by Jim Johnstone | Contributing Writer

breth / th treez uv lunaria
bill bissett
Talonbooks, 2019
There have been many superlatives thrown around to describe bill bissett over the course of his career. Heâs been called a shaman, a visionary, a secular prophet, a countercultural icon, a one-man civilizationâall descriptions that address the ineffability of bissettâs poetics, yet fail to describe him in concrete terms as an artist. In large part, this stems from the poetâs mythology as one of the founding members of Canadaâs avant-garde, a hippie turned jack-of-all-forms whoâs become a mainstay in galleries and on stages across North America for almost sixty years. Itâs hard to pinpoint when bissett crossed the line from man into myth, but heâs added a significant amount of fuel to the fire himself with invented biographical details and unearthly origin stories (the most common being that he arrived âon th first shuttul uv childrn from lunaria 2 erthâ instead of being born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1939). bissettâs effervescent performances make such claims seem, if not possible, then at least rooted in the spirit of his otherness.
The eighty-year-old bissettâs recently published 529-page volume of new and selected poems, breth / th treez uv lunaria, brings his craftsmanship to the fore and emphasizes the diversity and range of his verse. Crack breth, and youâll find lyric meditations, typewriter art, songs, concrete poems, and political narratives all sharing space, sometimes even the same page. In terms of variety alone, the collection is an unqualified success. Showcasing work thatâs long been out of print, breth gives readers a window into the various poetic modes bissett has mastered, mixing and remixing material from his earliest books up to present day trade collections. Such a chronology might sound daunting, especially considering brethâs gargantuan breadth, but it turns out that the book reads like a collection of greatest hits (bissett has a lot of them) balanced with deep cuts from bissettâs restless, often genre-defying, canon.
For those unfamiliar with bissett, the first thing youâll notice on reading his poems is his use of phonetic orthography. This approach creates an initial make-or-break moment for first-time readers. In theory, phonetic spelling (along with a lack of punctuation) can be used to destabilize traditional linguistic devices, allowing words to merge, recombine, and break down into their base morphological units. bissettâs application of this practise has been idiosyncratic, but for the most part heâs used it to explore the non-hierarchic possibilities of language. On one end of the spectrum, his visual work pushes toward what heâs called the âmolecular dissolvââa space where words move past conventional meaning into their concrete, lettered forms. This is a juncture where language meets fine art, something that often blurs in breth, particularly in bissettâs hand-drawn, pictogram-like material. At the other end of the spectrum, bissettâs narrative poems are malleable, freeform trips into the poetâs subconscious, stripped of syntax in a way that encourages interpretation, and multiple (or even conflicting) meanings.
Free of traditional logic, the metaphorical leaps that bissett makes charge his poems with mystery. Take âth breath,â the would-be title poem of the collection (âwould-beâ because here bissett uses the conventional spelling of âbreathâ instead of the âbrethâ of the bookâs title). In this poem, bissett writes that breathing âis th same as th eyee / openingâ and
all th worlds of green snow fold
inside th heart
and th rhythm is th skull
The first thing to notice here is the double âeâ that ends the word âeyee.â Itâs as if bissett is encouraging the word âeyeâ to open, slowing his metaphorical reveal. All lens and lashes, the âeyeeâ widens to observe âworlds of green snow,â a kind of seasonal duality that conjures the beauty of winter and summer before bissett returns to the body (âth heart,â âth skullâ) again. Originally published in 1972, âthe breathâ was the first poem in Beyond Even Faithful Legends (Talonbooks, 1980), bissettâs last major volume of selected poetry. Since that time the poetâs phonetic spelling has become even more unruly, and his decision to leave most of the older work in breth unaltered creates a kind of timestamp. Interestingly, the orthographic inconsistencies in bissettâs work create potential new building blocks of meaningâfor example, the way the âaâ in âbreathâ has gone missing in later iterations might make it seem as if the letter has been lost on an exhale. This compression also brings âbrethâ closer to âberth,â the human chest closer to the hull of a ship.
