The opening paragraph fromJames Reaney’s 1950 short story“The Bully”
As a child I lived on a farm not far from a small town called Partridge. In the countryside about Partridge, thin roads of gravel and dust slide in and out among the hollows and hills. As roads go, they certainly aren’t very brave, for quite often they go round a hill instead of up it and even in the flattest places they will jog and hesitate absurdly. But then this latter tendency often comes from some blunder a surveying engineer made a hundred years ago. And although his mind has long ago dissolved, its forgetfulness still pushes the country people crooked where they might have gone straight….
Come to Alvego Root Theatre’s Tales for a Reaney Day and hear two of James Reaney’s short stories — Adam Corrigan Holowitz performs “The Bully” and Kydra Ryan performs “The Box Social”. Where & When: September 10-12 at Somerville 630, 630 Dundas Street, London, Ontario.
Summer 1937: James Reaney (age 10) picking gooseberries with his cousins in Erin Township in Wellington County, Ontario.
The “Berry-picking” scene from Act I of James Reaney’s 1967 play Colours in the Dark uses a pattern poem in the shape of a family tree pyramid to help the berry-pickers bring back the lost child.
8. BERRY-PICKING
MOTHER: The Story of the Berry-Picking Child and the Bear.
SCREEN: A child’s drawing of a berry-picking woods.
PA: This happened early near the Little Lakes.
KIDS: Darting about with berry pails
Look at the raspberries Wild Gooseberries Huckleberries Over here! Look at the raspberries Wild currants. Don’t eat them. They’re poison. Bunch berries (ugh!)
One child is left busily picking. Her name is SADIE.
GRAMP: as a bear. Enters and lifts up a child. Child my cubs need nurse. I need your blood. SADIE: Wouldn’t blood-red berries do instead? GRAMP: No. Flesh must be my bread.
SADIE: Put me down Mr. Bear. I do thee dread.
Bear runs off with child, kids enter shrieking.
KIDS: A bear ran off with Sadie! A bear ran off with Sadie! And it takes a lot of people to produce one child.
They form a family tree pyramid with a reappearing Sadie.
KIDS:
It takes Two parents Four Grandparents Eight Great grandparents Sixteen Great great grandparents Thirty-two Great great great grandparents Sixty-four Great great great great grandparents One hundred and twenty-eight Great great great great great grandparents Two hundred and fifty-six Great great great great great great grandparents Five hundred and twelve Great great great great great great great grandparents One thousand and twenty-four Great great great great great great great great grandparents
It would take over a thousand people to do this scene: at Listeners’ Workshop we did it with thirty-two people: the children here are suggested by a triangle arrangement, the thousand ancestors behind each human being. Have one group of players in charge of chanting “Great great” & “grandparents”.
SADIE: Are you there 1,024 ancestors?
A feeble rustle
Are you there 512 Are you there 256
Are you there 128
Sound gets louder, less ghost-like and more human.
Are you there 64
Are you there 32
Are you there 16
More recent ancestors step forward and say firmly and clearly what we have only dimly heard: “We’re here.”
Are you there 8
Are you there 4
Are you there Mother and Father?
GRAMP, MA and PA step forward and establish the next scene as the kids fade away
For more about James Reaney’s use of shape poems or pattern poems as theatrical devices, see Thomas Gerry’s bookThe Emblems of James Reaney (2013) and Gerry’s article “Marvellous Playhouses The Emblems of James Reaney” in the Summer 2019 issue of Queen’s Quarterly.
Our deepest sympathy to the family of the late Prof. (Dr.) P A Abraham, who passed away on May 14, 2021.
An Indian Canadianist, Prof. Abraham worked with James Reaney via Western University and was instrumental in setting up the James Reaney Canadian Centre at Gujurat University in Ahmedabad, India.
Prof. Abraham also helped Reaney donate his collection of Canadian literature to the university, a valuable resource for students and scholars at the Centre.
