rainer Maria Rilke as an idea--

207

someone who she read a fair amount. I can’t think of any
authors to compare her to though. That’s a tough one for me.
San Diego still sounds really cool. I only wish I knew
what my schedule was going to be like with the shows at
school. I have midterms Thurs. 16th and Fri. 17th and one of
the shows I am designing for closes on Sat. the 18th. I may
need to be there the last night of the show but I think I
could miss it (let’s just say: if you were going to book it
on the Sat. maybe you could let me know before you did).
Otherwise I am available and would love to go anytime after
late Saturday night until whenever you leave--the Elst? So

let me know! If you would prefer another arrangement or
something,l’m cool with that too.

Before I go I wanted to mention to you someone who I
have known a long time-- a member of the Logan family (I
think we talked about them before.) Pat Logan was Bron's
closest friend for many years. Chris and Bron made a film
about her and her fight with Hodgekin’s disease... Anyway
Pat’s daughter Amy was close to Bron and was involved in the
support group/roster when Bron was sick. -She is an
interesting'and insightful person. I mentioned your name to
her and the work you were doing. She would like to talk if
you would. Right now she is somewhat hard to get a hold of.
She just moved to Vancouver with her boyfriend. So if you
wanted you could send a letter or any informationfito me and I

could forward theme I see her quite a bit. Shedhave a more
fixed address soon.

take care,

Jeremy

P.S. I am sending these two pieces. I guess connected in

that both were written, in a way, for Bron. blue is a newer
poem and spaces I wrote just after her death.

208

 

AuL‘l 31 6};
Hello Renee, Hello Gloria,

I guess it has been ages since we last spoke. The river of time swirls
along the endless spiral path. Suddenly it is the middle of summer and my
time for adventuring is not as plentiful as I would like . However
comprimises must be made -‘-I am doing my best to maintain my focus and I
try to tell myself that adventuring can wait.

I have a pretty cool job these days. I am working at festivals around
Van as a crew person. My first gig was the International Children’s
festival. _I did everything from driving tent stakes with a sledge hammer,
to putting up huge tents, stages and seating, to herding small children into
shows inside the tents, to installing lighting equipment etc... I met lots of
interesting folks. Next was the Dragon Boat festival - giant canoe races
with teams from around the world. My job there entailled collecting
garbage (primarily) also moving sound gear, food and people around in
golf carts. There was lots of free beer which made the garbage pick up a
little easier—also 12 bucks an hour. ' Tomorrow I start the Folk festival

which promises to be a good gig—location is excellent: right on the sea
shore.

I managed to get four days off last weekend (after working ten
straight). I journeyed to a magical place on the west coast of Vancouver
Island. There lies the oldest of trees and hanging mosses and , of course,
the open ocean. Wowufucking amazing. Endless beach and surf and white
mists rising out of the sea. I even braved the waves long enough for a quick
body surf.

I was accompanied on this trip by my new sweetie-Va1erie who is
also a theatre and fine arts type person—she is currently a directing graduate
student. Val has a truly inspirational spirit and a very grounded outlook on
the world. We seem to share a common rhythym. "A“!

In case you are wondering Bemadette and Im on happy terms and
still hang out. I guess we had too much difficulty finding a common
agenda. We are heading in different directions and trying to bridge that gap
was tiring and not very fulfilling.

Does that make any sense?
Do I make sense in any of my meandering chatter?

 

Do y’all think I am crazy?

I hope so.

Renee, I enjoyed reading your letter and the offer to come for a visit
is very enticing. After Folk fest (early in August) I am returning to Ontario
for a while. Had I more time I would attempt to cross the border and
journey to your ever intriguing woodland home. However I think under the
circumstances it would seem too rushed. I have a lot of visiting,
remembering,'laughing , crying, indulging and catching up to do in Ontario-
-I get overwhelmed just thinking about it.

Soooooo perhaps Christmas, perhaps next summer but I know in my heart
that I will make it there before too long.