Spelling quirks and all, brethâs consistency is startling, especially considering the decades it spans. Reading the oldest piece in the book, an âuntituld pome,â composed when bissett was a teenager, itâs tempting to assume that his poetics were fully formed when he arrived in Vancouver in the late 1950s. But those years were a time of apprenticeship for him (writing alongside poets like Milton Acorn, Judith Copithorne, and bpNichol), a time that saw the establishment of blewointment press, a book publishing company that grew out of blewointment, a literary periodical founded by bissett (and noted for its lowercase, phonetic spellings and for its hand-decorated and mixed-media covers and inserts). The press was dedicated to printing work that was âvizual non linear n not cumming from aneewhere n mostlee left wing politikalee.â
Still, the Beats in particular were influences, and bissettâs work displays some of the ecstatic and political hallmarks of poets like Phillip Whalen and Richard Brautigan. In a 1968 issue of The Paris Review, Jack Kerouac called bissett âthe greatest living poet todayââdespite the fact that nearly all his work was either mimeographed or photocopied at the time, and difficult to obtain.
One of bissettâs earliest trade projects was awake in th red desert (released as both a book and record by Talonbooks in 1968), which featured a meditation on national identity titled âTh Canadian.â Reprinted early in breth, âTh Canadianâ is prescient, foreshadowing Canadaâs ongoing colonial backlash. In it, bissett writes that he
did en
vision th society of fact in Canada
as a train, its peopuls classd, & sub-
classd, according to th rank they owned, or,
who they cud claim owned them, its
peopuls cut off from each othr by
such coach cars & compartments.
Contrary to the government-directed nation-building projects of the timeâthe Canada Council of the Arts was established in 1957, and the current Canadian flag adopted in 1965ââTh Canadianâ rails against settler notions of hegemony and freedom. Early in the poem, bissett acknowledges the discord between Indigenous peoples and those who colonized (and continue to colonize) the land; he uses the countryâs centennial as the poem’s occasion. In the poetâs imagination, the train he posits as a country cuts citizens off from one another in coach cars and compartments. Soon, âdarkness, / fortif[ies] th condition, keeping each in place, / lest they overcome fear & th structure toppul.â bissettâs vision is unnerving; it sees prisoners transported across the country by rail, hinting at the Japanese-Canadian internment during the Second World War. The poem also gestures toward the poetâs own clashes with the law; bissett did jail time in Powell River, Vancouver, and Burnaby, British Columbia.
With respect to bissettâs creative spirit, Toronto-based critic Mike Doherty once called him a âdevotee of both / and.â While âTh Canadianâ doesnât appear on the recorded version of awake in th red desert, many of the poems on that record have become part of what amounts to bissettâs sonic signature. These include âanodetodalevyâ and âmy mouths on fire,â both of which are represented in breth, and which use repetition as a means of creating mantra-like soundscapes. This technique is strikingly mnemonic in âanodetodalevy,â a tribute that predates the Cleveland poet d.a. levyâs death in 1968. Using various permutations of the line âthis is an ode to d a levy,â bissett riffs on levy and âhis gentul beardâ while the spacing between letters on the page expands and contracts to regulate the speed at which the poem is read. In this sense, bissettâs written approach to sound poetry is, as Chris Jennings has stated, characteristic of musical notation. Itâs also flexible, something thatâs evident in the iambic chant of âi dreem uv northern skiesâ in âslow slow rabbit song,â which allows the poet to adjust the rhythmic and tonal patterns of repeated passages to vary the emotional tone of the poem.
Online resources are helpful for those seeking an immersive bissett experience. Many of the poetâs performances can be found on the web, including an extraordinary interview with Phyllis Webb and bpNichol that was originally broadcast on CBC television in 1967. During the sit-down (at around the four-minute mark), bissett performs âHOW WE USE OUR LUNGS 4 LOVE,â a high-water mark in his early sound work, breaking into a percussive meter that at points resembles song. Ostensibly a love letter to language itself, âHOW WE USE OUR LUNGS 4 LOVEâ is disjointed and often surreal, as when bissett describes âth ceiling th horse / came out uv in disguise as a blu kettul drum,â or âwhen th wheel combines 2 open th / mirage.â After a page and a half, the poem breaks down, monosyllabically lurching into a sequence that forgoes predictable reading conventions. At that point, it branches vertically, concluding:
swamp swing beetles nest slides blankets
summr sand inside O
door willow this
stain under beach
before him is
hang she cool
after him in
she saw she my
him him mouth
swing she she
hyena him him
thrill she sang
rope him under
softer n she him
pussy him away
n rose she in
over him daisy
pull up
in
