Singing Forever in My Memories: Review

Singing Forever in My Memories

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“A man of knowledge chooses a path with a heart and follows it and then he looks and rejoices … and then he sees and knows.”
~ Carlos Castaneda

To enter the mind of a poet by reading his words, is to tread on sacred space. It is to illuminate with observation the consciousness of another. There, as in the strands of DNA, memories reconstitute a universe of people, places and aspirations of a lost time. As in Proust’s “A La Recherche du Temps Perdu,” writing becomes the sharing of a living, kindred world. Referring to Tennyson in his introduction, Michael Walsh writes, “imagination is the manipulation inside the mind of absent things.” Those moments lived in a long gone era, now absent, although forever at the forefront in our thoughts and hearts, are reclaimed by the poet as pivotal points to cohere a synthesis of a life story. So too in “Man and his Symbols” Jung reveals that the creative act is to dip into the well of the subconscious to bring forth the images of the unexplored worlds within us.

In “Singing Forever in My Memories,” the poems alight images of people and landscapes with the loving depth of remembrance. “My words are my pictures, my images and my memories” writes the poet. “They are my happiness and my pain. They are the album of my life, the benchmarks of my travels and travails They are my survival and my future. When I enter their world, I am transferred to the frames that become the colours, sounds, smells, tastes and touches of my memories. I am still aware of my possibilities that are ever-changing and my Hericlitean state of a constant, flexible future allows me to remain active today.” The questions in these poems aim to answer the question: “Who am I and why am I here?” The poet writes: “My voice is the music, the instrument I share with my friends.”

The poems in this collection give us a view of the miracle of life, from birth to death,

“I am the prodigal birth who/ arrived/ where hope/ was measured seconds before/ the bombs came raining / down without warning/ I was safe/ “conceived” from “galactic dreams/ in flux” through illusions, dreams and hopes, all the while profoundly present, aware and observant of reality’s beauty, pain and paradoxes as it is taking place in the now. “I am the fetal fusion/ I am the electric glow/ I am the consummate beginning/ of my parents’ devouring embrace/ I am their bodies entwined/ combined/ refined/ now I am me/ savouring and seeking/ the flavours and perfumes/ of my I AM mortality/ forever meandering along/ the crowded streets/ and journeys of my life.”

These poems are deep meditations of witnessing. They see and transcribe the world with profound awareness of the observer being an ever fluctuating wave within it: “I among possibilities, ever changing, changed.” Memories shape who we are. They make up our internal biographies, the stories we tell ourselves about what we have done with our lives. We need the certainty of memories as a safe board from which to confidently stand where we are and to then take leaps of faith into the future. Memories virtually allow us to survive. In the poem “I Live in the Memories,” the poet writes: “I live in the memories of yesterday/ so much to dream/ before I leave/ on a celestial sunbeam.” For each one of us is a child travelling through time, growing up, growing old, transcribing reality into words. Memories are stored in our brains and in our bodies. They are essentially the building blocks of who we are. We truly are our stories and histories.

In “Life’s Journey is a River,” the words of the poem build up the torrential, liquid momentum of a river, which embraces the largesse and power of the river’s water and all it meets and thus encompasses along its journey. As the river flows from its birthplace to the sea, so a human life is “a current set adrift/ ambling across the land/ the river of change/ its flow/ its current/ meandering at will/ but always constant/ your journey to a distant shore.” In the vignette “Old Man by a Fence,” memories, like fences, hold and protect what was important in one’s life. “The memories and fences/ are enough for one/ who toiled in earnest/ now go and God bless you/ for it’s time to rest.” Also in “Memories” the poet writes: “when I am laid to rest/ beside brittle leaves/ covering the rainbow trail of windswept days/ let the crackling logs of home reveal me/ running through the asphalt forests/ swinging my bat/ on the strand/ that’s teased by time.”

Much like the golden, fiery sunflower petals in the beautiful painting on the cover, by the poet’s late wife, all living beings are flames lit for a spark of time, petals blooming forth in a breath of air. In the poem “Flux” we read:

“I am a flume of flaming liquid fire/ fuming after fame before/ igniting another frenzied time/ of endless struggle.” In “Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon,” we are “dots and dots and dots/ making shape and substance and sense from segments of separation.” 

In the painting, as in life, the children that chase butterflies are no different than “the toys in a store waiting to be wound.”

We are “anticipating their steps/ along parasol avenues/ where shadows unveil the activity of now/ before the key winds down/ with a final flash.” Also in “Van Eyck’s Marriage Ceremony,” the couple is “permanently costumed in yesterday’s dust/ holding the hand of wax/ extended forever,” 

their reflection in the mirror “walking backwards to eternity.”

Poetic sketches of sensorial language instantly teleport us to the places evoked, replete with their sounds, scents, tastes and hues. In “Music,” we can clearly hear the tunes of “bagpipes wailing/ blow notes across oceans of dreams/ alive in the eternal silence/ of far away memories” and in “Sketches of Hermans Island” the poet writes: “shadows and shingles whining in brine/ whistling winds whooshing roars on rocky shores/ spraying and flaying/ gulls wings swinging in draft/ clamming ready for steam chowder pots/ while bobbing nets call/ cod and flounder.”

Inanimate objects come alive through the poet’s imagination. A discarded, rusty, old metal rod becomes a metaphor for an old man “just wanting to die/ crippled and bent/ performing no deed.” Conversely imagined, it becomes a harbinger of hope “covered in dreams/ iron support for mighty spaces.” Oh, the power of imagining!