Hope all your creative endeavours are progressing well: dysertation work,

darkroom construction. You guys will have to keep me up to date on all
developments. '

Here is my new address:

#4-131West13thAvenue fivé/‘Aéha({gb’7’> 8?}, [251%

Vancouver, B.C.
VSY 1V8

Take care, '
lovej eremy :

210

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Dear Gloria,

Immediately upon leaving you I began to come up with things
I wished I'd mentioned. Likely this is endemic to the process. So
many pieces of it, there were, much to collect together from the '
various filing places in what passes for one's mind. Here are a few of
the scraps that fell out' while I drove from Kingston to the cottage
Saturday morning.

The writing class.

One Rosalind Adams, RR #1, Milford, Ontario, KOK
2P0, _a rather silent, mysterious, painfully shy young woman who
said virtually nothing in the classes, who turned out distinctive
pieces about life as a seasonal worker in Prince Edward County (a
poorish area to the west of Kingston, around Picton) which were
clearly .autobiographical and very strong. Ros adored Bron, and Bron
seemed to be very supportive of Ros, talking with her before and
after class, possibly between. Ros was striken by Bron's illness and
would turn up at Gibson Ave, near mute with distress that last
summer. Later she came to drop in on me regularly, then dropped
out of sight. She resumed contact with me a couple of years ago. She
had birthed a daughter whom she named Bronwen. The infant was
born with a heart defect and only lived 4 days. She has subsequently
had two sons, still lives in the Picton area & might be able to shed
some light on Bron's mentoring/teaching ability.

Another from the class, Richard Belzile, a francophone 8L an
out-gay man, now at the other side of law school has just been hired
by the Queen's Human Rights office as Someone about to undertake
anti-heterosexism work within the university (sign of the times). I
presume he could be reached through the university commencing in
September. He, Richard, is also a gifted ASL signer and signed Bron's
International Women's Day speech, heretofore known locally as '
Blueprints.

Bron's style in a teaching situation, as I mentioned,
seems in retrospect to have been almost at odds with her personal
style. As I came to know her first in the classroom, I didn't catch the

71‘)

 

 

 

separation until I spent time with her afterwards, elsewhere.
Certainly the confrontational Bron, the argumentative Bron, this
woman stayed home on teaching days. We did get her passion
though. It was electrifying. She loved reading aloud. I understood
why she did it so well better after I talked to Peggy about elocution
Peggy was known for her prowess - and listened to Bron's aunt
described a young Bron on the washing line platform, declaiming
poems to anyone who would listen. (This last story came from the
aunt as she and I sat a shift with Bron's body after she had died.)
Thinking back to the creative writing course, the memory of her
voice and her' familiarity with the material she chose remains clear
and affecting still, after all these years.

Monday, June 26/95

Another memory centres on what I might best
describe as the ethics of .writing about real peOple. I've since had this
decussion more times than I'd like to remember and understand it to
be one of the standard topics among writers and writers' friends.
There are, of course, all kinds of points of View. You who are engaged
on this very subect will have your own 'take.‘ The subject came up
because one of the undergrads had written a short story about what
she admitted was an incident involving her upstairs neighbours in
the student rental where she lived. She, the student, was very
troubled about having written the story. Did she have the right, she
wanted to know, and what did Bron think about such issues? Without
missing a beat, Bron came back with something like: 'Of course! You
write what you have to write. Your obligation is to the story, to the
writing. People will like it or lump it, doesn't matter.‘ The class '
chewed over the right or wrong of the question for the rest of that
class and several more. Probably the reason I remember her position
so vividly was because the village poems I was engaged in wrting
had positioned the same dilemma directly in front of me and since
I'd read Bron's published work (Marrying Into ..., Common Magic, The
Stubborn Particulars...) I'd had occasion to wonder how much was
autobiographical and real and, well, wondered about this very
matter. -

"close to the bone' was written right after the Blueprint speech
and now reads raw and unpolished. It was never published, never
submitted. 'promise' was published, along with another I can lay my
hands on, in a little literary mag out of Kingston called Next Exit,

edited by Eric Fulsom for some years. Eric put out a special issue
with pieces written for Bron. Can't put my hand on any of those
issues either, although I know they are around.

Rather than let this sit awaiting completion in my computer for

who knows how long, I think I will cough it forth and send, as some
evidence that I have been thinking about our conversations.

