The uncollected Acorn

by Milton Acorn

Book by Acorn, Milton

157 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1987

About the author

Milton James Rhode Acorn (March 30, 1923 – August 20, 1986), nicknamed The People's Poet by his peers, was a Canadian poet, writer, and playwright. He was born in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.

Acorn was a World War II veteran. On a trans-Atlantic crossing, he suffered a wound from depth charges. The wound was severe enough for him to receive a disability pension from Veterans Affairs for most of his life. He returned to Prince Edward Island, and then moved to Montreal in 1956. He also spent several years living at the Hotel Waverly in Toronto.

In Montreal, he published some of his early poems in the political magazine, New Frontiers. He also self-published a mimeographed chapbook, In Love and Anger, his first collection of poems.

He was for a short time married to poet Gwendolyn MacEwen.

In 1967, Acorn helped found the then-"underground" newspaper The Georgia Straight in Vancouver, BC.

Acorn was awarded the Canadian Poets Award in 1970 and the Governor General's Award in 1976 for his collection of poems, The Island Means Minago.

In July 1986, he suffered a heart attack and was admitted to the hospital. Acorn died in his home town of Charlottetown on August 20, 1986, due to complications associated with his heart condition and diabetes. According to fellow poet and close friend Warren Kinthompson, he had "lost his will to live after the death of a younger sister."

Reviews

[Vicki Nemeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having read this book in two stretches, I read it in a perceptibly different and more insightful way on the second stretch.

The first stretch was to fulfil the suggestion of an acquaintance I had met years before moving to Winnipeg, when I had newly arrived in Beautiful Muskoka and the region still appeared relatively safe. He was an old guy in a men's clothing shop, where I was visiting to appreciate the fabric weaves. But the Huntsville, Ontario library didn't seem to have Milton Acorn, and CanPublishing doesn't exactly make its historical titles easy to get, so wouldn't have gotten ahold of Mr. Acorn until I moved someplace bigger.

Finally, I managed to flee to Winnipeg and freelance my way into a normal (not a homestay) rental room. I read most of the book while coping with the news of Russia invading Eastern Europe, remembering stories I'd observed about birds, and expanding my copy and content writing for IT businesses and technology magazines. I found most of it enjoyable and accessible, and sought to intuitively absorb the rhythms and devices I hoped to draw inspiration from.

Well, wouldn't you know it, Christofash don't like you working. (People who accuse of you of not wanting to work don't want you to work. They want to accuse you of not wanting to work.) Two thirds of the way into the book, I was uprooted and switched to easier material.

I was off this book for three years. I'm out of practice in writing poetry, at the moment.

But I did learn the world history that my public school system didn't think was important enough to teach me, and I learned post-Thatcher history that has gotten our dystopia into the predicament we're in. I also learned to be critical of certain schools of literary criticism, and how higher ranking editors can use it to repress any ability to read authors meaningfully, while pretending to respect their freedom by allowing publication.

So I think my original enjoyment of this book was on the level of, "It's nice, I guess." And that's how I read nearly three quarters of it. Now that I've read the last quarter so differently, it feels like I didn't even read the first three.

It's historically valuable and advisory. (The only bad poems in the last part are the ones about the Iranian revolution, and I doubt Acorn was expecting to be right any more than wrong, but he ran out of time to respond anymore.) Acorn was from Prince Edward Island and neurodivergent enough to be married to Gwendolyn MacEwen for a little while. Note that mental health practitioners back then had reprehensible definitions of conditions that are now considered neurodiverse, and many Canadian writers wouldn't have seen themselves that way but would mysticize what experience they had. Some of Acorn's work documents life experiences that he was actually not free to talk about, and yes this is Canada. We still aren't.

So, it will be worth returning to the parts that I think I haven't read satisfactorily. I wonder what else I missed.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

For no mathematics measures the pain
That makes its home in the den
Of one man's heart, except it's the same
As the pain of a million men.

Each jobless man is a world gone grey;
Where a worry walks in a haze;
Where life is a habit that flesh has learned
And drags thru a desert of days.

-excerpt from a political poem about Ottawa men and statistics. Fitting for this day and age and officious [internet] politics.

3.5 rounded up, I believe has more to do with the choice of poems if it's to be seen a low rating. My first choice was to acquire Dig Up My Heart but as there is a shortage of Milton Acorn's books available I went with his uncollected. There was one copy available for about sixty dollars used that I decided was too pricey. I've noticed quite an increase in books lately.