A Great Confusion: Joe Fiorito

I am heading north
although it feels as if I am
heading south

but I am coming from
the south. I am
distraught.

I am trying to avoid
all those places
you are not.

(Vehicule Press)

In his third collection of verse, Quicker Than The Eye, Joe Fiorito continues to craft short, sharp poems that define the harder edges of urban life. His principal tools are a photographer's eye for detail, and a musician's ear for the sound of the human voice. Now, in Quicker Than The Eye, Canada's poet of the streets turns his gaze inward, writing about the influences of early love, family tragedy, and the search for meaning in a world where "the desolate things are mine." A master of spare, razor-sharp language, Fiorito manages to strip sentiment from memory in order to find tenderness and enduring truth on the margins of the city. He has never written more austerely or more beautifully. (From Vehicule Press)

Joe Fiorito is the author of eight books. He has won the Brassani Prize for Short Fiction in 2000 and the City of Toronto Book Award in 2003. He has written two previous poetry collections: City Poems and All I Have Learned Is Where I Have Been.

 

A stepping stone towards honouring Ray Souster

Stairs first step in honouring Toronto poet Raymond Souster: Fiorito

A set of stairs leading down into a west-end parkette may soon bear the name of poet Raymond Souster.

   

Toronto Star file photo

Raymond Souster walks in 1984 along the Humber River, not far from a parkette where the proposed plaque honouring him would be installed.

By: Joe Fiorito Columnist, Published on Wed Oct 23 2013

There is a scruffy patch of grass, with a few trees, some swings and a sandbox, south of Bloor and a little west of Windermere. It is officially known as the Willard Gardens Parkette, but in the vernacular of the neighbourhood, it is known as Lollipop Park.

Lollipop, because it is a sort of bubble-shape; also, obviously, because kids play there.

Leading down into the park is a set of stairs with a railing. Toronto poet Raymond Souster used those stairs, and people say he liked them.

You remember Raymond Souster, who died last year. If you do not, then you do not know this city. Souster was to Toronto as Frank O’Hara was to New York. He was the city poet, personified.

And if you happen to find Ray’s book, Ten Elephants on Yonge Street — or any one of the 50 or 60 books he wrote — you should buy it.

Now back to the park:

There was a planning meeting the other night, because the local councillor has found some money to spruce up the park. And so a dozen, maybe 20 people came to the meeting; young parents, mostly.

I’ve been to such meetings before; organizing them is how I used to make a living. The talk was familiar, about swings and slides and monkey bars, and the development of children through play, and young parents are keen about these things and —

Disclaimer.

I have reached the age when the cuteness of children holds no appeal. But I am also a realist: all children — save the ones who end up in jail — tend to grow up and become taxpayers, and I have a hunch I will need health care in the future, so I do not begrudge them their monkey bars now.

The park will likely be ready next summer. And everyone was happy.

Enter George Elliott Clarke. He is the reigning poet laureate of this city, and just before the meeting wrapped, he addressed the parents with an idea.

An idea about Raymond Souster.

He began by reciting the poet’s accomplishments: here a Governor-General’s Award, there an Order of Canada; founding member of the League of Canadian Poets; influential publisher; and so on.

He also read “Flight of the Rollercoaster,” a Souster poem which Clarke said he first discovered at the age of 16. His delivery was enthusiastic, equal parts poetry slam and roller-coaster swoops.

The parents smiled.

OK, so what does this have to do with a pint-sized parkette and a sweeping set of stairs?

Souster grew up nearby, and Clarke thinks the stairs should be named in his honour, and there also ought to be a plaque, perhaps with one of Ray’s poems.

There is not a parent in the world who would deny a child a snippet of poetry. The councillor said the Parks Department was on side, and that the city was also on side, and it would be a nice thing.

All agreed, then.

One parent, in a burst of sunny enthusiasm, asked if the plaque could be shaped like a lollipop.

No. Ray Souster was not Robert Munsch, and anyway I think there is a city protocol for such signs.