Prof. Abraham’s book James Reaney: A Short Biography was published in 2005 (ISBN 81-85233-24-9)
A fool once caught a crow That flew too near even for his stone’s throw. Alone beneath a tree He examined the black flier And found upon its sides Two little black doors. He opened both of them. He expected to see into Perhaps a little kitchen With a stove, a chair, A table and a dish Upon that table. But he only learned that crows Know a better use for doors than to close And open, and close and open Into dreary, dull rooms.
James Reaney, 1949
Crow near Jericho Beach, Vancouver, BC.
“The Crow” is from The Red Heart (1949), James Reaney‘s first book of poems.
’s windows, last night, rain wrote upon,
And Bobdog, while we slept, was miles away,
Beating the bounds, our frontier nose-spy
Reporting back at dawn.
We reward him for knowing about
Quarrels in lover’s lane,
Thieves on the prowl and other such
Nightwalkers.
Canny protector, I pray you:
Bark always when strangers come nigh.
Yes, we cannot smell trespass
Nor hear it, as you can.
Piss a ring of fire round our house,
Our curtilage, my land, my concessional lot.
Lead me safely at last
Under this township to my last cot,
And when Elderberry is a ruin,
Guard my grave from the academic wolf,
The curious professor
With his fine wire-brush
Who would dig me up again
From my happiness, your kingdom.
James Reaney, 2005
“Elderberry Cottage” is from Souwesto Home, a collection of James Reaney’s poems from 2005 and published by Brick Books.
Daisy’s Aria from John Beckwith and James Reaney’s 1982 opera The Shivaree is now part of a two-volume anthology of soprano arias from Canadian operas produced by Counterpoint Music Library Services.
In collaboration with the Canadian Music Centre, Dr. Nakagawa plans to create anthologies for each voice type.
UBC Public Scholar Dr. Stephanie Nakagawa performs “I Need You Guillaume” from Victor Davies and Maureen Hunter’s 2007 opera Transit of Venus, one of the arias from her collection of music from Canadian operas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRulssBwJXw
Daisy’s Aria from The Shivaree
Caralyn Tomlin (Daisy) and Avo Kittask (Quartz) in The Shivaree, Comus Music Theatre, St. Lawrence Centre, Toronto, 1982.
In The Shivaree, Daisy is abandoned by her lover Jonathan and accepts the marriage proposal of a much older man, William Quartz. The story gives a Canadian rural setting to the Greek myth of Persephone borne off by Hades. In the aria, Daisy regrets marrying Mr. Quartz and longs for Jonathan to rescue her.
Daisy: Oh Jonathan, why have you forsaken me? Is there still time – to take me away?
ARIA Jonathan, you were a strange young man. You never could decide if I was yours, So Jonathan, I tried to make you decide By letting Mr. Quartz keep company with me. But if flowers and leaves keep company with winter, They soon find they’re stabbed with an icy splinter. My heart’s like the lane and the fields in fall, Rusting and stiffening with cold until all Lies buried in colourless snow, Jonathan! Walk above the snow Where the garden was — Walk above the snow That covers me up, Jonathan! That covers me o’er.
Cover for James Reaney’s libretto for The Shivaree, which premiered at the St. Lawrence Centre on April 3, 1982.
Join us on Sunday March 7 for The John Beckwith Songbook — a concert celebrating the music of Canadian composer John Beckwith in honour of his 94th birthday.
Presented on the Confluence Concerts You Tube Channel, this celebration of John Beckwith’s song repertoire features three programs encompassing nearly all of his music for solo voice, including folksongs and songs set to poems by ee cummings, Miriam Waddington, and Colleen Thibaudeau.
“Jamie lived in London and I lived in Toronto so our collaboration was almost exclusively through correspondence,” he recalls. The composer Richard Strauss and his librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal carried on their famous collaboration much the same way. And like Strauss and Hofmannsthal, Beckwith and Reaney had their disagreements: “I wanted the leading character in our first opera to have a cat,” recalls Beckwith. Reaney replied tersely: “Cut the cat.”
Advice for potential opera composers? “You have to get a good book or you won’t have an opera. I’ve had students come up to me asking ‘What should I do for words?’ I tell them to get to know some writers.”
