"Naturally, poetry can't defeat ongoing ignorance, repetitive wrong-doing, physical deterioration nor personal extinction. But to say a few meaningful words about being in the world in the face of infinity and eternity — well, that's something."
— Fraser Sutherland, Northern Poetry Review (2007)
Under "Lifer" in THE DICTIONARY OF PO/ETERNITY, you will discover widely travelled Fraser Sutherland's name flanked by W. H. Auden, Earle Birney, Elizabeth Bishop, John Robert Colombo, E. E. Cummings, Mary Dalton, Stan Dragland, Robert Frost and Ted Hughes on the left while Philip Larkin, Irving Layton, John Newlove, Alden Nowlan, Sylvia Plath, Ezra Pound, Al Purdy, Theodore Roethke, Goran Simic and W. B. Yeats quite naturally fall to the right.
Born and raised in Pictou County, NS, the critically lauded povert poet, lexicographer, editor and literary journalist who now calls Toronto home put away childish things in order to pursue adolescent lusts before attempting to follow in Ernest Hemingway's foot-stomps by assuming the very adult position of a small-town newspaper reporter in order to gain experience in the ways of this world after earning his journalism degree from Ottawa's Carleton University in 1969. A frequent contributor to this newspaper, Sutherland's body of work includes 14 volumes of poetry, short fiction, criticism and non-fiction published across the continent (as well as appearances in either English or myriad translations in 100-plus prestigious anthologies and periodicals around the globe).
This evening, commencing at 6, the self-described counterpuncher will take his latest work, The Philosophy of As If, from the page to the stage launching what may well become one of the few collections of poetry destined to flourish long after its creator ceases to exist, no small feat in this (or any other) age.
The poem is tired of being abused.
In the old days it was an oscilloscope
registering the curve of moods.
After a while it wearied of
rehashing childhood illnesses
adolescent lusts, adult idiocies. . . .
Last evening, browser parked at one of the University of Toronto Libraries' incredibly comprehensive and admirably ambitious writesites, Canadian Poetry Online (edited by terrific poet Sophia Kaszuba), it dawned on yours truly that another of the CPO's principle participants, Dr. Ian Lancashire, shared a love of language and literature with Sutherland (since both men belong to the same dictionary society). On the off-chance I might find the good professor at cyberhome, I rat-a-tap tippy-tapped on his e-door with a "por favor" request: Would the Winnipegger mind providing yours truly with an assessment, an opinion, an idea of what he finds valuable in Sutherland's work? (Dare I disturb the universe, I thought to meself. Shamelessly, I shot thought back, yessiree; after all, nothing ventured, nothing maimed when it comes to going the cyber-distance in the name of poetry).
To my astonished delight, a couple of hours later, the good doctor graciously responded: "An admitted 'extreme free-speech libertarian,' Fraser Sutherland possesses the courage of a pride of lions. Who hasn't relished his unflinching reviews of CanLit? A lexicographer of Canadian English, Fraser expects our poets to purify their tribal dialect; and if, thus tasked, they neither toil nor spin, he says so. Fraser is a majestically talented writer, but he is also a most necessary reader."
This evening, this most necessary reader will no doubt relish dishing up the goods from one great work, a work it took its author several years to complete through thin and thinner; but, a work so vital and vibrantly alive in all its aspects, listeners can expect to hear a veritable banquet of robust ear-cheer because, as anyone who's heard Sutherland extemporizingly hold forth, the experience both transforms and transcends each and all versions of so-called reality on its way to express transport.
As if. As If? The Philosophy of As If? Aside from the gorgeosity to the Nth degree of your title, can you explain or describe its genesis to me?
For a brief period during my early 30s, I compulsively copied out maxims of psychology into a big ruled hardbound notebook. One of my sources was a book on the psychology of Alfred Adler, in which appeared quotations from a German neo-Kantian philosopher named Hans Vaihinger whose 1911 work, Philosophie des Als Ob, was translated by C. K. Ogden and published in 1925 as The Philosophy of "As If": A System of the Theoretical, Practical and Religious Fictions of Mankind.
