Various Positions by Ira B. Nadel

statement, “CIV/n: not a one-man job,” “CIV/n” being Pound’s abbreviation for civilization. Its stated goal was to present poetry that would be “a vital representation of what things are, done in strong language (if necessary) or any language, but it [would] rouse the reader to see just what the world around him [was] like.” Poets in Canada, Collins added, were “forced to write with maple syrup on birch bark,” and this needed to change. The energetic editorial meetings, attended by Layton, Dudek, and Collins, often at Layton’s Montreal home, led to the appearance of new and unorthodox writing: it was frank, colloquial, unselfconscious, and experimental. To get the Canadian mind out of storage,
CIV/n
proposed the following new standard:
    For Kulchur’s sake, at least, let’s have a lot of bad
good
poetry in future, instead of more
good
bad poetry—and let the dead-head critics hold their peace until the call of the last moose.
    In a letter to Robert Creeley, Layton comically summarized the completion of the inaugural issue: “Last night we celebrated
CIV/n
with an orgy and to give the issue the proper send-off we all undressed and sat about holding each other’s privates (sounds gruesome now).”
    Pound was sent copies of the magazine and replied to Dudek that he found it unpolemical and too local. He questioned whether the magazine had any interest in “standing for maximum awareness.” The fourth issue of
CIV/n
, which included Cohen’s first effort, was more broadly based. The issue also contained work by both Creeley and Corman; a long article on Pound by Camillo Pellizzi, an Italian author/critic; and an editorial by Dudek on why Pound was being held in a Washington, D.C., mental hospital. It also contained contributions from Phyllis Webb, Raymond Souster, and Irving Layton. Cohen’s author’s note reveals that “Leonard N. Cohen … composes poetry to the guitar; now studying at McGill.”
    The second poem by Cohen in the issue alludes to his experiences in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the summer of 1953. That summer Cohen had gone to Harvard, ostensibly to take a poetry course from the experimental French poet Pierre Emmanuel, who was teaching a course on the nature of modern poetry. Cohen convinced his mother that the enterprise would be worth a month or so in Cambridge, though he spent most of his time listening to folk music from the world-famous John Lennox Collection at the Widener Library. In the poem, he describes how the “secret undulations” of the River Charles “swarmed the shadows of ten dozen streetlamps and a moon.” The poem appears retitled and revised as “Friends” in
Let Us Compare Mythologies
. Four other poems by Cohen appeared in
CIV/n
before publication ceased in 1955.
    The literary environment of
CIV/n
was as important as the publication itself, and through
CIV/n
Cohen came into contact with older, more experienced writers who sought to challenge the poetic orthodoxy of the country. Aileen Collins later characterized this challenge as the effort, at least in Montreal, to contradict the Canadian Authors Association’s notion of poetry as effusive expressions of emotional states, similar in form and taste to a blend of maple syrup; hence her comment about maple syrup on birch bark.
    The
CIV/n
circle included Layton, Betty Sutherland (sister of the McGill poet John Sutherland and Layton’s companion from the mid-1940s; they married in 1948), the sculptor Buddy Rozynski, art director of the magazine, his wife Wanda, and later, Doug Jones, Phyllis Webb, Eli Mandel, F.R. Scott, Cid Corman, Raymond Souster, Robert Creeley, and Charles Olson. Aileen Collins and the Rozynskis handled the production and distribution of the magazine, as well as the finances, and also took charge of the correspondence, accounting, art-work, and circulation.
    Cohen was soon participating in the group’s discussions, debates, and informal readings, often bringing his guitar to