Jean Jay Macpherson (June 13, 1931 – March 21, 2012) was a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

lyric

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or w ...

and

scholar A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researche ...

. '' The Encyclopædia Britannica'' calls her "a member of 'the mythopoeic school of poetry,' who expressed serious religious and philosophical themes in symbolic verse that was often lyrical or comic."Jay Macpherson
" ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', Britannica Online, Web, Apr. 10, 2011.

Life

Jay Macpherson was born in

London, England London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major se ...

, in 1931.Jean O'Grady,
Macpherson, Jean Jay
" ''Canadian Encyclopedia'' (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1988), 1282. She was brought to

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...

in 1940 as a ' war guest'. She took high school at Bishop Spencer College, St. John's, and

Glebe Collegiate Glebe Collegiate Institute (GCI) is a high school in the Glebe neighbourhood of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Administered by the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board (OCDSB), Glebe Collegiate Institute has approximately 1,700 students and is the di ...

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the c ...

.Heather Pyrcz,
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: A Digital History of Canadian Poetry
", YoungPoets.ca, 2003, Web, Apr. 10, 2011. In 1951 Macpherson received a BA from Carleton College (now Carleton University) in 1951, followed by a year at

University College In a number of countries, a university college is a college institution that provides tertiary education but does not have full or independent university status. A university college is often part of a larger university. The precise usage varies ...

in London. She received a BLS from

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Univer ...

, and then completed her MA and

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...

at Victoria College,

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

, both supervised by professor and critic

Northrop Frye Herman Northrop Frye (July 14, 1912 – January 23, 1991) was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century. Frye gained international fame with his first book, '' Fearful Symm ...

. Macpherson published poetry in ''Contemporary Verse'' in 1949. Her first book was published in 1952. In 1954 Macpherson began her own

small press A small press is a publisher with annual sales below a certain level or below a certain number of titles published. The terms "indie publisher" and "independent press" and others are sometimes used interchangeably. Independent press is general ...

, Emblem Books, which published her second volume, ''O Earth Return.'' Between 1954 and 1963, Emblem Books published eight

chapbook A chapbook is a small publication of up to about 40 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch. In early modern Europe a chapbook was a type of printed street literature. Produced cheaply, chapbooks were commonly small, paper-covered bookle ...

s featuring the work of Canadian poets, including

Dorothy Livesay Dorothy Kathleen May Livesay, (October 12, 1909 – December 29, 1996) was a Canadian poet who twice won the Governor General's Award in the 1940s, and was "senior woman writer in Canada" during the 1970s and 1980s.Mathews, R.D.. "Dorothy L ...

Alden Nowlan Alden Albert Nowlan (; January 25, 1933 – June 27, 1983) was a Canadian poet, novelist, and playwright. History Alden Nowlan was born into rural poverty in Stanley, Nova Scotia, adjacent to Mosherville, and close to the small town of Windsor ...

, and

Al Purdy Alfred Wellington Purdy (December 30, 1918 – April 21, 2000) was a 20th-century Canadian free verse poet. Purdy's writing career spanned fifty-six years. His works include thirty-nine books of poetry; a novel; two volumes of memoirs and four b ...

."Macpherson, Jay," ''Cambridge Guide to Literature in English'' (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988), 623.) Macpherson's two earlier volumes were incorporated into ''The Boatman'' (1957), a book which "gained her a considerable reputation. Dedicated to Northrop Frye and his wife, the collection reflects Frye's emphasis on the mythic and archetypal properties of poetry." ''The Boatman'' won the

Governor General's Award The Governor General's Awards are a collection of annual awards presented by the Governor General of Canada, recognizing distinction in numerous academic, artistic, and social fields. The first award was conceived and inaugurated in 1937 by th ...

1958 Events January * January 1 – The European Economic Community (EEC) comes into being. * January 3 – The West Indies Federation is formed. * January 4 ** Edmund Hillary's Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition completes the third ...

. Macpherson taught

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...

at Victoria College from 1957 until 1996. She became a Professor of English in 1974. Her 1982 book ''The Spirit of Solitude'' is "a highly regarded study of the

elegiac The adjective ''elegiac'' has two possible meanings. First, it can refer to something of, relating to, or involving, an elegy or something that expresses similar mournfulness or sorrow. Second, it can refer more specifically to poetry composed in ...

and

pastoral A pastoral lifestyle is that of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasture. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music (pastorale) that depict ...

traditions from the 17th century onward." Jay Macpherson died on Mar 21, 2012.

Writing

Macpherson has been described "as a 'mythopoeic' poet – rooted in the teachings of Frye, the archetypes of

Carl Jung Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, ph ...

, and the intensely conservative social vision of T.S. Eliot." Within her work, "recurring themes involve the

creation Creation may refer to: Religion *''Creatio ex nihilo'', the concept that matter was created by God out of nothing *Creation myth, a religious story of the origin of the world and how people first came to inhabit it *Creationism, the belief that ...

fall Autumn, also known as fall in American English and Canadian English, is one of the four temperate seasons on Earth. Outside the tropics, autumn marks the transition from summer to winter, in September (Northern Hemisphere) or March ( Southe ...

flood A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...

, redemption and the

apocalypse Apocalypse () is a literary genre in which a supernatural being reveals cosmic mysteries or the future to a human intermediary. The means of mediation include dreams, visions and heavenly journeys, and they typically feature symbolic imager ...

." Her interest is in "authentic myth", "the ones that have some imaginative force behind them." In technique, Macpherson has been placed "beside Margaret Avison,

P. K. Page Patricia Kathleen Page, (23 November 1916 – 14 January 2010) was a British-born Canadian poet,Peter ScowenP.K. Page dies at age 93 '' The Globe and Mail'', 14 January 2010. Retrieved 15 January 2010. though the citation as she was inducted as ...

Phyllis Webb Phyllis Webb (April 8, 1927 – November 11, 2021) was a Canadian poet and broadcaster. Webb's poetry had diverse influences, ranging from neo-Confucianism to the field theory of composition developed by the Black Mountain poets. Critics hav ...

, but especially

Anne Hébert Anne Hébert (pronounced in French) (August 1, 1916 – January 22, 2000), was a Canadian author and poet. She won Canada's top literary honor, the Governor General's Award, three times, twice for fiction and once for poetry. Early life Hébe ...

– particularly in the use of the

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

and macabre themes and devices."

''The Boatman''

Macpherson's first major work, ''The Boatman'' (1957), "describes a world where redemption is still possible." Northrop Frye (to whom ''The Boatman'' was dedicated) called it the "one good book" of Canadian poetry for that year. He added: "There is little use looking for bad lines or lapses in taste: The Boatman is completely successful within the conventions it adopts, and anyone dissatisfied with the book must quarrel with the conventions. Among these are the use of a great variety of echoes, some of them direct quotations from other poems, and an interest in myth, both Biblical and Classical."Northrop Frye,
Letters in Canada - 1957
" ''The Bush Garden'' (Toronto:Anansi, 1971, 70-76. The Boatman of the title "is

Noah Noah ''Nukh''; am, ኖህ, ''Noḥ''; ar, نُوح '; grc, Νῶε ''Nôe'' () is the tenth and last of the pre-Flood patriarchs in the traditions of Abrahamic religions. His story appears in the Hebrew Bible (Book of Genesis, chapters 5� ...

, but both Noah and the

ark Ark or ARK may refer to: Biblical narratives and religion Hebrew word ''teva'' * Noah's Ark, a massive vessel said to have been built to save the world's animals from a flood * Ark of bulrushes, the boat of the infant Moses Hebrew ''aron'' * ...

itself form an allegory for the artist and the artistic experience, the ark representing Jung's

collective unconscious Collective unconscious (german: kollektives Unbewusstes) refers to the unconscious mind and shared mental concepts. It is generally associated with idealism and was coined by Carl Jung. According to Jung, the human collective unconscious is popula ...

." "The creation is inside its creator, and the ark similarly attempts to explain to Noah ... that it is really inside him, as Eve was once inside Adam: When the four quarters shall Turn in and make one whole, Then I who wall your body, Which is to me a soul, Shall swim circled by you And cradled on your tide, Who was not even, not ever, Taken from your side. "As the ark expands into the flooded world, the body of the Biblical

leviathan Leviathan (; he, לִוְיָתָן, ) is a sea serpent noted in theology and mythology. It is referenced in several books of the Hebrew Bible, including Psalms, the Book of Job, the Book of Isaiah, the Book of Amos, and, according to some ...

, and the order of nature, the design of the whole book begins to take shape. ''The Boatman'' begins with a poem called 'Ordinary People in the Last Days,' a wistful poem about an apocalypse that happens to everyone except the poet, and ends with a vision of a 'Fisherman' who ... catches 'myriad forms,' eats them, drinks the lake they are in, and is caught in his turn by God."

''Welcoming Disaster''

Macpherson's next major work, ''Welcoming Disaster'' (1974), "employs more complex forms to pursue its quest for meaning; the poems frequently succeed in maintaining imaginative contact with social reality while extending Macpherson's essential concern with psychological and metaphysical conditions."

George Woodcock George Woodcock (; May 8, 1912 – January 28, 1995) was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, a philosopher, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet and published several volumes of travel wri ...

saw ''Welcoming Disaster'' and ''The Boatman'' as similar, even complementary: "They are narratives of journeys into spiritual day and night, disguised, no doubt, by all the devices of privacy, but nonetheless derived from true inner experiences."

Margaret Atwood Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, ...

emphasized their differences: "If ''The Boatman'' is 'classical,' . . . then ''Welcoming Disaster'' is, by the same lights, 'romantic': more personal, more convoluted, darker and more grotesque, its rhythms more complex"W.J. Keith,
Jay Macpherson's ''Welcoming Disaster:'' a Reconsideration
" ''Canadian Poetry: Studies/Documents/Reviews," No. 36 (Spring/Summer 1995), UWO, Web, Apr. 12, 2011. "''Welcoming Disaster'', has the critics baffled. They cannot agree on its proper interpretation - is it a darker, more tragic vision or is the possibility of redemption there?" Suniti Namjoshi saw it as a book about redemption: about the necessity "to hit bottom and then to make the journey up"; "after a descent into the underworld ... it is possible to return to the ordinary world of everyday life". David Bromwich, reviewing the book in ''

Poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meani ...

'', saw it as even more positive: for him, it "moves from consolation to guilt to terror and finally to a deepened consolation." On the other hand, Lorraine Weir interpreted the book to be saying that the "underworld journey of redemption ... fails". "Fertility is not restored, the underworld is not left behind." Weir calls Macpherson's vision "inescapably a tragic one."

Recognition

Macpherson won ''

'' magazine's Levinson Prize, and the

University of Western Ontario The University of Western Ontario (UWO), also known as Western University or Western, is a public research university in London, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land, surrounded by residential neighbourhoods and the Thames R ...

President's Medal, in 1957. She won the Governor General's Award for ''The Boatman'' in

. A small park in her former Toronto neighbourhood, Jay Macpherson Green, is named for her near Avenue Road and Dupont Street.

Publications

Poetry

* ''A Country Without a Mythology.'' n.p.: 195?. *

1952 Events January–February * January 26 – Black Saturday in Egypt: Rioters burn Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses. * February 6 ** Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, becomes m ...

:''Nineteen Poems.'' Mallorca, Spain: Seizin Press *

1954 Events January * January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany. * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The fir ...

:''O Earth Return.'' Toronto: Emblem Books *

1957 1957 ( MCMLVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar, the 1957th year of the Common Era (CE) and ''Anno Domini'' (AD) designations, the 957th year of the 2nd millennium, the 57th year of the 20th century, and the 8th year ...

:''The Fisherman: A Book of Riddles'' Jay Macpherson
, NNDB.com, Web, Apr. 10, 2011 *

:''The Boatman.'' Toronto: Oxford University Press *

1959 Events January * January 1 - Cuba: Fulgencio Batista flees Havana when the forces of Fidel Castro advance. * January 2 - Lunar probe Luna 1 was the first man-made object to attain escape velocity from Earth. It reached the vicinity of E ...

:''A Dry Light & The Dark Air.'' Toronto: Hawkshead Press *

1968 The year was highlighted by protests and other unrests that occurred worldwide. Events January–February * January 5 – " Prague Spring": Alexander Dubček is chosen as leader of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. * J ...

:''The Boatman and Other Poems.'' Toronto: Oxford UP *

1974 Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War determined politics; ...

:''Welcoming Disaster: Poems, 1970-74.'' Toronto: Saannes Publications *

1981 Events January * January 1 ** Greece enters the European Economic Community, predecessor of the European Union. ** Palau becomes a self-governing territory. * January 10 – Salvadoran Civil War: The FMLN launches its first major offensiv ...

:''Poems Twice Told: The Boatman & Welcoming Disaster.'' Toronto: Oxford University Press

Fiction

* 1962:''The Four Ages of Man: The Classical Myths.'' Toronto: Macmillan

Non-fiction

* 1972:''Pratt’s Romantic Mythology: The Witches’ Brew.'' St. John's Nfld.: Memorial University * 1974:''"Beauty and the Beast" and Some Relatives.'' Toronto: Toronto Public Library * 1982:''The Spirit of Solitude: Conventions and Continuities in Late Romance''. New Haven: Yale University Press ''Except where otherwise noted, bibliographic information courtesy Brock University.''Jay Macpherson, 1931-
, Canadian Women Poets," BrockU.ca, Web, Apr. 10, 2011

References

Monograph

*Weir, Lorraine. ''Jay Macpherson and Her Works'' Toronto: ECW Press, 1989.

Articles

* Berner, Audrey. "The ‘Unicorn’ Poems of Jay Macpherson." ''Journal of Canadian Poetry'' 3 (1980): 9-16. * "Comments (On the Practice of Alluding)." ''University of Toronto Quarterly'' 61.3 (1992): 381-390. * Keith, W.J. "Jay Macpherson’s Welcoming Disaster: a Reconsideration." ''Canadian Poetry'' 36 (1995): 32-43. * Weir, Lorraine. "Toward a Feminist Hermeneutics: Jay Macpherson's ''Welcoming Disaster''," in ''Gynocritics/La Gynocritique - Feminist Approaches to Writing by Canadian and Quebecoise Women'', ed. Barbara Godard (Toronto: ECW P, 1987) 59-70. * Namjoshi, Suniti. "In the Whale’s Belly: Jay Macpherson’s Poetry." ''Canadian Literature'' 79 (1978): 54-59. * Reaney, James. "The Third-Eye: Macpherson’s ''The Boatman''." ''Canadian Literature'' 3 (1960): 23-34.

Notes

External links

Biography and selected poetry of Jay MacphersonJay Macpherson's
entry in

The Canadian Encyclopedia ''The Canadian Encyclopedia'' (TCE; french: L'Encyclopédie canadienne) is the national encyclopedia of Canada, published online by the Toronto-based historical organization Historica Canada, with the support of Canadian Heritage. Available f ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Macpherson, Jay 1931 births 2012 deaths 20th-century Canadian poets Canadian women poets Alumni of University College London Anglo-Scots Canadian people of Scottish descent Canadian modernist poets English emigrants to Canada Governor General's Award-winning poets McGill University alumni Members of the United Church of Canada University of Toronto alumni University of Toronto faculty Writers from London Writers from Toronto 20th-century Canadian women writers