Page from Reaney’s draft of the libretto for Night Blooming Cereus (see John Beckwith’s 1997 book, Music Papers: Articles and Talks by a Canadian Composer, page 219)
The high school is the palace of Merlin and Cheiron Where governors and governesses teach The young Achilles and young Arthurs of the town.
The radiators teach the rule of monotony Cheep cheep cheeping in the winter classroom Timid fingers learn to turn a fire on.
A stuffed hummingbird and a stuffed Sandhill Crane. In the dusty looking glass of grammar, Number, the young see the shape of their brain.
But what and where did I learn most from? High, dark, narrow as its single window In the old high school there was a cloakroom—
A cloakroom! In winter stuffed with cloaks Soft with outside things inside Burs, mud, dead leaves on some of the coats.
At four o’clock there are forty-nine bare hooks As a hundred hands reach up And I, lingering rearranging my books
See sweeping face peer in of janitor Alone in the winter twilight The old janitor! An image to ponder over.
Of course I learnt snow dripping windows Corridors of words, cobwebs of character, The ninety-two elements in a long row, But most I learnt
The insoluble mystery of the cloakroom And the curious question of the janitor In some ways so centre and core January man and cloakroom From which the moon each month unlocks upon the wave A white bird.
James Reaney, 1962
James Reaney at home, age 1 1/2 years, January 1928.
Sunday November 15, 2020 – Thank you all for joining us at Wordsfest via Zoom for James Reaney: Words & Music. You can view an archived version of the event here: https://fb.watch/1NryVbGfTv/
Stephen Holowitz, Sonja Gustafson, Oliver Whitehead, and Ingrid Crozman at Aeolian Hall, October 18, 2020
A big thank you to Sonja Gustafson (soprano), Ingrid Crozman (flute), Stephen Holowitz (piano), and Oliver Whitehead (guitar) for your wonderful performances of selections from James Reaney’s poem “Brushstrokes Decorating a Fan” and Colleen Thibaudeau’spoems “Watermelon Summer” and “Lullaby of the Child for the Mother.”
Sonja Gustafson performs “Ernie’s Barber Salon Near the College” from “Brushstrokes Decorating a Fan”
And thank you, Carolyn Doyle, for being an excellent moderator and drawing forth the stories and recollections behind the music. Composers Stephen Holowitz and Oliver Whitehead first got the idea to set music to James Reaney’s “Brushstrokes Decorating a Fan” when they were asked to perform at his 81st birthday party on September 1, 2007. Their success with James Reaney’s work led to an appreciation for Colleen Thibaudeau’s poetry and composing the music for Adam Corrigan Holowitz‘s 2013 play Colleening.
Our grateful thanks to Joshua Lambier and Gregory De Souza at Wordsfest for helping us put James Reaney: Words & Music together.
About the composers: Composers Stephen Holowitz and Oliver Whitehead are members of the London jazz group The Antler River Project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hteyhpy3gcM
The James Reaney Memorial Lecture series celebrates the life and work of Southwestern Ontario poet and dramatist James Reaney, who was born on a farm near Stratford, Ontario and found a creative home in London, Ontario.
Our thanks toWordsfestand theLondon Public Libraryfor their support of the lecture series, and toPoetry Stratfordand theStratford Public Libraryfor their support in hosting the earlier lectures (2010-2015).
In celebration of London’s bicentennial, the City of London launched the first Forest City Facts earlier this week at Gibbons Park on the Thames River. Each lawn sign displays a short historical fact about London people, places, and events. In partnership with the London and Middlesex Historical Society and other local history groups, Forest City…
To celebrate National Poetry Month, here is the “April” eclogue from James Reaney’s long poem A Suit of Nettles. April ARGUMENT: With Duncan as judge the geese hold a bardic contest in honour of Spring. [DUNCAN RAYMOND VALANCY] Here is a kernel of the hardest winter wheat Found in the yard delicious for to eat.…
The Farm ( ( ( 0 ) ) ) For more about James Reaney’s poems and a look back at the family farm where James Reaney grew up, see the 1971 TVOntario documentary “James Reaney” in the Canadian Writers series. The Farm There was a farm divided in two1/2 of it surly brick maker ownedswale…
James Reaney 