Though narrative sense seems to have been abandoned in this passage, bissett moves through a litany of words that make sinister meaning: âhang,â âswing,â and âropeâ follow âwillow,â forming an ominous strand. The poem reaches its climax by alternating between pronouns (âsheâ and âhimâ) as if it were cutting back and forth between protagonists holding hands and spinning. Disorienting, and laid out to suggest a pair of lungs, the passage is a great example of the ways in which bissett leaves his work open for interpretation. For example, the reader could choose to see the vertical branches introduced here as bronchioles, or as rope hanging from a willow tree. There are several instances in breth where the poet encourages readers to interpret his work as they see fit, saying so directly in âwe ar almost ther,â when he asks readers to âmake yr own variaysyuns n / sustaining lines or parts uv.â
Immersed in breth, one would be hard pressed not to succumb to the sensation described in âdragon fly,â when the poet writes that âall / air waves at once sound in [the] ear.â Throughout the poem those waves are shaped by the words on the page, running to the margins before taking the shape of a mountainâand then a water droplet that reads:
side orders
mahogony
macha macha ling
all down th waterfall
moss house moss stone
moss love moss light
moss water moss lifting
moss delight moss smell
moss webs moss beam moss
see th spider spinning moss
moss lake th rain falling th moss
lake smiling on yu moss dust in
yr air moss loving fingers
lifting moss nd th lady
moss on th path weaves
all yr lives reveal
Visual and textual elements frequently coalesce in bissettâs work, and here they combine to represent a bead of sweat on a radiator. Moss lines the left-hand side of the water droplet as if it were transparent, revealing the natural world within. There bissett punctuates the poem with images from everyday lifeâa âhouse,â âstone,â a âspider spinningâ its web. As âdragon flyâ continues, its words slide down the page, mimicking the poetâs distorted consciousness. bissett also makes it a point to emphasize the unreliability of language when he writes âforget th dialectick th dialectick forgot / yu,â urging readers to remain open to associative movement.
bissettâs work is weakest at its most traditional. This is true of his more recent political poems, which can be one-dimensional and feature paint-by-numbers provocations. In breth this applies to work like âwar sucks,â âbillyuns uv tons uv plastic bottuls,â and âevree brain is diffrent,â each of which offer reductive takes that exhort without the artifice needed to win new political converts. In general, bissettâs political poems are better in comic bursts, as in âwatching broadcast nus,â reprinted here in full:
i see th salmon talks will
resume on monday
well thank god at leest th
salmon ar talking
Part of a series of salmon poems that spans multiple books, âwatching broadcast nusâ illustrates how the poetâs humor adds levity to quixotic material. This kind of wit is evident elsewhere in breth, notably in âit used to be,â when bissett posits that âyu cud buy a newspaper n sum / toilet papr 4 a dollar fiftee // now yu cant // yu have 2 make a chois.â Spelling âusedâ in a way that mimics the international shorthand for American currency (USD), he criticises capitalism with cleverness and humor. Moments like these are sprinkled throughout bissettâs narrative work, balancing his earnest, but less convincing material.
In its versatility and scope, breth represents a life lived in, and through, poetry. At age eighty, bissett continues to produce work at the pace of a much younger artist, and despite the fact that new poems arenât rare, theyâre a continued act of will. As a writer whoâs made a career out of challenging the literary establishment, heâs faced constant pushback from the orthodoxy. Itâs been some time since Conservative minister Bob Wenman called bissettâs work âdisgusting and pornographicâ in Canadian Parliament, but the poet still faces an uphill battle as a living legend who ekes out a living as a poet well past retirement age. There are few writers who have managed to sustain a more distinctâor vanguardâpoetic practice than bill bissett. As such, heâs a necessary addition to the growing list of Canadians who have authored volumes of selected poetry in the 21stcentury. Not as definitive as the compendiums by other Vancouver-based contemporaries in Talonbooksâ collected series (Fred Wahâs Scree and Daphne Marlattâs Intertidal come to mind), breth nonetheless goes a long way in untangling bissett the writer from bissett the legend of otherworldly provenance. In fact, the most surprising aspect of breth is just how human the poetâs work feels in todayâs literary climate, as if contemporary practitioners are just beginning to catch up with bissettâs hybrid approach to verse. This is a welcome development, and thereâs more to come. bissett is currently at work compiling a companion volume to breth that will bring more of his out-of-print and hard-to-find material to the fore. As bissett might say with his trademark enthusiasm: âraging, xcellent!â
—
Jim Johnstone is a Toronto-based poet, editor, and critic. His reviews have been published in magazines like Maisonneuve, The Rumpus, and Poetry, where he won the Editor’s Prize for Book Reviewing in 2016. Currently, Johnstone curates the Anstruther Books imprint at Palimpsest Press. His most recent book is The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry.