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Jean Jay Macpherson (June 13, 1931 – March 21, 2012) was a Canadians Lyric poetry poet and scholar. 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.
In 1951 Macpherson received a BA from Carleton College (now Carleton University) in 1951, followed by a year at University College in London. She received a BLS from McGill University, and then completed her MA and PhD at Victoria College, University of Toronto, both supervised by professor and critic Northrop Frye.
Macpherson published poetry in Contemporary Verse in 1949. Her first book was published in 1952.
In 1954 Macpherson began her own small press, Emblem Books, which published her second volume, O Earth Return. Between 1954 and 1963, Emblem Books published eight featuring the work of Canadian poets, including Dorothy Livesay, Alden Nowlan, and Al Purdy."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 in 1958.
Macpherson taught English 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 poetry and Pastoral poetry traditions from the 17th century onward."
Jay Macpherson died on Mar 21, 2012.
In technique, Macpherson has been placed "beside Margaret Avison, P. K. Page, Phyllis Webb, but especially Anne Hébert – particularly in the use of the Gothic and macabre themes and devices."
The Boatman of the title "is Noah, but both Noah and the ark itself form an allegory for the artist and the artistic experience, the ark representing Jung's collective unconscious." "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:
George Woodcock 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 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, 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."
She won the Governor General's Award for The Boatman in 1958.
A small park in her former Toronto neighbourhood, Jay Macpherson Green, is named for her near Avenue Road and Dupont Street.
Except where otherwise noted, bibliographic information courtesy Brock University." Jay Macpherson, 1931-", Canadian Women Poets," BrockU.ca, Web, Apr. 10, 2011
Writing
Macpherson has been described "as a 'mythopoeic' poet – rooted in the teachings of Frye, the archetypes of Carl Jung, and the intensely conservative social vision of T.S. Eliot." Within her work, "recurring themes involve the Creation myth, fall, Flood myth, redemption and the apocalypse." Her interest is in "authentic myth", "the ones that have some imaginative force behind them."
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.
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.
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."
Recognition
Macpherson won Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize, and the University of Western Ontario President's Medal, in 1957.
Publications
Poetry
Fiction
Non-fiction
Monograph
Articles
Notes
External links
Categories: 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, Academic Staff Of The University Of Toronto, Poets From London, Poets From Toronto, 20th-century Canadian Women Writers
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