On the Poetic Works of John Devlin, Part I
John Devlin was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1954, and is best known today as an outsider artist — specifically for his drawings of an imaginal Cambridge, which he refers to as Nova Cantabrigiensis, a place removed from England and carefully reconstrued with a kind of mathematical intuition as the new center of the world, so to speak, in the middle of a lake in Nova Scotia. At 25, Devlin “left to read theology at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. There he suffered a severe breakdown, the first of a series of psychotic episodes that forced him to return to his hometown to be hospitalized.” [1] There is sufficient material available online regarding Devlin’s visual art for me to forgo it here — his visual work has enjoyed some recognition beginning in the late 1980’s — but there has been to-date no serious attempt to reckon with Devlin’s poetry, namely, the three self-published books he calls the Triptych Canadensis: Painting on a Curved Surface (1983-84); The Ghost on the Mezzanine; and Enigma of the Piano (1991-94), all from Gegenschein Books. I do not wish to relate his poetry too closely to his mental illness for fear of it being taken as a sort of folk-anomaly, or reduced to mere symptom. It is so easy to reduce. Nonetheless, that would be a study of some interest, and since my notes will be dealing with the pseudo-musical interrelation of his poems in sequence, I wish to supply a comment of Devlin’s on his Nova Cantabrigiensis that deals with his illness and use of ratio, and then leave it at that.
“My theory,” he says, “is that for ideal design, there is an Ideal Ratio. I have been hunting for such a constant. I was on a Faustian quest, for arcane knowledge that would explain the magical ambience of Cambridge. I thought that if I could capture that ambience as a mathematical formula, then I wouldn’t have to go to England. I thought I could think my way out of mental illness back into the happy times in Cambridge … before things began to fall apart on me.” One of Devlin’s main obsessions is the ratio of 3:7, the relationship between the number of vowels and consonants in “Jesu Christ”; he has even marked his toenails with it. He is convinced that all objects that are not constituted according to this perfect ratio are flawed, and by correcting them, he will be able to prevent illness and death. [2]
John Devlin, Untitled, 1988, Mixed media on paper, 28 × 21.6 cm. Collection Henry Boxer Gallery.
John Devlin, Study of King’s College, Cambridge, 1988, Mixed media on paper, 21.6 × 28 cm. Collection Henry Boxer Gallery.
*
It is the aim of this essay to make swaths of Devlin’s mature work available, while giving only a modicum of extraneous information or interpretation, by way of framework. In Devlin’s words: “I have earlier work but I don’t wish to show it because it is immature. I also have later work which I don’t wish to show for slightly different reasons.”
Devlin’s earliest work that begins his “mature” period, is Painting on a Curved Surface. This book-length long poem in 79 sections (“stories” to use the author’s nomenclature) is presented in landscape, with two columns of text per page, which means up to two poems, length permitting. I’ll reproduce that style here.
The title of this book bears no relation to Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, by John Ashbery, which Devlin has not read. Devlin’s cover-art, in conjunction with the title and text, suggests to me the situation of the astrologer on earth, whose observations describe the dome of the heavens. At times the astrological is overtly stated, as in the first section of the poem. Other times various details, events, and proper names take on the aspect and specificity of astrological motions: the crinums, Edith, Edward, of the poem’s second section.
Front cover art for Painting on a Curved Surface
1. Man in Foliage
Jacob Meisner was hunting in the
woods near Noel one morning when
he came upon Jesus, dressed in
khaki, with a horn-pipe stuck into
the top of his trousers. He was reclining
on the ground under a witch
hazel bush.
Jacob asked him, “Jack...” - for
all his close friends called him by
that name - “when will the caribou
return to Hants County ?”
Jack toyed with the muzzle of
his rifle and answered, “When
Mars returns to Aries.”
2. Twilight I
A pot of pink crinums bloomed
on the table.
Edith sat down. She wrote,
“Who would believe the paper and pen
would outlive the hand? Traces of
the man in patterns on sand.”
Edward entered the room.
She rose and said, “I love you
in the evening.”
3. A Soldier and His Bible
Richard Hartshorne was an officer
in the British Army.
One day he sat reading the Psalms.
The light began to fail. He put
down the book and picked up his pen.
He wrote, “Warm oil poured over
the head is running through the hair,
down over the beard and face, even
running freely over the stiff edge
of a starched collar.”
4. The Clerk
Alexander Bradley’s great plan
in life was to climb the ontological
ladder to the United Kingdom.
He dreamt of killing the Cyclops
in the Byzantine Caves.
He had great plans for King’s
College, Windsor. He remembered
Henry VI’s work at Eton.
Life in Bedford, N.S. was a
neutral background to a rich
psychic life.
5. Fishers of Men
Edmund Silvershield was baroque
in thought, ascetic in speech.
Both men were in the water up
to the waist. From Manbir’s neck
was suspended a disc of gold.
