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Ruth Taylor 1961-2006
By Endre Farkas
Feb 27, 2006, 14:03

 

 

 

Ruth first entered my life in the mid seventies, in my creative writing class, with a mischievous smile and challenging  eyes. She claimed that we met before that, when I was invited to read at Vaudreuil Catholic High to a group of grade 11 students and she introduced herself. She always had a better memory than me. Sometimes, she would quote me lines and when I asked whose it was, she would tell me that they were mine. She would also, when we would be walking, or driving somewhere or sitting on a back porch, in a park or a bar quote at the drop of a whim The Wasteland, Jaberwocky, Little Bateese, No Parking, In Guildernstern’s County and so much more. Maybe part of Ruth’s problem was that she remembered too much.

           

She occasionally reminded me that when she was my student, I had handed back a poem of hers with the comment “I asked for an avocado and you gave me an onion”. I don’t remember doing that nor do I know what I meant by it. We were so much younger then, but she said that for her it meant that I was treating her as a fellow poet. Ruth was always reading into the world what most never saw.

           

I remember Ruth in my Laird Hall office, where I conducted my creative writing classes, sitting under my desk and when a dilettante student would read one his or her poems that she didn’t approve of, watch her arm extend out and her palm move as if she were squishing something. It was her way of saying it was shit. The others in the class were afraid of that arm extending from under the desk, like a dragon emerging from a cave. But she was also generous and a champion to those who really cared.

           

Ruth had an enormous capacity for caring and loving. She was a mensch and quite a few of us benefited, sought and got comfort from this wild, passionate and lonely woman-child.

           

Very soon, I knew Ruth as a fellow poet who was touched by the madness of poetry, poems of infinite skill, richly woven and textured and of mystical depth appearing as The Drafting Board and The Dragon Papers. And  I remember late nights on her back porch in Ste Anne, one minute cursing me for introducing her to the scene and in the next, with a smoke and drink, saluting the gods and goddesses of the word and declaring herself their mouthpiece.

           

We also worked together in the poetic community. We spent countless hours, editing, typesetting, cutting and pasting, proof reading, midnight running to the obscure corners of Montreal to pick up boxes of books for launches, and then sitting in La Cabane toasting our adventures.

           

Ruth lived life at an intensity that was always on the brink of combustion. She was driven by a childlike innocence that found wonder in everything around her and a mystical calling that left her profoundly alone.

           

Most of us had a very complex relationship with Ruth. She wouldn’t have it any other way. She couldn’t have it any other way. We weren’t here to be ordinary. She couldn’t let herself be and she couldn’t let us be.

           

And because of this, Ruth didn’t have an easy life. She was hard on herself and could be on others.  She could be one moment intensely loving and profound and the next frustratingly petulant and pushy and self centered. And everything in-between, like all of us, but unlike most of us, she wasn’t good at "politesse" and therefore was not able to navigate the world that is too much with us.

           

But whichever Ruth I encountered, I knew at the core was an overwhelming love and life. And sadly, the person who would move mountains for others could not shake off weights that settled on her and could not accept helping hands that reached out to her.

           

Ruth, I am angry at you for that. I love you Ruth but I’m pissed at you for thinking that no one knew as much or could give you a helping hand. If you were so smart, how come you have come to this? And Ruth I am really pissed at you for taking off so soon.

           

And I am sad that I will not have any more late nights with you, staring up at dragons and dreams. But I will look up on starry nights and look for you among the constellations riding the cosmic comet, bugle to lips, leading the charge across the heavens. 

 

---

Poem For Ruth

Claudia (Cel) Lapp

 

O Ruth, I hardly knew ya

so wear my cinnabar dragon bracelet

hoping to fetch a shred of your spirit

for this ER AH, conversation,

out-of-body as it may be.

You can hear me, I know and…

 

 

AHEM. AHEM.

 

With Delphic innocence

I did presume

to treat of things

 

Chthonic and celestial fires alike

We’re glad you did, girl

 

quarky reasoning,

meanings for which there is no academic proof           

Third eye knows best,

O Chironic daughter of Jove

salamanders frolicking

 

autofecundation      a fertile imagination, heh heh

                                                                                 

fetch of a silkworm momentarily eternal

upon a quivering leaf      Who the hell in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue

 knows that fetch means “ghost”,

Hostie!

Heh. Heh.                                                                       

You’d go on about draconic Flaming

Pearls, hermetic charms & Wiccan                  

spells for lakeside suburbs

 

and doppelgangers

                        

You became Artie’s R.T., two Goats

just days apart, your two Mars                                                                  

in opposition

                                                                                                                                                      

forlorn whimsy of cosmic clock

          Why bother

2)

Now you’re talking like a Capricornus!

