Playing with Fire

Bill Brydon was a librarian/journalist in Toronto.

These are unlikeable books. The author is as arrogant as Layton but lacks wit. The free verse is condensed and non-rhetorical, like Pound’s, but lacks whimsy and singularity of vision. Aesthetic tinkering takes the place of intellectual initiative. Thematic ideas are repeated until they become fatuous cliches. There is a superfluity of serious purpose and a minimum of distinctive thought.

Dance of the Particles takes its name from its final poem, a 21-page meditation that examines the poet’s relation to the world around him. Fascinated by history, he sees aspects of the past everywhere in the present and speculates about the intrinsic processes that constitute time. We are told that history is “motion in time” (p.60), and that every moment is a “newfound land” (p.56). The poet’s memory encompasses the far past, and he becomes a self-aware microcosm of his race. The poem begins “my true home is in motion” (p.41) and leads to the collective “our true home is in motion” (p.60).

This is the book’s best poem, save one dedicated to Dennis Lee, but it is little more than a still-born child of T.S. Eliot. There are direct references to Eliot in both books, and many echoes. The first page of Dance of the Particles is virtually dependant on “Burnt Norton.” It begins:

My true home is in motion.

Through sunlit, summer streets.

These children on warm spring evenings.

My true home is in motion

here and always, now

and everywhere: the streets

quietly moving past and through me.

The bulk of Dance of the Particles is taken up by a collection entitled “Marshall’s Lives,” a series of autobiographical reflections which locate the author socially and professionally. Throughout, there is an infelicitous concern with self-image. Of himself and his brothers, he writes,

One is obsessed with golf,

one with basketball,

one with words...

One raises rare fish along

with four kids.

At least one seeks fame

and cares less and less

as it approaches him. (p.12)

A number of poems reminisce about such well-known writers as Atwood, Purdy, and Margaret Laurence. In context, this seems presumptuous. Everywhere there are scraps of thought from other writers, with Marshall’s comments, and self-observations which carry a strong sense of literary avocation; but nowhere is the writing good enough to establish any special authority.

Playing with Fire is a 48-page anti-nuke poem that should have been included in the above book. It is short; some parts are only a couple of lines long; and one part consists of a single word. It is insufficiently distinguished to merit its own cover, and it shares the themes and flaws of Dance of the Particles. Marshall immediately establishes a sense of unique perspective:

The world is densely populous with children, intensely populated in morning...

But one is sobbing uncontrollably.

He is a nebulous dreamself. (p.5)

The poet inhabits a world of “dreamfields,” a vast spectrum of inter-related human minds. The bomb threatens these dreamfields. Marshall drives this point home using mainly his own daydreams and an occasional external reference, such as a description of the famous Vietnam war photo of a child fleeing napalm (p.20). A broader treatment of the issues would be better. The poem’s reiterated message is that “none can take this cup away except ourselves”; in other words, only you can prevent forest fires. Stuff like this hurts the peace movement.