The poet on the bus

 

While browsing in a big-chain bookstore recently, I happened upon the book Milton Acorn: The People’s Poet (2015), which includes essays about Acorn as well as the text of his book I’ve Tasted My Blood, first published in 1969. This edition also includes notes Acorn added when editing a subsequent edition in 1978. The book reminded me of an encounter I had with Acorn when I was a high-school student and aspiring writer in 1973.

One of the benefits of attending the School of Experiential Education (or S.E.E.) in the early 1970s was the opportunity to meet some of Canada’s most respected poets. Many of the English literature students, like me, were interested in poetry, and the English teacher, Barry Duncan, was very good at getting writers to come to the school to lead tutorials and read their work. Some people called an alternative school such as S.E.E a “free” school. It was run like a university: attendance was not mandatory but most courses had one class a week and you were expected to complete your assignments through independent study.  

In those days, there was a vibrant Canadian poetry scene. Margaret Atwood, Irving Layton and Al Purdy were the big-name poets, who got the more elite reading gigs at art colleges and were featured on CBC. But there were several recognized poets who were happy to drop in to our old school building in southeast Etobicoke and regale a bunch of long-haired teenagers in denim overalls with their wit and their published work. The names Earl Birney, Bill Bissett, Gerald Lampert and Joe Rosenblatt spring to mind as writers who visited our school.

One day Barry (we called our teachers by their first names, of course) told us he had lined up a visit by Milton Acorn, a popular local poet who had recently had the honour “The People’s Poet” bestowed upon him by a group of his peers — Atwood and Mordecai Richler among them — who were dismayed that he'd been passed over for the Governor General's Award that year.

Even though I didn’t have any classes that day, I made a special trip to school to see the visiting writer. The session was to take place in the early afternoon and the bus I boarded at Old Mill station to get to school was almost empty. I took a seat near the back and opened my book (probably a Kurt Vonnegut or a Richard Brautigan; I was a sucker for an easy read). After the bus left the station I became aware of some peculiar animal noises come from the back. Snorting, growling, moaning. I turned my head far enough to see that a shabbily dressed middle-aged man was huddled in a seat across from me and few rows back. He wore a coarse brown shirt and a pair of old black dress pants that looked like he’d bought them at a charity shop. The waist was secured by a belt that was way too big for him; the long slack end of the belt flapped down at his knees. His brown hair was greasy and disheveled and he resembled a huddled wretch from a Dickensian slum. This man might have been homeless, but we didn’t say “homeless” in those days; we used more clumsy words like “winos” and “bums.”

As the bus rolled on, the man lolled from side and groaned audibly, never uttering a discernible word. Was he a mental patient or a drunk? I wasn’t sure. I considered getting up and moving farther away from him, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Out of the corner of my eye I could see that his brown eyes burned with a kind of fiery torment, a dark blaze of passion. He moaned and growled some more and whined like a dog and swayed in his seat until we reached my stop. I stepped quickly toward the centre doors and leapt off the bus, glad to escape the remote chance that this frightful specimen might speak to me. 

I didn’t look back until I was inside the school (an old two-storey brick building constructed as a primary school in the first years of the 20th century). I was a little early, so I had time for a quick visit to the washroom and to look in the students’ common room to see if any of my friends were around. Then I went up to the second-floor classroom where the poetry reading was to take place. There were a few students in the hallway outside the classroom door and about 25 were hanging around inside, smoking cigarettes (because it was allowed) while Barry chatted with someone, probably the guest speaker, at the front of the room. When I got a better look at the person Barry was talking to, I realized it was the scary guy from the bus. That growling, moaning, tortured soul was the People’s Poet, Milton Acorn.

At first, and to my surprise, Acorn’s behaviour in the classroom was pretty normal. He was lucid and well-spoken and fulfilled his role as a mentor to young aspiring writers. But when he began reading from a paperback copy of one of his books, he seemed gripped by a kind of spiritual possession. He shouted some lines so loud and abruptly that some of the kids flinched in startlement. After one particularly dramatic line, I noticed a tear had flown from his eye and landed on his cheek. At another point, he shrieked a phrase with dramatic volume, then stared at the page for a few seconds, silent, his eyes fixed on the book with an expression of utter horror, as if the words he himself had written were the source of his torment.

And then he snapped out of it. He took some questions from the class (sorry, I don’t remember any) and I sensed an air of condescension toward us. He turned to illustrate a point on the blackboard and, searching the ledge for something to write with, quipped, “Is this school free of chalk?”

His sarcastic wit now intact, that furious emotion he had displayed during the reading seemed to have been switched off. But I knew it wasn’t an act. I had seen that fire in his eyes, heard his troubled voice on the bus, when he thought he was alone.

 

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Milton Acorn (1923-1986) was born in Charlottetown, P.E.I. He lived in Charlottetown, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Notable books: I’ve Tasted My Blood; I Shout Love and Other Poems.