Afterwards I asked Clarke, in his capacity as laureate, if that was going to be the end of it for Souster, a little plaque in a park near a set of stairs he used.

Clarke said no. He wants another, perhaps grander and certainly more central marker.

Here’s a thought: Ray worked all his life for the bank at the corner of King and Bay, where there is a bare and expansive square that would be enhanced by a bust or statue.

Let’s take those steps, too.

Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca

                                 
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Hi Joe,
Well done! First step almost in place ...

My friend Sylvia gave me the heads-up about your column today. We both save our 7 or so 'free' monthly visits to The Star so we can enjoy your columns. Terry Barker (from the tribute to Ray at Runnymede Library) was at a poetry gig with George E. C. in the little east end park at Taylor's Creek Ravine a few weeks ago. Lots of stuff in the works promoting CanPoets. Following is a posting about the Quattro book launch on Ray's birthday (suspect you may already be in the know & attending). Also we're doing a tribute book on Milt, ACORNucopia, with Mosaic Press. Can't remember offhand if you've sent a piece for that?

All well here  ... but let's keep those kids healthy in the park so they can look after us in our dotage  :  )

peace & poetry power!
Chris ... & Chase Wrffffffffffffffffffffffff!

p.s. in August I posted a comment under your column, & the process ate up all of my monthly allotment of free visits to The Star ... arrggggggghhhh
you might suggest to the-powers-that-be that postings not count against free visits


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article on Milton Acorn in Toronto Star (thanks, Joe!)

Fiorito: Milton Acorn’s poems find fresh audiences with new book

Published on Friday January 04, 2013

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Toronto Star file photo Milton Acorn was a Canadian poet, writer, and playwright. The often controversial figure won the Canadian Poets Award in 1970. A poetry award in his honour was established in 1987, a year after his death.

By Joe Fiorito City Columnist

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There is a new Milton on the shelves; it was launched recently at the Imperial, a modest bar tucked away in the corner at Dundas and Yonge.

But when I say Milton, I do not mean the one going on about his blindness. I mean Milton with the cigar and the growl, the chronic nosebleeds and the red worker politics; your Island poet, your people’s poet.

Acorn, Milton.
The tough nut.

As for the Imperial, it is where the downtown guys bring their deep thirst late at night, and where Ryerson kids mourn or toast their future.

Now and then, you get poets.

The evening was lovely and chaotic. There was singing. There were skits, one of which involved an eyeball flung across the room.

There was a reading by the actor David Fox, who looks as unlike Milton as anyone can be, but he played Acorn on stage long ago, and he drew on that when he read.
Oh, how he read.
I mean that half the pub held students drinking deeply, and thinking less deeply, and they were also — Milton would have approved — looking for a little tenderness with the help of beer. They were rowdy. They didn’t care.
Fox made them care.
That’s art.

I had one or two coffee-house poetry flashbacks. I saw an old guy sleeping on a bench during the folk songs; a long time ago he would have been stoned. I think this guy was just old, cold and tired.

And then four bicycle cops marched in, one after another; bright yellow jackets, guns on their hips. They snaked through the room in single file, a kind of bike cop conga line. Who knows what they were looking for?
Maybe Milton.

I should say I met him once. He was a stalwart in the Canadian Liberation Movement when I was a new recruit. This was years ago, in Thunder Bay, and he was passing through.
 
The political philosophy of the CLM was so rigid it hurt. Our tactics included a naïve Canadian nationalism, to which I still cling.

I recall the sticker we used to slap on cars with American plates: “Yankee Go Home. We Don’t Like You The Way You Are.” This was the time of the Vietnam War. I slapped a few stickers on cars myself.
I blush to confess it now.

Anyway, Milton came to my place with some other cadres. He fell instantly for the girl I was seeing, and he saw my chessboard and he thought he would show off, and show me up at the same time.
I thrashed him.
Then I offered him some of my poems. He read them wordlessly, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and growling all the while.
I was, in those days, writing sharp little imagist poems. He said nothing, and then he growled that the poems sounded like Black Mountain stuff — American, a CLM sin — and therefore no good.
I now see my mistake.
I should have shown him the poems first, and then beat him at chess. Not that it mattered. He didn’t stand a chance with my girl.

