Episode 65: Touched by that Fire: On Visionary Literature, with B. W. Powe

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2020

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

B. W. Powe is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and professor at York University, in Toronto. His work, though it covers an immense range of topics from politics and poetics to magic and technology, proceeds from a mystical apprehension of the universe as the locus of magical operations, the site of experiments in cosmic becoming. In his various books and essays, Powe continues a uniquely Canadian form of the visionary tradition whose luminaries include his former teachers Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye. In this episode, he joins JF and Phil for an exploration of the meaning, potency, and danger of the visionary in art and literature. Header image: Detail of "Green Color" by Gausanchennai (Wikimedia Commons). REFERENCES B. W. Powe's website B. W. Powe, The Charge in the Global Membrane B. W. Powe, Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye: Apocalypse and Alchemy Frank Lentricchia, "Last Will and Testament of an Ex-Literary Critic" Lorca's concept of duende Hildegard of Bingen's concept of viriditas Gilles Deleuze, Cinema II Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy Marshall McLuhan, "Notes on William Burroughs" Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture John Clellon Holmes, beatnik Northrop Frye, Canadian literary critic Hildegard von Bingen, Ordo Virtutum Joni Mitchell, "Woodstock" Genesis 32, Jacob and the Angel R. D. Laing, Scottish psychologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus" Sylvia Plath, "Daddy" Jack Kerouac, American writer Allen Ginsberg, American poet Lionel Snell, British philosopher and magician Special Guest: B. W. Powe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:02.0	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:23.3	For more episodes or to support the podcast, go to weirdst. I'm J.F. Martel.
0:53.3	What is the imagination? According to B.W. Pow, our guest for
0:57.5	today, it is, quote, the key to the soul, to seeing pattern and incongruity, to reclaiming the
1:04.2	inherent order of the cosmos, to augury and omen, to the restoration and contemplation of mystery, unquote.
1:12.5	In other words, the imagination is more than a mental faculty.
1:15.5	It's an organ of perception.
1:18.0	Howe is a Canadian poet, novelist, and literary scholar based out of York University in Toronto.
1:25.1	He is the author of numerous books, notably a seminal study of the relationship
1:30.0	between Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye, both of whom taught him when he was a student at the
1:34.4	University of Toronto, and most recently the charge in the global membrane, a meditation on the
1:40.7	seismic changes overtaking our hypermediated world. Howe's work is difficult to categorize because he really is a visionary in the technical sense of the term.
1:50.0	For many years now, he has taught an almost legendary course at York University entitled
1:56.0	visionary literature from Hildegard von Bingen and Teresa Vavala to Bob Dylan and Patty Smith.
2:02.8	It was this course that we picked as our object of discussion for this episode.
2:07.6	B.W. is a friend and mentor of mine. I first met him in Ottawa when he was giving a talk on his
2:13.5	book Marshall McLuhan and Arthur Pry, Apocalypse and Alchemy a few years ago.
2:23.5	Over the course of the talk and the conversations that followed, I was struck by B.W.'s profound insight into subjects we regularly discuss on the show, the imaginal, the mystical, the weird,
2:29.7	the prophetic power of dreams and art. Having him on weird studies is something that I'd been thinking
2:35.1	about for a while. In particular, I had a feeling he and Phil would have a lot to talk about,
2:40.8	being both pedagogues who still believe in the transformative power of an education
	...

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