Manbir was a Sikh.
Edmund turned and gave the man’s
beard a friendly tug. He said,
“The star in the water is in line
with the city below the horizon.”
46. Poet Under a Willow Tree
Nathan Stillwell was a foolish
virgin and did not keep his lamp
filled with oil.
He believed that the Provost of
King’s College, Cambridge was
more powerful than the Bishop
of Rome.
When he moved past the Duke’s
Music Room one morning, the Sun
was eclipsed by the ball on top.
He believed that England stole
Italian architecture when Christopher
Wren designed the library of Trinity
College.
48. Ron and Wanda
After a wild period Ron settled down
with his girlfriend.
Before Ron, Wanda said, ‘I am looking
for a man who is as comfortable
as an old shoe.’
One day walking down Spring Garden
Road Ron looked up into the sky
and saw the eye of God.
The day the Queen arrived Ron’s
hibiscus bloomed. In the afternoon
the books on Michelangelo arrived.
Ron sang, read Colette. Wanda took
her liver-coloured dog with her into
The Cake Box.
Ron’s grandmother saw ball lightning
pass through the screen door
into Wanda’s house.
One foggy July morning the linden
trees were sticky, the bedsheets
damp.
Wanda joined the Orchid Society.
Wanda’s grandmother read the
Psalms.
Ron’s friends began to call him
‘Silent Ron’.
During a period of illness Ron did
not like Italian architecture.
Soon Ron and Wanda were back
to their old selves, all gussied up
and going to see Cleo Laine.
62. The Dark Man
Ralph Merricott had a successful
moustache and went to Peterhouse,
Cambridge.
After the First War he went to
Nova Scotia. He bought an old farm
in Hants County.
He heard the story of the frozen
black man who was sawed in half
to get downstairs.
When the Sun set, Ralph sat under
his cherry tree, and said, ‘Now the
dark man rises from his slumbers.’
The lilacs covered the eaves.
Ralph was losing his sight. He
wrote in a book with a soft black
cover, ‘There is a ghost in the large
upper room, who dances the chaconne
in June, when the sulphur-yellow
roses bloom.’
63. After the Equinox
It was fall. The tomatoes were like
so many red and green lamps on the
vine. The caterpillars were gone. The
pumpkins were full. The world was
poised.
Andrew turned and said, ‘Who is
the man at the top of the garden?’
65. Mystery in the Rotunda
Anthony Lilly was conceived in
beauty and born into a difficult time.
At age twenty-five his motto was
‘Say Nothing and Carry a Big Stick’.
At age twenty-seven he was given
to eating gold foil crumpled around
a wedge of lime.
It was his twenty-ninth birthday
and he was sitting in the Duke of
Kent’s rotunda watching the rainbow
rise over Bedford Basin.
Anthony continued, ‘I have lied
when I should not have lied, and I
have told the truth when I should
not have told the truth.’
The bishop offered him shellfish
and coconut.
70. Allegro-Grave-Allegro
Margaret filled a bowl with
narcissus and then had a light
fresh lunch.
Every day she took a nap from
two to four. On her wall hung a
painting entitled “Muse in Repose”.
In the winter Margaret became
ill. She asked, ‘Am I in Grand
Pré or Grantchester?’
She remembered her brother
who had died in the water. She
wept.
Ruth came to her and nursed
her. Soon she was well.
After this they spent the winters
together in Georgia.
67. Stopover in Atlantis
Montezuma the Aztec was in the
Azores en route from La Paz to
Byzantium.
He was lying under an azalea bush
eating brazil nuts and Philadelphia
cream cheese, gazing at the azure
sky above. He was all jazzed up with
an indigo sash around his waist.
He spent his school years in Arizona,
going on to the Royal Navy
at sixteen, and sailed around Antarctica
when he was twenty.
He met Ezra Blackhorn off Argentina.
Ezra was born in Uganda
but spent his early years in Alabama
and Australia.
Both men were now off on a pilgrimage
to the basilica of St Zachary in the great
Asian metropolis.
The fall jasmine was blooming
and a glazed vase on a bamboo
table was full of magenta colchicums.
Ezra was lazily eating
tetrazzini while his travelling
companion woozily
studied the score of Idomeneo.
Both men went on to the baked
Alaska. Montezuma picked up
a text on American zoology.
Ezra said, ‘I have never seen
the Golden Horn.’
Montezuma remembered a night
he had once spent in the red light
district of New Orleans, and replied,
‘I intend to examine the
influence of Greece upon Asian
architecture.’
A short silence ensued.
In a moment Ezra said, ‘I once
saw a field full of pushkinias in
New Zealand.’
In the zenith shone a comet,
bright as a star at high noon.
Ezra remembered the day
he saw the sarcophagus of Alexander,
and said, ‘ “The corposants! The
corposants!”
you cried as we sailed
down the Amazon.’
