“I run into on a Sunday night an oratorio
performed by the brass blare of taxicabs
herding fares along the listless streets
of Beirut. Shout ye triumphant, they blast…”
from “Correspondent (Notes for a Mideast Solstice)”
Scroll down for the rest of the poem
Antony Di Nardo is the author of two new collections, Soul on Standby (Exile Editions) and Alien, Correspondent (Brick Books). The latter is a collection of outsider pieces taken from the poet’s years spent living in Beirut, Lebanon. It’s a surprising book; as successful an act of reportage as a collection of personal lyrics. Di Nardo’s tone is mature, concerned, and almost radically apolitical at times, a thorough and meticulous attempt at documenting and translating an experience too massive for simple accounting, but too specific for the blunt force of the proclamation. It’s also a surprisingly beautiful work, filled with a sneaky craftsmanship that belies its formal casualness and twists the rhythmic presentation of the lyrics in unexpected ways.
Di Nardo exchanged emails with Torontoist’s poetry columnist, Jacob McArthur Mooney, while journeying home from Beirut, through Paris, and finally back to Ontario soil. Their correspondence follows, edited somewhat for space.
Jacob McArthur Mooney: Thanks for doing this, Tony. We are writing to each other from opposite sides of the planet (the geography website Geobytes.com lists Toronto to Beirut as a rather whopping 5,701 miles, or 9,174 km.) so I appreciate you fitting me in. I feel like I want to get the obvious (but superficial, or maybe superficially obvious) question out of the way first. That would be the matter of your somewhat atypical publishing history. Alien, Correspondent is your first published collection, but you’re publishing it in your sixties and at the exact same time as a, let’s call it, co-debut collection from another press called Soul on Standby. I hate to dwell on matters of publishing, but perhaps you could map out for me your relationship with poetry. Is this a newer pursuit? An old one with a long, quiet prehistory? Or something in between these two?
Antony Di Nardo: First of all, I’d like to comment on your numbers. Somehow, and perhaps as a result of the conjunction of globalization and cyber-driven communications, I look at distance in terms of hours. We’re only seven hours away from each other; fourteen if we intend to meet for coffee. The other number is that sixties thing you bring up. I’ve just turned the corner on that decade, so according to the ticking of my internal clock I still consider myself a pup at fifty-something. And I think we all agree that one is never too old for poetry. Was it not Thomas Hardy who turned to poetry in his fifties, after a successful career as a novelist, never to write another novel again? And his career as a poet went on for decades. (When you’re sixty, you like to think of time in terms of decades—it adds volume and longevity to one’s future.)
So, the simple answer to your question is my relationship with poetry has been an old one with a long, quiet prehistory. I published several poems in my late twenties when I worked as editor of a weekly newspaper in Northwestern Ontario, writing op-ed pieces to illuminate (I thought then), and poetry to satisfy an aesthetic urge. I was reading Purdy and early Atwood, Layton and bp Nichol, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at one of his readings. Some of my poems were published in a long defunct quarterly known as The Squatchberry Journal and several appeared in The Northern Ontario Poetry Anthology published in the mid-70s. Poetry was a path I was ready to pursue for myself when both personal and career circumstances changed. After that, a hiatus of many years ensued before I returned to it again. By then I was already fifty. Numbers again.
That said, this last decade has been most productive for me, both thematically and technically. I’ve taken some important risks with my writing and developed a voice and perspectives giving my body of poetry its muscle and character. Editors have been kind to me and my work has appeared widely in journals across Canada. I published two chapbooks that I gave away like calling cards. I’ve also been reading more poetry than I ever did before. But it’s primarily my experiences in post-war Beirut as an “alien” and self-appointed “correspondent” that gave me the resolve and material to put together a manuscript that I felt had sufficient unity of voice and purpose and adequately represented my ability to craft a poem. That led to Alien, Correspondent and, in what I think is a complete departure from my own traditional conceptualization of the art of the poem, to Soul on Standby. Except for a few pieces, the latter has little to do with Beirut, though it was written in this conflicted, anarchic environment. Alien, Correspondent is a poetry of place; “Soul on Standby,” of the uncommon in the commonplace.
