Recently published:
The Green Archetypal Field of Poetry: On Poetry, Poets, and Psyche
BOOKS
The Green Archetypal Field of Poetry: on poetry, poets, and psyche |
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Ekstasis Editions, The Green Archetypal Field of Poetry: on poetry, poets, and psyche gathers a selection of essays and short statements on poetry by Stephen Morrissey. While best known as a poet, Morrissey’s critical writing is an important part of his literary work. In this book he writes on the legacy of several Canadian poets who helped bring modernism to Canadian poetry. Always original, Morrissey's approach to poetics reminds us of the enduring importance of Beat, Romantic, and shamanic poetics; Morrissey emphasizes the human soul as the center of writing poetry. Morrissey suggests that poems originate in what he calls the green archetypal field of poetry. This is Stephen Morrissey’s second volume on poetry and poetics, after The Poet’s Journey: on poetry and what it means to be a poet. |
Critical praise for The Green Archetypal Field of Poetry
For close to fifty years, Stephen Morrissey has been reminding me that poetry
is a calling, that it is essential to human psychic health, and that it is the air
we need to breathe. He is certainly one of the most interesting "thinkers" in our
generation, and one of our most consequential poets. His latest book, The
Green Archetypal Field of Poetry, is a must-read.
Here is a book for any reader who may have doubts about the growing relevance of poetry and the need for poetry in our lives. Reading Morrissey’s thoughts on why and how he became a poet in his home city of Montreal, eventually writing his way into Canadian literature as one of the very best poets of his generation—Morrissey is a most convincing literary guide, as this delightful and fascinating book will clearly reveal.
Morrissey’s book spans a lifetime of reading and writing poetry, and of bumping up against poets who were doing the same. It is an intense and beautiful exploration of what poetry means to him. Morrissey concludes that poetry is "the voice of the human soul." In short, in this book he offers us a glimpse into his own soul, and that is a profound and wonderful gift.
Stephen Morrissey wanders herein the Green Archetypal Fields—the Elysian Fields—of the Poetry that the Poet has conjured. He is Yeatsian here, looking back at Fellow Travellers in the Art, recalling Allen Ginsberg preaching, "scribble down your nakedness," re-reading Jack Keats and Jack Kerouac and discovering that they are long-lost brothers, reminiscing about Montreal mentors and comrades—the directly great Louis Dudek, Irving Layton, F.R. Scott, and A.M. Klein, and the Véhicule Poets. And what is the end of all the musing? Poetry. Impeccable Poetry.
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