He rolled over on his back. By
now the aurora was flickering on
the northern horizon.
‘I have seen the Teazer Light
only once,’ he went on, ‘and that
was the day the whales came to
Admiral Rock.’
Montezuma raised the titanium
octant to his face, and replied,
‘The spiral nebula in Andromeda
puzzles me.’
Libra had long set; Triangulum
was rising in the east.
Overall, the sections I’ve chosen are designed to give a general sense of the book and to present the major thrust of this work, namely: the poem as a series of interludes; and the interludes as transformations in the form of a fugue.
These sections or stories do not sully themselves with an overarching narrative progression, instead they are concerned with transient figures and scenes of great specificity but of an often ambiguous significance. To detail their ‘meaning’ would be a senseless task, and Devlin's irreverent favoring of music and charm is what makes these interludes rather than poems vainly concerned with being the whole show. The development throughout these interludes is visible in their recurrent and evolving themes. These themes evolve in the way of a mystical transformation, such as the one embodied in the liturgical calendar (another heavenly sphere, analogous, and here perhaps the same as, that of astrology). I do not mean that these poems are particularly occult, but that they were individually composed within a longer indeterminate sequence, and as such, they indulge in an inherently mystical nature of self-uncovering. This self-uncovering is painted with Devlin’s straightforward, almost prosaic delight in details and words, and his lovely and rare urbanity — more George Herbert (referred to several times in this book) than the colder and crueler sophistication of later days.
Back cover art for Painting on a Curved Surface
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Here are a couple illustrations of Devlin’s thematic transformations:
Architecture
Section 48. Ron and Wanda: “Ron’s friends began to call him/ ‘Silent Ron’. /During a period of illness Ron did/ not like Italian architecture./ Soon Ron and Wanda were back/ to their old selves, all gussied up/ and going to see Cleo Laine.”
Section 46. Poet Under a Willow Tree: “Nathan Stillwell was a foolish/ virgin […]
He believed that England stole/ Italian architecture when Christopher/ Wren designed the library of Trinity/ College.” [3]
Montezuma speaks in section 67. Stopover in Atlantis: “I intend to examine the/ influence of Greece upon Asian/ architecture.”
The Dark Man
Section 62. The Dark Man: “the frozen/ black man who was sawed in half/ to get down stairs.” Then the protagonist of this story, Ralph, now under the cherry tree, prophecies: “‘Now the/ dark man rises from his slumbers.’ […] Ralph was losing his sight.”
Section 63. After the Equinox, already presents, or foretells in a shadow of futurity, of the Dark Man’s resurrection: “Andrew turned and said, ‘Who is / the man at the top of the garden?’”
etc.
I’ve hardly touched even these themes, and there are many others in the interludes that develop in poignant redemptions, and in side-winderings that are also poignant, if less familiarly directed. Even death and resurrection do not preclude a further life. The Loch Ness Monster, The Devil, Ralph Merricott, Jahweh, and Patricia all have a spiritual existence unhindered by the orders of mortality or birth, just as “The bishop offered him shellfish/ and coconut.” has a significance in timeliness rather than its historicity.
When I asked Devlin in an email exchange about his poetic influences, he replied:
“Major influences on me have been Dante, Eliot. Alice in Wonderland. Also Bach’s Art of the Fugue. Also my Mother for her Letters as well as Memoirs. I’m interested in how seemingly sterile arid systems can generate romance and emotion.”
To close my notes on Painting on a Curved Surface, I’ll supply the title poem, simply for its own sake.
John Devlin, Untitled, 2018, Mixed media and gold leaf on paper, 28 × 21.6 cm. Collection the artist.
36. Painting on a Curved Surface
The clock struck ten.
A green lily flecked with nutmeg spots
bloomed in a glazed pot by the
open window.
Mozart was seated at the secretary
in the Green Saloon of
Aztec House writing a letter to
his cousin in Ephesus.
Lady Alexandra entered the
room carrying a trivet of walnuts
and water biscuits.
Desmond Duffy was waiting
in the Circular Hall.
‘We are going to Parrsboro
tonight,’ she said.
‘And Octavia will be there.’
‘And Octavia will be there,’
she echoed.
Mozart directed his gaze
into the evening light.
‘Can you guess my secret?’he asked.
She flashed her fine eyes
at him and laughed. She said,
‘Every bicycle is haunted by
an invisible horse.’
Mozart stood up.
The wisteria was tapping
at the French windows.
The candles were unlit.
Sawyer Hall was waiting.
Read Part II here and Part III here.
NOTES
[1] Christian Berst,“John Devlin”, Art Brut.
[2] ibid.
[3] Virgo, the male virgin. Also, could this be a cheeky nod to Robert Herrick’s panegyrics against virginity, but this time, of the male?