The book is called In A Springtime Instant. It is published by Mosaic Press, and it was edited by James Deahl, himself a poet to contend with.

Say what you will about Acorn — and you can always say he needed a bath — he was Whitmanesque. I bet that would have bugged him. Old Walt was American.
No matter.

Old Milt should be read.
 
Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca.

Ray Souster (and Statue?) in Joe Fiorito's Toronto Star column

Fiorito: Warm thoughts to some who have warmed this space

Published on Monday December 31, 2012

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RENE JOHNSTON/TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO 

  Poet, publisher, and former banker Raymond Souster is shown at the Old Mill Bridge on the Humber River in Lambton Park in October 2000. Souster died earlier this year.

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By Joe Fiorito City Columnist

Let us offer best wishes for the year ahead to some of the people who have appeared in this space over the past 12 months.

Happy New Year to my two favourite priests, Father Hernan Astudillo of the Church of San Lorenzo, and to Father Roberto Ubertino, of St. John The Compassionate Mission.
Father Hernan and his parish have raised thousands of dollars in aid and supplies, including ambulances and buses, for those who have been harmed by earthquakes in Central America.
This year, among other things, the padre worked as a field hand in the Niagara region, in order to better understand the migrant workers for whom he says mass.

Father Roberto? He runs the mission on Broadview north of Queen. You may also know the St. John’s Bakery, which makes some of the best sourdough bread in the city; more importantly, it employs a dozen or so people who would otherwise be on welfare or collecting benefits; instead, they are paying taxes.
I am not, by nature, a religious guy, but these two are an example of faith through good works.
They should meet.
I’ll see what I can do.

I now want to wish a happy new year to Nick Lounsbury, who helped to rescue a man who jumped in front of a subway train last spring.
I send best wishes to Russ Loader of Oshawa, who discovered that there was so much electrical current coursing under the floors of his apartment that he could power a light bulb, simply by touching bare wires to the floor. No one but me, and Dr. Magda Havas of Trent University, seems to think this is a serious problem. Best of the season to you, too, Dr. Havas.

Tashi delek and happy New Year to Pema Choden, who fed me the best momos I have ever eaten.

Now here is a Raymond Souster story. The poet died earlier this year. The last time I saw him, he gave me an armload of his books. I opened one of them recently. It was an orphan; the pages were blank. If I had any nerve at all, I would hand-write some of my own poems between the covers.
I don’t have that kind of nerve.
I wonder why the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce does not erect a statue of the banker-poet in the courtyard in front of their head office downtown.

Happy New Year to John West, who dominates the ping-pong tables at the Wellesley Community Centre; also to his happy foil, the recreationist Lucky Boothe.
We are the ones who are lucky.

Nathaniel Banton? We love that man around here. We also send our love to Donald and Alane Simmonds, who mourn the loss of their son Kevin.

Greetings, and thanks, to the person at Toronto Community Housing who arranged for the cover over the canopy at the entrance to 200 Wellesley.

Best wishes to Frank DiGenova, of Butcher By Nature on Annette St. Frank is back in business after the fire. Happy thoughts to my other favourite butcher, Peter Sanagan, of Sanagan’s Meat Locker in Kensington Market, who recently expanded.
These two should also meet.

And now to Bob Richardson and Bertie Nakogee. Bertie was a First Nations volunteer who died in Toronto before he could serve overseas in the First World War. He was buried in an unmarked grave. Bob secured him a tombstone.
Thanks Bob.
And thanks, Bertie.

But my kindest thoughts are for you, dear reader, for following me around town the past 12 months.
Happy New Year, one and all!
Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca

Mac Pap Memorial to vets of Spanish Civil War

Fiorito: The Mac-Paps: Lest we forget

Published on Friday November 09, 2012

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By Joe Fiorito City Columnist

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Many years ago, at the end of a long and boozy evening, my father told me that he’d tried to enlist in the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. He was in his teens then; he wanted to fight in the Spanish Civil War.