JMM: It’s a really significant title, I think, in that it manages to encircle the book’s creative ethic in a very graceful, efficient way. Surely, you’re writing from a region with a rich and distinct history when it comes to communicating to the West how it wishes to be communicated. Edward Said comes to mind, but he isn’t alone in this pursuit. What’s exceptional about the book is how your ethic and aesthetic compliment each other. The content of the poems have a real visitor’s quality, I sense you being taken aback by much of what you see but you remain primarily an observer, reporting back (corresponding) on your observations. The trick is that you’ve managed to maintain this quality without dulling the humanity of initiating events. This is something documentarians speak about a lot, that the true witness isn’t so much empathetic but a vessel for empathy, not so much a storyteller as a willing display mechanism for a story. I wonder if you could dwell on your position as a poet for a moment. What’s the relationship like, for you, between observer and correspondent?
AD: This is by no means a simple question and I’m pleased your reading of the poems elicits reflections on the creative ethic and aesthetic of the book because at the heart of many of these “regional” poems is the issue of what’s left out or left unsaid. I introduce my first poem in the collection with an epigraph by the late Mahmoud Darwish, a poet I greatly admire. He says, “There is yet another road in the road.” On one level that tells me there are layers upon layers in the meanings we create and we seek; on another, it suggests the ubiquitous fork in the road. That road not taken. But it also directs the reader towards a simpler, more common revelation—that there’s always more than meets the eye. And I think that’s where my ethic and aesthetic happen to meet, in that intersection of what I happen to witness and what I consciously choose to observe.
Seamus Heaney in one of his poems says, “no such thing as innocent bystanding.” My understanding of the definition of a witness connotes accidental circumstances. The witness is there, on site, seeing what just happened not by choice, but because of where he was when whatever happened, happened. Heaney implies that there’s nothing accidental or innocent about that—we are where we are when we are by virtue of certain cultural imperatives, the fractal of fate, and our own unique disposition. On the other hand, the observer chooses to witness, makes a conscious choice to bear witness and there’s nothing innocent about that either, especially when those observations lead to both an ethical and aesthetic engagement which, in my case, results in a poem. That poem, I suppose, is ultimately the correspondence—if I’m to sustain the analogy of an observer as also having the duty to report.
As for the alien factor—an alien by definition is one who doesn’t belong—I think it’s always present when writing about another culture even from within that culture. We know very well that the foreigner’s gaze filters experience and skews one’s understanding of events. As a poet I do that deliberately. However, I don’t pretend to be writing about the Middle East here, and I surely don’t pretend to be explaining it to the West. Most of the poetry in this collection is informed by an alien stance and those poems report on my responses to that foreign culture and not the culture itself. The “correspondent” of the title underscores that, and the comma serves to distinguish that role from my “alien” reality.
It’s interesting that you mention the documentary. I presented a workshop in Beirut last year entitled “Writing as Documentary” in which I explored the relationship between writing and the camera’s eye. And whenever I introduce certain poems from Alien, Correspondent I speak of them as short documentaries—documentaries about the connections between imagination (the aesthetic, to use your term) and perception. As for the story or a poem being a vessel for empathy, I’ve never thought of them that way, or the documentary for that matter, but I see your point. Empathy teaches us a lot about cultural dissonance and about our own prejudices. However, my take on the documentary and writing has a more technical side to it. I think of writing sometimes as framing observations and the act of framing itself as being a deliberate selective process that either forces an intended bias or imposes an aesthetic quality. As a poet, I have no choice but to make such decisions with every poem I write. That, I believe, is the very act of writing, and of documenting and creating. As I said before, the poem then becomes the correspondence and, in tandem, the documentary.