214

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October 6, 1988
Dear Joanne,

Great to get your letter - and the poems, which I have returned with lots of
comments. Generally, fine-tuning here. These are very good. I'm particularly
taken with how you seem to be taking more chances, risks, especially with
the two longer pieces, though that energy seems to have affected the

shorter ones too - nice touches, like the presence of the Bolsteins in

The Hill, the little aside about Slim in Of Mills, which give the poems

a density and a texture which is really exciting. And you're right about
where the problems are in the longer pieces too, and I've stuck on lots of
comments which I hope will be helpful.

Aw, gee, looks like you've lost your wonder-woman pencil case (or super-woman)
- I'm being a very hard-wrking girl, mainly because I have a deadline for
these poems for CBC State Of The Ants. They're in rough shape now and have
to be sent on next week, first-draft deadline. I'm sort-of pleased, sort-

of scared about how they're coming out, which.is as very short,snappy

prose pieces, very different from my earlier stuff. So it's fun and
exciting. I'm not getting involved in community stuff here at all, and

am sticking to the CC mandate about how much time I have to give the English
Department (3 days) to the letter. I do see lots of students in bat time

but I'm really giving myself lots of time to write and to think and to

read and‘Lo all the things I don't seem to have had enough of in the last
few years. I'm loving living alone, even in residence, and really feeling
that this period of time is a period of grace, a gift.

One of the people I'm reading and loving is Elizabeth Bowen, her novels now
her short stories later. She's someone I read as anfl undergraduate - a novel
called The Death of the Heart which got destroyed for me by a professor who
referred to it as "sentimental women's writing." As it turns out (surprise,
surprise) my current re-reading of it reveals to my delight that she is
anything but sentimental, though she's a woman infill the ways that professor
a man who loved Lawrence and Durrell could not see, she's wonderful, amazing,
ironic, funny, moving, intelligent. Wow.

. . , _
I am seeing some people here, of course, friends I knew slightly that I am
getting to know better as the months go on. And I'm planning to take in
some of the London scene, though, to date, I haven't even been down town.

I'm so glad you're going to come on to the Interval EOuse board, we need
good women. I will be looking forward to seeing you at meetings when
I get back.

Anyway, some student photographer is coming to take my picture for an an:
article/interview they're doing with me in some magazine, so I guess I'd
better go wipe the ink off my chin, etc.

Keep writing letters and poems .
0f the titles, I like Safekeeping: best, but none strike me as "it" really.

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Appendix B

Pictures

222

 

Bronwen Wallace

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223

35:55 when ES humon— Eons—END

 

224

Jeremy Baxter

 

31’3"

 

Carolyn Smart and Bronwen Wallace

225

Wallace Family Farm

 

226

 

227

Ron Baxter

 

Me and Jeremy

Wallace Apartment

 

Last Residence

Interval House

228

Bronwen’s Last Garden

 

229

Appendix C

Poem

230

 

I MET CAMERON YESTERDAY‘

For Bronwen Wallace
(1945-1989)

A today he took me to meet your Mum and Dad

We wore our flannel faces while you loomed above

the crisp white linen you never wanted to be.

Cameron poured us all tea and we talked about

our mutual love for Siamese cats, but make no mistakes
this was ceremony.

Now, late afternoon, as the shadows paint

a favorite picture book, and those cats thread up

the fire escape at the Hochelaga Inn,

now having almost touched your life, I must face
this unearned grief.

I did not even ask how you faced your death,

if your lips curled back like the petals of the crocus

the Innkeeper force-blooms in the tidy foyer.

Words were never on your lips. I have always

had to call them up from you, so that I might tell Cameron,

so that he might tell someone he is about to love, his lips
so much like wings.

Those two cats are on the roof now, I see them mine

the eaves for traces of something they remember--

a feather perhaps--see them bat the thick particles of light.

And I see you rise up over Kingston, in the distant city smoke.
Smoke.

Over the room where your Mother and Father

first knit you with lean boned thighs, circumambulated

with kind vapor, even into the years of your disapproval.

How were they to know you would collect like
this monolithic grief?

And how was I to know that

I would see your smile reverse

like empty parenthetical
that I must fill.

Gloria D. Nixon-John

 

' I hope to write a series of Biographical poems about Wallace. This is the first in the series. I have only
four to date but his will be my next project! Wallace would have wanted it to be my first project!

231

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