When I asked why, he told me he was bored, there was no work at home and — he was dark, my old man — he said that he wanted to die.
They sent him home.
Had he gone to Spain, he surely would have gotten his wish, and I would not be writing this.

Now, the disclosures:
I used to work for CBC Radio; my beloved still does; the CBC’s acclaimed radio documentary maker, Steve Wadhams, is a friend; and here is how it all comes together:
There was an article in this newspaper a while back about Jules Paivio, the last living survivor of the Mac-Paps. Wadhams played a hunch — he asked the CBC archivist if Paivio had ever been interviewed.

Yes, there was a long interview on tape, recorded by journalist Mac Reynolds in 1964. Wadhams listened to the interview avidly. But he sat bolt upright when the archivist said, “You know there are more interviews.”

Turns out there were 150 hours of interviews. Reynolds had traveled the country in 1964 and 1965, looking for Mac-Pap vets, finding some 50 of them, and recording as many as he could.
No one but the archivist knew the material was there, or had paid it any mind, until that moment.
Wadhams quickly unearthed a letter from Reynolds to the legendary producer and CBC executive Robert Weaver, asking about airtime.

But there was no reply on file, nor any evidence that the material had ever aired. In other words, these were voices that had never been heard before. Wadhams found himself sitting on a motherlode of historical gold that had been hiding in plain sight.

He did some research and learned that Reynolds had been, um, a fellow-traveller who had gone to England to join in the fight, but somehow had never made it to Spain. “I inferred from this that he had a motive for doing these recordings.”
Of course, the only motive you really need, in oral history, is the truth as it is told by witnesses to history.

Remembrance Day was looming. The Mac-Paps are not officially remembered on Nov. 11.
Wadhams got to work.
He started to edit — luckily, the interviews had been shot-listed — and as he worked, he read as much as he could about the Mac-Paps.

They were much more than a bunch of unemployed rabble-rousers and commie sympathizers in search of adventure. They were men who wanted to stop fascism in its tracks.
They came from all across Canada; some had already run from totalitarianism; plenty of them had been in labour camps. They got shot up, some of them, before they crossed the Pyrenees.
The war itself was a slaughter: Guernica, phosphorous bombs, soldiers on horseback fighting Hitler’s warplanes; Bethune and mobile blood transfusions.

And remember this: when the men who survived came home, they were ignored.
Wadhams played me a piece of tape the other day. I listened to a vet recalling what happened when a submarine torpedoed the ship he was on; the last man who drowned — poor fellow, clinging to the mast in terror as the ship went under — was from the Lakehead, my home town.
Maybe he knew my old man.

The documentary airs in two parts, on CBC Radio 1: The first hour of “The Spanish Crucible” will be broadcast Friday, on “Living Out Loud,” at 1 p.m.
It will be repeated on Remembrance Day at 8 p.m. Part Two airs on Nov. 16, and will be repeated on the 18th.

A final disclosure: the voice of the Star’s reporter, Greg Clark? That, proudly, is me.
Joe Fiorito appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Email: jfiorito@thestar.ca

Nigel G. Spencer has left a new comment on your post "Mac Pap Memorial to vets of Spanish Civil War":

Thanks for this! In return, here is an excerpt from my acceptance speech at the GGs, 2012:
Les romans dans cette série célèbrent le courage, l'empathie et l'imagination de personnages réels et fictifs confondus qui luttent pour préserver ce qu'il y a de mieux dans notre humanité et pour le cultiver. Dans cet esprit je vous rappele que cette année nous fêtons le centenaire de la naissance de Raoul Wallenberg...mais malheuresuement, fidèle à la tradition, nous ne fêtons pas le soixante-quinzième du Batallion Mackenzie-Papineau, ces bénévoles non-reconnus, même diffamés pour leur lutte anti-fasciste pendant la Guerre civile d'Espagne.