JMM: That paradox is an interesting one, of being a kind of assertive bystander. Is empathy a passive or aggressive action, to you? Alternatively, if it’s a passive action, is it corrupted by the somewhat aggressive (or, at least, public) act of publishing? You seem very aware of the politics involved in aestheticizing some of the things you take as subjects. Has that reverence ever steered you near the idea of just not sharing the results of your labour (as let down as that would leave me, as a fan of the book)?
AD: Empathy is an act of the imagination. We can only ever imagine how someone else feels or what a person feels, albeit usually founded, I would hope, on the powerful evidence of some shared human experience. It gives us moral compass, an ethical identity. As such, I believe that empathy itself is exercised in the active voice, an aggressive action as you put it, though aggressive for me carries with it connotations I would not normally associate with empathy. But I think I know what you’re suggesting: the implication that if one acts on feelings of empathy then it becomes an assertion, a public statement, and, unavoidably, is meant to be in your face, so to speak. In some cases, the poem is definitely such an assertion, though I wouldn’t go so far as calling its publication an aggressive act.
Like empathy, the poem, as we know, is an act of the imagination, and, by virtue of being public, a political reality. However, I think you’ll agree that my poems are not politically charged in the traditional sense. In fact, as much as possible, I make a conscious effort to avoid regional politics or taking sides in the conflicts that have shaped this corner of the world. But I am, after all, the “assertive bystander,” and so I cannot completely deny my presence in the poems and therefore the politicization of both my aesthetic and its subject matter. I bear the bias of my presence wherever I find myself—be it in Toronto, Beirut, or in a poem.
Insofar as not sharing some of the poetry—choosing not to publish it—I think I would be denying myself as an artist. If I am to believe strongly in what I do, and that my work merits an audience because of an artistic integrity that is worthy of a considered response, whether on a political or aesthetic level, then I have no reason to resist publication. The published poem is a form of taking action. Besides, there’s an obvious ego component to publishing, isn’t there? I’ve never been tempted to not publish a poem that I felt was “finished” and ready for an editor’s acceptance letter. I must revere my work, I suppose, more than my subjects.
JMM: That’s all good stuff, and there’s a lot more conversation in those words: empathy, aggression, and (of course) imagination, than we can have right now.
I actually want to talk as much about the style of the book as the substance. I think what got my attention, originally, was the intensity of your engagement with sound, contextualized by the somewhat “messy” lineation and random-looking formal signifiers. Your poems tend to flow unhinged a bit, they don’t look particularly constructed, constricted, or otherwise dominated by your attempt to present them as poetry. What they do have is a rich diet of alliteration, assonance, and other good old fashion poetry ingredients. Individual lines can have a heady mixture of repeated start sounds, vowel sounds, slant rhymes, and sound patterns. That tension is really attractive for me, a poetry that appears so casual upon first viewing but, if you start digging into it, is very much the product of musical attentiveness. Is this something you work towards, or is it a constant part of your approach?
AD: You might say I’m drawn, like bees to the buzz of the hive, to the sounds of words. I like their musicality, even the clash of sounds, and I’ll use that music as much as an image to build a poem. The other day I heard someone say “Massachusetts” and I’m still repeating that word to myself thinking I should use it in a poem. It has a richness of consonance and assonance and those four quick syllables contain a whole rhythm section.
So, yes, I’m very musically attentive. Much of the poetry in this book is informed by how I’ve developed an understanding of the relationship between “sound and sense.” In fact, as I remember, that’s the title of a textbook on poetry (by Laurence Perrine, thanks to Google) that I used years ago and which in many ways shaped my own technical approach to poetry. I rely on many of the tools found in his poet’s toolbox to make music (though some tools, such as alliteration, I like a bit too much) and to help make sense of ideas. You’ll find a sonnet in my collection, as well as other tightly constructed pieces that rely on established forms and rhymes to carry the poem. I enjoy the discipline such work imposes, especially when I can veil the poem in a kind of “casual” formlessness, as you suggest. Hence, the effectiveness, for me, of a slant rhyme or a line that syncopates with a few extra beats.