                                                                                   

There’s a thing I can relate to -

Solar light afflicted by Saturn,

apprenticed to the Study of

OLD THINGS (how you loved em)

words gone extinct that Moderns

don’t care about, tomes bulging

with prima materia for your

daunting DRAGON PAPERS                                                                                                               

                                                                                                       

A voice that says, “Ecce”,

 

zones on the stellar map

as the abodes of dragons

 

CAPUT or CAUDA?  Head or Tails                         

Your Astrologus speaks. Your        

Lunar North Node destiny was Virgo, Plutonic,                                                       

autoerotic, while South Node corrupted your

Pisces Venus with loss.

Ever unsatisfied

This is not bogus talk but true, my friend.

                                                                                                                    

Nobody knows of what I sing.

That is the agony of it all.                 

Of Thee you sang, with Thallic

routines made the puers quiver,

melted down their minds by

Sapphic methods, O ART!

O stand-up Muse, O Girlfriend!

 

O Terpsichore’s hot-tin tap shoes,

O Klio’s electric karma clit  O Ruth,

Dakini to Dragon Lady,

I hardly knew ya,

stared long at your wood nymph

cover photo, Pandora & Eros

behind your eyes,

Saturn’s musty cloak thrown off,

Charming in leopard pants & big

galoshes, a Girl, but Old…

One tires of … Monads and Gonads

The Melancholic speaks now…

3)

Mixed humours here   sanguine

      to melancholic

a bit cholicky too, no doubt                  

That Mars , a moist Mater of yours, all lune-y

& maternal, Retrograde, too,

was no Choleric but moist Mater

who needed to act out big time                                                                                             

whenever you let him out

In an arpeggio of delicious uncertainties

life spills over, warm upon their bellies

 

…is captured in tissue.                                                         

Heh Heh.   Heh Heh Heh.

 

O Thallic stand-up,

who’ll be your Doppelganger?

 

a fast red bird

  one big dragon roaring,

      spitting lightning out in forks                         

I see you wearing your Dragon Robe                                                                                         

with flaming pearls when you enter

the Pearly Gates

 

Ecce, our understandings fail us

            at the least surprise                                

We’ll never “figure out” your demise…

   forlorn whimsy of our cosmic clock

You Capricorns will not forget theTime,

the allotted seasons.

So it was your time? WE CAN’T

BELIEVE THAT…

Your call…

      

You are CAPUT, but only in this reality.                                             

Now you cavort with Chiron, gather Self-Heal,

smash the face of the clock, roam palatine space

with the Immortals

 

This is the eternal present.

This is the eternal present.

Yes, rain falls, snow flies,

       kettle boils and dishes

are stacked in the sink.

 

4) AHEM. AHEM.

 

And the dragon scent,

an eerie and comfortable cologne

This is the eternal present.

---

Valentine’s Day 2009

(For Ruth)

Chris Gobeil

 

At 45,

on lovers’ day,

she took to her bed,

in a womanly way,

five Russian soldiers

Strong, stout

and stoic of face;

a tribute to

the warrior race

 

Valentine, Lykaia or Lupercalia;

love is fertility,

inter alia

 

What sage can explain

the despair of the little girl

inside?

What darkness was embraced

to shield from the man?

The hands of the man, and the pain

And what else then died?

 

When life brings no other way,

aqua vitae

can’t be beat, eh?

 

So soldiers five

inspired euphoria

Took her on past

alcoholic bulimia

To a place

where die are cast

Where souls are ante

And peace beckoned at last

 

Aqua vitae

The water of life

Swim into its depths

Can you taste it now?  Life?

Or some less familiar spirit?

 

Love made her

Love left her imperilled

The angels approach,

but bring no Herald

 

 

So peace she found

in bed when she drowned

with Russian draught

the sorrows fraught

 

The shadows laughed

as they often would

“We’d have helped her,

if we only could”

 

One dead poet

Five dead soldiers

One sad world

Sorrow grown bolder

One last kiss

on lips growing colder

 

 

February 14, 2009

---

I always knew what the deal was,

even when I was your kid

 your feelings, arghaaaah,

your feelings, something about

your feelings, fuck your feelings

you were my teacher

slut face whore mouth slut cunt bitch

I’m under the impression I should thank you or sumthin’

after all you did rip me over to Ireland

 

In Harp Drunk Deceptive nights

hurt by my poetic heartbreaks

how like an adoptive mother

one more about feelings more than things

your ignorance was meaningless

I owe you nothing

no essays, papers, homework

for I can feel now

my heroes have shifted

listen to meee!

I’m writing bullshit!

look at me writing bullshit!

I believe I’m a beatnik bullshit

I have beatniked the bashful poem

beaten beatnik’s brains out

look at me, listen to me, hear me, smell me

shit on me!

 

I am your God

are you responsible for this

you can’t be responsible, for me, no

you’re famous in my eyes

 

I adore you

I wanna be you

I want your age, your job, your children,

and I want to feel you intellect,

rub against my balls

sometimes I avoided you 

sometimes you intimidated me

but I still looked up to you

So as I lie here in my bed

Drunk

Stoned

Naked

Polluted

I disregard you,

and realize that you’re gonna want to die someday

yesterday

tomorrow

and though you may live on

you will someday

and eventually drag me down with you

January 2006 Vancouver