/pdf/radiant-imperfection-the-interconnected-writing-lives-of-438386bmq0.pdf

"Radiant Imperfection": The Interconnected Writing Lives of Robert Bringhurst, Dennis Lee, Tim Lilburn, Don McKay, and Jan Zwicky

This paper discusses whether a consideration of the capacity of rocks to affect humans in terms of their charisma or object-agency can aid in understanding identified variation in patterns of lithic procurement, distribution, and use. Lithic assemblages at sites dating to both the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic in two separate areas of the central mountain plateau in southern Norway demonstrate use of locally available rock. Their use contrasts with that of flint which could only be sourced at the coast. While the use of flint in regions with a restricted range of available and suitable rock types is understandable, the presence of flint in regions rich in flint alternatives is more puzzling. In order to understand the choices and actions of prehistoric communities we must consider other factors, such as a sensorial exploration of the ability of raw materials to affect humans, together with the diverging ontological perspectives that shape human–material relations and the social situations of practice. This paper argues that, in addition to their straightforward utility, lithic raw materials had socially situated object-agency and inherent characteristics of charisma and that these exerted powerful influences on human choice, perception, and preference.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/B9A0448D798E7E3ABF47286F571161DC/S0079497X20000043a.pdf/div-class-title-in-search-of-cloudstones-the-contribution-of-charismatic-rocks-towards-an-understanding-of-mesolithic-and-neolithic-communities-in-the-montane-regions-of-south-norway-div.pdf

In Search of Cloudstones? The Contribution of Charismatic Rocks Towards an Understanding of Mesolithic and Neolithic Communities in the Montane Regions of South Norway

This article explores the concept of authenticity of rock, place and stone tools in the Mesolithic. It uses results from a recent pXRF analysis on a selection of greenstone adzes predominantly originating from a delimited area on the western coast of south Norway as its point of departure. The results show that, although the majority of the 80 analysed adzes were made of greenstone from one specific source, eight clearly stemmed from local outcrops away from this one source area. The quantitative geochemical data are not presented in detail. Instead, the focus is on the social significance of these stone objects and their sources as indicated by the results. I argue that the anomalies demonstrate an acknowledged social value placed on stone from a dedicated source area; they represent deliberate attempts to manipulate perception and thus replicate a specific social affinity. Emphasizing perception and appearance, I consider adzes of green stone as assemblages of knowledge, skill, place and social memory – as desirable objects that enhanced a feeling of belonging and social identity – and I question whether this means that people in the Mesolithic recognized and acknowledged something as authentic.

Acknowledged authenticity. Or did the origin of rock matter in the Mesolithic

In the collection Strike/Slip (2006), Don McKay, the leading ecopoet in Canada, uses the movement of rocks along a high-angle strike/slip fault to explore the strained but creative relationship between landscape and language, and specifically between geology and 'poetry as a reader of deep time'. John Terpstra's poetry also reads the rocks of deep time, particularly in the World Biosphere Reserve of the Niagara Escarpment. Whereas the rock's hardness has taken 350 million years to form, the people in the city below habitually use hard, divisive language: there needs to be a new Pentecost to 'change the face/of the earth' (1997, 45). In exploring several poems from Strike/Slip and from Terpstra's work, I will consider how geopoetry reads time past, present, and future through encounters with rock, guiding us through astonishment to future possibility. 

Reading Deep Time: Contemporary Canadian Geopoetry

A LIST OF CANADIAN POETS OF THE LAST HALF CENTURY whose work exemplifies cosmopolitan tendencies would likely not hold Don McKay's name at the top. Critics of his ten poetry collections and two essay collections have chiefly understood McKay's work within the context of ecopoetics and post-Romantic thinking (see, for example, Alanna F. Bondar, Adam Dickinson, and Sophia Forster). This is understandable; however, his poetic and non-fictional meditations on non-human nature, and especially geology, have provocative implications for contemporary cosmopolitanism discourse and suggest an unexplored link between two scholarly fields pertinent to his work. In order to elucidate these broader implications of his writing, and to thereby balance the current critical appraisal of McKay as nature poet par excellence, a view that risks underestimating those broader implications, it is first necessary to clarify the salient characteristics of cosmopolitanism. At present, there is little scholarly consensus on what cosmopolitanism entails--does it describe a mere familiarity with world cultures; does it describe the real experience of postnationalism, of international travel and migration; is it primarily an aesthetic, an ethic, or both? Besides this semantic difficulty, however, the more obvious reason for McKay's position on my hypothetical list of cosmopolitan poets is that, unlike some others such as Irving Layton, Gary Geddes, and Michael Ondaatje, McKay rarely takes a sustained look at other (human) cultures in his verse. It is rare that he publishes poems that start and end in a "foreign" culture, and instead of populating his work with fleshed-out humans, he more often focuses on the natural world, self identifying as a nature poet in essays like "Baler Twine: Thoughts on Ravens, Home and Nature Poetry" and "The Bushtits' Nest" (Vis a Vis 2001) and in his 2001 interview with Ken Babstock. The question then becomes whether nature poetry necessarily precludes a sophisticated engagement with ideas from around the world and, more specifically, relevance for cosmopolitanism discourse. When McKay's poet-speaker explores his interaction with the otherness of nature, grappling with challenging epistemological and ontological issues, does the absence of other in-the-flesh people in the poem negate the mental expansiveness displayed? The answer, of course, is no. In fact, McKay's poetics, especially as it is focused in his recent collection, Strike/Slip (2006), winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize, offers a valuable reconception of global connectivity based on a shared link to geology, a link that cuts across (or beneath) cultures and which is mutually supportive of his ethics of appropriation. The task of identifying the implications of McKay's poetry for cosmopolitan discourse, aside from what might appear as his "uncosmopolitan" content, is also complicated by his consistently ironic and playful tone (see Forster) and by his "self-effacing poetic persona" (Cook ix). This trademark humility, playfulness, and eschewing of appropriation is identified by numerous commentators on his work, such as Brian Bartlett, Kevin Bushell, Meira Cook, Forster, Ross Leckie, Travis Mason, and McKay himself, and it makes difficult the isolation and generalization of his philosophical positions from his poems. Typically, his self-conscious poet-speakers either attempt to limit impositions on the world observed, which includes limiting any prescriptive philosophizing, or else they fail in their appropriations in such a way that McKay's disapproval becomes clear. The poet, writes Travis Mason, "sets the offhand--the impromptu and distinctively unpretentious--against Poetry, capitalized here not incidentally, as a way to represent and value the more-than-human world with a measure of humility" (88). This reverence and humility, often conveyed through self-deprecating humour, may also explain why McKay is hesitant to explicitly extend the implications of his ecological ethics to the realm of human interaction. …

Rocking Cosmopolitanism: Don McKay, Strike/Slip, and the Implications of Geology

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Rocking Cosmopolitanism: Don McKay, Strike/Slip, and the Implications of Geology