But formal poems are the exception, so you’re right when you say that many of the poems appear to flow unhinged or with a messy lineation. That’s largely due to how I listen to the phrasing of a line or how I imagine that line will be read and heard. Line breaks allow for a pause, or musical rest. I’ll also intentionally carry an idea/image into the next line or leave a word hanging on the previous one. That’s usually done to bring attention to an image, to ensure that a certain ambiguity or irony or the significance of a word itself is prominent. I suppose I’m fond of the performance potential of an enjambment. However, for all I’ve said about how important the soundscape of a poem is, I pay just as much attention to its architecture on the page.
My more recent work is pushing away from many of those devices that play with sounds. I’ve done away with line breaks altogether in my other book, Soul on Standby, preferring the long line of a complete sentence or paragraph, and its ragged right margin, to the traditional stanza. I don’t think I’m dismissing the music of poetry, but I am looking for another way of using language to contribute to our poetical conversation and make it memorable. Rather than using the syllable or word as a unit of sound, I want to privilege the syntax of the sentence in order to enable speech patterns, as in some cases, or “trains of thought” in others, to be the focus of attention. A well-wrought sentence is a beautiful thing and I’m looking to make that central to the poem. It also serves the narrative nature of my recent work far better—a better fit for ensuring the unity of form and content. Still, I remain drawn to the power of repetition and assonance and so inevitably music also finds its way into those long lines that stretch to the edge of the page. Because poetry is, after all, in its many manifestations, as Laurence Perrine taught me, basically about sound and sense.
JMM: I’d like to finish our conversation with an introduction to this poem we’ve reprinted below, “Correspondent (Notes for a Mideast Solstice).” This poem in indicative of what I like about the book, it’s made of music and thought (and, this time, thoughts about music). When did you start writing this? Was it a particularly arduous or easy write? What was happening around you as you wrote it?
AD: “Correspondent” had its start at Assembly Hall, a hundred-year-old neo-Gothic building at the American University of Beirut that is used now primarily for concerts. Its high vaulted ceiling, excellent acoustics and massive pipe organ makes this an ideal hall for Bach and choral performances. I’d like to think that the poem you’ve selected likewise creates a kind of acoustic space for a fugue of words and music.
In my first year in Beirut I was surprised to observe that the pageantry of Christmas received almost as much attention as it does in the West, though, thankfully, toned down. On the evening of the winter solstice that year I attended a program of choral music performed by the AUB choir. Their interpretation of Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio” was sublime and the line, “shout ye triumphant,” kept playing in my head when I left the serene, almost sacred, scene on campus and walked out into the garrulous city streets of Beirut. Those two experiences were in striking contrast to each other, perhaps best illustrated by the horns played in Bach’s oratorio and those blaring in the stream of city traffic. To add to that, I remember hearing the muezzin’s call to prayer through the thick, stone walls of Assembly Hall just before the concert began, a concert celebrating an entirely different faith. The irony was not lost on me, as you can see from the poem.
In some ways, the poem wrote itself or, at best, was given to me by the choir and city that evening. I wanted to capture that clash of sacred music and urban chaos, as well as that of two religions in counterpoint. And, while thrilling at the opportunity for wordplay on a musical theme (adding some music of my own to it), I couldn’t help but editorialize on my understanding of faith in our modern world. Thank you, Jake, for picking up on this poem. Here it is.
Correspondent (Notes for a Mideast Solstice)
I run into on a Sunday night an oratorio
performed by the brass blare of taxicabs
herding fares along the listless streets
of Beirut. Shout ye triumphant, they blast
from the tips of their horns, a chorus of shepherds
going back for a second fare and fugue,
while the baroque of bells from Assembly Hall
rings out the last notes of the solstice. All’s well
for the moment and meltingly beautiful.
But harmonies such as these won’t stir up
the midnight dust of eternity on Bliss Street
nor the city’s recent past. The trumpets’
alleluias that I heard tonight no longer rule
the world, such voices never last for long,
and the Prophet’s singsong call to prayer
in the tenor of his time still escapes me.