Throughout these poems breathes an awareness of temporality and the transience of life as it is happening in the now, shadowed into relief by memory of the past, yet always alert to the present, constant passing of time, the flux of existence: “weather beaten barns/ lying in disarray/ with mangled pots/ and hoes and rusty rakes/ heirlooms, hung from nails/ along the walls by/ pioneers’ hands long since gone.”

An overarching intelligence, creativity and richness of experience infuse and enhance this collection, the observant eye of a poet who imaginatively infers worlds from the smallest fragments of the tangible. In “Fragment,” we come upon a vivid “blue ooze from/ reckless, restless/ thorny orange spikes/ with straw birds cavorting/ on turquoise carpet fens.” Pivotally in the centre of the book, “I Am Not America” is a powerful piece that sums up the paradox of the American dream in the poet’s own timeline. Memories enliven realities juxtaposing true, lived experiences with media images of a contradicting culture oftentimes too good to be true, a poem answering best perhaps, the question of the poet’s “who am I?”

Sounds, colours and poetic word play of assonance and onomatopoeia grace “Spring Fling,” describing the beginning of blooming season in all its hues and manifestations, its:

“buds on branches/ song of the jay/ that hummingbird woo/ mothers suckled/ bee/ honey suckle/ rose round window/ curtain rippling/ against window/ wide open fields/ midst lily/ tulip/ crocus petals/ breeze shining on.” 

Amidst skillful use of language and images, we glean an innate joy for life and human interaction: “then to sit and grin/ in friendly accord/ with a gentle man/ with time to leave/ his work alone/ and talk” and always, just a thought away from “the cliffs” that “like biscuit ginger/ drip with time” like the “summer crews” who “yearns for home.” In the poem “Music Tapes: Chet Baker,” a masterful interweaving of the musician’s cool jazz trumpet music underscores snippets of sequences of a man’s life. The refrain “Come blow your horn” , reminiscent of the rosary’s “ora pro nobis” and the twelve stations of the cross, aptly captures Baker’s tragic ending. For a man’s life can be difficult as that of a homeless “old man snuggling down/ on a cardboard mattress/ searching for a bed/ of warm night air/ issuing from the bowels of the dead” yet we are redeemed by an innate positivity which extrapolates light from the “shadows in the night/ serenading my hopes and dreams.”

After a lifetime of aspirations, effort and toil, life will ease us out. Perhaps we are all like “Lawrence of Arabia”: “woven in contradiction/ an anonymous hero” who one day will “die like lightning.” In view of this, by writing, the poet keeps in touch with his memories as he, like the biblical prodigal son, wanders “the world trying to find” his “home with its familial roots and connections.” Although the “Stone Staircase” is perfectly “symmetrical and parallel” it fades “into nowhere.” What a gorgeous metaphor for the brief, precious perfection of a human being’s life! Existence: a dream within a dream, “juice laden crimson/ bobulating on a stem of tender fragility.”

A literary powerhouse, a generous spirit, a teacher at heart, Michael Walsh has penned a poetry collection deserving of attention in the Canadian Literature poetry scene. Editor of poetry collections by myriad Canadian poets including Irving Layton and Gwendolyn Macewen, from the sixties to today through Mosaic Press, the publishing house he founded, Michael Walsh’s “Singing Forever in My Memories” is a collection of poems to enjoy and to be inspired by. He teaches us that “creativity should be the last magic in our materialist world and” that “the modern artist is in his own way a magic hunter whose depth of feeling makes him lose all self-consciousness when he can identify with what he creates.” Poetry is vital to language and to living. Indeed in this collection Michael Walsh has gifted us a poetry book that can guide us home through memories, strewn like stepping stones to the initial sources of experience. If literature has the potential to change the way we see the world, this book is a must read for its gold nuggets of beautiful metaphors and philosophical ponderings on how to live a life of joy and wonder sparkling like a river flowing towards the sea.

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Michael Walsh is a retired professor from the Faculty of Animation, Arts & Design at Sheridan College. He taught Media & Communications History & Theory courses for over 38 years. He has also been involved in Canadian Book Publishing since 1967, performing a variety of roles from publisher, editor, sales/ marketing director & rights. He founded Mosaic Press in the early 70s because he believed that Canada needed to include new voices from a variety of diverse backgrounds. He was a delegate to the first Conference on Multiculturalism in Ottawa. Mike still maintains an editorial role, supporting the new challenges that began 50 years ago when Mosaic Press became a new voice in Canadian Publishing.

Josie Di Sciascio-Andrews has written seven collections of poetry and two non-fiction books. Her work appears in various journals and anthologies among which: Canadian Literature, The Malahat Review, Descant, The Canada Literary Review, Acta Victoriana, Canadian Poetry Review, The Blue Nib and Lothlorien, among others. Her poetry won first prize in the 2023 International Poetry Prize in Rome’s Antonio De Ferraris Literature Contest. Her poem “The First Time I Heard Leonard Cohen” was nominated for the 2022 Pushcart Prize. Her latest book of poems, “Meta Stasis”, was released June 2021 by Mosaic Press. Josie is a member of The League of Canadian Poets, the Ontario Poetry Society, the Italian Canadian Writers Association and The Heliconian Club for Women in the Literary Arts. She teaches workshops for Poetry in Voice and is the host & coordinator of The Oakville Literary Cafe series.

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