In a year marked by anniversaries, we celebrate the 100th birthday of Raoul Wallenberg, but we have not honoured the 75th anniversary of the MacPaps, Canada's volunteers in the opening battle against fascism.

All honour to them for embodying what is best in the Canadian character.
Thank you.



Posted by Nigel G. Spencer to Riffs & Ripples from ZenRiver Gardens at 8 May 2013 17:08

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Nigel Spencer and Alain Roy win the 2012 Governor General’s Literary Award in Translation

Thursday, November 22, 2012 at 13:58

The 14 winners of the Governor General’s Literary Awards were announced recently by the Canada Council for the Arts.
These awards are given in both English and French in seven categories: fiction, poetry, drama, non‑fiction, children’s literature (text and illustration) and translation.
In the highlights from this year’s announcement is translator Nigel Spencer's third win, each time for the translation of a book by Marie-Claire Blais.
“Everyone involved in the creation of a book—including writers, illustrators, translators and publishers—has a story to tell,” said His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, Governor General of Canada. “The Governor General’s Literary Awards is not only a chance to honour our very best books, but it is also a chance to pay tribute to Canadians who are rising stars in the world of literature. I congratulate all the winners who have worked hard to add their tale to our collective memories.”

2012 Winners in Translation

Nigel Spencer, Montréal, Mai at the Predators’ Ball (House of Anansi Press; distributed by HarperCollins Canada)

English translation of Mai au bal des prédateurs by Marie-Claire Blais (Les Éditions du Boréal). What Nigel Spencer has achieved with the translation of Marie Claire Blais’s Mai au bal des prédateurs is nothing short of brilliance. He has met the formidable challenge of conveying in English the complexity and richness of this narrative with a mastery that is stunning in its range of colour and tone.

Alain Roy, Montréal, Glenn Gould (Éditions du Boréal; distributed by Diffusion Dimedia)

French translation of Glenn Gould by Mark Kingwell (Penguin Group Canada). It took courage and endurance to tackle this demanding work. The translator, Alain Roy, has consistently shown concern for concision and precision without ever sacrificing the subtleties of the contents. This masterful translation of Glenn Gould is obviously grounded in extensive research, making it a wonderfully lucid read.

Milt's ghost at Grossman's Tavern & Necropolis

Hi Joe,
Just returned to Marmora (Sunday, April 22nd?)  - on my second 'welcome home' beer - my backyard gardens are beautiful:

flowers persist
blooming thru gravel by
backyard Buddha

Anyway, it was a nice hike thru the Necropolis (Allan & Holly Briesmaster & Kent Bowman & myself). We hijacked two visiting photogs who were intrigued by the concept of the Unfinished Monument. They ended up doing the entire ramble with us. Allan read 'the poem' this year.

Then on to Grossman's, where David Day (who had missed us at the Necro.) & another photog, Peter Rowe, awaited us. Two pitchers of beer at Grossman's are now almost $25! .. . but ... the men's room has been renovated!!! - a rite of passage for Canadian male artists - stumbling drunk down the steep stairs to wade thru inches of urine - now just a fading memory  :  )  

James Deahl (who edited the new Milt) & his new wife, Norma West Linder, Terry Barker, and the aforementioned David Day, Peter Rowe, Allan &  Kent Bowman and I did our duty & knocked back a sufficient # of jugs to honour Milt's legacy.

The book is beautiful (besides being inspirational & all that!) & Terry Barker has mailed you a copy, c/o The Star. It should be there if/when you show up for work tomorrow  :  )

There's always next year to join the tour ...

peace & poetry power!
Chris ... and Chase wrrffffffffffffffffffffffffff!

p.s. we forgot the cigars, but Milt's ghost enjoyed the evening immensely anyway




On 2012-04-20, at 9:08 AM, Fiorito, Joe wrote:

Chris -
I got sideswiped by work, which now and then happens.
I hope everyone got drunk and smoked cigars.
- Joe